Avoid reprisals!
From experience it will never work out. Clubs that hold contests are like kids in a sandbox, they are comfortable with their own & their unique style of play.
What you should do:
Enter the Yamato in a different contest for your own piece of mind. You know the effort & skill involved, see if a different venue will reward the ship accordingly.
Color of the deck? That is the lamest excuse for points deductions I have ever heard! Exact shades & colors are subjective and should only be deductions if the color is completely out to lunch. Many 'Blue Hue' Panzers have won top awards, I have yet to see dark gray weather to a blue color...
I know exactly how you feel.
After putting a entire winter's modeling effort into a Marder II (bugger of a kit to boot) It never even placed at a contest out west in 2009! The winner was a ringer who had his converted LAV 8 wheeled APC featured in that months Extreme Modeling Mag. Actually he entered 2, third place went to a club` member. All good as mine made `Great Scale Modeling 2010` While the others did not.
I posted pictures here, asked for critique and was told one road wheel was off the tracks. Well I corrected the mistake & hid another in deeper snow. My Marder II at CAMS took `Best light Armour`
The system used is flawed in that the model should earn merit on its own, not looked at for flaws. Mistakes should be points deducted, not compared to a professional model builder`s resin prototype.
The best system I have found for model contests is where each model is removed from the room to be judged. At least 5 judges assign scores for its merits compared to their ideal build of the kit in question. The highest score & lowest are discarded, the rest averaged for the final score. The metals are assigned Olympic`style that is only 1 Gold, 1 Silver & 1 Bronze per category. Only a exact tie merits 2 awards of said level, rare as the scores are calculated to the first decimal point. I prefer this as it allows for nicer awards vrs everyone getting something. (That is fine for the Jr. entries, not adult competition)
Jason