Notes

Summary:
12 players at high level
format/practice/organized/prepare/compete are all required to do well
Takes a shit ton of time and skill
Knowing the nuances of everything involved makes a key difference
Cost info
This is a very general statement and is off the top of my head. There are a lot of things that can be discussed more in depth and I am leaning more on the cautious side for if you do this. I have needed to step back from having as much a hand in everything because of the time and money involved. I dont want to step into the fray and lose. If tus puts out a team I want it to be a winning one.



The first and most important thing is the players. Roster size is approximately 15 players and you will typically need at least 12 on your team to have enough to always cover differences in schedule. Those 12 players need to be among or the same level at minimum as the top 100 players in the world. This is simply because every week in these competitions you are facing the same players who competed at worlds, who won worlds, who win kc cups, etc, etc. The bar in that regard doesnt lower it only gets higher. Black Samurai is a fantastic player now but back when he first entered tus he didnt get into the team because he wasnt at that level. It has taken him a while to get there. You cant just be a player that gets kog or does well in tus tournaments. You have to be fighting in the biggest tournaments you can find regardless of language. You need more experience than just with the tus community. I am not playing tus down I am saying that there is a difference in diversity of experience that you get by playing in tournaments with several hundred people or in tournaments with best players in the world. It is also important that they can perform well in the respective format that you are competing in. Some players excel in tw format while being shit in cw format and vice versa. You need to find 12 players at this level that are not already with another team.

The next thing I want to talk about is preparation for matches. If you really want to do well and have a chance at winning these competitions you need to prepare. Besides the typical you need to be active all the time and keep up to date on the latest meta trends you have to practice, organize, scout, and predict. At least once a week you need to have internal practice or scrim with another team to practice communication, test decks, and find out strengths and weak points of your team. This can involve voice chat, testing a theorycraft or tech, or realizing your team is much stronger with certain decks and need to practice other archetypes, etc. You need organize these events and plan them consistently so that others can attend. Obviously you will need to work with other teams and their schedules for scrims. Scouting is huge. You need to review previous matches, what your opponents use, what they may use, what patterns do they show. Then you need to predict what they will do and and analyze how your lineup should be based on that. This can be extensive work and you can go even so far as to analyze play patters of the opponent in terms of what cards do they tend to set first. Now that is more of an extreme example but when I was coaching I would know they will bring about x of this deck, x of this deck, then x surprise decks. They will use x surprise deck first. We need to use this deck to counter their lead etc etc. Teams that practice, are organized, scout, and predict are the ones who perform well. It can take countless hours to get this done and is twice as much work than as a player if you are a good coach.

The above are just a general overview. There is a lot of nuance with managing the personalities of a team, transferring players (coming and leaving), relationship with other teams, keeping up to date and innovating, identifying opposition and your teams weakpoints and how to improve, etc etc. Like I mentioned before the most important part is getting high quality members which are both rare and coveted. More than convincing tus about a team you would need to convince tw to let you in. Cw anyone can join if they have the money and the members but tw you need to apply before a season starts during a certain window of time and have enough quality to convince the organizers. I dont believe naming the tus teams A+B is correct. It implys one is worse than the other when in reality if you are playing in these competitions representing tus you should be able to play at that high level thus I wouldnt think it fair to name one A one B. If you want the team to be successful it is a lot more work than just having a team. Excel sheets with players data was one of my favorite ways to keep track of performance for example. Currently, I have not been involved with how the team plays or in a coaching position. I have left that mostly up to sam and others because of my irl responsibilities. However, sam can vouch for the amount of work that needs to be put in to be a success. A previous tus team member who went on to found their own team and win tw spent 40 hours on the week leading up to tw finals studying the opposition and preparing for one match. Now obviously you wont need to spend every week like that but its a good example of the kind of work needed to be successful.

Side note: I have not been contacted by you or other tus members about wanting to join our teams. If there are people looking to compete at that level for tus then have them contact me and they can tryout for our current teams tho I do reserve the right to say yes/no obviously. To make a team you require a lot of people at a high level and having only 2-4 people at that level will just get you curbstomped.

Financial numbers updated on what sam was saying. If Im guestimating correctly cw is about 2.5 times a year and tw about 2x a year. They each cost 150 + taxes. If you want to buy whale accounts with all the latest stuff knowing the right people you can get those for about 250-300 a piece. You dont need the entire team to be whales like that but you cant play in these competitions with un-optimized decks. They can and will lose you matches. Additionally, playing with a few limited decks makes you predictable for the opposition thus losing you more games. You will need to keep up with the meta which can increase the cost as well, that may either be in time spent grinding or cash.