Objectives - Preparing for War 4 (You should probably read this)

[willng3]

Congratulations to all of you for making it this far.  I've assembled you all here today because I require a particular set of skills and you all are the best I could find...

Ah screw it, I suck with introductions.

For those of you who don't know me, I am willng3.  If you can't stand saying a number in your head every time you speak to me, then feel free to call me by my several nicknames:  Will, willu, willy, wilfred, willing (boo), etc. :D  If you need to know something about me, I can give you several things that might interest you.

Age:  19
Sex:  Yes please Male
Occupation:  Student
Relationship to Elements:  Addicted
Favorite Element:  No, it's definitely not Life.
Personality:  Slow to anger, quick to annoy.  Strong sense of justice.  I dislike drama, but will pursue that path if I think that anyone has been wronged in an area.  As my teammates, I will take extra measures to defend you from accusations or insults; I will bear my fangs when my team is threatened.  But even with this serious demeanor, I enjoy being silly and playful when it's appropriate.
I also like long walks on the beach and red sunsets.

Our goal is simple:  Win the War.  However, it's obviously going to be much more difficult than what it seems.  War is filled with drama, stress, RAGE, and sadness...  But! This isn't to say that we can't have fun while doing it, which is why our second objective is to have fun while playing this game.  I know that several of you have been on teams who have seen their fair share of drama, fell apart due to inactivity, or just felt completely overworked due to lack of communication within the team itself.

I'm going to make sure that none of that takes away anyone's passion for this event.
I am ridiculously active, I have assembled several individuals who I know are also addicted to the forums and the game.  It will be easy to manage and bear the workload so long as we all are willing to cooperate with each other; even if you feel as if you cannot contribute to discussions, there will still be plenty of opportunities to help out by testing decks, spying on enemies, etc.  We'll probably have a good idea of what's required once we get started.

Now, even though one of our biggest objectives is to have fun, we do have to set down a few ground rules before we go any further...
1)  DO NOT SPEAK OF TEAM SECRETS TO ANYONE EXCEPT FOR YOUR TEAMMATES.  Leaking team secrets is worthy of severe penalties by the organizers and is probably one of the most legitimate ways to actually piss me off.  Don't do this, for your safety.  Even if it's something as insignificant as "Oh yeah, we've got Frogs in the Vault", just resist the urge to say anything to people trying to get information out of you.  And yes, people will try very hard to get you to talk about strategy.  If anything it's best to just ignore them.

2)  Keep any and all drama to a minimum.  I don't particularly care if you engage in playful bashing of other Elements as long as it's kept to being playful and not trying to provoke some form of rage from the opponent(s).  If someone's being a poor sport after playing their match, then I suggest you offer condolences for winning the match or just ignoring them; I've been on one side of drama Wars for 2 Wars in a row and I'll just say that they're not enjoyable for me to have to watch.  If someone is accusing you of cheating then that's a bit different and I encourage everyone to stand firm behind you since I believe you are all very, very trustworthy players.  If someone is actually childish enough to take to harassing you via PMs then you should have no problems contacting someone with higher power to take care of them.  Basically, I'd like for us to display very sportsmanlike conduct and not feed into drama.

3)  Team unity.  This is really important to me.  If we can't all come together, stay organized, and solve every problem that comes near us, together, then our chances of victory are weakened in the process.  People are going to feel demotivated very quickly if they feel like they're the ones doing all of the work which is why I urge any of you who feels that they're pulling too much weight to contact me personally to try and work out a solution that suits your needs as well as the team's.  Also, try not to take too much offense to other teammates opinions and/or actions.  If I have some of you trying to get back at someone because you feel they've wronged you somehow then you're obviously not focusing on what needs to be done during the next round.  If you're having problems with anyone on the team and just can't restrain yourself any longer, then just send a 400 page long rant to my inbox and I will try to resolve the situation to the best of my abilities.
If the team's not stable then it's going to continually come closer to falling apart.  Your (the team's) sanity and morale is one of the things I'd like to preserve throughout this War.  My time with Team Life during War #2 was a ton of fun just because of the people I was involved with; I'd like to make this experience as enjoyable for the rest of you as well.
But sheesh, enough about all that crap, let's get down to what we need to do during the upcoming week.

