Hi there. My name is Stuffed_Shark, and this is my public handbook I'm creating for those who want to start their own competitive Insurgency team. My background so far has been being a member of TAW's second team in season 3 of the Digital Gaming League, Managing and becoming the captain of that team in the 5th season. Leaving and starting up my own team, and then disbanding to join the second Vertias team in season 7, and rejoining and re-forming TAW's competitive team for the next season, season 9.

What I cover in here is my own opinion and from personal experience. If something isn't, I will definitely reference said person.

I've included a first chapter thingy, and will add more once I get more written down :P


I'll be doing a bonus section down below of other competitive captain's and their leadership advice toward those who are looking to start a team.

Best of luck out there.


-Stuffed_Shark : ^ )

The reason I'm throwing this in, is to be perfectly clear with anyone looking to start up a team after the DGL.

Truth is, there's very little reason to form a competitive team in NA and EU. There's the occasional gym cup, but that is not a common occurrence like the previous DGL seasons. The DGL has begun again with a 2 day Revival Tournament on January 20th, and the next season of DGL starting February 27th, 2018.

I'm not sure how the South American or Australian Insurgency scene are going, but right now it's not good for teams. While TAW NA has been disbanded While TAW NA has been reestablished, many of the former DGL players from teams that have disbanded are up for grabs, or are being put into teams that were never thought of before.

It's a wild time currently in competitive Insurgency.


If you're looking to get into competitive INS as a team, it's more than likely you'll be doing mostly pug scrims. These have varying levels of success, but alot of them have had very experienced veterans playing on them that would dominate a team of new players starting out.


Things are on the up and up for competitive Insurgency, for however long we have left before the storm, Sandstorm.

*2022 EDIT*
I'm sorry but any form of competition beyond pugs is long dead, the sequel is also dead. This guide is irrelevant for Competitive Insurgency, as it is no more. Feel free to use for other games though! :)

Before we can start recruiting and practicing competitive insurgency, we'll need to figure out who you are. Rather, YOU'll have to figure out who you are, a leader or a follower. It's perfectly fine to be a leader or follower, and you can even change that role as you develop your skills.

The easiest way of figuring this out, is to ask yourself a question: When your playing a game of competitive insurgency on a public server, and no ones' talking, are you naturally feeling a sense to lead and tell them where to go to be effective as they're currently sitting in a corner of the map being utterly worthless? Or do you just not care and move around them to kill their entire team (well, it is an imaginary situation so you might not be at that point just yet...)

If you feel that natural inspiration to lead, congratulations, you're a leader at heart and Insurgency can be a place for you to develop some skills. If you went for ignoring the team and fragging away, you're more of a follower right now, which is just fine. The next video in the play list is going to be more suited for you, but I'd suggest listening to this video too to understand and develop a good taste in who you want being a leader in your team.

So,Leadership. It's a big topic with not that much information out there at the moment for Insurgency. Because of the innate design and mechanics of Insurgency, your job will NOT be easy. As a captain, your team-mates will be looking up to you to perform the best and give the best direction depending on your style. You have a lot of responsibility and difficulty in the future for your team, so by taking a leadership role you're doing a lot. Most people don't want that stress of leading a team, but if you're ready for a tough challenge, let's get started.

First things first, You're gonna need to know what kind of a leader you are. No, this isn't done by some face book quiz, but by asking yourself a few questions given certain circumstances. 1st Question: You're in the middle of a game, and you see a member out of position on wherever they were supposed to go. Is your first instinct as a leader to directly tell them where to go and how to do everything to an exact degree? Or are you more likely to just gently suggest they do something else and give a little direction on where to go?

