Review [Issue 51] The Best of Team INT

[Night-Sisters 2,139]

 

Well folks, here we are. Yet another Women's Day has come and gone on Tanki; Instagram contest results are long since out, those special gifts little more than a distant memory, and the 'Spring Showdown' battle between well-known female tankers over and done with.

If you are sitting here reading this article, it is more than probable that you are a member of the EN community. It is also quite possible that you took a gamble and bought the INT paint... and thus are not terribly happy about your loss of 5k. My apologies, but apart from the whole losing thing, (which you can watch here, in case you somehow missed the battle) playing for the International team really was fantastic, and if asked, I would jump at the chance to do it again. Getting to meet, play with, and befriend other highly-skilled female tankers was a uniquely interesting experience...but more than that, it was downright fun. Of course, the perk of being both a reporter and a player is that I now get to share that experience and give you an insider look at the INT team. So, settle on back and enjoy the ride...

 

Recollections:

By: 

 

Just 2-3 days before the big day, I got to know the girls. Most of them didn't know each other before that. Girls = shy, so shy that I put them all in a group call and only two of them could do that thing we call talking. :rolleyes:   

Parallel to that I gathered a few lads in a separate chat to organize little friendly trainings. After each training the boys would give tactical advice to the girls to help them play better as a team. The very first training the girls had against the boys was actually good, since they won. Us boys were just goofing around. The next day however we crushed their spirit so badly that they were all so morally beaten down it made my job for the big day all the more harder. Picture me, a solitary dude, fighting against ten stubborn women who had then suddenly broken the ice and were now more focused on girly talks and completely forgot about the match.  

I've seen everything from the minor tanki gossips, to pictures of ribbed actors from TV serials I've never even heard of, to more disturbing stuff I rather forget ASAP.  Heck, at one point I was even subject to a raging debate of "Who's more cute? DS or Semyon?"  :huh:

On the big day however, I introduced the band to @The.L-E-G-E-N-D. The group morale was down at that point and no one really bothered. But gradually I managed to slowly recover that, refocus them on what they've been brought together for and shaping their spirits up. The selling point was making the group believe that they were genuinely good from their first training victory and that the boys were only able to crush them on the next day because @The.L-E-G-E-N-D.was guiding them on how to do it all throughout the match, and that from now on he will start doing exactly the same thing for the INT team and everything will be fine as long as they all pay attention to him. Quite a gamble!

I honestly do not know how much proper attention @The.L-E-G-E-N-D got, other than the girls having apparently forced him to put a picture of himself and his beautiful long hair up, but the gamble seemed to have paid off.  They were more attentive, opened up to multiple suggestions, started talking as a team, drawing plans for attacks, defense, planning routes, devising strategies, deciding on the lineups, incorporating the advice they were receiving from the boys, etc...

 

The time arrived and the battle started and we've all seen what our girls were capable of. But some grinch somewhere wasn't too happy and the "lags" started happening. Everyone was angered. Part of it due to the fact that while practically the whole of the INT team was off map and reloading, one of the Russian girls used the opportunity to come in, take a flag, capture it and then worst of all see the referee validate that capture.

The mood of the team was very bitter but it was nothing compared to what came the next day. They were told to keep everything secret, and that meant they wouldn't even be able to freely speak with the guys who helped them in the past days. And there went their biggest source of moral boosting and team advice. At the same time a few absurd, treacherous comments on the forums, specially the ones from friends celebrating the sad facts and bashing the INT team just because they purchased the RU paint spoiled the mood. Several of the girls felt betrayed as they knew some of these persons and had even helped them in the past in various things.

 

On Wednesday everyone was online several hours before the scheduled start of the match but somehow they were only contacted minutes before that to obtain their new accounts. And with that came a whole slew of problems.  Sparing the details, that whole hour was very stressful for the whole group. So stressful that many wanted to boycott the whole thing and go out.  Myself, @The.L-E-G-E-N-D and a few of the girls spent the whole hour trying to convince everyone to stay calm and play the game despite the appalling conditions.  Upon getting on the battle field, the frustration grew even bigger at the sight of the opposition now having a full garage set which meant that the strategies devised by the boys were now obsolete since the latter factored in the garage sets of both teams in their plans.

 

But now all of a sudden the team didn't have access to any new plan, they couldn't ask the boys for last moment advice, as they were asked to keep the secret. @The.L-E-G-E-N-D and myself had now already moved to the commentators box. So, the whole team after 1.5 hours of frustration, anger and tough emotions now felt all alone on their own to fend for themselves.

It was quite saddening to see that even as the match was beginning some of the girls were still begging for a reschedule only to receive a cold "нет, play." 

