Clan Spotlight: [-G-] 10/28
Дата: 28.10.2013 18:57:42
Hypnotik: If you ask a group of people involved in Clan Wars who the top Clan
is right now, one Clan you'll hear a lot is [-G-],
Guerrillas. As an offshoot of one of the earliest Clans on the
North America server, many of their players have been playing since
the start of Clan Wars and have lots of great advice for
established Clans and those just getting their start.
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We interviewed these players to learn more about Guerrillas:
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Yankee- Commander of the Guerrillas
Nemesis79- Deputy Commander of Guerrillas and right hand man of Yankee. I run pretty much the majority of the Guerrillas day-to-day administration and day-to-day operations.
RedParadize- Battle Caller for -G- and Deputy Commander.
Bockrocker- Field Commander for -G-.
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You can challenge Guerrillas to Absolute Tank Companies this Wednesday at 3:00 PM PDT on the NA East server.
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When did -G- form and how did you get together? Yankee- G was formed as a fragment of Brothers Grim, one of the original Clan Wars Clans. We decided at the time that there was little bit too much talent separation in the Clan. We wanted to be a little bit more successful, so we dragged the top talent away, recruited new talent, and created Guerrillas.
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How did you guys choose the name Guerrillas? Did the “G” part come from Brothers Grim? Nemesis79- Well, it was something that CaptainNopants had been considering for quite a long time - a name that he wanted to use. Generally the idea behind it is, when we first formed we were intending on being nothing more than a 35-40-50 man at the most raiding Clan. There was no intention to create Guerrillas in its current form. It was going to be raiding gold pots only, holding a single 4,000 gold pot territory and that would be pretty much it. That was the original intention.
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Yankee - That didn’t last very long.
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RedParadize - Yea, that didn’t. Actually it worked like this; we landed in Scandinavia, right after that we landed near Courland which led to Moscow and never left.
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Nemesis79- And the rest is history.
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Yankee- We saw some early success, so that attracted some more talent and we got lucky with a couple diplomatic issues. Our initial war efforts kind of established us as the “powerhouse” over in that area. So we ended up being... umm NOT a raider Clan.
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When you got into this area, was it your intention to keep it for long? You said that you decided after a little while to be a “land holding” Clan. Yankee- Once it got started, sure. I think we started getting interested in holding it at ... Nem, what was the first record we broke? 160?
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Nemesis79- Actually I think it was around 280.
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Bockrocker- It was ROTA on Brandenburg, wasn’t it?
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Nemesis79- It was ROTA on Brandenburg and NDP on Hessen if I can recall correctly.
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Yankee- And I guess we became relevant during what’s known as the “Four Horsemen War”, if you know the Four Horsemen War.
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RedParadize- I’m pretty sure the turning point between being a raiding Clan and being a Clan that would stay on the map was actually the Four Horsemen War. When someone asked us to let them past through our territories, through Moscow and move elsewhere, that’s pretty much when we decided to stay.
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Yankee- That’s a very good point. We were asked to leave, so we decided to stay.
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Bockrocker- Coincidentally, when I first encountered “G,” my former Clan, the one and only, was one of said horsemen and it did not work out well for anybody, except for G so, eventually I found myself over here. I was impressed at the time.
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Do you remember what happened with G and the Four Horsemen? RedParadize - The “Four Horseman” planned to move to the inland in Russia and we were in their way. And Moscow was one of the territories they wanted, so they asked us to leave. And I think I might have been the earliest advocate in not letting that happen.
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Yankee- It’s not an uncommon situation to see on the map today. A stronger Clan came to what they thought was a weaker Clan and said “look we’ve got plans for this area, we don’t want to fight you. Why won’t you just move out of our way?”, and we just found that unacceptable.
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RedParadize- At that point I said that Moscow must not fall. Which is something that actually happened in World of War II.
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What was going on internally while you were holding it for that long? Were there a lot of people getting nervous about losing it? Bockrocker- How many times were we attacked on it?
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Yankee- You know I don’t know if I want to make that public or not. But might as well, like 7. In 420 days Moscow was attacked about 7 times. It was such a long way to the landing zone. You have to remember that Moscow was like a 5 day march from the landing zone. The map was pretty static back then. We had SSGS to our side before they got wiped out. Everybody else was pretty NAP’ed up, just controlling landing zones at the time.
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Nemesis79- The Four Horseman War was basically after the conclusion of it. That was when the majority of the attacks came. After the conclusion of the Four Horseman War is when you saw Guerrillas spread out to its European blob, which we held for quite some time. Pretty much after that it was rather long time before it was even touched again.
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Yankee- Well we had Iron Wolves sink down a couple times along the east and Rebellion tried to hit it couple times. The defense of Moscow was not actually done in Moscow, the defense of Moscow was done in the landing zones and diplo rooms.
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You said you wanted to be a raiding Clan - what did you change internally to transition from a raiding Clan to a Clan that is on the map and stay in there? Yankee- Recruiting.
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RedParadize- I think it’s because we could.
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Yankee- But once we got the taste if the gold and the taste of success, we felt we could do a little bit more. We had the system in place to get two or three Clan Wars teams up in a time zone. We were able to beat most of our opponents. So, you know there was no reason not to stay.
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Nemesis79- One thing you might see fairly often is notable Clans that disband or go inactive for whatever reason. We end up picking up quite a few talented individuals from those Clans. It’s been our modus operandi for a long time. The first marked one was not too long after the Four Horseman War with HI (Home Invasion). That was, if I recall correctly, first group of large players. There were a bunch of former MLP guys in HI and we ended up recruiting several of them over to G, after the Four Horseman War when their activity died off, the guys in that Clan were looking for another place to go. So we picked up a bunch of the guys from Home Invasion and that’s pretty much when it began, the switch from being a raiding Clan and into something more.