-First of all, we need to get this Propaganda page over and done with.  I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to write for the speech, and I plan on using this song (

&feature=fvst) as well.  I'm trying to stick to a theme of letting yourself go and setting your mind and soul free, giving into natural instinct.
However the big problem is the banner.  I suck at anything that requires artistic ability.  Therefore, unless we have a better solution our War banner is going to be this fine piece of art:
Let me know if you have a way of solving this problem.  In this area, I really can't be of any assistance.
-Vault building.  I will start a thread on Vault strategy which will outline what we're going to focus on this time.  Just keep in mind we have like 7 days to build the thing.
-Team roles.  I'm still kind of stuck with this one.  Right now I feel confident that either ak65ala, with his great knowledge and experience with or pikachufan2164 who I worked with and know is an organization powerhouse would fit this role.  Unless one of you wants to step down and let the other take his place, you might need to duel for this role :D
Strategist is quite different this time around.  Again, previous experience tells me that pikachu fits this role, but if someone else wants to show proof of themselves being worthy of this role, then by all means throw your name into the ring.
Duel organizer.  This role is fairly easy to perform, but it's still critical that someone takes this role very seriously.  Ideally, I'd like you to focus on the points I pointed out last War,  here. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23527.0.html)  Basically, you're the one who's going to be responsible for staying on everyone else's asses and making sure that battles are arranged and communicated to everyone else so that we don't have to waste cards subbing for you.  I need someone very active to fulfill this role.
-Specific needs.  This is pretty much left up to you to take care of.  If you want to introduce yourself to the team and give out a few facts about yourself (like I did above, if you want), then by all means do so in this topic.  Previous tips and secrets you might have acquired over previous War careers are also always good to have and are welcome.  The sooner we feel comfortable with working with each other, the easier it will be to get things done.

I also sleep live with a grammar/spelling Nazi.  If you're not used to some of the terminology I use, then I have no problems with you informing me that you can't understand some of what I'm saying.  I can adjust my (bad?) habits to meet your needs, after all.

My memory sucks so I'm probably forgetting to mention something important here that I had intended to say over a week ago in this topic when I planned on making it.  I'll be busy setting up various topics for the rest of the day to get us set up and ready to work like a well-oiled machine.  I'll get to any questions you may have asked here as soon as I can.

<3

[pikachufan2164]

Call me Pika

A little about me:

Age: 20
Gender: Male
Timezone: GMT-7
Occupation: Student
Favourite Element: Aether
Quirks: Pays way too much attention to detail. Super organized. Loves making bad puns and/or innuendo. Silly when I need to be.

Some additional things about War roles:

Lieutenant needs to be active, as they will also have mod powers in this section (to do things like edit opening posts for things like the Deck and S/D/C threads).Strategist also needs to be active, and will need to be proficient with Google Docs. I'm in the process of trying to wrap my head around the new Vault system at the moment.[/list]
Organizational Stuff

Secret chat. Right now, we have our typewithme (http://typewith.me/seedsofvictory), but it's kind of prone to borking. Would be be better off using IRC if everyone's comfortable with it? (Note that I don't know what we need to do in order to make a new channel, but hopefully someone will know or is willing to learn how)Thread structure. In Team Aether, we used a Main Thread each round to do our discussions and post chatlogs in, generally only put our final results in the Deck and S/D/C threads, and pretty much left our round-by-round Strategy threads blank. We had a Duels thread each round where everyone puts their duel organization status in there and also copy-and-pastes the communication PMs in the thread. There were also separate Strategy threads for each element that would be updated each round with what we knew about each teams' Vaults. Would everyone be OK with this sort of organization?Archival. If we are going with the typewithme, then we'll need to archive the document each round. Regardless of which chat we're using, it's best for us to paste chatlogs into the secret section (using something like http://pastie.org/ with the private paste option on) so that everyone is on the same page.[/list]
Deadlines

