The second man from the top in TAW's Sentinel command is BGN Lucky. Lucky has put in a ton of time and work for TAW in the past and now he has turned his tireless efforts to helping develop leadership and rebuild struggling divisions, helping keep the games we love in the clan we hold dear.
---As my TAW.net biography explains, I have been a gamer as long as I can remember, and I'm 50, so that goes back a ways. I started with the usual games like Stratego and Risk, then got into table-top war games (Panzer Blitz, Third Reich, Richtofen's War, etc.) and RPGs like D&D. That was 35 years ago! I stumbled into Live Action Roleplaying Games in 1990, with NERO in New England, and ended up owning and running one (Legends Roleplaying) a few years later. As far as computer games go, my first was "Adventure", played on a sort of teletype machine by acoustic-coupler modem - there was no monitor; it just printed everything out on a roll of paper! I used to buy about 15-20 games a year, but since I found Arma 2 in 2009, I have hardly played other games. I spend a lot of time in the mission editor, creating missions for the Arma Division.
You've been in TAW nearly two years and worked your way up through the ranks to Brigadier General, earning nearly every command medal the clan awards. What has been your proudest accomplishment in TAW?
---No question: the thing of which I'm most proud is to have been one of the people who helped build the Arma Division into what it is. There's a culture that is classic TAW and works well for the co-op style the members like. The other thing that I'm really proud of is the missions that I've made for AM to play. We've got an archive now of over 25 original missions that were created to suit the way the members like to play.
Now, on to Sentinel. What are the goals and objectives of Sentinel as a division and as a part of TAW?
----You have to understand that we're in the middle of big changes at SN. So I can't give you a lot of details, but here's the big picture. Sentinel has been a the place where game divisions get moved if they're struggling. Usually that happens when their membership drops below 20. And in the past, there was a unspoken policy that the goal was to get the groups built back up and out of SN ASAP. We have re-examined that, and we're no longer going to pressure groups to sink or swim. The details are TBD, though. The really big change, though, is that what used to be called "TAW University" has been folded into Sentinel, and Sentinel is being reshaped a bit to focus on leadership development. So now SN will be helping develop TAW leaders in addition to working with struggling game divisions.
What are the "qualifying factors" that lead to a division being assigned to Sentinel?
---In short, if the membership drops below 20 or the group is unstable, Army will step in and move the group to SN. Then we begin to work with them to rebuild and help them with what they need to thrive.
What are the basic steps that a division goes through once placed into the Sentinel Division?
---It really varies by the group, depending on their circumstances. And this may be something that changes in the near future.
What are some of the misconceptions of the Sentinel division that members may have?
---Some people have said that SN is the place divisions go to die, and that's wrong. Of course, the majority of games have a life cycle: they come out, people are excited about them, and they thrive for a while. But then gamers get bored and want something new, so they leave the division, or sometimes game servers become unavailable, etc., and the numbers dwindle, and the division will get moved to SN. Sometimes, the division does "die". People abandon the game and move on. That is just normal. In those cases we try to rebuild with the people who remain, but sometimes it's just not going to work out, for various reasons.
You have been with Sentinel since February according to your TAW.net profile. Did your work with Sentinel begin before then or was it a brand new endeavor for you?
---It was brand new. I was 1CLC before that for about 6 months, with ChicagoOne.
If you had one thing to tell the rest of TAW about Sentinel, what would it be and what would make that one thing the more important than other statements about Sentinel?
---I think it's been covered.
Hooah Lucky. You got my vote. Great job in all you do for TAW.