WAAC vs Being friendly to newbies

Just a few random thoughts inspired by lots of Warmachine and other things. If you've read my previous posts, you'll probably know what kind of impetus I had for writing this. 

Two things to note. I play for fun. However, I also play to win. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. It's also part of why I don't like to play D3 Inferno mode unless in a party; because I find single player extremely boring, despite the fact that single player was previously a lot easier than multiplayer.


A lot; and trust me when I say this, of people think I need to lighten up during games and just relax. I say to them 'bollocks'. I am relaxed, but I also believe that the rules should be adhered to. I like things to be difficult or at least not piss-easy. My friends have accused me of making things a lot harder than they need to be during cooperative games by sabotaging the party whenever I was bored. And that is true. I need a certain level of thrill in my games to be able to enjoy them.

And I've also had very very strict teachers to thank for my current adherence to rules. My english teacher once downgraded me one grade because my essay reached her 2 minutes past the cut-off time. My friends mother; who incidentally was also the one who sort of taught us how to play mahjong, was very brutal to us when teaching us and if we made a mistake, we made a mistake. We couldn't take it back. It was like the old chinese saying in chess, '举手不回' which means you can't take back your moves once your lift your hand off the piece.

And that was fine. I took the lessons, and learnt the hard way and learnt the lessons they needed to teach. In the end, I learnt how to play mahjong pretty quickly while I have other friends who have been playing for the same amount of time I have and who STILL CAN'T remember the rules. Seriously, if that's what it takes to be good at something, I'll take it.

So what does this mean for me when I'm playing games? I'm not going to cheat, however that doesn't mean I will not brutally exploit any openings or weaknesses you expose. I would expect the same from my opponent. To me, that's not WAACing, that's just playing the game. And afterwards, we can all have a short discussion about the match and what mistakes we made and what we could have done about it and so on.

So am I a good person for newbies to play against? It depends on their POV. I don't use certain combos like IronFlesh + Winterguard + Kovnik Joe or even Kayazy but I do play in a brutal manner but Warmachine IS a brutal game. So maybe the sooner they get used to that, the better.