Propaganda. 4 days to complete it. I don't have art skills, so banner is kind of out of my domain (maybe ask EmeraldTiger to see if he can help us out?). I'm not a particular fan of rap, but whatever works. I can help out with the War speech if need be.Vault. We have 7 days to decide our initial Vault. Due to the reduced Vault size and the increased discards during the early rounds, our decks need to contain more versatile cards than ever. We have 373 cards to work with (400 cards - 39 card team cost + 12 card Propaganda bonus). Opening Vault restrictions are: at least 187 Life cards, maximum 24 copies of non-pillar/pend Life cards, maximum 12 copies of non-pillar/pend off-element cards, no shards.[/list]

[ak65ala]

First! Second! (silly pikachufan2164!)

Just kidding!  Well, kinda.  So, I am ak65ala, one of those guys who has had some good experiences with this game and this community and hasn't get gotten bored enough to leave.  Been around for a year now, haven't won anything, haven't had much love from people but I hope that is due to my low-ish post count, non-participation within chat and not any other reason.

Fun info time!
Age: 25
Sex: Male
Status: Married to a beautiful woman, one beautiful daughter of 10 months and one unknown kid on the way.
Education: Masters in Electrical Engineering, Undergrad in Engineering Physics.  Been working for 2.5 years now for a A&E firm. (Architecture and Engineering.  I make stuff like schools, hospitals, stadiums, you know... like that.)

I resonate with willng3's post about wanting to keep this a place of fun & hard work.  I don't start drama, and if I do by accident, I try to fix it quickly.  There are personalities I don't like, but I keep all of that in the background and don't let it affect the task at hand. (affect or effect willing3? my grammar is... so-so).  I almost beat willng3 in the trials, so I feel the two of us are on equal footing for ability with life, but he is heads and shoulders above me in community presence.  My one and only job here is to make him Grandmaster (and have fun while doing it!).

The first thing I hope for is for organization.  I hate when discussions are in 5 different places or when threads are disorganized, etc.  As long as we have a place for each point of our team, deck building discussions, strategy discussions, etc, I will fall in right at home here.

I have a good idea of where I want to see our vault, but I will wait till willng3 throws up that topic and see what his thoughts are.  I don't think we can go wrong with all the talent we have in this room!  Glad to meet you all! Life forever.

Edit: My art skills are sub-par right now and my computer is sub-par as well (10" screen, 10 min to play a FG due to my awesome processor, no video card....)  so I don't think I can be of much help.  I can do some simple pixel art but a whole banner might be above me at the moment. 

[willng3]

Thread structure. In Team Aether, we used a Main Thread each round to do our discussions and post chatlogs in, generally only put our final results in the Deck and S/D/C threads, and pretty much left our round-by-round Strategy threads blank. We had a Duels thread each round where everyone puts their duel organization status in there and also copy-and-pastes the communication PMs in the thread. There were also separate Strategy threads for each element that would be updated each round with what we knew about each teams' Vaults. Would everyone be OK with this sort of organization?

This was very good for our organization last War.  I'd like to reintroduce it again.

I'm not a particular fan of rap, but whatever works.

Hmm yeah that was something I couldn't really take into account myself.  I know that a lot of people see rap as the devil's music and will instantly downvote anything having to do with it.  If we feel a bit uneasy as to how the community will react to the song genre then I'm open to other suggestions.

I have a good idea of where I want to see our vault, but I will wait till willng3 throws up that topic and see what his thoughts are.  I don't think we can go wrong with all the talent we have in this room!  Glad to meet you all! Life forever.