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This sounds like a familiar story. Why have you guys succeeded, when other similar-intentioned Clans have failed? Yankee- In simple terms, I could say ethical leadership. We don’t steal gold from the Clan. It’s a no-drama Clan. Anytime a situation occurs in the Clan, we usually get rid of whoever is creating the drama. It’s just a more professional atmosphere. People take it seriously without getting too emotional about it. And I think that’s the difference between us and some of these other high talent Clans that have tried to succeed. It’s the experience with leadership: Captain, Red, Nemesis and I, we’ve been doing this together every night with probably I would say on an average 98% attendance for over two years. So it’s just kind of a machine that keeps rolling at this point.
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Nemesis79- That would be my thing that I attributed to most is, the steadfastness of the leadership, especially the four that came from BG: Yankee, Captain, Red and myself. We’ve been together for a very long time. We are actually friends despite some of the differences we have and some of the disagreements we have…they’re always there, they’re always going to happen. But, we’re friends and we’ve been working together doing this stuff day in and day out for a very long time.
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Do you guys have any interesting traditions after working together for so long? Yankee- I think we’re probably the only Clan that has a nightly meeting that all members are expected to attend.
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Nemesis79- I haven’t seen that any place else. Other than that, the only real tradition I can think of is me raging at people to make sure they’re getting into ATC and/or MapTactic. And getting “readied up” in battle well ahead of time.
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RedParadize- When you think about it, we don’t even see it anymore I guess. But there’s a bunch of stuff we do, each time we have a battle when the officers gather, and determine who’s going to call and which players we pick. As we said before is a well-oiled system - it could be considered as a tradition.
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Yankee- But as an example, Nemesis and I would be normally be watching the map…coordinating chip moves with our allies, discussing our own chip moves, who’s going to attack us and what not. At 8:00 we watch the turns, we determine how many battles we’re going to have. Within 10 minutes we usually have a battle caller assign to those battles. His job is to get tank line ups to the roster guys. We have guys that are dedicated in putting rosters together. They have list of players and available tanks and who’s good in what tanks. The battle callers give that information to the roster callers. The roster makers, they make their rosters. Other people are editing the TeamSpeak room. Other people are making sure MapTactic and TeamSpeak is set up properly.
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RedParadize- And then you have the battle caller explaining the strats and picking a flank commander.
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Bockrocker- We’re a well-oiled machine for the most part.
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How much do you weigh your battle callers' influence vs. individual players? RedParadize- A good strat doesn’t normally require an exceptional player to work, but when the battle doesn’t go as expected, then you need to count on your ace player to make a difference. That’s the way I see it. If the battle caller knows what to do and knows how to explain the strat, and if he knows how to feel the battle given the information he has, given what he can see on the map, everything should be fine. But often times it doesn’t. Nothing is perfect. In this situation, it’s important to have that exceptional player to carry the team.
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Nemesis79- I would estimate for your average Clan, that 75% or more relies on the battle caller. For us, it’s more 50/50 based on the reasons that Red explained. We have some brilliant minds for strategic play, map strategy, and battle calling, but we also have so many players that have been doing this for such a long time and they’re so good at what they do, that often times it can make up for the battle calling. I think it’s one of our key ingredients and one of our unique values.
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RedParadize- I don’t really like explaining numbers with that because it’s very difficult to figure out. I can’t ask our guys to pop up our Clan Wars battles just to see if it would work without me calling, or the opposite.
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What can a less-experienced Clan do to get their battle callers up to the level where they need to be? What has to be developed in order to gain that skill? RedParadize - Experience. For a long period of time, G has been very active in companies. And that’s how I developed my skill of calling, how to feel the battles, how to give instruction and to be easily understood with my broken English. A big part of this came from companies. Experience is the key, also structure, but mostly experience. If I had to give advice to a new Clan, I would say to polish their commanding skill. Anyone can play pub battles and increase their own personal skills. When it comes down to battle calling, you have to CALL.
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Yankee- I think that one of the big differences we started to see in battle callers, is that the most basic of battle callers will tell their team where to go, when the battle starts. They’ve got to develop their depth a little more than that. If this happens, we’re going to do this, if this happens we’re going to do that. You’ve got to have a plan in advance. I think too many teams start out with too many young battle callers, that instruct their team to go here- here - here- here and here. And then it just gets confusing at that point.
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RedParadize- Then they start to micro-manage their players and lose their focus on the overall battle. You have to trust your player. When G first started, we didn’t have the depth that we have now. A battle caller worked with what they had, and that’s it. You explain your strat in a fashion that people will understand what you expect from them and don’t micro-manage them. You tell them want you want them to achieve, not where you want them to go. The better your player can comprehend, the more likely you can provide a vague order like: “Hold there or attack there”. The better the player, the less detailed the instruction will be.
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Yankee- That’s an interesting point because that’s one of the reasons we broke up BG. As a matter of fact, we had this talent difference and the guys at the bottom that weren’t able to play in Clan Wars, wanted the guys at the top to train them to be better so that they could play Clan Wars, but we weren’t interested in doing that.
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RedParadize- On our part, that’s a luxury that very few Clans have. We don’t train players. When they are recruited into G, they are expected to know what to do. They are expected to know how to play. That part we don’t train them for. As far as flank commanding is concerned, in G we have multiple battle callers per game. There’s one top battle caller and also a flank commander that controls a specific portion of the map or group of people or both.
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Bockrocker - It’s the guys that work with the commander. They know exactly what’s going on in his head, what he needs to do, what he wants to accomplish. And whatever he doesn’t see, they should be able to take over.
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RedParadize- For instance, Bock has been my wingman for a long, long time. I’m pretty sure you can read my mind.
