World of Pwnage

How to Start A Counter-Strike Clan

How to start your own CS clan

It may have entered your mind when you play Counter-Strike and see all these guys talking about CAL, leagues, lans, and clans, that you might want to actually create your own clan. This is a guide that will give you the basics on how to start one up and what it takes to keep it growing and Pwning. The guide lists the basic things you need to do so.

Money for the Clan

Whether you are starting a clan or already have one, you need money for your clan to run. This is another guide all together. But asking for donations is the minimum to get started. Ask your rich aunt or family members. Get paypal if you don’t have it yet to collect donations. You can use paypal to buy most of the stuff your clan needs. More ways to collect and earn cash for your clan is in the Gamer's Guide to Making Money which includes beta testing, playing games and filling out surveys, ads, selling stuff on ebay, how to get sponsors, etc to fund lans, pub and private servers, website etc. If you can not master this or have someone who will handle this, your clan is doomed to fail.

A Mission for the Clan

             Be clear, precise, and it has to be compelling in order to attract others in and motive you and your teammates. It is also lays the foundation of what your clan will do, be known for, act in CS servers, and etc. Here is a tip that will save a lot of new clans: FOCUS your clan to a specific game or genre. Do not encompass too many games because it will become very disorganized and lose the clan's identity or brand. Keep is narrow and as focused as possible.

You do this by deciding on what you want the clan to do – play CS all day? Get better in FPS games? Pwn in CAL-I? Just have fun on weekends? Lan parties? Participate in local Lan event and tournaments? List it out. And this will determine your team’s motto and spirit summed up in its mission.

           The next step is naming the clan. This should tie closely into the mission of the clan too. And is quite important because it is the identity of the clan and will be recognizable to everyone else and not just the team. Put some thought into this because clans can go dead just with a bad name – they don’t get the respect in matches as those of “cooler” named clans. Don’t believe me? Join a server and name yourself “The Pigeon”. If you start pwning it up there then most likely you will be called a hacker. But if you have a tag on and do really well you will be asked what exp you have, and be more respected. I don’t recommend using really fancy symbols as your name because that is also looked upon as a team with noobs trying too hard to look pro and not having skills to back it up.

Get a Clan Leader or Become a Leader

             You will need a leader in your clan in order for it and to execute starts and tactics well – you can’t have everyone giving out orders or someone giving out orders and no one listening. Try to get a leader for your clan as soon as you can. This guy will be the one to call out strategies during matches. He can also be the one finding, inventing and posting up strategies for maps on your forums or teaching others map strats. If he can’t do that then you can get someone who likes making strats up to join your team and the leader will read the strats with the rest of the team, memorize it and give the in game command to execute which strat to use during scrims and matches.

            A leader has to have good communication skills, high level of CS skills, good level of strats or can learn quickly, and lead in rushes. Experience in CAL or other leagues is a plus – he has to know what works and what doesn’t.

            Your team also needs a manager too. This person needs to think up and manage the schedules, practices, events, match start times, etc. for the team and keep the entire team informed about changes, and announcements. He has to make sure that everyone in the clan knows what they are suppose to do during a scrim or match. Keeping order within the clan is his job too.

“Yeeeah, we’re going to need those strats for de_cpl_fire right. So yeeeah get those posted up. Yeeeeeah”

You need to get people to join your clan

          Many people who want to start a clan just jump right to this step without thinking. Finding people is the hardest thing to do. You have to choose carefully. If you do not 100% trust the other person or don’t like their personality, voice, age, race or whatever – DON’T recruit them into your clan. It will just come back to destroy the team.

         Go to Counter-Strike forums and get people who are skilled to play with you. There are many forums that let you advertise your newly found clan. Just post and give out your contact so you can interview potential recruits. See if they pwn and invite them to join your newly forming clan or one you have already after you get to know them more. Make sure he is a team player and can fill the role that your clan needs.

I suggest you fill the role of the leader first. So play with a lot of guys who are interested and get the one with the highest skills, experience, and strats. You can also get a leader by going to highly skilled pubs and trying to recruit them there. In order for you to effectively recruit you must be able to communicate your clans mission and your intentions for him to join the clan as a leader or a recruit.

Use AIM, xfire, ventrillo and/or teamspeak to do talk with them when not playing CS – get to know them better. It should be a given if your teammates are serious about joinging your clan that they should all have working mics. Get to know their real names, age, interests, where they live, etc etc etc. You really can’t recruit a clan member who lives half way around the world from you and expect them to play with you in every scrim. Recruiting younger plays is a gamble too for some who want more mature teammates.

Growing your Team

After you got 1 or 2 good guys you will need to keep them posted on your clan. You can just make and idle in a mirc channel and have your new recruits join there. Or send our an email. Play as much as possible with the recruits in pubs and ring with them until you guys get a whole team up. More details on how to find matches using mirc will be posted up, but joining #sourcescrims channel in mirc is pretty easy. This will let you see how your recruits play and will let you see how your team can work together.

Establishing your Team

Once you have around 5-6 guys and have the leadership role filled then you can start building a small community around them. This is the final step and will continue to improve as the team improves and gains more experience, reputation, and audience. To do so, you usually need a forum to keep members posted on events and announcements, a website, a public CS server and a private CS server. All of this cost time and effort to setup. You can ask your recruits to help or get others to help out. But minimum is setting up a website, posting all the members info there and install a free forum there using phpbb or other free forum plugin.

More to come including how to write good strats, practicing strats, building your best team with the recruits you have, how to attract highly skilled CS players.