 

Despite all that, the team did admirably.  The winning margin was rather slim in both rounds. Their only weakness was not being able to effectively take down the double Vulcan setup the enemy now had. A clan or team would have more promptly adapted to that and counter the enemy with bold new moves within 5 minutes. Its easy for many of us, specially the eSports-centric players, to say the team should have done this or that and bash them for being noobs at team strategy. Just like its easy for all of us to forget that this was by no means a clan or official team playing.  And to be honest, they made it easy for us to forget that with their good performance on Tuesday. The truth however is that those girls have all up till now ran away from clans and teams and for practically all of them this was their very first time playing within a team on a call.

 

Interview:

 

As a special treat, allow me to welcome key players , , and @CooperO who all cheerfully and willingly agreed to talk about the battle. Thank you ladies, I really appreciate it!!

 

(Please note that you open the spoiler below at your own risk. Beware large chunks of text!)

 

 

 

 

 

Night-Sisters: Hello everyone! Care to introduce yourselves? 

 

: Hai, I'm Jenny and I'm from England. I was the rookie on team INT that no one knew about, hehe. I'm mostly a short-ranged player but that doesn't mean I'm a noob at long-ranged either. 

 

: Hello! My name is Mia (in game known as Mia.ArchangeI). I'm 20 years old. I've played this game for almost three years now and have had a great time in it as a volunteer/helper. I was a FB moderator, main event organizer and used to be a spectator for community purposes and much more. Hopefully I get back to it sometime soon. 

 

@CooperO: I'm CooperO, been playing this game for over 4 years. I started off as a Viking/Rico user, but I've changed combos over the years and now Viking/Firebird is my favorite combo.

 

 

And how did each of you come to be a member of the International team?

 

: A mod asked me as they said there weren't many "females" helpers but then a girl from the team asked me too and added me and introduced me to DS.    

 

: I will just quote our beloved CM, Semyon Kirov: “Puuuhlease join the EN/DE team for that March 8 battle at 17:00 UTC! We have 3 German girls and we need 3 English ones. And you should be there!!”

How could I say no to such a cute request? Hehe.

 

@CooperO: @W-h-o told me that they were still looking for players, so I decided to sign up.

 

 

Was this a good experience? Would you do it again?

 

: It was great experience. I learnt the map Kungur even better and which part I could weave into the best attacking routes. I would only do it again if some INT girls were with me.  

 

: Every new experience is a good experience in my opinion. I would totally do it again, but only if it’s 100% well organized. Less problems – more fun.

 

@CooperO: Yes and no, I’ve met some really nice players in the process and I became a better player myself. However, the way the battle went was horrible, with constant lags and the postponing. Then the mess with the special accounts, which took way too long and resulted in unnecessary stress and loss of concentration. I would have gladly avoided those issues. 

 

 

How were you feeling in the hours before the first battle? Excited? Nervous? How about the second?

 

:I felt sick before the first and then the second I was stressed out because of the accounts and all that.. also suddenly realizing we had... all M3 access.. that made me panic.

 

: Even though I knew it is just a friendly battle, I took it in a serious way, like we were fighting in some championship tournament. Which meant that I was SO nervous and stressed about it...I was literally shaking. The second time was much worse because of all the problems we had with accounts. In the end I lost the wish to play and I believe many of other girls did too.

 

@CooperO: In the hours before the battle I was excited but also nervous. I was wondering if we would even stand a chance against the Russians. Right before the start, I got a little more nervous, but as soon as the battle began, I was focused.

 

 

The loss was undeniably tough... After getting beaten by the Russians 2-1 and 2-0 our team was frustrated, sick of playing tanki, and upset. Do you think that we responded appropriately to the defeat?

 

: To be honest you can't blame us for how we reacted. Don't get us wrong, we weren't bitter towards the RU girls. The entire team was frustrated at the incompetence of the organizers.

 

: Good question. I do believe we responded appropriately. I also believe that it’s 1:1 because without the server attack and lags caused on purpose, it would be our victory. Russian team used the lags to capture some flags which is very selfish and unfair. Thanks to all this, organizers postponed match for the very next day, while giving us accounts with full M3 garage especially made for this battle. Not to mention, we got these accounts one minute before the start and then we dealt with wrong names, no supplies, no items, no pro passes etc for the next hour. We asked not to play that day, but it seems like no one cared about that. We were too stressed and angry and disappointed all at the same time. It didn’t end well. This is why our behavior is fully appropriate. We received an apology, but that doesn’t change the fact that we still lost under questionable circumstances.

 

@CooperO:I think we had the right to be upset, we were winning during the original battle, but it got ruined outside of our control. Then the rematch happened and the Russians came better prepared since they had already seen our tactics. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the special accounts we got just for the match, weren’t given out correctly. This resulted in some extra stress and frustration among the team. Due to this, our performance got affected negatively. We didn’t play as well as during the first match and it cost us.