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When you start working with a new field commander, can you pick up immediately that this guys is someone you can work with or does that take time to develop? RedParadize- There’s something about G…the officers in G are older. Our youngest officer is Exxo. Anyways, most of the officers are like 27 years of age or older. Overall, experience is the key. If a group of people work together for a long period time, a bond naturally creates itself.
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Nemesis79- As far as recognition of somebody that may have an innate talent, usually it takes one, maybe two battles to have somebody that would come in that may be interested in doing something like that or someone just trying to build rep. From my perspective, and one of my jobs is to recognize that kind of talent, whether they have the ability to contribute in that fashion it takes one or two battles, and that’s about it. With the amount of guys we have that are already talented in that capacity, within one or two battles we can recognize typically whether a person is going to be successful in that area or not.
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RedParadize - Specific to top Clans in general, but mostly specific to us, when playing in G, there are many ways you can contribute in a battle/in Clan Wars. But there is one thing you are not allowed to do, and that’s LOSING.
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Yankee- Usually if you have a guy that tries to call in companies and gets about six battles in, if they lose two of those, no one ever accepts their invitation.
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Bockrocker- It’s nerve-racking when you come in and you start leading tank companies -you have high expectations to live up to.
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RedParadize- When we play Companies, we win about 94% of our matches and people expected us to win most of the time, which is sad and stupid obviously, but still expected.
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Yankee- It’s a funny thing. All the guys in G expect to win a lot. If you’re in a platoon and lose 3 games out of 5, that platoon’s going to die.
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RedParadize- It might re-form the next day.
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Yankee: It might, but for the current day, that platoon’s pretty much dead. You get a platoon that’s running 67% and people will start flipping out.
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You don’t have any sub-clans at the moment. Is there a reason for that? Nemesis79- Grrrrr….
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Bockrocker- Let me just say one thing before he starts - Yankee and I went to Moscow for Ural Steel and came back and had a sub-clan. Nemesis got bored, lol.
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Nemesis79- I’ll just say this and it’s just a statement I’ve posted on the forums already back when we had those sub-clans. 1) Never again, G will not have a sub-clan ever again and 2) The basic problem that a lot of people experience with those sub-clans is you have to maintain a talent level in the sub-clan that is at least close to what the main Clan is to make it work properly for any extended period of time. Now, you have some exceptions to that obviously, Relic being one of the most notable. Lozarus does a fantastic job with his. The major problem that a lot of people run into in that respect is that you have players in those sub-clans who just don’t understand how the diplomacy in Clan Wars fights and all that work on the highest level of this game. It’s a very difficult thing to understand and one of the hardest things to master. And it’s just really hard to get a group of people in a sub-clan that are capable of understanding and working at that level of diplomacy. Due to the fact that it’s designed to work in conjunction with the main Clan and the literal definition of the sub-clan is that we all work towards one common goal, it doesn’t work very often.
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RedParadize - I would say this. We had Rebellion, which was an epic failure because of the reasons that Nemesis mentioned. Most of the Rebellion players had little experience in Clan Wars and would try playing. Because of the amount of players that wanted to join G, we eventually considered such a sub-faction because those players would not have been experienced with Clan Wars and all. But one thing remains, when you have a sub-clan, you have to deal with their expectations. Some people would want to join the sub-clan just to join the main Clan. Others want to have that Clan be glorious which could cause some conflict with the main house and stuff like that. It’s a lot of work to manage and I would say that in the end, it’s not our style. It would feel unhealthy, as Yankee mentioned.
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Yankee- From my point of view, I would much rather work with a competent ally that has their own agenda, their own goals and are competent in not drawing resources away from the main Clan. We had a weird situation with Rebellion, where everyone that joined Rebellion would never get recruited into G, it was part of the deal. We didn’t want to deal with 100 people asking every day when they would ever get transferred in to G and we thought that it would be better to try to maintain the talent level in the second Clan to try to make it a viable Clan Wars Clan, but no one ever wants to be considered a sub-clan. So like I said, I just prefer to identify solid Clans we can work with on the map and let them take care of their own business, and we’ll take care of ours.
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RedParadize- On the other hand, the players in the sub-clan will still be run by the main Clan. Like Yankee has mentioned, it’s much more beneficial to work with an ally that is surveying his own interest as well and making sure that they are defended as well. There are a lot of Clans that we’ve built good relationships with.
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Who in your opinion is your greatest ally, or greatest rival through your Clan Wars history? Yankee- G has a funny history - one of our greatest battles was against Forge but then they became one of our greatest allies afterward, so that’s kind of tough. Since we came to America we’ve had this snippy thing going on with Havok. The team that took it to us the hardest would probably have to be Forge, wouldn’t you say?
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RedParadize - It depends. We have a different perspective. Normally G doesn’t have allies. Most of the people consider allies something that will last forever. It’s not that we exclude that possibility but we don’t set in stone a friendship to a Clan since no one knows where a Clan will go eventually. We are neutral in the beginning of every war that we have participated in and then we decide to jump in the fight. We don’t bind ourselves too much to another Clan. For the moment we are going in the same direction but who knows when we will go in opposite directions.
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Would you consider the battles between G and Forge the most difficult or the most exciting you've played as a Clan? Nemesis79- From my perspective it was the whole SCC war against Forge. I didn’t like the idea of fighting Forge. I’ve liked those guys for a long time and have a well-established friendship with the ex-Forge leaders BarrooM and Nagatron, and Barroom is in G now. From an actual competitive standpoint and what marked us on the map as one of the top Clans, it is the SCC war against Forge. It’s probably the greatest series of battles that I’ve participated in to date.
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RedParadize- It was the hardest war that we fought by far.
