"went for max" would mean here more ornamentation and bigger pieces. Is easy to cook perfectly a small pot, but the challenge is hugely increased if you are expected to produce bigger, more fragile pieces, with more parts that can fall off, and a structure that needs to carry more weight. 'A' can afford to play safe and small in this game, 'B' can't. You would need to be 'good' to be sucessful playing the A game, but would have to be 'a master' to be successful in B group.

No only they are different levels of challenge. Is a different level of learning. Even if A can do small and simple pieces, we can't say that are better than B in this sense (nobody had evaluated B doing small pieces). The opposite is also true. There is not guarantee that A are ready for the bigger pieces at the end of the course and wouldn't fall for the same errors than B.