Warlight Training School November update

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During previous month we:

• Wrote 1st part of our training program. It contains our goals and list of first 30-40 games from settings introduction phase. Our program can be found here: https://warlightgamereviews.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/warlight-training-school-program/
  
• Reviewed 5 games. Their review can be found here: https://warlightgamereviews.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/mega-review-of-5-1v1-training-games/
  
• Made 17 games, 6 of them being 1v1 games.
  
• Found 2 new students.

Our plans for future are:

• Continue searching for players interested in writing game reviews. So far we have 0 additional game reviewers, but 2 players have promised to help around 2nd half of December.
  
• 4 of our students have requested vacations ranging from 1 to 3 months. 2nd and 3rd student groups have been merged and at the moment we're forming new group.
  
• Update game review blog. At the moment some of its pages are out of date and require updating.
  
• Once we have 10 students, we intend to make a 1v1 student exclusive tournament. It was intended to be made last month, but because of student drop offs got delayed.
  
• Continue working on training program and hopefully finish it. At the moment we need to complete introduction to strategic templates/maps phase and write criteria for exam games

If you want to get invited to any of positions(teacher, game reviewer, guest player, student) contact me directly via private message or write in this thread. We currently are looking for 2 more students and 2 game reviewers. You can apply for other positions as well, but at the moment we are not in desperate need for more teachers and guest players.

I volunteer as teacher. It fits perfectly with what I already do in Illuminati.

This is a great initiative. Best of luck to it!

I would be interested in doing at least one review, but I have some suggestions about reviewing first. The first thing is that I think you would get more response if you allowed people to view the game URLs without having to contact you first. For example, you could post a list of recent games either here or on your blog, perhaps tucked away on a sub-page of your blog so that only motivated people bother to go there. By opening up the process this way, you're sure to get more people interested in reviewing.

Secondly, I think you'd also get a lot more response if you allow people to submit sparse and/or incomplete/partial reviews. These partial reviews would not be given directly to the students, but would only serve as seeds to help a proper review to be written with less effort. You could even allow reviewers to read other peoples' reviews of the same game, so that they can shorten the amount of time they need to discover the key moves in the games. When people ask for feedback for their games in the forums, this is how it works. Someone might write a short blurb about a crucial mistake. Another might write about the picking stage. All you would need to provide the student with would be a compilation/summary of the various feedback bits that scattered reviewers have submitted.

With those two suggestions in mind, I would be interested in helping to provide some of that 'review fodder'. But I would probably have a hard time writing a complete, thorough, comprehensive review of the whole game from every aspect. At least I can save some time/effort for whoever writes the final review. (This is not to say I definitely *couldn't* write a full review, just that I probably won't be able to do so on a consistent basis.)

If you 'open up' the review process like this, to allow a more wiki-like or Amazon.com-like contribution model, I bet you will get a lot more participation, and you will probably end up with good reviews either way. Certainly something imperfect now will be better than something perfect that never comes.

I'll send you a PM, so if you're willing to allow such review fodder efforts, I would be interested to see some of these games that have been played. :-)

Edited 11/25/2016 22:12:41

I would like to apply as a student.

would also like to apply as a student thank you

im not a beginner player. im just trash. i barely win any games, and the ones i do win, its only team games where my team is good. idk if i would qualify as a student. but if i do, may i please join?

I would like to apply as an intermediate student / student helper.

(Help the newbies in some capacity, and learn the advanced stuff.)

Edited 11/28/2016 10:39:31

To new applicants, I'll invite you guys to a 1v1 later today. Pakh will decide on your official acceptance, but myself and DanWL are currently his teachers, and I'm always happy to help someone make progress.

Reviewed 5 games. Their review can be found here: https://warlightgamereviews.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/mega-review-of-5-1v1-training-games/

Sadly the template is rather poor with only 1 pick :(

I've just been using strat 1v1 to teach.

When a student's comfortable on that, I usually start introducing them to the realtime ladder templates; then after they're familiar with the RT ladder templates, we'd play those + strat 1v1 at random, depending on what they need the most work on.

Edited 11/28/2016 15:34:23

I want to become a student too. I don't really have a clue of my strength relative to others..

Invite you to a game, Kakuro.

To all applicants and current students, your friendly teacher Nex is recommending you read https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B024HXqzvoGCejhhajNFa1ZOVlE/edit?usp=sharing.


Further instructional material can be found from watching and studying the games of such players as:

https://www.warlight.net/LadderTeam?LadderTeamID=4090, current 1v1 ladder #1
https://www.warlight.net/LadderTeam?LadderTeamID=9054, current realtime ladder #1


and the rest of the ladder top 10s, https://www.warlight.net/LadderSeason?ID=0, https://www.warlight.net/LadderSeason?ID=3, https://www.warlight.net/Ladder?Ladder=Seasonal. The team ladders may also be of interest, but I personally am not skilled enough in team matches to teach them effectively.

Edited 11/28/2016 18:36:57

Quick update regarding new applicants. I didn't have much time this weekend and today, but from tomorrow I'll start inviting you to new games. At the moment new teachers are still getting used to students, but after they'll have games with every one of them, they will form their own student groups. I personally don't want to have more than 10 students all by myself, because overall quality of games and teaching suffer then.

At the moment there are 8 students, 6 applicants, 4 students on vacation. That would make 18 players. Nex and DanWL should take 3-6 students each, so there's potential for 4 more applicants, maybe more if some of students on vacations leave permanently. I won't be judging how suitable applicants are for now, but during the course of your games I will be looking for these things:

• Activity, players who will constantly get booted in games will get removed. We allow vacations for as long as you want and our games honor vacations mode. You should declare your plans in advance if your vacations are longer than 10 days and we would prefer you to finish the games you are already invited to. By joining you should be able to commit to 5-10 3 days boot games at same time.
  
• Joining our games. You can decline some games if you don't like their settings, but if you decline significant amount of them (~50%), you'll get removed.
  
• Respect towards each other. Please solve your conflicts as civilly as possible. Rude players will get removed.
  
• Following our teachings. You can make your own moves, but if you don't plan to follow any of our advices, I don't think you should be joining.
  
• Communication skills. We expect you to understand basic English and communicate without need to translate every single word. Quiet players are likely to be removed, as it's common for our teachers including myself to ask students questions on their moves.
  
• If students intentionally try to ruin our team games they will get removed instantly.
  
• We expect new students to be capable to defeat AI in 1v1. If player can't do it initially, it is expected that he learns it in first 5-10 games. Constant very weak performance and no sign of improving might result in removal. If you have trouble with AI, let me know and I'll try to have some extra games with you versus AIs

As for now expectations are low, but if applicant amount increases significantly, we may increase them to remove the least motivated students. I am not going to turn down anyone who wants to join, but if there are more students than we can handle, entrance exams might get included as well.

We judge our students by their actions in our games and ignore their profiles. I believe that people can change, I have seen players with 60+% boot rate start treat their games very seriously and people who have acted dishonorable become respectful and kind. If you are afraid of your past behavior or your statistic page, don't worry and apply, if you're dedicated to changing for the better you'll be fine.

Thanks to everyone who applied, it's a great honor for me and whole crew of Warlight Training School to be able to help you. We wish you best of luck in upcoming games. We plan 1 student exclusive tournament in near future so keep your eye for invites. In next couple days I'll mail every new applicant and will continue communication from there.

I would like to be a student

I would also like to join as a student

I would as well be interested in joining as a student.

I'm interested in joining as a student as well.

At this rate we may need a fourth teacher; I can only do so many games at a time xD

i would like to join as a student

Edited 11/29/2016 04:20:07