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Yankee- That war typically went: We would attack Forge and we would lose, attack Forge and lose, and then we would attack them the third time and win. So we were just digging and digging to get them out of there - they put up great fights. The middle of that war was when the tier X mediums came out. So that was a really interesting dynamic that got introduced in the middle of that war with Batchat rushes and things like that. Our most heartbreaking losses and most satisfying defeats happened during the SCC war with Forge.
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Do you guys have a particular thing that you consider your Clan’s greatest achievement and what are your next goals? RedParadize- Our greatest achievement I would say from my point of view is our path from a raider Clan to probably what is perceived as the top Clan in North America. That’s for me our greatest accomplishment. The SCC war was exactly that. We beat the Clan that was considered the top Clan at the time. The path from the beginning to now.
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Yankee- Would it be too much to say the fact we earned $25,000 of gold off the Clan Wars map in a year? It was about 6.5 million gold we pulled in for a yearly income once.
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Nemesis79- From my point of view, our greatest achievement is remaining one of the top Clans for as long as we have. Quite simply because like was mentioned earlier, you have so many Clans that achieve that meteoric rise and epic fall.
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Yankee– (PURPL) *ahem* [See Anfield's War Video: Here]
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Nemesis79- Staying on top of our game as long as we have, especially with this group of potatoes that I have to herd every day.
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RedParadize- Personally I still like the way we climbed to the top. I wish Forge was still there, you know?
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What have you guys learned now that you are where you at where at the beginning you wish you knew about running a Clan? RedParadize- How time consuming it is? Haha
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Nemesis79- If I had known then what I know now, how much time that I would spend on this as far as the Clan management. Yeah, you couldn’t have gotten me to do that for any amount of money.
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RedParadize- People talk about talent and stuff like that, but they tend to forget how much work is required to get that experience. Even today, if we have to get into a big war it would be very time consuming. A war takes a lot of time, there’s a lot of work you have to do.
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Yankee– I would agree, I wouldn’t believe what a time sink it’s become. It’s been very rewarding but four or five hours a night and maybe only an hour of that is playing tanks.
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What do you guys think your reputation as a Clan is in the community? How have you guys developed that reputation? Yankee- We are feared, in an internet tank perspective of course. We decide who wins wars. We jump in a war late and have yet to make a wrong decision. People don’t want to piss us off. I think we get respect from some of the higher level Clans and some of the lower level Clans don’t have that respect from us since we are the big boys on the block.
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RedParadize- We do have some trolls in our Clan but overall our guys are pretty respected. Other Clans, usually don’t want to go against us, usually it’s pretty bad to go against us. I don’t think it’s all due to fear, but also good relations. We are clear, we don’t lie. We say to everyone, defend yourself and if we feel we need to defend you we will and if you feel we have to go against you we will, and that’s it. We don’t create false sentiments of friendship.
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Yankee– I think a lot of the community thinks we are greedy bastards and maybe we are. Come at us, bros!
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Nemesis79- I think they already are. Hello Subversion. That’s going to be interesting.
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Yankee- You know what? I’m going to change my answer on what I’m most proud of. I’m proud of maintaining my income against all of Wargaming’s best efforts.
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RedParadize- About greed - personally that’s something we’re proud of, how much we earn and pay our members. When it comes to the decision of going to war and dropping our income, I’ve only heard once that we should stay and farm. The rest of the time we want to go fight. Our guys enjoy being part of our Clan and I am very proud of our guys. A lot of our guys can be considered mercenaries, jumping around from Clan to Clan. Well, they were mercenaries until they found G. I am proud of that. People stay in G because they believe it is the best play to be.
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Yankee- I would challenge anyone to find a player who has been in G, a significant Clan Wars player that has been in G, and is now somewhere else.
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Bockrocker- It’s the retirement home of purple mercenaries.
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Yankee- People land here and then they stay. It’s low drama, lots of fun, and high income. The typical soldier in G pulls in 6k to 8k a month, which isn’t huge, there are probably other Clans that pay better since they pay less members.
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How does this affect you guys in Clan wars? You are successful in both Clan Wars and tournaments (2 Guerrillas teams just qualified for WGLNA Finals in Las Vegas). How are you able to be successful in both simultaneously? Yankee- It’s a struggle, especially with this PubStars team we put together since we had the balls to put six officers on it. It’s been tough, but we haven’t failed to field teams yet.
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Nemesis79- We have relatively high attendance, even on tourney nights. I tend to complain about it a lot, simply because I am concerned with having the “Six A-Teams” trademark that we supposedly have. If our attendance dips down even close to only being able to field two teams I get concerned. We’re able to accomplish that pretty easily even with all the tournament participation so it’s not that huge of an issue. Probably the biggest thing that we lose out of it is the amount of officers that we have on these teams. We are able to manage without them so it’s not that big of a deal, but I tend to make it out to be a big deal.
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Bockrocker- Well you figure there are 20 doing tournaments and we still have 30-50 plus showing up every night, all top notch players. It’s easy to make it work at that point (I say sarcastically).
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Anything else that you would like to add? Nemesis79- One of the things that I wanted to throw in there real quickly has to do with our recruiting policy and how that works. I don’t know of any other Clans that recruit the way we do. Basically there is no recruiting in G, people come to us. Nobody can apply into the Clan. People PM us on the forums or notable players who are familiar with us contact us independently. The way the process works is that you don’t just get into G based on your stats or based on who you know. We have a series of talent evaluators set up where you go in and audition for a spot In G. We have 5 or 6 evaluators that platoon with these players and run tank companies to see how good this player is. I’ve seen a lot of Clans that accept players outright based on their stats it doesn’t work that way here. It’s completely done with personal oversight and I think this is what has kept our talent at such a high level. Pope_Shizzle is the first contact and his job is to keep track of the recruits that are coming in and expressing interest. His job is to herd everything together and coordinate with the talent evaluators and I make the final decision to bring the person into the Clan based on Pope’s and the evaluators’ feedback.
