Clan Spotlight: Team Special Forces

We interviewed these players to learn more about Team Special Forces:

xQuietx - Commander.
UsDarkmanX - Original founder and former Commander. Currently Senior Advisor to the Team Special Forces Community.
Pigeon_kicker - Executive Officer. Head of division event coordination and information services.
THEMARCO1979 - Executive Officer.

How did Team Special Forces form?

xQuietx - Team Special Forces covers a number of games aside from World of Warplanes. One of the obvious ones is World of Tanks, where we are actively competitive in Clan Wars. We also already have a division for World of Warships, the next upcoming title for Wargaming. In addition we have a number of other games that are all under the umbrella of Team Special Forces. Our basic philosophy is that we are competitive, but we’re also cooperative. We do not want competition at the expense of friendliness and fun. In addition, we have a certain minimum standard of professionalism, but really, it’s being a mature adult. As a result, you won’t find any young people in our division. It’s a really good environment. We’ve got some fantastic people with some great personalities, and we have a lot of fun both flying in the game and in the chat rooms.

USDarkmanX - We started back in 1997 with ironically enough, another tank game. We jumped between various games, and eventually, to World of Tanks back in closed beta. From World of Tanks we expanded into World of Warplanes during the closed beta. We are now also expanding into World of Warships that is currently in closed beta as well. Basically, we have our own little system within our community that when we bring in games, they have to go through this development-type group, and that’s how they get brought into an actual division within the community. We have a long standing history as one of the few gaming communities out there that have been around for 17 years now and still going on strong.

Does [SF] have a specific goal?

xQuietx - We’re preparing for Clan Wars, but we’re not gonna try to match the more selective clans. We’re still gonna be competitive, and at the same time, we’re gonna have a great environment for those who don’t want to be competitive to fool around. That is exactly what Team Special Forces is all about in every single one of the games, not just Warplanes.

Pigeon_kicker - We attempt to retain a high enough amount of competitiveness and tom-foolery to be attractive to both highly skilled and lesser skilled players. We’re going to continue to climb the ladder of success in Clan Wars, and develop friendships and Alliances into a very effective fighting force. Ultimately, we want to double the years we’ve been around, if not triple them.

What do you consider to be your clan’s greatest achievement?

Pigeon_kicker: - We’re still here since 1997, buddy. One of our greatest achievements is that we’ve hung on to as many people as we have. We’ve lost our fair share of members to other teams and things of that nature, but we don’t put them down or look down on them for that, and that’s kind of a special thing with us. If you leave us for somebody else, but then say, “Hey, I made a mistake. Can I come back?” We say, “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but we’ll let you back in.” We’re open in that aspect of it. Our community is also very open to the other clans. We have weekly scrimmages with them, and we hold joint training sessions. We find out what they’re planning, and then work together on the same thing at the same time. It brings training sessions to a whole new level.

xQuietx - One of the things I’m the most proud of is that we’ve taken truly new pilots turned them into halfway decent pilots. It takes a lot of work and a lot of patience, both for the student and the teacher, but we have a track record of success, and pigeon_kicker is one of those. One other achievement is that we placed third in the recent Community-run Clan Wars that happened about 4 months ago. I absolutely admire the two teams that were better than us, but we placed third.

What's next for [SF]?

xQuietx - First and foremost is getting our pilots both competent and tiered up. When Wargaming implements Clan Wars in World of Warplanes, I want to be ready on day one, not day two. And I think we will be.

THEMARCO1979 -[SF] has always been about inclusion and having fun, so most of our World of Warplanes division is made up of casual players. We’re also working to develop our competitive side as much as we do our casual side. Everyone knows you have more fun winning. [SF] has a place for everyone, and our goal is to make sure you’re having fun whether you’re flying with friends or in a tournament.

What’s the craziest experience you’ve had in [SF]?

xQuietx - Marco’s periodic “Fill the Queue”. Some of the flights that you have enabled him to do for gold have been a hell of a lot of fun.

Pigeon_kicker - When I was first given operator tags in TeamSpeak after becoming an officer, I was going through the channel commander options, whisper options, and things like that. I accidentally set up a whisper key that sent it to every single channel in TeamSpeak. There were probably 50 people or so logged on that were whispering me back, “Shut up”, “Quit it”, “What are you doing?” That’s one of the most interesting things that I can remember with me.

xQuietx - We have some, I’ll say, interesting drunken discussions that happen sometimes late in the evening, but I can’t necessarily pick out one.

