Featured Clan: R1SE

iScending: Welcome back commanders, Today we have another interview this time with kyrahihi, the Clan Commander of R1SE!   ---   How, and when, did you create the clan? What was the motivation behind the creation of your clan? What was the biggest challenge for you and how did you overcome it? R1SE is in fact a new clan, created 3 months ago, but most of its members play together since EXN0M. Somewhere in January, the members of EXNOM decided to move to FAME leaving both exnom clans to me. I decided to move the most active members from EXN0M to the first clan and there, along with the remaining EXNOM members we managed to maintain a very high level of play on the CW map. Then in February something unexpected happened and I was faced with my biggest challenge since starting WoT…keeping the players and moving them to a new clan, R1SE. My luck was that most of the players turned out to be really cool guys and stayed with me, helping me in creating this new clan, who became now, after 2 months, one of the most active clans on the global map, always being present and playing a lot of Clan Wars.   How do you go about running your clan? How did you create the organizational structure and what are the key parts of this structure? Running a clan is hard work, but I try to handle it as good as I can. In my clan I keep things as transparent as they can be. I want my members to be aware of the things going on in the clan. There is a very good balance between respect and “trolling”. It is hard for me to name the key parts of the clan structure because everyone has his very important role, so I will just put them down here and with this occasion they can see how much I respect them and how lucky I feel to have such guys in my clan:   Deputy Commander, nick1401, is a very respected guy in the clan and I am lucky to have him there, because there are times when maybe I don’t know what to say…and here is his strong point: he always knows the right thing to say.
  The Field Commanders. I have at the moment 4 main FCs and 1 reserve FC, and I really feel lucky about this because they always seemed to be prepared for any fight where I needed them. Treasurer, ProMasterChief: I don’t really understand how he does his stuff with the gold list and the payments, but he does a very good job since all the players are happy and nobody complained about anything. All the gold we make on the global map is sent to the players.   Diplomat: ritzcrackey: Our hybrid (inside joke) has good relations with most of the clans and never disappointed me when I needed him to accomplish something I have to cut the list here, or I will just continue to put each of my players on the list because I know most of them and know each ones advantages, and what he plays better..and play style and so on. Actually I think this is what makes us good…we know each others weaknesses and do very well in covering them.   Do you have an objective as a clan and did you achieve this objective? If you did, what did you do to achieve this/ if you didn’t, what are you doing to achieve this? With the 3rd Campaign coming, our main objective these days is to train on most of the maps and for this we landed in different parts of the global map. I want to say thank you to some of the clans we fought, which were actually much better than we initially expected (I see here JCKAL especially, gg guys, you are doing a great job). On the long term, our general objectives are to stay on the map for as long as possible and play against as many clans as possible, because this is what CW is for, and until now we always managed to achieve our goals, with the latest project being a real success: taking over most of Norway and Sweden (9 provinces in 3 days) and having a total of 24 CWs played with no defeats. This is truly amazing and I have only to thank my players and my FCs, who proved to be really awesome.   How often do you organize training's and what is the focus point of your training? What are you aiming to achieve with your training?  We make training's quite often, especially before we land on an area with maps we didn't play so much before. And we have 2 kinds of training's:   1st: Me and only a few more guys, FCs especially, go on a new map in training and start looking for the best spotting positions, both active and passive. Then we test the time needed to get there from each base, to know exactly who can spot first and from where. After we test spotting positions, the next important thing is to determine the tanks best suited for the tactic we want to play.   2nd: After tactics and tank setup are made we also make 15 vs 15 trainings to see which FC is better suited for that map. In general we test from both bases a defensive and a more aggressive tactic and see which one suits us better.   I think I can say that by training we achieve “some” experience on that map and players feel a little more familiar with the tactic and the style of leading a fight of that particular FC.   How do you make your tactics for each map / province in Clan Wars? What are the key points you keep in mind when making the tactics? I think I accidentally answered to this question above. Its simple…training, training, training. And also a lot of Tank Companies played especially during weekend nights, when most of the players can stay up more because they don’t have to go to work next day.   Diplomacy … What are your opinions on this? Is your clan on the side of one hand washes the other or is it more a "lone wolf” clan?  Diplomacy...what can I say here. I think it’s clear for all CW clans that without good relations to other clans it is almost impossible to be successful on the map. We are not in any alliance now but we have a lot of “friendly” clans with who we can work together if we end up in the same region of the map. Actually I think I can name only one clan that I am sure has something against us (but I won’t name it).   What are the main points for you when it comes to diplomacy? Do you play our diplomatic endeavors short term, or do you have long term goals for diplomatic alliances? It seems that I make some sort of habit into answering in advance to some questions J We don’t have any long term alliance. Just short term when its needed on the map. My main point when it comes to diplomacy is that everyone with who I already cooperated knows I always keep my word, no matter what the consequences are.   How are you overcoming internal clan problems such as disagreements and problems between members? Are some of your players more important than the rest of the clan, or is everyone equal and responsible for their own actions? Although it may seem hard to believe, I don’t remember any real disagreements between players. I think this is especially because most of them are mature guys, with families home, who know how to respect someone, even though its an internet “friend” only. Sure, there are groups made, with some players spending more time in platoons with same guys, but I think this is everywhere, and when it comes to CW they all join the same team and play as a group. As to some players being more important then others, its quite simple answer, NO. I listen to all the players opinions, doesn't matter they joined the clan 1 day ago or 2 months. And I try to make sure they all know this so they come to me if they have any problem.   How dedicated are you to being a successful clan and what kind of sacrifices did you have to make? Is responsibility shared equally among clan members? I don’t think we can talk here about sacrifices. Only one that comes into my mind now is that before I became commander of first clan, EXN0M, I was playing a lot more battles daily then now. But I don’t really see this as a sacrifice. There are days when I am online from 18 – 23:00 and I barely play 5-10 battles because I have to handle all the clans activities and plan the moves on the global map, do training's if needed, build tactics, talk to other clans and so on… The only players with who I share these kind of responsibilities are the staff members, deputy, field commanders, diplomat. I want the players to be free of these things so they can focus only on playing this game that we all love. And until now they do it awesome and I want to make sure I will keep things like this for as long as possible.   What are you doing to keep the morale in the clan high and what is more important for you: Having fun or being successful? I don’t think those two are so far apart. For us it’s quite simple: We are having fun being successful! Recently we started doing internal contests, 1vs1 (our champion is tom_cat), 3vs3 will come next..and who knows what else. The purpose of these contests is to have more group activities, while also earning some gold.   Finally, what do you suggest for new clans to be successful? In your opinion, what is the key to a clan becoming successful? Depends on what they want to be successful at. There are clans with a lot of great players that don’t even play CWs, and I am sure that if they did they will be quite good. I think that if a clan wants to be successful the most important thing is to have a very good organization, with commanders that are, or at least try to be close to their players, and talk to them about everything. A player has to feel important there, and needed. He has to play for pleasure, and not because he is needed. He has to be told when he played good, even if he knows it. When a player does something wrong I usually make fun of him and avoid to criticize him, especially with other players around. I am sure not everyone thinks the same as me here, and its normal to have your own opinion. This is just my way of doing things in a clan, and it works, until now. I have players joining from other clans and telling me how incredible it is when they see people showing up and joining the CWs on their own. If we have 50 people online, 48 join TS and CW. So after all this talk I think the most important thing for a clan to try to be successful is to have active players that join and play CW for fun. After this there is only place for improvement.   ---   Thank you for your time and we will have more interviews in the future!