Guide Clan Tournament Preparation 101

[Jaaames 1,622]

 

Welcome eSports enthusiasts! With the recent news of a clan tournament for the English clans only, the excitement can really be felt. For a large amount of time, our community had been longing for a clan tournament of its own. The German and Russian communities both have their own tournaments with very tasty prizes, and so it only seemed fair that we could have our taste of the action, considering this community is the second largest in the game.

 

Within the time period of the last ranking cups several months ago until now among the English leagues, activity within clans has plummeted and are in need of a spark to re-ignite the action. This upcoming tournament will for sure be the answer. A lot of the current English clans have never had a chance to play a tournament with such big status and prize, which has sort of caught them off guard. That leads us to the question: How do you prepare for a major clan tournament? This article will involve me giving the best explanation possible, from my own experience of recruitment and clan training, as well as asking some of the best in the game how it's done. Enjoy!

 

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Recruiting before the tournament

 

To start off, you obviously can't play a tournament without active members in a clan. The chances are, to get to where you are right now as a clan, you must've been active at some point, but 90% of all clans go through a moderate inactive phase when there's no tournaments to play. Clans and their members have the habit of only being active when there are important games around the corner. Most of the time, this is not the correct way to go about clan eSports. The key right before any major tournament is to ensure you have a fully active squad AT LEAST a month before playing the tournament and to stick to a regular training routine, which I'll mention later on. 

 

 

If we assume you're a leader of a clan with a half active member list, just like essentially most of the Top and Second League clans in the English community. You'll definitely need to add reinforcements with a tournament approaching, at least one or two transfer windows in advance. You may ask how is the best way to recruiting players that will benefit your team greatly? To be honest, there's no easy way, and the only way is quite exhausting but overall worth it for the results. I spoke to a popular clan leader @Lankbouv, of the very successful clan "All Kind" who won lots in their time, about recruiting players. Here's what he had to say: 

 

"Recruiting players is one of the hardest tasks I've ever done in my life. You must never let anyone strong-arm you into taking them, they only cause trouble. Similarly, never take players who come as a package with another player. I have never ever seen such players work out well with a clan. Of course their skill is important, but so is their attitude. Always test a player for a month: often they'll train for the first week but then go inactive. That's why getting players way before a tournament is necessary, so you test their commitment."

 

These words are absolutely true. It may seem easier at first thought to straight away take in members that want to be in your clan, but the real thing is to think about the long run. Will this member really stay active and commit to the clan? If you look at the top clans of the past and present, the squads have remained pretty similar over the past years, and have solidly relied upon at least five or six regular members. This is solely due to the fact that they've taken their time over who they choose to be in the clan, because on top of skill it's always about consistency and clan loyalty. 

 

To find players for your clan any point before a tournament, often they will gravitate towards you naturally, and they can be tested when you get suitable applicants. A lot of the time you will also have to search a little more outside the box when recruiting. You should usually look for players you see online every day, as well as having high skill and knowledge in every format. Having a good team attitude is very important and ensuring that their head is not bigger than the clan, so to speak. Like stated before, testing rather in advance of the tournament will help a bunch in this field, and the upcoming tournament itself, shall act as natural motivation for players wanting to train on a regular basis.

 

 

Addressing Training and an Initial Training Routine

 

Why is a strict training routine necessary so early on? The reason is quite self-explanatory and simple. You need to allow yourself enough time to get used to playing as a team together again and build better chemistry, as well as seeing where your strong and weak points are in different formats and maps. Leave this too late, and unfortunately it's near impossible to gain good results. Now you have active and willing members, It's time to get into a strict training routine before the wake of the tournament. Like mentioned before about starting things early, it's vitally important to have this up and running at least a month or two in advance. @Lankbouv again gives some advice on training your squad for a tournament:

 

"I think that when preparing for a big tournament, the earlier you can start training with your players the better, but the most important thing is having a main team in your mind and making sure they gel together during the tournament. An example I use is MOS season 1 when our main team was formed just before the tournament and we played together the whole way through it. Yes it won't always work, but the point I'm making is that gelling together as a team is crucial."

 

A very good idea mentioned there, having a specific idea of which members you shall include in your main team. This makes it easier to make the necessary tweeks if needed, if you spot something that doesn't quite work with that team in a training match. I always suggest, when there's plenty of time before a tournament, to start training in the XP BP format in the initial days of having a full squad. This is because it's the easiest to set up, and the elements are relatively simple. It gives clan leaders a chance to observe their selected team in a clear manner and see which positions suit which players the most and actually test to see if the players they had in mind really do gel together. Once you've established this, then, as a team, you can discuss which formats may need the most work once you start adding these into the daily training system. Each format usually should be given the same amount of attention, though.

 

 

In terms of choosing the maps to train in, you should focus on as wide a range of map style and size as possible before you know the maps and formats that will be included in the official announcement. To give only one example from endless possibilities, you could train in both the maps "Barda" and "Red Alert" because they are two contrasting maps, but can be played in the same format. With "Barda", for example you can practice your tactics in standoff situations with the flag, as that's very common in that map. In "Red Alert" you can practice fast counter attacking as that map usually has fast paced end-to end gameplay. By doing so, you'll be prepared for anything, as each map has so many different gameplay elements, as well as some characteristics being relatively similar amongst them. By learning many of the maps as a clan beforehand, you can learn important things such as drop zones and drop timings, camping spots, routes for the flag and so on. Come the time of the tournament, you'll have these in your head and will definitely have the edge over the opponent in battle.