USDarkmanX - Going off Quiet’s thing, we actually used to meet up on TeamSpeak to drink when we were playing games a long time ago. We would meet up on Friday nights to drink, while on TeamSpeak, while playing games, and it would get pretty nuts sometimes

THEMARCO1979 - One time when I was running a scrim with another clan, I had both clans open in different tabs. During the battle, I could hear people talking about how their game crashed or that they got shot down. We’re big on battle comms, so I was calling for everyone to be quiet, and couldn't believe that these guys just kept going on and on and ignoring me, so by my third call for battle comms, I lost it a bit on my [SF] guys telling everyone to shut up. Then I noticed all the talking was coming from the other clan! I’d forgotten to mute that side, so I sheepishly came back to our TeamSpeak to a dead silent room and had to apologize to everyone. They all must have thought I’d gone crazy for a minute. We also have many arguments and discussions about everything you could think of on TeamSpeak. It gets pretty funny sometimes, but it never gets out of control.

How does someone join [SF]?

xQuietx - There’s a lot of very big clans in World of Warplanes, and you’ve spotlighted a number of them. Each clan has plusses and minuses and this interview will certainly not tell a new recruit if we’re perfect for them. Come find us, come talk to us, ask us questions, hang out with us, and find out whether we’re the type of people you want to spend time with. We won’t feel bad if we’re not, and we would love to have you here if we are. It really boils down to “Are you professional? Are you mature? Do you like hanging out with us?”

USDarkmanX - New recruits can apply just by going to the website. Sometimes people are unsure and just want to test us out first, so we do that on TeamSpeak. The best way to dumb down how recruits come in is really just an open session. Someone’ll come in and hang out on TeamSpeak for weeks before they apply to the group; others will just register and apply directly on our website.

What’s the best way to contact you?

xQuietx - You can either PM or email us through our website. Pigeon_kicker is your best contact for setting up a scrimmage since he keeps the schedule unbelievably well coordinated. However, any of the command staff can handle it. If you see us in-game, feel free to send us a message and we can get things started.

Pigeon_kicker - And on our main webpage, we have a public scrimmage forum that anybody can go to and set one up.

Do you have any shout-outs or last words before we wrap up?

Pigeon_kicker - Our allied clans [LIGS] and [ACES_]. Breezy1 and md4dodge have helped us tremendously in getting preparing and ready for the upcoming Clan Wars. There’s also some other clans out there that are not necessarily allies, but we do regularly train and talk with them. I also want to say that we are always recruiting all skill levels. It does not matter if you fly into the ground every time; come stop on by and we’ll teach you how to fly.

THEMARCO1979 - To the new, up-and-coming clan [SE] and their Commander, Duvious, for hosting a scrim against us. Duvious and I had it out in the school yard one day, but we made up and now we’re friends. Shout out and thanks to HBFT, GhostPrime, gunlion, and DavidBowieRocks for the prizes and helping me bounce around ideas for the events. And another shout out to [ACES_] for helping fill the queue with their member base, and PostTraumatic for using his chat channel to invite all his contacts.

Associated Clans

[SF-V] Team Special Forces World of Tanks 1st Brigade

[SF-S] Team Special Forces World of Tanks 2nd Brigade

Clan Spotlight Flight Details

What: Clan Spotlight Flights
Who: [SF] and "_WGA"" employees
When: March 18, 16:00 PST (19:00 EST) to approx. 18:00 PST (21:00 EST)

If you face off against any of our Spotlight Flights, you'll have a chance to win Gold prizes!

Keep an eye out for Hypnotik_WGA or veganzombiez_WGA in your battles. If you encounter one in battle, then destroying either an [SF] or "_WGA" plane will earn your account 300 gold!

If you are streaming on your own Twitch.tv channel and you send a link to your stream with the time at which you face us, you will double your winnings! This link must be sent in a PM on the forums to veganzombiez by 09:00 PDT (12:00 EDT) the following Friday morning.

If you have any questions you'd like us to ask [SF] while on the stream, please leave them in the comments thread for this article or you may also ask them in the Twitch chat!

Gold from this event will be distributed by Wednesday, March 26, 2015.