Summary of the 5 vs. 5 Intra-TAW Defuse Tournament

The Battlefield America Competition Battalion held the first ever Intra-TAW 5 vs. 5 Defuse Tournament on 23 November 2013, which was used as a platform to give members in the regular battalion a chance to participate in a competition-style event while providing the competition staff an extended look at members interested in becoming competition players.

There was a total of four teams comprised of five active players each, including the comp team. We started off by having each team play against the comp team to determine seeding: Team A plays Team D and Team B plays Team C. This was fairly easy to determine, as those who worked together the best, had the tightest communications and executed with confidence performed the best.

As an aside, I instructed the comp team to "show no mercy" and "play as if you're playing in a competition." I felt this was needed not only because the comp team needs to hone this mentality, but also for us to see how the other teams reacted in the face of adversity.

And, as expected, the first games were a challenge for the teams due to unfamiliarity with the game mode, map and teammates. There were some sighs of frustration, hesitation and overall not knowing what to do.

(Granted, some teams had players step up into the leadership role, which is always good because having no one to lead or too many people trying to lead results in discombobulated play.)

However, with each game, the teams progressed; enemy call outs were quicker and more accurate, execution of strategies were more determinate and as a result, the comp team had to adapt to a bigger challenge. Viewing through Spectator Mode, Mercenary and RazorEdge viewed in first-person mode through each of the players to see their aim, reaction and awareness, while I viewed in free cam mode to see the relationship between their communications and their placement on the map. Often times, I would hear a plan put into place, but see a player stray from the plan (i.e., he didn't listen) and end up in a location completely unhelpful to himself and his team. Or, there would be instances where the team stood around, giving the other team a chance to get into position quicker. There were also many instances where players would stick together, but did not use their cover properly.

All of these factored into how we evaluated individuals and we feel strongly that this is the right format in conducting tryouts going forward. In the future, we plan on implementing a draft and/or simply allowing teams to form themselves. But in this case, we didn't have time to do that; it's actually a small miracle that we pulled this together in a matter of a few days and had the turnout that we did. Truth be told, the three of us didn't meet in TeamSpeak at all during the whole week, but coordinated everything by e-mail.

Our hope is that we can develop this as a model to be able to host ladders in the future, where external clans will come and participate. We have a lot to learn, but we are encouraged by how we were able to make this happen. It goes to show that a staff that works closely together can get anything done.

So, did we find any players suitable for comp? Yes, we did. You'll just have to find out who made the cut.