 

 

What could we have done differently to win?

 

:Nothing differently, except to practice beforehand give it a week. We were all great individuals players that needed to understand each other's way of playing.

 

: Like I explained above, it’s not really our fault that we lost. All the stress and lack of wish to play made us lose the focus on the battle. We were discouraged and therefore didn’t even cooperate well. If we had a chance to postpone it once again, we would probably prepare ourselves better. 

 

@CooperO:What could we have done differently to win? Probably we could have practiced more, using different tactics also, instead of just one. The Russians adapted to our strategy, but we couldn’t manage to adapt to their strategy as well as we should have in order to win. 

 

 

What are your thoughts on the 'lag' in the first game?

 

: All I can comment is "DDoS". Never have I had lags like that. Weird? You betchya.

 

: Lags are caused on purpose (by taking down the whole server). I’m just not sure how that person made all the International team disconnect while Russian girls could still play normally. It’s clearly seen that he/she was either hating some of us or simply wanted RU team to win. 

 

@CooperO: I’ve heard so many different rumors that I’m not sure what to believe anymore. I think the lags were very convenient for the Russian girls as they weren’t really prepared for the first battle. I’ll just leave it at that.

 

 

What was the best thing about being a member of team INT?

 

: Meeting you guys. <3

 

: "Girls Battle” group chat on Skype. We got to know each other very well and we became good friends. We joke all the time and we all sound like we are seriously damaged people, but that’s what makes it all special… Haha! Jk. Love you girls! 

 

@CooperO: Having a fun time and meeting nice and skilled players.

 

 

And what was the hardest?

 

: Hardest was disappointing all those who supported us.

 

: The hardest thing was making a very stubborn girl, maidchy, stop being grumpy and play the second match with us (for those who don’t know, she had the most problems with her separate account). I’m so dead for saying this, but it's worth it.   

 

@CooperO: Accepting the loss, I think, but by the time I saw the stream of our battle, I could see we didn’t play like we did during the first battle. It at least made me understand why we lost.

 

 

Thank you all for your time

 

 

 

 

Photo Album:

 

In the hours before the battle, Mia took group photos. Some were extremely visually impressive:

 

 

Others demonstrated near-perfect coordination and timing:

 

 

But to me, the photo below is what best represents the spirit of the International team; a group of ladies who decided to show off their pro faceplanting skillz and then went into a massive fit of giggles on Teamspeak. Good memories, girls!

 

 

A link to the full, albeit unofficial INT album can be found here.

 

The Lineup:

 

A terrific player all-around, Jenny is consistent and highly skilled. She functioned as a mid/offensive striker in the women's day battle, utilizing Isida, Firebird, and Smoky well. (And, though she denies it, Jenny is also dangerously proficient with a Railgun.) A huge asset and fun to play with, we were really glad to have her on the team.

 

She's Mia... enough said :P. (Jk, jk.) Archangel was our XP girl on attack. She made some phenomenal plays, most notably in the first battle, when she escaped with the flag via the 'scenic route'.  

 

Great to play with, easy to talk to, and a talented tanker... Rally was, for the most part, an offensive Isida. She assisted Mia and Jenny on the offense. 

 

@CooperO

Simply put, Cooper was the defense. She was so good with Vulcan/Mammy on the flag that the Russians put the exact same combo on the field. Cool, calm, and collected under pressure, she was definitely 'beast'. ;)

 

@LadyYuna

The other key defensive player, Yuna backed Cooper up with Isida and Viking. Together, they were an undeniably formidable combo.

 

I must admit that as a purely defensive player I didn't see much of Mrs.Queen, which is a good thing! It means that she was doing her job, wielding the nemesis-to-all-rails combo (Smoky/Viking) as part of the offense. 

 

@maidchy

This is the girl who made our lone flag capture in the battle against Russia. Excellent player, all around.  

 

@drijfsijssie

Unfortunately, Drif did not get a chance to play in the first battle and couldn't make the second. Hats off to her though, for still attending training with a broken hand. 

 

@Lestat-400

Did not get to play at all, which was a horrible mistake. Was unfailingly calm, and set up the Teamspeak server for INT.

 

@Meliora: A good Thunder, Meliora was as cool as a cucumber even in the midst of our rather chaotic game. She played mid/attack, and kept a level head. 

 

@Night-Sisters: The lowest ranking player on the team, I was the third member of the defense and provided the vast majority of nervous chatter on Teamspeak. Mainly used XP or Hunter and Rail to snipe and provide support for Cooper. 

 

 

A huge thank you to  for his unfailing patience with us, @The.L-E-G-E-N-D for all the moral support, the guys that we trained with and against, and also the RU ladies, for such good games.

