Team Light, what's up?! My name is Simon and I'm Bonestorm ingame, a 22yr old Maths & Economics graduate from the UK. I currently work- and sometimes it might feel as though I live- as a financial analyst. Games of strategy have always been a flirt of mine; and aside of elements I'm currently playing a fair amount of World of Warcraft PvP (played almost 6yrs total) and play at top20% rating in team 2s and 3s in what is widely regarded as the toughest WoW battlegroup in the world. I have some views on both war and on team play in any structure so I'll probably end up making this a fair bit longer than just a hello, sorry if this is gonna be a lot to read but I think it's fairly important to just have a read over and understand my views on effective teamwork.
Firstly, my main ask is for a stress free and focused team during each phase of the event, with support for deck ideas & constructive advice and views on how we can look to give ourselves the best possible chances of performing the very best we can each round. It can also sometimes be daunting playing any competitive gaming, especially when it feels like there is a lot on the line. It worked well in Team Entropy last war (I'd imagine it was a common practice for war teams) to communicate effectively when we planned to play a match, so others can perhaps pop online to help out and watch it unfold and maybe offer some advice, keep tabs on the full enemy deck content, or even just some company to help keep your cool and slow down any mental anxiety- and also help the team get more enjoyment out of particularly exciting or tense matches. There were also some things regarding communication I felt I could've handled a little better last war, I ran vault recon and didn't even do it on a transferable medium for the rest of my team, I plan to do it again and this time make sure everyone has access.
After what I just said, it won't be surprising that i'm of the opinion that the most important aspect of working as part of a team is communication. You need only a small amount of team communication to fully avoid real-card penalties involving decks, but there are also more important focuses that require team communication. If, for example you need a substitute, or you can't do any decktesting on a given day - Don't worry or stress about getting it done, you should just let everyone know as far ahead of time as you can.
Probably the most important reason for good communication is that war is so diverse and there is always scope for misjudgement in opinions, deck content, or deck strategies on the whole. The more we explain any comments or opinions the more the entire team can understand and follow our thought processes and perhaps point out any mistakes or see extra positives from an unexpected angle that make the strategy even more viable. No-one should be excluded and everyone should be involved when it comes to the discussion of a team strategy.
I'd also like to talk a little about our element. You might have already looked up or in the case of xdude and deviloss been involved in some past play of Team Light, but from what I can gather Light is definitely a rank1 viable element in war. Majofa & Co. had a decent run out with Light in the previous war finishing second and it was often interesting to see Light's decks and the extent of the extra upgrades last war really refreshed deckbuilding with some new options for Team Light. I'm hoping we can emulate some of their successes and maybe improve on some of their more open element metagames, it's also gonna be interesting (possibly sometimes a headache
) adapting to the new war rules.
The last thing I wanna touch on is my role in the team, I already spoke about running vault recon and that's a lot of work but something that I actually enjoyed to understand the event format in real depth. Also I'd be happy to share in some of the more boring 'work' of the event (i.e. taking down enemy decks in compilation for each round.) The last role I'd like to fulfil on the forums side of things is creating the match listings for everyone, after logging on to see the new rounds it really helped me to get motivated for the round by drawing up the duel schedule for the team that round. If people want to share the work it's cool but it's something that really helped motivate me to stay organised and contribute more to the team during the round.
--
Also what I'd say with regards to communication media is to use a reliable online chat client, there are lots of cool ones out there - I set up a chat at
http://chat.mibbit.com for Team Entropy last war as it's very reliable and is essentially an IRC channel without any external client that can be ran from any internet browser, we used it in conjuction with some other resources and the elements forums to contain all the info for the team.
So yeah, this is a little on the formal side but it's cool to express some opinions and if you did sit and read this all you'l see the page I'm on. I'm buzzing to get to know everyone and I'm sure we'l make up an awesome team of friends, aswell as a strong force in the event- very much looking forward to us sinking our teeth into the vault.
Peace for now since soon we'l be brothers (and sisters?) of war!
