Tackling tournaments and preconceptions of defeat
Saturday 4th October saw me attending my first Infinity tournament at my local club. Originally, I was going to skip going to it because I didn't think that I'd got a good enough grasp of the game, having only played it for a month or so. But I was assured that I was "tournament ready" by others and the general air of excitement carried me along towards dropping the £20 for the tournament ticket on the Monday before the event. I suppose being told that everyone would come away with something from th prize pool, even if only a patch and some dice, also helped push me over the edge. If anything, some new dice would be great—mine roll like shit.
It's been a while since I've gone to a wargames tournament. Back in the early 2010s when MkII/III Warmachine used to be my main focus, I used to play in local tournaments fairly regularly and used to place reasonably well—mid table most of the time, though I once managed to snag 4th. So, I kind of knew what I was getting myself in for and I knew that there was the potential that I'd find the experience stressful if I was aiming for some kind of win. Winning isn't something that I do playing Infinity. I've talked previously in other posts about dealing with getting summarily beaten over and over, and how I've been trying to change my mindset and approach to games, treating them more as learning experiences rather than focussing on the win/loss result. That has been working and I have been more and more excited to get back to the table and play Infinity as I see my game play evolving in light of the experience gained from each game.
Going into the tournament then, my aim wasn't to win or focus on my losses, but to see what I could learn both about the game and about how I approach the game. Also, coming in last place wouldn't be too bad as well, given there was a wooden spoon trophy and prizes. The fact there was also an award for best painted (something that regularly features at wargames tournaments) also meant I could strive to get a completely painted army together for the event. Not entirely impossible—most of my Infinity miniatures for the faction I play (JSA Shindenbutai—yes, I play on hard mode) were already painted. I just had the character model, Yojimbo, to finish up. Or so I though—I actually also had a Yaozao peripheral remote in my list that I forgot about and failed to paint, but it turned out not to be a problem and I could put in the rest. Yojimbo is a model I've been holding back on painting as I wanted to do it justice and I had a plan for it. They are a samurai riding a motorcycle (only in Infinity...), and I wanted that bike to look a lot like Kaneda's from Akira. I think I kind of got there after some late night effort on the day before...
My painting efforts certainly weren't in vain and I believe I was a close second in the painting side of the tournament, but lost out in the end to a chap called Scotty, who's miniatures were superbly painted. He was definitely a deserving winner of the best painted title. I'll have to up my game when painting my Kestrel Colonial Force miniatures in due course.
The tournament itself was a lot of fun. I didn't come dead last; that honour fell to Matt from our club who unfortunately had a terrible tournament due to bad dice and getting distracted from scenario objectives by models that just wouldn't die. Instead, I came second to last. I'm not hugely surprised by that and I wasn't expecting to do any better. I did certainly make some mistakes over the course of the tournament and my last game did go very badly due to a bad match up and also some terrible dice rolls. I did, however, gain a lot of experience and learned a lot from it at the same time, and that was really what I wanted to get out of it.
One of the big points that has come to the fore in the post-tournament analysis is the fact that my best game was in the first round and against an opponent who had come up from elsewhere and wasn't a member of our club. So I went into that game with no real expectations and played very well, managed to draw the game. My other two games were against opponents I've played and lost to before, and I think those experiences ended up providing me with a preconceived notion that the game was already a foregone conclusion—I was going to lose. The second game was still fun despite getting pretty heavily mullered and being unable to achieve the main objectives of the scenario—I certainly made some deployment errors, but I still managed to achieve some good plays at the same time. My final game though was against one of the best players at our club and I really do think that I went into that game thinking there was nothing I could do to win it.
That experience has taught me that I really need to go into my games with no preconceived notions of how the game is going to turn out. And actually, if I have no expectations of the results, then I can both a) play better and make better decisions and b) actually enjoy the game a lot more. Enjoying playing Infinity has been something that has come on late in my experience of playing the game. I definitely enjoyed the introductory games I played, but there was certainly a period where I questioned why I was playing this game when I was just getting my ass handed to me in an epic fashion week after week. It's been probably over the last month when I've started to find it more fun and be more excited to play the game and try new things out—that has come partially from learning more of the nuances of the game, and also from changing my mindset in terms of how I approach thinking about each game. And I think that this learning point about not seeing a foregone conclusion in a game before you even start it is something that I definitely need to work on, and something that is going to make future games a lot more enjoyable.
I'll certainly be looking to attend the next tournament that the club puts on in February. And I did win Most Sporting at the tournament—as the TO said, he had watched me get my ass handed back to me over and over all day and I still had a smile on my face at the end. That got me some Pan-O Dronbots to add to the slopes of Lead Mountain. I can add at least add them to my Kestrel force. And I did get some new dice too—hopefully they roll a bit better than my others...