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_Shrew– Glorious Supreme Leader. Does everything except chip movements, calling, and recruiting.
GabrielAngelos – Primary caller. Second in command after Ox.
Oxmathus_PRO – Chip movements. Helps Gabe not lose battles.
Ant_PRO – Treasurer. Steals ants.
This month’s Clan Spotlight focuses on BULBA, a simple social Clan dedicated to excellence in everything they do. Their roster of Gold League players allows BULBA to be dominant, and their philosophy allows them to relax and have fun. BULBA is more than just a group of highly skilled players: BULBA is their home.
What’s the story of BULBA?
Oxmathus_PRO: It’s actually a pretty good story. The clan was first made back in 2013 by Aquavolt, but was essentially started by Gold League players foodie and Unnomable from RBIS (Romantic Bulbasaur Iguana Squad). It came from when foodie and Unnomable always used to say “BULBA” because they liked Bulbasaur and thought it was kind of cute. While they were still in PBKAC, a friend came into their channel and said he was going to take the name BULBA and make a clan out of it. Aquavolt freaked out and said, "You're not going to take that name" or something and the next day made the BULBA clan itself. So it was originally started as a joke so the other guy couldn't take the name, and essentially sat as a dead clan for the next 8 or so months until a group of people left -G- and various other clans to go and start our own clan, which became what BULBA is today. That was about a year ago.
What are your goals?
Oxmathus_PRO: A fun social clan that doesn’t require people to be serious, but still be good.
_Shrew: BULBA started as a clan where Clan Wars was the least important objective. We didn’t even think about it, but now it seems we’re one of the biggest powerhouses on the whole server, which is funny because we still don’t require Clan Wars or anyone to show up. It’s all voluntary: If you wanna do it, you do it.
Your motto says “dedicated to non-CW excellence”. Will it change after your success in the current war?
Oxmathus_PRO: No, we joined the server war because people attacked us, and we’re defending ourselves. That doesn’t change what we are as a clan.
Your Clan Ratings definitely show more Skirmish battles. Are Strongholds that much more of a focus for BULBA?
Oxmathus_PRO: Originally, the only reason we sat on the Global Map was so that I could do payouts for Strongholds.
_Shrew: Yes, and when we want to test ourselves. For instance, people used to never attack -G-, but then Strongholds came out, and we’re like “We’re a Stronghold clan, so why don’t we try ourselves against -G-?” We ended up beating them a few times. Really, Strongholds is the biggest thing for BULBA, maybe more important than Clan Wars. It’s just right now, we can’t do both.
Who does the diplo to keep you on the map?
_Shrew: Most of the bad diplo is done by Gabe. Most of the good diplo is done by Ant. And the neutral diplo is done by Ox and I.
GabrielAngelos: Are you calling me a bad diplomat, Shrew?
Ant_PRO: Yes.
_Shrew: Yeah, this is why we’re in a war right now.
So the entire server war is caused by Gabe?
_Shrew: Yes. 100% caused by Gabe. There’s even a map he made that’s on one of the wardecs. It was probably just one of Gabe’s crazy ideas that was obviously a superficial plan.
GabrielAngelos: The funny thing is that Shrew wouldn’t ever let us attack anyone, so I got people to wardec us.
What’s the most memorable Clan Wars battle you’ve had so far?
Oxmathus_PRO: The best fight we’ve had was against RELIC recently on Komarin where they beat us in a 1v1 situation.
GabrielAngelos: RELIC is the only clan on the server in this Clan Wars scene that has a 100% win rate against BULBA.
Oxmathus_PRO: They’re 1 out of 1 against us, meaning they’re probably one of the top clans right now.
Ant_PRO: I’m gonna have to disagree with my colleagues here and say our most memorable battle was in the early days of BULBA, almost a year ago, against Legion Latina on Swamp. They ended up beating us in a very close battle.