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We interviewed these players to learn more about Guerrillas:
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Yankee- Commander of the Guerrillas
Nemesis79- Deputy Commander of Guerrillas and right hand man of Yankee. I run pretty much the majority of the Guerrillas day-to-day administration and day-to-day operations.
RedParadize- Battle Caller for -G- and Deputy Commander.
Bockrocker- Field Commander for -G-.
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You can challenge Guerrillas to Absolute Tank Companies this Wednesday at 3:00 PM PDT on the NA East server.
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When did -G- form and how did you get together? Yankee- G was formed as a fragment of Brothers Grim, one of the original Clan Wars Clans. We decided at the time that there was little bit too much talent separation in the Clan. We wanted to be a little bit more successful, so we dragged the top talent away, recruited new talent, and created Guerrillas.
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How did you guys choose the name Guerrillas? Did the “G” part come from Brothers Grim? Nemesis79- Well, it was something that CaptainNopants had been considering for quite a long time - a name that he wanted to use. Generally the idea behind it is, when we first formed we were intending on being nothing more than a 35-40-50 man at the most raiding Clan. There was no intention to create Guerrillas in its current form. It was going to be raiding gold pots only, holding a single 4,000 gold pot territory and that would be pretty much it. That was the original intention.
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Yankee - That didn’t last very long.
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RedParadize - Yea, that didn’t. Actually it worked like this; we landed in Scandinavia, right after that we landed near Courland which led to Moscow and never left.
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Nemesis79- And the rest is history.
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Yankee- We saw some early success, so that attracted some more talent and we got lucky with a couple diplomatic issues. Our initial war efforts kind of established us as the “powerhouse” over in that area. So we ended up being... umm NOT a raider Clan.
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When you got into this area, was it your intention to keep it for long? You said that you decided after a little while to be a “land holding” Clan. Yankee- Once it got started, sure. I think we started getting interested in holding it at ... Nem, what was the first record we broke? 160?
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Nemesis79- Actually I think it was around 280.
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Bockrocker- It was ROTA on Brandenburg, wasn’t it?
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Nemesis79- It was ROTA on Brandenburg and NDP on Hessen if I can recall correctly.
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Yankee- And I guess we became relevant during what’s known as the “Four Horsemen War”, if you know the Four Horsemen War.
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RedParadize- I’m pretty sure the turning point between being a raiding Clan and being a Clan that would stay on the map was actually the Four Horsemen War. When someone asked us to let them past through our territories, through Moscow and move elsewhere, that’s pretty much when we decided to stay.
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Yankee- That’s a very good point. We were asked to leave, so we decided to stay.
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Bockrocker- Coincidentally, when I first encountered “G,” my former Clan, the one and only, was one of said horsemen and it did not work out well for anybody, except for G so, eventually I found myself over here. I was impressed at the time.
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Do you remember what happened with G and the Four Horsemen? RedParadize - The “Four Horseman” planned to move to the inland in Russia and we were in their way. And Moscow was one of the territories they wanted, so they asked us to leave. And I think I might have been the earliest advocate in not letting that happen.
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Yankee- It’s not an uncommon situation to see on the map today. A stronger Clan came to what they thought was a weaker Clan and said “look we’ve got plans for this area, we don’t want to fight you. Why won’t you just move out of our way?”, and we just found that unacceptable.
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RedParadize- At that point I said that Moscow must not fall. Which is something that actually happened in World of War II.
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What was going on internally while you were holding it for that long? Were there a lot of people getting nervous about losing it? Bockrocker- How many times were we attacked on it?
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Yankee- You know I don’t know if I want to make that public or not. But might as well, like 7. In 420 days Moscow was attacked about 7 times. It was such a long way to the landing zone. You have to remember that Moscow was like a 5 day march from the landing zone. The map was pretty static back then. We had SSGS to our side before they got wiped out. Everybody else was pretty NAP’ed up, just controlling landing zones at the time.
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Nemesis79- The Four Horseman War was basically after the conclusion of it. That was when the majority of the attacks came. After the conclusion of the Four Horseman War is when you saw Guerrillas spread out to its European blob, which we held for quite some time. Pretty much after that it was rather long time before it was even touched again.
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Yankee- Well we had Iron Wolves sink down a couple times along the east and Rebellion tried to hit it couple times. The defense of Moscow was not actually done in Moscow, the defense of Moscow was done in the landing zones and diplo rooms.
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You said you wanted to be a raiding Clan - what did you change internally to transition from a raiding Clan to a Clan that is on the map and stay in there? Yankee- Recruiting.
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RedParadize- I think it’s because we could.
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Yankee- But once we got the taste if the gold and the taste of success, we felt we could do a little bit more. We had the system in place to get two or three Clan Wars teams up in a time zone. We were able to beat most of our opponents. So, you know there was no reason not to stay.
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Nemesis79- One thing you might see fairly often is notable Clans that disband or go inactive for whatever reason. We end up picking up quite a few talented individuals from those Clans. It’s been our modus operandi for a long time. The first marked one was not too long after the Four Horseman War with HI (Home Invasion). That was, if I recall correctly, first group of large players. There were a bunch of former MLP guys in HI and we ended up recruiting several of them over to G, after the Four Horseman War when their activity died off, the guys in that Clan were looking for another place to go. So we picked up a bunch of the guys from Home Invasion and that’s pretty much when it began, the switch from being a raiding Clan and into something more.