Cheers.
Also, I posted the Vault planning topic, but it's missing a few things at the moment.  My plan is to separate the Vault topic from a deck brainstorming topic which I'll probably start here in a few minutes.  This way once we agree on what decks we want to take, we can immediately consider them added to the Vault and then work out the rough edges in the Vault topic.  Sound good?

EDIT:  Actually, it probably works just as well just to put the decks in the Vault topic as well.  Never mind then!

[Isei]

Age:  22
Sex:  Male
Occupation:  Student/Circus Performer
Relationship to Elements:  Hobby
Favorite Element:  Not really sure.  I just know it's not death.
Personality:  And this is the part of the forms that I always suck at.

I am an incredibly outgoing person most of the time, but I tend to clam up and brood in certain situations.  This probably comes from the performer thing-- even if I'm not actually outgoing, I'm good at faking it.  I'm a little disorganized, but if I have a deadline to do something, it gets done (I've never been late to a gig as an entertainer). 

And that's about all I've got for you guys.  I look forward to working with all of you.  Go !

[The_Mormegil]

Hi everybody! Glad to have been chosen for Team Life, this War is going to be oh so intresting. The team looks far better than what I experienced last War too, mostly because I know how active you all are going to be. Now about myself.

Age: 19
Sex: Male
Occupation: Maths student (I just started university)
Relationship to Elements:  I love games, and this one is a Game with the capital G.
Favorite Element:  I don't really know, I enjoy playing Time, Aether, Fire, Entropy, Death and Air, but it's highly dependant on the mood and on the deck.
Favorite Deck Type: this is more like it. I love control-oriented decks and good stalls. I'm also one of the very rare people that enjoy playing deckers.
Personality: I'm Italian (unfortunately, it's endemic where I come from). I'm a bit of a maths nerd. I also have a knack for probability, so that might come in handy. I tend to forget things and am quite un-organized (for instance, just last week I forgot a bag on the train for Florence and had to go fetch it in Pisa, wasting 10 hours and over 100 € for utter stupidity). I don't do that on purpose, but I'm like that and 19 years of experience are apparently not enough to avoid incidents. Fortunately, I have developed some methods to get around my problems, and fortunately my matches aren't bags.
However, I think the biggest contribution I can give this team is my thoughts. You can count on me to express my opinion on absolutely everything that crosses my sight. Do I say intelligent things or just an annoying amount of idiotic misspelled phrases? You decide.

And just to get started:
1) Aether's thread organization from War #3 is something I envied a lot since the secret sections were open. I'm all for it.
2) No roles for me. Pika is just that better as a strategist, and ak65la is more experienced in the ways of Life. I have a lot of upgrades and more money than I will spend this whole War, but that's not the only thing that is required from a Lt. Also, I can't give pep talks.
3) Secret chat. I always worked with typewith.me in this community, although we had an IRC channel last war. But that one was desert every time I was on (conflicting timezones), so it doesn't really count. I set up a typewith.me because of the shared document and the unlimited history, but I'm in no way contrary to another system, IRC or whatnot. I'll try to set up an IRC if I can figure out how to do it when I'm done answering all the threads.
4) Propaganda... do images found on the net work as banners? 'Cause I'm pretty good at searching for art and I could probably (well, pretty much certainly) find something more beautiful than what we have now... I can also edit it a bit with text and whatnot. Would that work?

[The_Mormegil]

I can't seem to host this properly, but I got us a banner. Tell me if it sucks (once I can set it up...)

[willng3]

Looks great, awesome work.  Probably needs a caption of some type; dunno what to do about that.

I think we should pick a song that sticks to the theme of the banner.  Something that has to do with unity and bonds...maybe just talking about strength in general.  First thing that came to mind was Lean on Me (

), but that reaaaallly doesn't seem war-like.  I'll keep listening to my iPod to see if I can find something that seems interesting, but feel free to let me know if someone finds something in the meantime.

