Bob "Bcrbo" Van de Voorde talks about his team, TBH.MSI, this week and what adventures they have gone through since the collaboration between Bcrbo and the team started late February. The column tries to show the side of gaming from a team Manager's perspective and in two weeks, the sequel of this quasi TBH.MSI Travel blog will be published as well.

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.

We are a mere three weeks away from the first of two major Call of Duty 4 LANs in 2009, if not the biggest of the entire year with no immediate LANs causing a stir in the Fall of this year. If we turn the clock back 12 months, we would find ourselves in the exact same position, yet before the crisis and before prize purse cuts, with the Summer of 2008 handing out a rough €75 000 in prize money to the various winners in Call of Duty 4.

So most teams out there are gearing up for a whirlwind of hotel changes, sleeping in airplanes and waiting for check-ins due to inevitable strikes, whereas most of these teams will travel in balanced groups of five, some have some extra baggage with them in the form of a manager. Yet, are they really there to better a team or are they just extra dead weight on the players’ shoulders in preparation of their biggest performance call of the Summer?

As some of you might already know, besides the writing I do for Cadred, I have also been entangled with one of the most hyped German teams for several months now as their Manager, so in this column I will try to explain a bit what is going on in the team and how we are preparing for the Summer events, as well as explaining a bit what my job within the team is and what I think, I can bring to the table for the players.

juL, thunder and rizaR from TBH.MSI preparing at the TBH office

So first I will talk a bit about my players, whom have all been top players in Call of Duty 4 for quite a while now, making us one of the most experienced German teams of the moment, something we value a lot as it is that experience that will separate you from your average subtop team to a possible winner. I, myself, got on board with the boys when they joined up with Team Bavarian Heaven at the end of February and right before the German ESL Pro Series were about to lift off, with my team being one of the title candidates from the get go.

I already knew most of the players before I joined up and that was my main motivation to join up, knowing that they are a bunch of relaxed, yet still very motivated players who are eager to better themselves and are open to sometimes hard, albeit always constructive, criticism to aid them in their quest for dominance in a wide and varied European playing field. I will, however, not condone or talk right the reputation that surrounds this team, although I find it unjust based on the fact that only 2 of the players who were under SPEED-LINK at AEF are currently still in the roster. The biggest controversy surrounding the team is the fact whether or not Ralf "rizaR" Beyer is capable of playing at the same level he reaches during online encounters and having sat behind the SPEED-LINK team during their AEF adventure from an admin perspective, all I can say is that they gave me a very nervous and unprepared feel. I support my players fully of course and I think when most of you take a step back and try to look at this objectively, he was not the first player out there to perform not as well as expected on his first major LANs with such huge pressure dangling above his head.

After having met them on several occasions now and gone through hours of practice with all the players on two separate bootcamp situations as well as their attendance at codHR #2 in Zagreb, Croatia, I feel more than confident that these players are the best Germany has to offer with regards to the Summer events and possess the best chances to secure a first German title in over more than 3 years, with the famed SPEED-LINK Call of Duty 2 team being the last one to bag a gold at a major European event.

That the road to fame and glory is not an easy one is something all the players of this team and many other top teams out there will relate to quite easily, as most of the times you need a sufficient dose of luck and your biggest, worst opponent is yourself. When all you read on websites is how badly people are expecting you to win or beat a certain opponent, the pressure builds and builds, making it almost impossible to not think about letting down the many critics whilst in the game, especially if you just had a great opportunity to put your team in the lead and screwed up, something that has happened to the best of the best on more than one occasion.

Well some of the tasks I take care off within the team are basic administration, which means that I take care of what is yet to come, such as booking the hotels and flights for the coming LANs as well as handling the payments through the management. When important matches are about, the ESL Pro Series usually requires statements written before and after the match to give the eager fanatics a glance into the preparation for each particular match and afterwards how pleased or disappointed we are with the results.

TBH.MSI right after beating rabbits to win codHR #2

Late March, during the Easter holidays, we had planned to bootcamp for three days at the TBH office in a small town near Munich and to save costs, the plan was for me to make a small road trip through Germany and pick up all the guys along the way, fortunately all of my players live in the west of Germany, giving me practically a straight shot from the Ruhrpott down to Munich with stops in Frankfurt, Nurnberg  before we met up with Marco "juL" Barasi and our management in Taufkirchen (Vils), Germany. During those three days, we worked on mp_crossfire and mp_citystreets the most, even though later on it turned out we needed those maps the least at codHR #2, as they were the ones we felt least comfortable on at that time. Then Friday noon, I picked up the rental car at the Munich Airport and we had a relaxed 8 hour drive from Munich to Zagreb, Croatia; having a nice night under the Croatian moon at our hostel. The following days we played extremely concentrated and no one seemed able to stop us at this Eastern-European event, with the best of Poland, Hungary and Croatia up against my boys. The organisation behind it all was very friendly and caring, making sure we would be able to leave as planned on our way home, which is exactly what we did after we won the overall final against the home team, rabbits. We left Croatia at approximately 19:30 CET that night and the long and gruesome ride home commenced, with me not reaching my home before 17:30 CET the following day, completely knackered and broken after driving the car for 21 hours out of the 22 hour total drive.
Especially the home journey was more than tiring for me personally, however, I was very happy to have been there and having been able to take part in the joy which was shared after we clenched the win. It will not be something, I am looking forward to repeat any time soon though, as it was nor sanitary, nor smart, but it needed to be done and that is all that matters in the end.

In 2 weeks, I will try and give you an update about how we are preparing for the Summer events specifically, as well as what use a manager can be on events, on some occasions be part of the tactical side of the game, if he has a background in competitive gaming and has a innate feeling of how his players handle the game. See you then !