Oxmathus_PRO: That happened? It was on Komarin against ACA-T. We lost to a cap fast.
_Shrew: That’s how the stereotype started: BULBA never leaving the red line.
Oxmathus_PRO: People didn’t want to go back to reset the base.
_Shrew: Everyone was full health, but no one wanted to move up because they didn’t want to get their tank locked or ruin their damages.
Ant_PRO: All of our tanks were on the ridge sniping while they capped.
_Shrew: In IS-7s and stuff.
Ant_PRO: aLarge2 said, “Get back to base” like 4 times, and everyone just sat on the ridge.
Oxmathus_PRO: That was in the first few months of the clan. I’d like to say that we’ve improved a bit from that point.
GabrielAngelos: Eh. I’d like to point out my favorite fights so far have been against OTTER. They’ve certainly been the most surprising. I thought we’d go 50-50, but it didn’t exactly turn out that way.
You placed 2nd to OTTER in both Invitational tournaments. How did you adjust for this war?
_Shrew: What we’ve concluded is that OTTER is not a social clan. They put in a lot of effort, and they get rewarded for that. Last Invitational, they trained for 4 weeks, while BULBA maybe did 1. We didn’t have strats for the maps, and our favorite maps were locked. Their training really paid off, but it didn’t bother us because getting 2nd place was much better than we expected for a clan that barely practiced.
Oxmathus_PRO: It’s a lot easier to win a fight when you put 4 weeks of time into it, but unfortunately for OTTER, you can’t put 4 weeks of time into a single Clan Wars match.
_Shrew: Now that we’re on a more even footing, where we both have the same amount of practice, we’re completely dominant, I think, due to both player skill and caller skill.
Ant_PRO: It’s a combination of Gabe, Ox, and Wallhack.
GabrielAngelos: We also have people helping us make strats for some maps, like RyanGetzlaf, who’s an awesome caller. I would also like to say a big thank you to VILIN for giving us an idea on how to play Steppes. We love your 3 Batchats on the 1-2 line, copied it and improved it.
_Shrew: This is why they wardecced us: you stole their strat.
Oxmathus_PRO: Basically, why would you put that much time into training when you can just take somebody else’s strat and improve upon it? It’s easier to do that.
BULBA’s had lots of success, but do you feel there’s room for improvement?
Oxmathus_PRO: Actually, we started a lot better than we thought we ever would. We’re probably, not too sound too cocky, looking pretty scary right now.
Ant_PRO: One thing we can improve on is not getting highrolled by Batchats in a 1v1 at the end of the game.
Oxmathus_PRO: I think the only thing that would ever help us improve would be the activity level. Right now, it’s better than ever.
_Shrew: Our biggest problem is consistency and still not knowing each other well. Sometimes there’s caller and player miscommunication, but everyone plays so well individually, that even if there’s giant miscommunication, it doesn’t really matter because we’ll just outplay pretty much any enemy team.
With that in mind, does BULBA rely more on individual skill, or are callers still most important?
GabrielAngelos: It’s a combo. We usually just take good map positions, see what the enemy does, and then outflex them normally. That has worked virtually every single time.
Oxmathus_PRO: When the clan first started, it was mostly relying on player skill because we didn’t have any dedicated callers. We had callers who were good, but they weren’t people who could compare to other clans. And ever since we got Gabe, that has changed so now we have both the skill level aspect and a really good caller aspect. That’s working really well for us right now.
How much has the Gold League experience helped?
Oxmathus_PRO: If I were to look through our clan roster, probably about at least 30 or 40 of these guys have current Gold League experience. That really helps because it means I can put them in a Clan Wars fight and know they’re gonna perform as much as I want them to, and I won’t have to worry about them messing up. Basically, they can carry a game and I don’t have to worry about micromanaging.
GabrielAngelos: The only downside to having WGLNA players is when there’s a match or they’re practicing, that can keep us from fielding three teams. For instance, we have most of RUlette and Top Tier, and we have players scattered throughout other Gold League teams too. We have to guess who’s gonna be on some nights.
