I have asked dutch clan FS to answer some questions and Crit was nice enough to give them: 1. Please tell our readers something about your clan and its members, your history and successes.
Firing Squad was founded by Krazy One (who is currently an active q3 member) in.. well.. 1996 or so. Most of us weren't there when the fun started, so we don't know exactly when. It wasn't till the DeCL of 1998 that FS started playing international matches. Later on, FS participated in competitions such as Villains 1 & 2 and in the Smackdowns. Right now we have a brand new team and since we haven't been playing together that much, we are working hard to improve our teamply.
2. Does your team currently play in other (online) tournaments?
Nope. (Unless you are also referring to our q3 division :)
3. You have surprised quite a lot of people with your very strong performance so far although FS has been inactive for months. What is the reason for that?
The main reason must be the large number of praccies we've played with our relatively small team. As you might have noticed, we play most of our games with just 4 members (ritual, rogue, crit and gem). Our team has about two backup players just in case one of us can't play. Since we get to play so often with eachother, i think our teamplay is developing rather rapidly. The first game against Daltons for example didn't go as smoothly as we were hoping it would be, but the second game against Vaxjo went a lot better.
4. How far do you think you can get? Are playoffs possible and do you expect to survive more than just the first round?
Reaching the playoffs shouldn't be too much of a problem; we are hoping to place 2nd or 3rd in our poule. What happens afterwards is really hard to tell; we'll have to wait and see how quickly we can manage to improve our teamplay (it sure as hell isn't perfect right now, trust me) and it largely depends on which clan we will meet in the playoffs.
5. A few months ago it seemed as if FS had "moved on" to Q3. What are the reasons for coming back to QW?
Only a handful of FS members moved on to q3, whereas others stopped playing games at all and the rest just kept on playing QW, so you can't really call it a 'comeback'. Most of us still played but we didnt play as a clan together anymore. Some were just clanless and some joined clan Denial. We also knew that when FS would have enough members to play again we would all go back to FS, and some time ago that happened. Ritual (aka infinity/jihad/forsaken) had been playing qw all the time, and after a while rogue (aka plop), gemini (aka vivi) and lithium joined the fray. Until recently, crit had a really bad internet connection (online gaming being impossible even within the Netherlands), but he has adsl now.
6. It seems that all of your members are using 3-4 different aliases in games. Why do they do that, confusing the enemy?
We will let ritual/infinity/jihad/forsaken answer this question :P
No, it's not like that at all.. gemini, rogue, crit and lithium usually play under their normal nicknames. It's just me who uses a lot of aliases :) I don't do that to confuse the enemy, I just get bored with a nickname rather quickly and i can't help making up other names.
7. FS can be considered as an oldschool clan and you played against the best in the old days (Rapture '99 comes to mind). What has changed since then? What do you think about the "newschool" and do you feel part of the new scene or do you long for the old days?
What we like about the current quake scene is that it is internationally orientated. In the past, we usually played our clanwars against other Dutch clans, whereas right now we are the only (!) active qw-playing clan in the Netherlands. Furthermore, teamplay has intensified a great deal. It is not about aim at all (to a certain extent of course :) but much more about experience with playing as a team. qw is still as much fun as it used to be, but it is played in another way in the present.
8. Are there any clans or players that you respect more than others in smackdown? For what reasons?
HangTime from clan Denial is one of the few quakers who never whine. He never refuses to play, nor does he ever get angry because of quake-related trouble. (Well, at least it never shows. :) That is an attitude to be reckoned with.
9. Are there any clans or players that you dislike more than others in smackdown?
Since we are from the Netherlands and have no surfnet connections, we can't play on swedish or finnish servers having decent pingtimes. The Danish G2N servers are our only way of playing most Scandinavian clans. Any clan who refuses to play us there simply because of their pings rising to from 15 to 40 deserve little respect. This type of clans exist, so we have learned.
10. Do you follow the happenings in the other divisions and if so what do you think about them?
Yes, rather closely; most of us are really interested in how other clans are doing. Obviously it's a good thing to know a little about the clan you are going to play against in the near future.
11. The good, the bad and the ugly about Smackdown2 ?
We have not run into too much whining so far, which is a good thing. Until now, the scandinavian clans haven't made much of a problem about the server that is to be picked for the matches. This is undoubtedly partially a consequence of the excellent Smackdown2 rules section.
12. Finally, last words?
1 h4v3 4dsl !!!!!!!
Sorry, crit tends to get carried away sometimes :P