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This sounds like a familiar story. Why have you guys succeeded, when other similar-intentioned Clans have failed? Yankee- In simple terms, I could say ethical leadership. We don’t steal gold from the Clan. It’s a no-drama Clan. Anytime a situation occurs in the Clan, we usually get rid of whoever is creating the drama. It’s just a more professional atmosphere. People take it seriously without getting too emotional about it. And I think that’s the difference between us and some of these other high talent Clans that have tried to succeed. It’s the experience with leadership: Captain, Red, Nemesis and I, we’ve been doing this together every night with probably I would say on an average 98% attendance for over two years. So it’s just kind of a machine that keeps rolling at this point.
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Nemesis79- That would be my thing that I attributed to most is, the steadfastness of the leadership, especially the four that came from BG: Yankee, Captain, Red and myself. We’ve been together for a very long time. We are actually friends despite some of the differences we have and some of the disagreements we have…they’re always there, they’re always going to happen. But, we’re friends and we’ve been working together doing this stuff day in and day out for a very long time.
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Do you guys have any interesting traditions after working together for so long? Yankee- I think we’re probably the only Clan that has a nightly meeting that all members are expected to attend.
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Nemesis79- I haven’t seen that any place else. Other than that, the only real tradition I can think of is me raging at people to make sure they’re getting into ATC and/or MapTactic. And getting “readied up” in battle well ahead of time.
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RedParadize- When you think about it, we don’t even see it anymore I guess. But there’s a bunch of stuff we do, each time we have a battle when the officers gather, and determine who’s going to call and which players we pick. As we said before is a well-oiled system - it could be considered as a tradition.
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Yankee- But as an example, Nemesis and I would be normally be watching the map…coordinating chip moves with our allies, discussing our own chip moves, who’s going to attack us and what not. At 8:00 we watch the turns, we determine how many battles we’re going to have. Within 10 minutes we usually have a battle caller assign to those battles. His job is to get tank line ups to the roster guys. We have guys that are dedicated in putting rosters together. They have list of players and available tanks and who’s good in what tanks. The battle callers give that information to the roster callers. The roster makers, they make their rosters. Other people are editing the TeamSpeak room. Other people are making sure MapTactic and TeamSpeak is set up properly.
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RedParadize- And then you have the battle caller explaining the strats and picking a flank commander.
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Bockrocker- We’re a well-oiled machine for the most part.
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How much do you weigh your battle callers' influence vs. individual players? RedParadize- A good strat doesn’t normally require an exceptional player to work, but when the battle doesn’t go as expected, then you need to count on your ace player to make a difference. That’s the way I see it. If the battle caller knows what to do and knows how to explain the strat, and if he knows how to feel the battle given the information he has, given what he can see on the map, everything should be fine. But often times it doesn’t. Nothing is perfect. In this situation, it’s important to have that exceptional player to carry the team.
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Nemesis79- I would estimate for your average Clan, that 75% or more relies on the battle caller. For us, it’s more 50/50 based on the reasons that Red explained. We have some brilliant minds for strategic play, map strategy, and battle calling, but we also have so many players that have been doing this for such a long time and they’re so good at what they do, that often times it can make up for the battle calling. I think it’s one of our key ingredients and one of our unique values.
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RedParadize- I don’t really like explaining numbers with that because it’s very difficult to figure out. I can’t ask our guys to pop up our Clan Wars battles just to see if it would work without me calling, or the opposite.
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What can a less-experienced Clan do to get their battle callers up to the level where they need to be? What has to be developed in order to gain that skill? RedParadize - Experience. For a long period of time, G has been very active in companies. And that’s how I developed my skill of calling, how to feel the battles, how to give instruction and to be easily understood with my broken English. A big part of this came from companies. Experience is the key, also structure, but mostly experience. If I had to give advice to a new Clan, I would say to polish their commanding skill. Anyone can play pub battles and increase their own personal skills. When it comes down to battle calling, you have to CALL.
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Yankee- I think that one of the big differences we started to see in battle callers, is that the most basic of battle callers will tell their team where to go, when the battle starts. They’ve got to develop their depth a little more than that. If this happens, we’re going to do this, if this happens we’re going to do that. You’ve got to have a plan in advance. I think too many teams start out with too many young battle callers, that instruct their team to go here- here - here- here and here. And then it just gets confusing at that point.
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RedParadize- Then they start to micro-manage their players and lose their focus on the overall battle. You have to trust your player. When G first started, we didn’t have the depth that we have now. A battle caller worked with what they had, and that’s it. You explain your strat in a fashion that people will understand what you expect from them and don’t micro-manage them. You tell them want you want them to achieve, not where you want them to go. The better your player can comprehend, the more likely you can provide a vague order like: “Hold there or attack there”. The better the player, the less detailed the instruction will be.
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Yankee- That’s an interesting point because that’s one of the reasons we broke up BG. As a matter of fact, we had this talent difference and the guys at the bottom that weren’t able to play in Clan Wars, wanted the guys at the top to train them to be better so that they could play Clan Wars, but we weren’t interested in doing that.
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RedParadize- On our part, that’s a luxury that very few Clans have. We don’t train players. When they are recruited into G, they are expected to know what to do. They are expected to know how to play. That part we don’t train them for. As far as flank commanding is concerned, in G we have multiple battle callers per game. There’s one top battle caller and also a flank commander that controls a specific portion of the map or group of people or both.
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Bockrocker - It’s the guys that work with the commander. They know exactly what’s going on in his head, what he needs to do, what he wants to accomplish. And whatever he doesn’t see, they should be able to take over.
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RedParadize- For instance, Bock has been my wingman for a long, long time. I’m pretty sure you can read my mind.
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When you start working with a new field commander, can you pick up immediately that this guys is someone you can work with or does that take time to develop? RedParadize- There’s something about G…the officers in G are older. Our youngest officer is Exxo. Anyways, most of the officers are like 27 years of age or older. Overall, experience is the key. If a group of people work together for a long period time, a bond naturally creates itself.
