♠ Medieval Reenactment Show Guide ♠

In case you're not bored yet, here's a little more detail about the process of judging the show!

Evaluate each pose individually, you're not comparing them to any other horses or anything. Each pose is worth up to 8 points. (A 7 pt pose is still pretty good, and I'd say 6 is the average.) The type of pose it is also varies a little on how you score it but I've outlined the pts that each feature of the pose is worth.

Agility: Piaffe/Passage/Extended Trot pose
+3 for alignment/body shading, +2 for eyes, +2 for ears, +1 for head alignment

Speed: Any Gallop/Canter pose
+3 for alignment/body shading, +2 for eyes, +2 for ears, +1 for head alignment

Stamina/Strength: Lope/Any Jump/Halt w/ tack pose
Lope: +3 for alignment/body shading, +2 for eyes, +2 for ears, +1 for head alignment
Jumps: +4 for alignment/body shading, +2 for eyes, +2 for ears
Halt with Tack: +1 for alignment/body shading, +2 for eyes, +2 for ears, +2 for levelness, +1 for tack suitability/placement

So for most poses you're going to look at the alignment/shading first, is the horse turned too close or too far and how is the shading overall? You can rank it 0-3. (3 being perfectly straight and the coat shaded the same throughout, 2 is close but not quite, 1 is they tried but really didn't get there, and 0 is like the horse might as well be running diagonal.) Then look at the eyes, if they have a neutral or angry expression and are looking straight ahead then +2, if they are looking slightly up or down or looking a little worried or surprised (but not actual worried) then +1, and if they are like staring at the ground or the clouds, or falling asleep or extremely worried, 0 points. Then look at the ears, +2 if they match up nicely or really close, +1 if they're close but could've been better, and 0 if they're obviously off by just glancing at the pose. Then there is 1 point they can get for head alignment, and most of the time they'll probably get it, but if the shading is really off on the head or more than like 1 pixel of the far forelock is showing then it's 0.

The jumps and the halt with tack are a little different, the jump has more ranges of alignment and body shading and no points for head alignment. I did this because in some poses and mods the head can go weird and it wouldn't be fair to automatically make them lose a point because of that so that point goes into the overall straightness of the horse instead.

For the halt, tack can obscure quite a bit, but we can tell if the horse is aligned just by looking at the hooves and lower legs so it's okay. There's 1 point for alignment/shading, you just compare what you can see of the horse's coat and the lower legs. As long as the legs line up and it's obvious that the horse is straight, then +1. The legs can be a pixel off w/o fault, but more than 2 pixels off and they're not really aligned so use your best judgement. Judging the eyes and ears is the same as other poses. The pt that would have gone for head alignment goes away because most of the tack obscures the head and forelock so instead we're just going to look at the tack, is it suitable for what the horse is expected to do, and is it placed correctly? We don't want to see a palfrey wearing plate, and we don't want to see a saddle hovering 4 pixels above the horse's back. If they tried, +1, if they just slapped some tack on in a hurry or weighed their poor palfrey or rouncey down with plate, 0. Then we check levelness. +2 if the hooves are level, +1 if they are only a pixel or 2 off, 0 if they're more than 2 pixels unlevel. I also give horses on mods that can't be aligned and level a little bit of a break, they'll never get +2, but if the legs are aligned and otherwise would be level if the mod was straight, then they get a +1 even if they're more than 2 pixels off. A lot of Mak's mods and pony mods just can't do both and shouldn't be penalized more than the 1 pt, as long as when they were posing they obviously tried for either level or aligned.

You have to be strict with the judging, otherwise it will all come down to the rolls but you want the horse with the better poses to not come out dead last at least. So be critical, ask yourself on every feature of the pose "could it be better?" If it could, it's not going to get the full 8 pts.

Then roll 4 d4s for each horse, one each for each skill, and add those to their pose points. Those are the "mid-battle" performance scores. Then you look at each horse's rolls, particularly their type's best skill, and if they rolled a 1 or a 4 in that skill, -1 or +1 to their score, and then you look at the mock battle rolls and add or subtract points from the total as well, depending on what the roll was. For tiebreakers, roll 1-9 at random.org for each horse that had a tied score, and add that as a decimal to their score. So if you roll a 7, then add .7 to their score.