Tuesday practice - cancelled due to lack of people.
Thursday practice cancelled due to lack of people.
OK, screw this time to do some management.
Now I am the grandson and great grandson of farmers and there's an old farmer's trick that works wonders with stubborn mules.
First the carrot:
We will give out prizes based on contribution.
Everyone in the alliance: CCP will be giving out medals to every character that was a member of the participating alliances on the first day of the tournament. CCP Logibro confirmed to me all 15000 of us will be getting a medal from CCP. The better the team does the shinier the medals so think of the newbros when we warp to the arena on August 15th.
All other prizes are for squad members. If they decide to cash out please give first refusal to fellow squad members, second refusal to members of the alliance otherwise I don't care who you sell it to.
1st-3rd place: 12 ingame Alliance Tournament Medal inventory items are given to teams that come
1st-3rd. These will be allocated to the 12 people who contributed the most and don't count against other rewards.
If we win: Alliance Tournament Cup becomes property of the Brave Collective for 1 year.
Plex, ludicrously OP prize ships and ship skins. - all this stuff goes in a pool. We will list the squad by contribution. Top person gets an item, then the next then the next.
Plex:
Teams that place between 17th and 32nd will receive 5 PLEX
Teams that place in the top 16 will receive 15 PLEX
Ship skins
10 Nightmare skins per win that are pretty rare and look like the Fiend/Imp.
Ships Feast your eyes! (linked above)
Example. If we come 4th we get 3 Fiends, 3 Imps, about 60 Nightmare skins and 15 plex. So handing them out to a 30 man squad we'd give:
top contributor - choice of Fiend or Imp, 2 skins
2nd - choice of Fiend or Imp, 2 skins
3rd - choice of Fiend or Imp, 2 skins
4th - choice of Fiend or Imp, 2 skins
5th - choice of Fiend or Imp, 2 skins
6th - last ship, 2 skins
7th-21st - 2 skins, 1 plex
22nd - 30th 2 skins.
More realistically we may get something like this:
10 skins, 5 plex so
1st-10th one skin
11th - 15th one plex
16th-30th nothing
We may even (loss - loss) get this:
1st-30th nothing apart from drama cynos on the subreddit.
Oh and I'm neither guaranteeing myself in nor ruling myself out. If I boundary violate like a dumbass and knock us out I probably won't count my contribution that high but if I do well you better believe I want one of them sweet sweet Fiends! Same for Tosan and anyone else who gets roped in to do management stuff.
Then the stick:
Guys I love you.
You know I love you.
But....
We had to cancel 2 practices this week because of low turnout. So we're on a cusp - are we going to take this seriously or is it just a casual thing where people rock up on the day and get owned, shooting off fireworks as we go down?
You know me well enough to know where I stand on this.
Now I have a queue of people knocking on the door who would love a chance to take part in what I think is going to be an amazing experience for us. Not to mention people who wouldn't mind a shiny Nightmare skin.
So from here on out if you're really apathetic I'm going to replace you. (Still love you tho).
The rule is: if you don't show up to practice over a 14 day period you're out.
Now that's not megaharsh, it's just 2 hours a fortnight. Holidays illness are fine. Please notify me if you can but if I kick you then you rock back up and say "I've just been in hospital for 3 weeks" I'll reinstate you asap.
Now it's possible some people think "I'm a kick-ass player, I don't need to practice."
If you're a kickass player we're not practicing so you can get good, we're practising so our weaker
squad members can get shored up by you. Suppose you're a fantastic tackle frigate pilot. Well we might want you to guard our logi. The logi however might be a bit raw and sits in the wrong place or comes too close or doesn't know what to do when damped. Well you're his partner - you talk to each other and practice how to deal with those situations. Maybe he needs to come in - so you anticipate what he's vulnerable to and tackle it right, telling him to go left. Once the damps are off he wants to pull range but he's tackled. So you peel.
The team within a team which is you and the logi you're protecting can't do all this unless you've learned to play together and when to key up and talk to each other.
When you intervene like this as a manager you never know quite what's going to happen. Will it work? Will it blow up in your face? So it was a nervous team captain that turned up to the Saturday practice, the most important practice of the week, the one where usually we play another team.
Pandemic Horde had turned up and we agreed to practice a few matches against them. Like us a newbie organisation, unlike us, advised and trained by tournament experts and past winners, PL. So no pressure then.
And we rocked them 3-0.
Now don't read too much into this we were both a bit short-handed and our comp was rock to their scissors. Still it felt damn good.
The PH squad are now friends and will be future practice partners and I'll be cheering loudly for them in their matches. Their captain is ex-Brave player Broodalpha.
Sunday saw another good practice and tonight another. Activity is up, skill is up, we're still making a lot of mistake but we're now all actively helping each other fix mistakes with people comfortable enough with each other to point things out and to accept criticism gracefully.
I'm sure there will be more hiccups and dramas to come before we nervously step out in front of the watching eyes of the whole of New Eden but if you're wondering if things are going well with the AT Squad?
Why yes, I do believe they are.
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