Before I give you the answers to this, I want to make something very clear. Just because you side with one style more than another, doesn't mean you can't or will need to change it based on your players and situation. This isn't something you just decide on once and never try again, as you should be aware and able to work with people you don't know and who might not be

If you answered telling them exactly where to go, congratulations! You're more of a Micromanager, which isn't always a bad thing. Being a micro guy is going to make some people think you're an armchair general or someone trying to play an RTS in an FPS. When recruiting players, (Which we'll cover in more detail in another chapter) you should be on the lookout of people who aren't as chatty and are struggling to come up with a decision on how to to do something. While these people aren't the best at insurgency for the most part, they can develop and become great players with a good mindset once you and them have both progressed through time and practice.

If you answered a gently suggesting, Congratulations! You're more of what I'm calling a Macromanager, which isn't always a good thing. Most people want Macromanager on their team as they give just enough leadership to be a leader and have a plan, but not enough demands to feel like a dictator . As I stated before, you're going to interact with a lot of different players in the game who will need the right kind of leadership style to be effective. Don't make the mistake I did and just be a Macromanager who never tells certain people what to do, you're going to need to take it slow and play and manage accordingly. Recruiting players should be quite easy as most people like a loose environment for competitive Insurgency.

Hopefully you now know what your personal style of leadership is, and a little bit to help your development.

So if you're reading this and are not interesting in becoming a captain, good news. Your captain is going to do all the hard work of planning things out and making sure everyone's there and ready to go. Your job? Improve,practice, and peform to the best of your abilities.


So, how do you improve? There's two main methods I've found. First, ask around for help on some basic topics or on some parts of the map. For example, if your gameplay on balcony (on distict) isn't going very well, you could ask one the operators in the gym on how to play that lane and what people commonly miss playing those lanes.

Second, load up a map and go around with the intent on finding something new. It could be a new prefire, a new grenade throw, a new OP wallbang, a new timing that could be really effective... If you're not sure on what to look for, ask your captain or an operator on things to potentially look for.


Practicing is up to the captain, but as a member of the team it's important to attend as many practices as possible. The more you miss, the less of a connection you keep with your team members. If your schedule makes it tough to attend alot of practies, being a substitute player is not a bad idea.

Performance. This can be the toughest aspect as a player, as people have on and off days. It's important to remember that if you don't feel confident coming into a game, you can always pratice afterwards for the next one. As long as you practice as much as you can, you should be able to play well with your team. Listen to your captain, and don't overly doubt your skills. There's a reason your captain picked you to be on your team.

Organizing a team is like planning a wedding: It's got alot of moving parts, but with a good plan it can be relatively easy.

The first thing you need to do to organize a team is to set roles. Are you going to be the captain on and off the field? You don't have to be the in game shot-caller and "captain" if you don't want to be. But you MUST have at least one person be a captain. Other roles are dependent on how your team plays and works together. Some example options are Fraggers(Nicer way of saying killers) & supports ( people who set up for others to get the kill), Objective focused players (sometimes called objective sluts), Wild Cards (players who move around the entire map and is always changing where they're going each round), Crazy's (those who push lanes at an insane speed and are successful . If you're not successful, please stop doing it as it hurts your team.)... and so on and so forth.

The second thing, rules. This one is really dependent on what kind of team you're looking for. Please note that most Insurgency competitive players like a relaxed style of team and feeling. If you make very strict rules about attendance and performance during matches, it can come back to bite you in ways you'll not be ready for. Make sure you set rules that everyone can always follow.
At this time, you should also set when you're going to practice. Before you plan when, be sure to talk to other coaches in the league you're looking to compete with to see when they're practicing. Being able to set weekly scrims against another team provides a good checkup each week as to how they're doing, and to how you're doing.

The third thing, Mains & Subs. At the beginning, you need to set the team up with at least 5 active players, and anyone else left over as substitutes.This is a tough one, but it must be done to make sure people are playing and practicing the right way. If you're not sure if someone should be a sub or a main, consider if they're going to be able to attend as many events as possible. While it's not usually a good idea to set more skilled fraggers as subs, if they're unable to attend your practices regularly and build synergy with the team, that's a potential liability and it'd be better to have them as a substitute.
Please note that subs and mains should always practice together. If you keep someone as a bench-warmer with no practice in events, they're unlikely to stay on the team and their performance in match when needed will suffer greatly from them not playing enough.