 

Closer to the tournament, in the official announcement, you will be given an idea as to what maps and formats will be played and those specific maps and formats will be focused upon. What will help, is your prior knowledge of the maps you trained beforehand and your inside knowledge of specific gameplay elements, such as what to do in a flag standoff, for example. This will make training in the official maps and formats of the tournament much more to the point, having a good idea of fundamentals.

 

 

Establishing Your Main Team

 

@Lankbouv's idea mentioned before about having a specific first team in mind for a tournament is effective, but more often than not, especially with a new group of players, you may have no choice but to chop and change your first team a lot throughout the initial training sessions with your team. I spoke to , from "Biological Hazard", on his opinion on selecting a main team, in all circumstances:

 

"Finding the main squad is very tricky. Each player has their own values and experiences in different maps and formats as well - which you must take into account. You would want to use the players who are better equipped to play in those maps and formats based on this. This can take days or even weeks. However it's most prominent after months of playing with the same team to build the chemistry and team spirit. Losing in a training session is never a bad thing, since you always learn from mistakes. The worst possible thing to do upon losing or feeling unsure of the outcome is to feel utter disappointment before the end, and afterwards. Keeping calm as a team is the best possible thing to do."

 

His idea is a wise approach, whereby understanding each and every player's abilities in certain maps and formats is the most important thing. This approach will enable you to have the most diverse squad. By retaining calmness after a tough day of training, it keeps the team morale up, which will only improve as time goes on. When looking at your whole team, seeing who fits in well with each other, it's important to take into account a couple of factors. You have to look at the overall awareness of each player during training. Do they all know where they are at every point in the map? Do they know when to push as a single unit? This will partly come down to communication, which all serious clans much use, but to have the instinctive awareness in a group of players is always a bonus to look out for when choosing a team.

 

 

Hinting upon an idea mentioned briefly before, the sooner the main squad is established, the better, so you can train as constantly as possible building a good momentum in the run-up to a tournament. @LB-12, the leader of "Biological Hazard" gives some further advice on finding a main team and even further improving them. He told me more on whether individual skill is really as significant in a team as one may think, as well as gaining team momentum as a whole:

 

"When to start training for a tournament depends on the skill level of the clan. The team should play as much as possible with each other but each clan can decide this individually. When you set goals you should do everything possible to achieve them, even if it means training every day. Every clan has their best players but the whole team should be at the same level, so everyone can play. The team is only as strong as its weakest player."

 

Here, @LB-12 implies an interesting idea, being that every clan member should be equal. Supposedly in this regard, it makes you a sterner clan leader, being able to narrow down clan applicants to really talented ones, so all of the members, in theory, should have such a high skill level, and especially being able to combine together and make one tough unit. Imply this knowledge, and you really can't go wrong in obtaining and fine-tuning your arsenal.

 

 

In summary, the most important thing with clan tournament preparation is to make sure you start recruitment and training as early on as possible and don't leave it to the last minute. Be patient with recruiting members, don't rush into it, and keep an incredibly consistent training regime. Follow all the points, and you'll see the positive results kick in. A special thanks to @Lankbouv, and @LB-12 for providing such invaluable advice to help the community out. I hope this brief guide assisted you with making decisions before the English clan tournament, and you can take these points on board to use in future competitions. Good luck on the battlefield!

 

 

[Unbeatable.Mr 335]

Really interesting !  :)

 

Article is totally relateable from a leader's point of view!

[Tini 993]

Really cool article! :wub:
It is just so true :P

[The_End_Is_Near 146]

Awesome

[Pyre 3,485]

Two more rank-ups, then my clan can get serious :D

[Lankbouv 6,347]

cool

[marc.jp_44 20,837]

Gotta be honest, I’m not a fan of eSports but this was a delightful read. Aesthetic and expression was flawless. One of my favourite pieces to date, very well done James!

[Syndicalist 286]

Very interesting (coming from someone who has ADHD and can barely read a paragraph without getting bored)

[rock80 1]

nice 

[GrandExecutioner 1,403]

I like it

 

EDIT: 2000th post. You better appreciate it ^_^

Edited February 15, 2018 by GrandExecutioner

[Aigaion 636]

any clans?

[Stamina 143]

good one

[Shame 137]

Nice.

[Tornadonero 22]

Nice 

[Trigger28_lucky 2]

This was GREAT! Good job, really fun read. I'm not a clan leader myself but i'm in a clan and this was really nice to read. Thank you.

[Pendragonprincess 8]

Thanks very informative, great points to consider to  :)

 

Great that EN is going to have an opportunity to participate in a clan tournament to.  To all the Clan's going to join in I wish you all good luck  :D

 

I have only tried to join one of the esports organised games, which was a disaster either my computer was having a bad day or tanki was on lagg overload, I tried a few time to join in could not load and then got banished from Tanki  :blink: for 10min  :wacko:  

[Mr.Flash-TeleporT 9]

LiKe.  :ph34r:  

[Psychotic 166]

*Calls up clan* get ready snubs we going to barda  :ph34r:  :ph34r:  

[Jaaames 1,622]

Cheers for the appreciation guys!

[majormajormac 298]

Excellent read James!

 

As leader of an older and now mostly inactive clan, I see the truth of your article.

 

I remember back in the day when we were in a clan together and what a mess it was.

 

I knew you had been a helper, but now a member of the PRESS. Congrates!

 

Thanks for your hard work.

Edited February 17, 2018 by majormajormac