going CAL : CounterStrike - Page 2

er who are you? lol

well, obviously i'm a new member to the site and clan..so there you go..lets go cal!

lol nice skippy kippie

First... this is a long post. Hope you don't get bored

Somone said "What could it hurt?"

I've played CS for over 5 years now, and have watched many groups of good people "go cal" and end up hating each other. Sure enough, a group of people that had fun pubbing together, break up, server dies, and everyone goes their separate ways. Cycle repeats elsewhere. Plus... the guy you're willing to put up with on the pub ALWAYS becomes intolerable when a team starts, and creates all kinds of drama until he quits the server.

Maybe look around for other leagues that require less dedication to practice, and have less twinks than there are in CAL-o. It's too easy to take the game super serious once competition starts. We're males - that's what we do My old clan I was in for 4 years played in a ladder league. That was fun, because you just tried to climb the ladder. There was no goal of "We must win 6 out of 8 matches against twinks to move up into the next league level - else we feel like we wasted our time". So you could just take whatever 5 guys you had around and duke it out with the other team.

The first CAL-o team I ran was undefeated. We practiced just about every night of the week. Practice doesn't mean "find a scrim and play". We would dedicate anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour detailing and then running one to three strategies on T or CT side. Then we'd find a good 3-4 scrims and practice only those strategies live to work out both individual, small group, and team tactics. Other nights we would work our "tool set" by just playing scrims and picking different strats to run from our tool set. Or running the same "RUSH B" strat 15 times in a row because it needed work.

You have to be willing to run a strategy over and over - even when it's currently failing - knowing that once the whole team gets it, it will work great in the right situation.

You also have to have 5 consistent players. Anything more than 7 and there is no longer a point in training a team. Typically with 7 players, you have a core 3 starters that are always around, and the other 4 rotate. This often causes battles due to ego issues.

One of your core players has to know the strategies from EACH PLAYERS point of view on both teams, because he will be calling the strats. He needs to know the ability of each individual player, and "buddy team". He needs to be able to feel out the other team within the first 3-5 rounds. Yes - this can mean calling 5 losing strats in a row just to know how the other team plays. Once it's figured out, it's easy to win the half. But - his team has to have faith in him, and he in his team.

I've tried to help several other CAL teams since then, and none of them had the dedication to practice, or the willingness to see through the moment to achieve the long term goal. Some of them would still even fight over when to buy and when not to by after an entire season of training.

Don't go CAL right away. Scrim for fun to get experience. Then if you want to take it seriously, start actually practicing. Then join a major league when the team has some cohesion.

- Love

If you really want to go CAL right away, just don't set the goal of getting to CAL-im in your 2nd season. Play CAL-o for fun, with the goal of having fun, and learning if you really want. Aim for CAL-im when you're ready to dedicate more time and energy to actualy practice.