The fourth thing and final thing: Team name.
This one can seem tricky, but give it a week or two and let it naturally come out. The more creative it is, the more memorable it will be and you'll have a higher likelihood of scrimming (that is, if the other team is even there to do it :^] )

This should be relatively simple.

You will need the following before attempting to recruit someone:

-A way to communicate (discord, teamspeak, mumble...)

-A name for the team

-Some kind of identifier (logo, steam tag...)

With those three things established, you're ready to start recruiting players.

First off, understand that most skilled and veteran players are not looking to join a team (please don't ask me to join your team.) At first, you'll most likely want to locate players in the gym who are regularly playing and are not on a team.

Second, you can try to locate some players on public competitive servers, but these are gambles that usually come up short. Due to the vast difference in skill and game, public competitive players who are not in the gym or other private pug's are very unlikely to be amazing players out of the box. They can however, become great players with some good instruction and experience in the game.

You'll want at least 4 players, but 7 would be ideal. 4 players will be "mains", and 3 will be subs. How you want to position it is up to you, but make sure you follow the rules of the tournament in terms of how many members you can have on a team.

Managing the team is the hardest part of being a Captain. Managing, although similar to organizing, is the much more personal side to being a Captain.

Managing (for this guide) will consist of tempering players , making sure you keep a lively and fun environment, and a warning about strict rules/attendance.


So first, tempering players. A lot of competitive insurgency players are in their teens and twenties. Because of this, people are young and full of emotion. This can make for very fun and very rewarding games, but the lack of maturity from being so young can make for issues between players who don't like each other. There will be a time where two members will get into a serious argument that could split the team into two sides. As the captain, you need to be the leader and either squash beef between two members, or remove someone from the team if they're unwilling to work with that person. Removing someone is always tough and can feel unfair or stupid if they're your best member. But it's more important for everyone to be good friends and enjoy playing with each other than it is to find small success with a team that doesn't fit together.


Second, lively and fun environment. This is easier said than done, but as a captain you'll want to make sure everyone can joke and keep it relaxed during practice, but be serious during scrims and actual matches. Keeping it open and loose makes people relax, and helps build bonding with everyone. You can even run little mini co-op events to see who's the fastest, it won't help the skill but it can be ALOT of fun with everyone playing. :)


Third, a warning about strict rules and strict attendance. It's normal to want to have everyone show up to all of your practices, but understand that a strict attendance policy such as missing 3 = kicked from the team, will not end well. People have complex lives and are not revolving around playing on your team (and you shouldn't be either.) You need to remember something if it feels like your players aren't as invested as you are: This is only a game, and while we're all playing to win, it's still important to keep it real. Strict rules doesn't work.

When it comes to playing as a team, this is pretty simple.

As a captain, you need to make sure that your players are doing what they've practiced, and pause if something isn't working for multiple rounds.

As a player, do your best. Sometimes people have off days, so if you're really sucking on a certain day don't feel too bad about it. If it starts to become a reoccurring thing in matches, you need to PUG more. By playing in more PUG's, you can sharpen your aim and rotations with and against good players.

I'll be making a more specialized Guide in the future on how to better play in the round from multiple "positions."

At this point, You have completed everything. Team name, roster, practices. You've played in the Gym, played in the gym cups. What's next?


That, is up to you and your team to decide.

Unfortunately, competitive Insugency doesn't transfer very well to a lot of popular tactical shooters. CS:GO is entirely different when it comes to aim and rotations, R6:S is much slower so if you have an aggressive strategy you'll have to relearn that, and Call Of Duty... I don't know, that might work.

In any case, with these skills of leadership and organization you can go out and form any kind of team you want! It doesn't even have to be videogame based!


Hopefully this helps you on your quest to whatever you're looking to learn and do.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Adios!

-Stuffed_Shark

: ^ )