Team Bravo: A History

Welcome to another guest post by Anafielle! Rhidach is gone on vacation again and forgot to remove my guest posting privileges. Righteous Defense is mine! All mine! Be warned, the beta coverage is temporarily suspended in his absence. In his place, I’d like to talk about one of my favorite topics – 10 man raiding.

I lead a 10 man, something I stress out about on twitter all the time. I actually lead the second 10 man in the guild, while Rhidach leads the first. These raids are called Team Bravo and Team Alpha, respectively. Despite our names, my raid is actually the more progressed of the two.

How did this happen? Oh, this is one of my favorite topics…

A 25 Man Guild with Two Tens

Like many casual-progression 25 man raiding guilds, Enveloping Shadows has long had an unofficial “officer” 10 man. Rhidach leads and MTs it, and mostly takes the officers and a few top DPS. For a long time, this was the only solid guild 10 man.

There was no real second 10 before I arrived. Several of the DPS had tried to start one, but they never quite got enough tanks and ran into troubles. There was, before I came, a fair amount of resentment focused on Rhidach’s 10 as the only successful 10 man. “They steal all the best players,” “They don’t care about the rest of us,” “They have all the guild tanks” (this was true), etc etc.

Enter Anafielle ….. I randomly appeared on the server, a mainspec tank just as geared as Rhidach, and one of the first things I told the guild was, “Hey, I like 10s. Is there a 10 man that needs a tank?” Needless to say, within hours of my server transfer I was approached by a bunch of people about the “second” 10 man.

Thus a second guild 10 man raid was born. The “officer” 10 became known as Team Alpha and my “second” 10 became inevitably known as … Team Bravo.

The Team B Underdogs

We were the underdogs from the start. No officers. Scattered schedules. A rotating roster that never looked the same from week to week. Even our name meant Team B. Fueled by passion and stopped by nothing, full of righteous indignation from months of watching Team Alpha get 10 man progression kill after progression kill, my raid started out like a beat up rebel with something to prove. We had a chip on our shoulder the size of Texas and a nasty streak as wide as the Mississippi river.

The DPS in my raid knew they were good. They had all spent time at the top of Recount. They knew they had the capability to get all those achievements – they’d just never had an organized raid to do it with. I was less a leader and more a guide, funneling their skill into useful accomplishments.

Our First Big Kill

I still remember our first progression kill. I carefully stacked my first Team Bravo raid for Heroic Saurfang specifically because I knew Rhidach’s officer 10 hadn’t downed the fight. (Me? Competitive? Nooo.) I picked out the top ranged DPS I could, spent so much time learning the strat, and carefully assigned CC and kill targets.

When we killed H Saurfang, I went wild with glee. It was a guild first! A GUILD FIRST! TAKE THAT, TEAM ALPHA!

I barely knew Rhidach at this point. He’d just recently trusted me with his cell phone number in case of emergencies. I knew I couldn’t misuse this power. Giving an Internet E-Friend your cell phone number can be dangerous and is definitely a sign of trust. But, in my euphoria, I had to brag to him and he was rude enough to be offline. So I took a screenshot of our kill, labeled it in big obnoxious letters “WE WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!”, transferred it to my cell phone and text messaged him with it.

Man, I’m such an asshole!

Team Bravo, The ES Progression 10

Over the last few months, despite setbacks, Team Bravo has risen to glory. We have gotten almost every single recent guild 10 man first. Most importantly, three weeks ago, Team Bravo achieved Glory of the Icecrown Raider.

It hasn’t been a completely smooth ride for Team Bravo. We’ve suffered from all sorts of ups and downs. I’ve personally fucked up all manner of things, from scheduling to simple Raid Awareness issues to leadership decisions like how we do a fight. Scheduling has really been the worst – our roster has rotated a ton over the last few months. Only now are we settling down into something approaching a regular schedule and roster. And still, I struggle with it… I’ll have to do a whole blog post on this, because scheduling a raid is the absolute bane of my existence as a raid leader.

Anyways. Our glory and success.

Team Alpha vs Team Bravo

I’m under no illusions – Team Alpha has often not run, and has been very casual about the fights they hit. It’s hard to be proud of beating someone who’s not really fighting back. They really only started focusing when we started beating them!

By contrast, Team Bravo was very, very focused. We started basically from scratch, but we had our eye on the goal from Day One. This is probably my fault – I was absolutely obsessed with getting my drake. A 10 man drake was my private dream, and I was not shy about telling everyone that I planned to get it for myself and for everyone around me. The 10 man was my personal vehicle for the drake. I privately thought of it as a fair trade – I would MT and lead for them, and my raid in turn would carry me to a pretty skeleton mount.

We finally made it. It took a lot of work, but three weeks ago we triumphed over All You Can Eat and Heroic Putricide (our last two hurdles) and scored our drakes.

And then, of course, we went back again over the last 2 weeks and killed pretty much every fight a second time to finish drakes for everyone who’d worked with us. I had always been very clear about my promise of drakes for everyone who was there for “the hardest fights”, and I spent a very long time carefully planning our last two weeks of raids to finish drakes for everyone I could manage. A raid is a team, and I was determined not to leave anyone out.

Amazing. Absolutely phenomenal. I look at my raiders and their drake, and despite the 30% buff… it feels like a real accomplishment. I feel really happy to have helped us achieve something really great, something indicative of hours and hours of work!

I have learned a ton about raiding, raid leading, management, and scheduling from my raid. And despite the stressing out I do about leading… my nights with Team Bravo are, without a doubt, the most fun I have during the week.

More Posts!

So, as you can tell, 10 man raiding is one of my favorite topics. While Rhidach is gone, you can expect some posts from me on 10 man strategies and a very long Drake Achievement guide for those of you trying to work your way to some pretty mounts. Stay tuned for more fun stuff!