KK let me start by saying Kev overpaid for us. And no kev I'm not just being contrary for giggles, but let me explain.
There are two ways to place value on a player during the auction, market value and actual value. Actual value is the benefit a player is really going bring to your team, market value is what people are willing to pay for that player. I think kev hit the nail pretty much on the head on our actual value, but probably not our market value. I think he could have gotten some of the same players cheaper. I have no arguement at all about the team kev created, he's a genius! This is by a long shot the best team I've participated in, so thank you kev for assembling it and thank you the rest of you for what you brought to the table.
Our TeamThis team is why this team did so well this war. It is often said, but bears repeating here. Success in war is marked chiefly by the activity of your team, being online regularly and contributing thoughts, ideas and insights on match-ups, vault management, event cards and other choices is key to a successful team. Fou things of note here I think:
Team Building - while I don't know how much time kev spent researching for team building I do know he spent significant time doing so. While we knew each other from working together on other projects it would not surprise me to learn that kev invited me to join his TPvP team as part of this process, nor would it surprise me to learn that he spent significant time reading posts and chatting with others on the team to discover the best group he could collect. The fact that our personalities meshed our deck building and match planning approaches often contrasted was no mistake, neither was the fact that everyone on the team was mature enough to deal with the inevitable conflicts stemming from our democratic approach. Essential too was the fact that our online time matched up quite well - I'm not sure if kev planned this, that sort of attention to detail would not surprise me.
Communication - I think the fact that we used both the forum and team chat to communicate was significant. Team chat allowed us to collaborate with each other live very well, but toward the end of each round would leave a mess on the Pad, and searching through chat for key links or ideas could often become a pain. But the fact that we could plan together, leave jokes for each other, complain about a match or otherwise share with each other live was a significant part of the collaborative process. The forum on the other hand was a far more sterile environment - but allowed us to organize and record more cogent and complete arguments or ideas. I think using both served us well - I found I often referred back to forum posts from previous rounds but never did so with stuff from chat.
Democracy - I agree with Mall - this drove me nuts for the first few rounds - in large part because with no prior relationships we are all struggling to find our place, to know what we can contribute and what others bring to the table. I imagine that someone with training in managing group process could have facilitated a smoother transition here, but kev choose people with the maturity to manage it on their own. The fact that so many voices contributed something each turn was significant, at times I felt my voice become too loud, but Mall or kev was often there to provide a counter argument. I sometimes wished that others would contribute more thoughts but all in all I think there was a significant amount of sharing, in large part facilitated because there was no decision maker that we would talk until we agreed.
Leadership - I wasn't really aware of the significance of this until I started writing this post, I knew that kev's commitment to our group process would at times mean that he held back from sharing his full thoughts - I can't imagine how hard that was, I know how hard it would be for me. But the result of this was that the rest of the team was forced to carry their share of the workload (again having picked the right team kev knew that that was how we would react). Early in the war I found myself checking my thoughts or tone with kev to make sure I wasn't coming off as pushy or belittling of anyone. In my opinion having that sort of sounding board allowed me to find my place in the group more quickly and minimize any conflict that might have occurred. The only improvement here I can think of is that we had no planned means of resolving a conflict, and while there was never any real flash point I haven wondered as the war progressed if some team member's grew silent as a means of minimizing conflict.
Right & Wrong ChoicesLots of choices get made over the course of a war, some significant, many aren't. Sometimes its hard to tell which is which in the midst of things - in hind sight here's some of our best and worst choices.
Vault Building - kev's call to go with 10 decks in the vault and to minimize quanta sources was an inspired move, the stress going with only 76 quanta sources was significant, however the flexibility it provided was essential to how well we did this war.
Deck Selection - the concept of choosing decks that fall into each category: rush, control, stall and break was essential to our success, having the number of decks we did that could effectively fit the break role was significant considering the number of stall decks that were used. I do think however we made a couple mistakes here. The inclusion of a 2nd Bone Air was probably not the best choice, if the purpose of having 10 decks was diversity then duplicating one of our decks was a mistake. Added to that we did not intentionally include enough rush options to our decks. We found ways to rush with what we had when we needed to, but the inclusion of one additional rush deck would have been nice.
Vault Management - I took too much responsibility here - in part that was because our democratic approach took longer to put together our decks each round, leaving us a short amount of time to deal with discards, salvage and conversion. I spent much of the war wishing we had salvaged our Sundials, or not converted our Reflective Shields, or Silences. More discussion may have lead to the same conclusions but at least we may have thought about alternative solutions instead of being surprised by something not being in the vault.
Vault Tracking - I thought Mall's approach to tracking vaults worked marvellously - drawing conclusions at the end of each list of decks played certainly helped my thinking in terms of match-ups for future rounds, I've got 2 slight complaints here:
1) I found the links to the match reports were useful to me at times, but because we didn't ever create a standard format for reporting the decks they were only used when I made the deck lists.
2) The perfectionist in me wants a tool that will help you more accurately picture an opponent's entire vault - the hole in our approach is against teams that don't reuse the same decks we'll have a much harder time predicting what they'll play because we only see decks lists and not the whole vault.
Match Planning - Despite our democratic approach there are times I either ignored another players deck choices or kept my mouth shut. Sometimes this was because of how late in the planning round decisions were being made, sometimes it was because I didn't want to create conflict, sometimes it was because I was lazy.
Burd's loss with Damstal in round 4 has eaten at me all war - I'd looked at the deck and thought about Silences but never said anything *sniff* and its my favorite deck of ours *sniff* and I miss it
That said I think we did an excellent job much of the time, having a variety of approaches to this I think gave us a more accurate picture on which to base our opinions.
Creativity - Burd you are the King! Kev has said a few times that every war their is one crazy that suggests bringing Explosion in a deck that doesn't produce fire quanta as a means of beating Discord. It's true that we have a team full of that sort of crazy mindset, its also true that Burd does things the rest of us write off and nuts and often makes them work. Having this sort of creativity is an excellent means of solving problem match ups, thank you team for your efforts in this regard.
I don't think I have too much more to say, kev thank you for bidding on me, this war was sooo much fun. I appreciate both the maturity you brought to the team, both your own and your desire to recruit others that were the same. Thank you for at times holding back your thoughts and allowing space for others to contribute, it was noticed an appreciated. Thank you for giving me the space to disagree with you and appreciating the value of a difference of opinion, that too was noticed and appreciated.
Mall thank you for consistently speaking your mind and for challenging my thoughts - our team was greatly improved by the counter point you often played to me. And thank you for your consistent sacrifice of sleep to stay up for matches or help plan as a deadline approached. You were a blast to work with, and I'd do it again in a heart beat.
Burd, I have loved your creativity. Its been fun and surprisingly effective, I've been pleasantly surprised by your trios and have greatly enjoyed both our conversations and your insight into decks and match ups.
Elbirn - thanks for your honesty about where you were at - its greatly appreciated. Again the maturity shown by not making excuses and just telling us where you were at was appreciated.
Bloom - thanks for the insight and perspective of previous team Airs, it was valuable. I wish I'd had the opportunity to get to know you better.
lol - nope that's not a wall of text - nope not at all
