Newbie or Experienced? That is the question...

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous peer pressure,
Or to take Arms as an experience player
against a Sea of newbies
And by opposing them: to win, to lose

...

The Pied Piper tournament is coming up at Huzzah in Ashburn on Feb 18th. The wrinkle to this tourney is that you can enter as either a newbie and come with a fully fleshed out 25 SS list or show up as an experienced player and be randomly assigned a pre-determined list. When I say random, I really mean drawing it out of a hat and playing that list. The Tourney Organizer, Bill, is going to provide all of the experienced players models and lists for the tournament. All in all it is a pretty cool concept and should be a fun tournament.

That leaves me in a bit of a conundrum. I am basically a 'tweener. I don't know which side to pick. At this point, I know Guild pretty well and if I show up with them, I stand a decent chance of doing well in the tournament. If I choose the experienced player route, there is a very good chance I won't be able to do anything at all since there are a number of lists and models I have never played against before.

So with the start of the New Year I decided to keep track of my Malifaux games to get some idea of how I am doing in the game overall. Also, with the data I can get some idea of what I am good at and what I need to work at. That being said, I might be able to use this data to help me make my decision.

I decided to go all out with the tracking in this spreadsheet and I am tracking the following:

• My Faction, Master, Avatar
• My Opponents Faction, Master & Avatar
• My Strategies & Schemes (and how I got points)
  
• Opponents Strategies & Schemes (and how they got points)

From there I can add (its Excel, I might as well get the software to do something for me) up the VPs and figure out who won (Not me). It has taken some getting used to and on Tuesday nights when I play 2-3 games I can get confused and miss something. As such, I have taken to writing these things down so I can enter them when I get home. Takes about 10 seconds to enter each game into the worksheet.

At that point, I can use 1st Gen Awesome Mike's awesome excel skills to do things like pivot tables, graphs and the like. At some point I will get him to show me how to do it. In the mean time, I am just going to read it and cry...

So in preparation for the tourney, let's look at the data. So far this year I am 5-7-1. While that seems okay, most of those wins are against guys who are pretty new to the game. While most of my losses come against experienced players. Against new players I am 3-1, while against experienced players I am 2-6-1. So it really comes down to me beating up on people that don't know better. I am a big bully.

I now need to decide if I want to enter the tournament as a new player and be a bully or lose 3+ games to experienced players. The trouble is that I am not sure I am going to have fun if I spend 4-6 hours losing at Malifaux in a tournament. I think at the end of the day, I am going to register as a newbie and just accept the ridicule from my peers and beat them down (hopefully). This way, I can have fun during the tournament and not be upset and a chore to play against because I am petulant and losing.

.....

With this regard my decision turns awry
And lose the name of newbie? Soft you say,
The fair Ophelia? Gremlin!?! in my GUILD!
Be all my noob-ness be remembered.