[TheCrazyMango]

MAH TURN
Age; 15(possibly the youngest on the team[sometimes i act 15, sometimes i act older. i prefer to think that i mostly act older])
Sex; male
Occupation; I wish i had one.
Relationship to elements; i was over-addicted at one point, but now its a healthy addiction(if there is such a thing)
Favorite element; gravity, but my passion for it is waning...
Favorite deck type; stalls. They won me meta, and its fun to make your opp rage!
Favorite card; fractal, i wuv having lots and lots o cards mitosis is almost my favorite, but its slower than fractal.
Favorite favorite; stalls.
I think that covers most grounds.

[LifeLockable]

I guess its time for me to step from the shadows

age: 19
sex: male
occupation: destroyer of worlds
elements relationship:my OCD wont let me stop playing till I have collected every card, and because new cards keep coming out I'll never stop playing xD
Favorite Element: Everything but fire and gravity...also Air lol

my favorite deck type? Well I'm mostly known for my firestall thats in the forum archive, and I use stalls to grind, but they are not my favorite, I would say poison decks are my favorite but thats not quite true either...I enjoy a deck that requires skill to play as in both people have an equal chance of winning, I personally play this game for fun, and hard matches like that are fun, thats why I HATE RAINBOWS, seriously a deck that can pack a bit of everything is not for me

a bit about myself? I guess I'm the most unknown player on our team lolz except for my failed escapades in tournements and league, though my losses stem from rainbows and freaking RNG...I usually haunt chat for brief periods of time, but I am a very active forum member, though I dont post a lot, I will be here all War, I cannot use the temp chat however because I am still in the dial-up stage of internet access LOL

[willng3]

Guys, we have less than 24 hours to get this Propaganda page done and due to stupid drama throughout the day today, I will not have much time to work on this.  ANY assistance here is greatly appreciated.

[The_Mormegil]

Well, there is one issue with this. You are the only one allowed to edit the Propaganda post. Although, we could make the Propaganda and you just need to pop up and edit it.

It's pretty late here and I have lessons in the morning, but I think I can pull together at least banner and song. If we all agree on the "Feral Bond" theme, I can also craft a speech, although I'd prefer if somebody else did this - I hate speeches.

EDIT: Also, epic bond-themed music: The Oath (

). I'd search for something a bit more... "adrenalinic". I don't know, more along these lines (

&feature=related) (Row! Row! Fight the Powah!). Ideally a mix of those two.

EDIT II:
(http://imm.io/9Zb6)Lame. Anybody, please improve upon it.

EDIT III: Random song: It's My Life (

). But we could probably go with will's rap if we don't use something Bond-related.


EDIT IV: Some random poem

It's still surprising how come we dare
to stand against such powerful foes,
to wage a War, as far as it goes.
We're born so small, we can't compare
to those who eternal stand so great
that ages are sand, void's just a mate;
or those who endless can travel through time,
watching the future with tools so fine;
nor those who high fly prideful and fast,
they prey on the weak, their glory will last;
or those who, solid as rocks
will never break, going on like an ox.
We're full of fear and majestic respect
for those who, blessed, seem so perfect;
and those who corrupted hide in the dark
waiting to kill us, not leaving a mark.
Likewise we hate to face in a fight
those who bend laws of nature alright;
those who can alter reality on a whim
give us no hope, our chances are slim.
Drowning is always no pleasure indeed,
from water we run with all our speed;
but fire is worse, it's a nightmare come true
combusting is bad, between me and you.
The one thing that we dread the most
is our nemesis, Death is our ghost.
But why do we fight, so scared and frail?
Why do we keep at it, why try to prevail?
Our strength is from Life, from blood and sweat:
don't you underestimate our threat.
We're in this as friends, as trustworthy team,
we're in this to fight off Fire's regime!
Together we stand, our fears now gone:
we're brave, we're strong, we will live on.
So meet us at the Frog Pond:
this is our Feral Bond.