Neck a Neck

After the initial uncertainty if the competition will be cancelled, The Guardian News decided to start the event when seven competitors signed up. AkiraStrait, ciabatta8.9, General Goose, heliozoan, Pudie, Toilet seat and Zpazeeagle decided to bravely step into the arena and compete to see who will be crowned the best Builder in OGAT.

The first stage of the competition where each participant is competing twice in two separate rounds, started on Saturday. Nervousness and anticipation was present among the first four competitors, AkiraStrait, ciabatta8.9, Toilet seat and Zpazeeagle when waiting for the beginning of the first round. None of the first competitors knew exactly what they got themselves in to. When the referee announced the theme of the first round – Lighthouse, many competitors were confused how to construct a lighthouse with limited height option. For the first 10 minutes there was almost no progress on any of the four fields. Slowly the creations started to appear. There was almost no interaction between the four builders as each was entirely focused on their creations. First to finish was ciabatta8.9 who made his creation in record 50 minutes. All other competitors finished well before the maximum allowed time of 90 minutes.

With only one score point difference between first and last position shows the quality of all four contestants. The first to finish - ciabatta8.9, was also crowned the winner in the end. Zpazeeagle following closely behind with his 2D relief sculpture of a lighthouse. There was also were little disparity among the three expert judges. The largest deviation was by Riczio2 who scored Zpazeeagle with only three points while other two judges gave the creation a nine and a ten. “I just don’t see a lot of work, water, few rocks and this thing from miscellaneous, just looks sad” commented Riczio2.

Head Judge and the director of the organisation committee DOJEGAN commented on the proceedings of the first round, “We have been very pleased with the first round. There were no major violations and the first round went very smoothly”. He also remarked on the four creations “I was slightly disappointed that apart from Zpazeeagle no other builder focused enough on the main theme, the lighthouse. In most creations a lighthouse was only a small part of the entire creation”.