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Nemesis79- As far as recognition of somebody that may have an innate talent, usually it takes one, maybe two battles to have somebody that would come in that may be interested in doing something like that or someone just trying to build rep. From my perspective, and one of my jobs is to recognize that kind of talent, whether they have the ability to contribute in that fashion it takes one or two battles, and that’s about it. With the amount of guys we have that are already talented in that capacity, within one or two battles we can recognize typically whether a person is going to be successful in that area or not.
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RedParadize - Specific to top Clans in general, but mostly specific to us, when playing in G, there are many ways you can contribute in a battle/in Clan Wars. But there is one thing you are not allowed to do, and that’s LOSING.
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Yankee- Usually if you have a guy that tries to call in companies and gets about six battles in, if they lose two of those, no one ever accepts their invitation.
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Bockrocker- It’s nerve-racking when you come in and you start leading tank companies -you have high expectations to live up to.
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RedParadize- When we play Companies, we win about 94% of our matches and people expected us to win most of the time, which is sad and stupid obviously, but still expected.
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Yankee- It’s a funny thing. All the guys in G expect to win a lot. If you’re in a platoon and lose 3 games out of 5, that platoon’s going to die.
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RedParadize- It might re-form the next day.
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Yankee: It might, but for the current day, that platoon’s pretty much dead. You get a platoon that’s running 67% and people will start flipping out.
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You don’t have any sub-clans at the moment. Is there a reason for that? Nemesis79- Grrrrr….
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Bockrocker- Let me just say one thing before he starts - Yankee and I went to Moscow for Ural Steel and came back and had a sub-clan. Nemesis got bored, lol.
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Nemesis79- I’ll just say this and it’s just a statement I’ve posted on the forums already back when we had those sub-clans. 1) Never again, G will not have a sub-clan ever again and 2) The basic problem that a lot of people experience with those sub-clans is you have to maintain a talent level in the sub-clan that is at least close to what the main Clan is to make it work properly for any extended period of time. Now, you have some exceptions to that obviously, Relic being one of the most notable. Lozarus does a fantastic job with his. The major problem that a lot of people run into in that respect is that you have players in those sub-clans who just don’t understand how the diplomacy in Clan Wars fights and all that work on the highest level of this game. It’s a very difficult thing to understand and one of the hardest things to master. And it’s just really hard to get a group of people in a sub-clan that are capable of understanding and working at that level of diplomacy. Due to the fact that it’s designed to work in conjunction with the main Clan and the literal definition of the sub-clan is that we all work towards one common goal, it doesn’t work very often.
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RedParadize - I would say this. We had Rebellion, which was an epic failure because of the reasons that Nemesis mentioned. Most of the Rebellion players had little experience in Clan Wars and would try playing. Because of the amount of players that wanted to join G, we eventually considered such a sub-faction because those players would not have been experienced with Clan Wars and all. But one thing remains, when you have a sub-clan, you have to deal with their expectations. Some people would want to join the sub-clan just to join the main Clan. Others want to have that Clan be glorious which could cause some conflict with the main house and stuff like that. It’s a lot of work to manage and I would say that in the end, it’s not our style. It would feel unhealthy, as Yankee mentioned.
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Yankee- From my point of view, I would much rather work with a competent ally that has their own agenda, their own goals and are competent in not drawing resources away from the main Clan. We had a weird situation with Rebellion, where everyone that joined Rebellion would never get recruited into G, it was part of the deal. We didn’t want to deal with 100 people asking every day when they would ever get transferred in to G and we thought that it would be better to try to maintain the talent level in the second Clan to try to make it a viable Clan Wars Clan, but no one ever wants to be considered a sub-clan. So like I said, I just prefer to identify solid Clans we can work with on the map and let them take care of their own business, and we’ll take care of ours.
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RedParadize- On the other hand, the players in the sub-clan will still be run by the main Clan. Like Yankee has mentioned, it’s much more beneficial to work with an ally that is surveying his own interest as well and making sure that they are defended as well. There are a lot of Clans that we’ve built good relationships with.
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Who in your opinion is your greatest ally, or greatest rival through your Clan Wars history? Yankee- G has a funny history - one of our greatest battles was against Forge but then they became one of our greatest allies afterward, so that’s kind of tough. Since we came to America we’ve had this snippy thing going on with Havok. The team that took it to us the hardest would probably have to be Forge, wouldn’t you say?
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RedParadize - It depends. We have a different perspective. Normally G doesn’t have allies. Most of the people consider allies something that will last forever. It’s not that we exclude that possibility but we don’t set in stone a friendship to a Clan since no one knows where a Clan will go eventually. We are neutral in the beginning of every war that we have participated in and then we decide to jump in the fight. We don’t bind ourselves too much to another Clan. For the moment we are going in the same direction but who knows when we will go in opposite directions.
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Would you consider the battles between G and Forge the most difficult or the most exciting you've played as a Clan? Nemesis79- From my perspective it was the whole SCC war against Forge. I didn’t like the idea of fighting Forge. I’ve liked those guys for a long time and have a well-established friendship with the ex-Forge leaders BarrooM and Nagatron, and Barroom is in G now. From an actual competitive standpoint and what marked us on the map as one of the top Clans, it is the SCC war against Forge. It’s probably the greatest series of battles that I’ve participated in to date.
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RedParadize- It was the hardest war that we fought by far.
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Yankee- That war typically went: We would attack Forge and we would lose, attack Forge and lose, and then we would attack them the third time and win. So we were just digging and digging to get them out of there - they put up great fights. The middle of that war was when the tier X mediums came out. So that was a really interesting dynamic that got introduced in the middle of that war with Batchat rushes and things like that. Our most heartbreaking losses and most satisfying defeats happened during the SCC war with Forge.