 

Afterthoughts

 

Despite the 'lag' of the first battle and miscommunication, stress, and ultimately losing to RU in the second, the INT team played well. It was hugely exciting to see us come together as team, buckle down, and play Tanki at an extremely high level, considering the circumstances. The experience had it's ups and downs, but I can honestly say that I am proud to have been a member of this team...at the end of the day, we did our best and fought our hardest.

GG Russia, 'til next year then. ;)

 

 

Edited July 20, 2017 by Hexed

[The.L-E-G-E-N-D 5,093]

Amazing Topic <3

[r_geelam0 37]

I love you, I'm so proud of the EN community(: <3

[orbanbotond 407]

Nice

[BabyLou 1,881]

I love you, I'm so proud of the EN community(: <3

I love you my fiancee <3

[Lord-of-the-Snipers 1,620]

Good read!

 

Thanks to for an open insight of how

a failed game organisation turned out to be especially bad for

the INT team.

Reading this it 's indeed admirable how good the INT team

has played.

 

quote: "Their only weakness was not being able to effectively take down

the double Vulcan setup the enemy now had."

 

That 's exactly what happened and without that setup I 'm sure

the INT team would have won after all. Girl power!

 

Nice interviews, pictures...a fine article! :)

[r_geelam0 37]

I love you my fiancee <3

I cant wait to marry my one and only ;) :wub:

[LadyYuna 122]

I love you, I'm so proud of the EN community(: <3

Yeah, it's amazing ^_^

People came to me and mentioned how nice and brave and good we were. I really expected something different.

 

Thank you :wub:

[orbanbotond 407]

Woow :o

[r_geelam0 37]

Yeah, it's amazing ^_^

People came to me and mentioned how nice and brave and good we were. I really expected something different.

 

Thank you :wub:

I know I expected a few comments picking at every moment on how we played "wrongly"... I agree with you 100% Yunes ^-^

Lets hope the hate comments don't reach us

 

Best isida< yunes :P

[r_Mia1 8,513]

Enjoyed reading this article! You're really good Sarah!

 

Much love to all of you :D ^_^ :wub:

[Bugs.meeny 1,013]

Nice article. Makes me angry about it tho, seemed like nothing happened in your favor. You all played great against the odds :D

[Taco 2,820]

Very nice article! It was fun to read! :) We're all proud of you #TeamINTforEva  :wub:  :wub:

[Fruit 6,570]

Nice article, and nice battle aswell! Had a great view on it from above, and I must say, you girls were amazing!

[VaudeVille 1,428]

Wow, the Battle was quite unfair then :/ . I thought the Russians were genuinely better and I bought the Russian paint too ( no hate pls). But now I realise that EN/DE could have actually beaten the Russians under better playing conditions and better organization. I feel you girls will beat the Russians even if you all practice once in a while as team. Best of luck for next year and I will buy INT paint next time.

Hats off to EN/DE girls.

Edited March 19, 2016 by VaudeVille

[Jwimmer 2,835]

Well done article. Surprises me to see how unfairly the INT girls were treated, but y'all played very well anyways. Makes me a bit mad that the battle was so unfair (I have a feeling if you could have kept your original strategy, we could've won).

[richardlord 32]

Well done ladies.  If the original match had gone as scheduled, I feel like you would have dominated.  Sadly that wasn't the case, but you put up a heck of a fight anyway.  Good luck in your future battles.  

[assolik 134]

Yeah, it's amazing ^_^

People came to me and mentioned how nice and brave and good we were. I really expected something different.

 

Thank you :wub:

Thanks for the gift Lady Yuna. I still like the paint I purchased, even though we lost.

[ExplosionsEverywhere 196]

dt king commentator

[Omar_Enze 846]

Good to know more about the battle from you ladies, you played well but good luck next time ;) .

[BFM 414]

Perfect Topic! Enjoyed Mia's Replies xD

[KillerGnat 3,135]

Very nice article! It was fun to read! :) We're all proud of you #TeamINTforEva  :wub:  :wub:

Somehow I knew you'd comment on this  :P.

 

 

 

INT girls did great! I stayed up till 1 AM to watch the live stream, and I certainly wasn't disappointed :). You completely busted the "girlz r noob" myth.

 

 

And I had no idea that DS was such a talented writer  :o. His wall of text was an article in itself.

[Quarks 2,255]

I can't say I watched the battle, too much work on my plate, nor did I get the paint, oops. A well written article though.

[CooperO 7,956]

 

 

Just 2-3 days before the big day, I got to know the girls. Most of them didn't know each other before that. Girls = shy, so shy that I put them all in a group call and only two of them could do that thing we call talking. :rolleyes:   

 

 

Funny part was that DS actually thought he was the one making us shy.. :lol:

[r_Mia1 8,513]

Perfect Topic! Enjoyed Mia's Replies xD

Haha, thanks! I didn't think anyone would read my text walls xD