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IPMS Nats: How are what-if entries judged?


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What do IPMS Nats rules say about 'What-If' entries? All I know is that judging is based on craftsmanship, not fidelity to the real subject. I.e, an overall pink F-15 wearing F-18 decals would be judged no differently than an accurately painted and decaled F-15. Is that so? Two things I am curious:

 

- What do the rules say for this?

- If the rules are clear on craftsmanship only, are the judges able to look past their own tendencies to judge accuracy? 

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All I know is that judging is based on craftsmanship, not fidelity to the real subject. I.e, an overall pink F-15 wearing F-18 decals would be judged no differently than an accurately painted and decaled F-15.

 

This is true for every category.  IPMS judging is entirely based on craftsmanship, not accuracy, so you don't have to worry about whether you've got the right bomb load for a specific mission, or whether your kit's pitot tube is 1 mm too long, you *only* need to worry about whether your seams are filled and your parts are aligned.

 

The rules are pretty explicit about this.  They allow some wiggle room for using accuracy in an extreme, tie-breaking situation, but in practice this would be gross accuracy issues (like entering a pink F-15 with Hornet markings vs. one in normal USAF markings) and basically never happens.  Nobody ever enters a perfectly built model, so judging is more about which faults are more severe than which entry is most perfect.  http://www.ipmsnationals.com/Documents/2019-FINAL-IPMS-USA-National-Contest-Rules.pdf

 

As for your second question, it depends entirely on the judge.  At the Nats level, it should go without saying that the judges will work strictly by the rules.  The more local the contest, the more likely you are to find shitty judges.  In my experience, bad judges tend to get shifted to the smaller/less popular categories; if you only have a certain number of judges for your contest, you stick the idiots on the kid's table, or humour or something where they hopefully won't embarrass the club too much; meanwhile your good judges get used in the major categories like aircraft and armour, where most of the entries are.

 

All that being said, judges are just random modellers who offer to help out, so mileage will vary widely.  There's no actual qualification necessary, so judges may not even know what the rules are, let alone follow them.

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In my local area (St Louis), a judges meeting is held prior to any judging being commenced, specifically to point out the criteria to be used for that judging, mostly for the benefit of new volunteer judges. Newbies are always paired with at least one experienced judge, and preferably two for judging teams of three. My experience has been that the local teams are very serious about their task, and as completely impartial as possible. I, for one, don't like having to point out errors on a model built by a friend, but do it regardless, for the sake of impartiality and fairness. I expect no less from my fellow judges.

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Isn't there a separate "what-if" category?  IPMS UK has a class for hypothetical aircraft (paper projects and imaginary), and it sounds like your project would fit the bill in such a class.

Thanks. I just checked the categories here:

http://www.ipmsnationals.com/Documents/2019-FINAL-IPMS-USA-National-Contest-Categories.pdf

 

Category 820 Kit-Based (spurious markings on standard kit) seems to be the closest to what I have in mind. 

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