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Do you guys have a particular thing that you consider your Clan’s greatest achievement and what are your next goals? RedParadize- Our greatest achievement I would say from my point of view is our path from a raider Clan to probably what is perceived as the top Clan in North America. That’s for me our greatest accomplishment. The SCC war was exactly that. We beat the Clan that was considered the top Clan at the time. The path from the beginning to now.
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Yankee- Would it be too much to say the fact we earned $25,000 of gold off the Clan Wars map in a year? It was about 6.5 million gold we pulled in for a yearly income once.
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Nemesis79- From my point of view, our greatest achievement is remaining one of the top Clans for as long as we have. Quite simply because like was mentioned earlier, you have so many Clans that achieve that meteoric rise and epic fall.
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Yankee– (PURPL) *ahem* [See Anfield's War Video: Here]
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Nemesis79- Staying on top of our game as long as we have, especially with this group of potatoes that I have to herd every day.
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RedParadize- Personally I still like the way we climbed to the top. I wish Forge was still there, you know?
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What have you guys learned now that you are where you at where at the beginning you wish you knew about running a Clan? RedParadize- How time consuming it is? Haha
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Nemesis79- If I had known then what I know now, how much time that I would spend on this as far as the Clan management. Yeah, you couldn’t have gotten me to do that for any amount of money.
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RedParadize- People talk about talent and stuff like that, but they tend to forget how much work is required to get that experience. Even today, if we have to get into a big war it would be very time consuming. A war takes a lot of time, there’s a lot of work you have to do.
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Yankee– I would agree, I wouldn’t believe what a time sink it’s become. It’s been very rewarding but four or five hours a night and maybe only an hour of that is playing tanks.
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What do you guys think your reputation as a Clan is in the community? How have you guys developed that reputation? Yankee- We are feared, in an internet tank perspective of course. We decide who wins wars. We jump in a war late and have yet to make a wrong decision. People don’t want to piss us off. I think we get respect from some of the higher level Clans and some of the lower level Clans don’t have that respect from us since we are the big boys on the block.
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RedParadize- We do have some trolls in our Clan but overall our guys are pretty respected. Other Clans, usually don’t want to go against us, usually it’s pretty bad to go against us. I don’t think it’s all due to fear, but also good relations. We are clear, we don’t lie. We say to everyone, defend yourself and if we feel we need to defend you we will and if you feel we have to go against you we will, and that’s it. We don’t create false sentiments of friendship.
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Yankee– I think a lot of the community thinks we are greedy bastards and maybe we are. Come at us, bros!
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Nemesis79- I think they already are. Hello Subversion. That’s going to be interesting.
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Yankee- You know what? I’m going to change my answer on what I’m most proud of. I’m proud of maintaining my income against all of Wargaming’s best efforts.
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RedParadize- About greed - personally that’s something we’re proud of, how much we earn and pay our members. When it comes to the decision of going to war and dropping our income, I’ve only heard once that we should stay and farm. The rest of the time we want to go fight. Our guys enjoy being part of our Clan and I am very proud of our guys. A lot of our guys can be considered mercenaries, jumping around from Clan to Clan. Well, they were mercenaries until they found G. I am proud of that. People stay in G because they believe it is the best play to be.
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Yankee- I would challenge anyone to find a player who has been in G, a significant Clan Wars player that has been in G, and is now somewhere else.
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Bockrocker- It’s the retirement home of purple mercenaries.
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Yankee- People land here and then they stay. It’s low drama, lots of fun, and high income. The typical soldier in G pulls in 6k to 8k a month, which isn’t huge, there are probably other Clans that pay better since they pay less members.
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How does this affect you guys in Clan wars? You are successful in both Clan Wars and tournaments (2 Guerrillas teams just qualified for WGLNA Finals in Las Vegas). How are you able to be successful in both simultaneously? Yankee- It’s a struggle, especially with this PubStars team we put together since we had the balls to put six officers on it. It’s been tough, but we haven’t failed to field teams yet.
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Nemesis79- We have relatively high attendance, even on tourney nights. I tend to complain about it a lot, simply because I am concerned with having the “Six A-Teams” trademark that we supposedly have. If our attendance dips down even close to only being able to field two teams I get concerned. We’re able to accomplish that pretty easily even with all the tournament participation so it’s not that huge of an issue. Probably the biggest thing that we lose out of it is the amount of officers that we have on these teams. We are able to manage without them so it’s not that big of a deal, but I tend to make it out to be a big deal.
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Bockrocker- Well you figure there are 20 doing tournaments and we still have 30-50 plus showing up every night, all top notch players. It’s easy to make it work at that point (I say sarcastically).
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Anything else that you would like to add? Nemesis79- One of the things that I wanted to throw in there real quickly has to do with our recruiting policy and how that works. I don’t know of any other Clans that recruit the way we do. Basically there is no recruiting in G, people come to us. Nobody can apply into the Clan. People PM us on the forums or notable players who are familiar with us contact us independently. The way the process works is that you don’t just get into G based on your stats or based on who you know. We have a series of talent evaluators set up where you go in and audition for a spot In G. We have 5 or 6 evaluators that platoon with these players and run tank companies to see how good this player is. I’ve seen a lot of Clans that accept players outright based on their stats it doesn’t work that way here. It’s completely done with personal oversight and I think this is what has kept our talent at such a high level. Pope_Shizzle is the first contact and his job is to keep track of the recruits that are coming in and expressing interest. His job is to herd everything together and coordinate with the talent evaluators and I make the final decision to bring the person into the Clan based on Pope’s and the evaluators’ feedback.
Clan Spotlight: [-G-] 10/28