Oxmathus_PRO: It’s a balancing act. We have to try to not put ourselves in a bad position that night so that we don’t have to worry about not having those people.
Ant_PRO: You’re giving away all our secrets. People are gonna wardec us during WGLNA matches now.
Aside from Gold League, do BULBA players participate in smaller tournaments?
Oxmathus_PRO: I’d say we have a lot of people who do Skirmishes. I used to do them, but since Gold League is starting up again, and due to the war, I can’t spend that much time doing all that stuff. I’ve been on or against teams of all BULBA. Skirmishes are a main factor, which is also why holding land isn’t too important since you can get so much gold from tournaments.
How do you keep your members motivated?
Oxmathus_PRO: I’ve had multiple people tell me they were going to quit the game, but came back because of the community that we have, so I think BULBA itself is what keeps people playing.
_Shrew: Definitely what Ox said. Again, we don’t require any activity, but people come to hang out on TeamSpeak, whether for an anime club meeting or just talking about random stuff. For instance, when the boxing match was happening, we had like 40 people just group watching the stream. It was pretty interesting.
GabrielAngelos: That was Puncho vs Mayflower, right?
_Shrew: Uh, Gabe is really bad at names. You should definitely write that down.
Oxmathus_PRO: We had a guy change his name because Gabe kept calling him by the wrong name, so he just changed his name to help Gabe be able to say it.
That’s some power he’s got.
Ant_PRO: I can definitely agree with Ox. I can almost guarantee I would’ve quit this game a long time ago if it wasn’t for BULBA.
Oxmathus_PRO: The whole reason BULBA was made was because we were all tired of our old clans. That’s why we don’t require anybody to actually do anything. Everything here is voluntary.
_Shrew: With this semester of college, I played maybe 5 pub matches total, but no one bothered anyone like, “Hey you’re not showing up enough” and now that it’s summer, everyone is on every night and ready to play. There’s no burn out. I think that’s the greatest thing about BULBA: no one’s gonna get burnt out because we don’t require attendance.
Oxmathus_PRO: When clans require people to train every night and show up to Clan Wars or get kicked, people start burning out either from them having to call or them having to be around every night and worrying about getting kicked if they’re not around. We don’t have that problem.
What makes BULBA different from other clans?
_Shrew: Everyone’s from different parts of the world. We have Chinese, Japanese—
All: Russians.
_Shrew: Lots of Russians. We have a few Finns, few Italians, few Germans, a British guy who hangs out—he’s not quite in BULBA but he thinks he is—everyone, everywhere. Lots of Brazilians as well.
Ant_PRO: Mexicans.
GabrielAngelos: BULBA’s the melting pot of unicums. That’s basically what we are.
_Shrew: We could possibly be the most diverse clan out there.
Does BULBA have any interesting traditions?
GabrielAngelos: Thunderdome.
_Shrew: We don’t do team trainings, but when we do, we don’t practice Clan Wars. The only team trainings we do are Thunderdome and other fun stuff.
Oxmathus_PRO: Something we used to do is group watches of movies or anime club meetings. I actually don’t even watch anime, but we’re not an anime clan. No one’s required to like or even watch it, but it just so happens that a bunch of the best players on the server happen to like anime.
_Shrew: Really, the anime club meeting isn’t about anime. Usually it’s just polls like “Who’s your favorite platoonmate?” or “who do you hate the most in the clan?” That’s pretty funny because it’s always me. It’s really nice because it breaks the ice and it lets people bash each other without taking it seriously. You can pretty much say what you want on these polls and a lot of times it’s pretty funny. It’s good to hear feedback.
Oxmathus_PRO: The thing is, we always do little stuff. Like sometimes in Clan Wars, if someone’s being annoying or something, or we just want to kill him, I’ll pay people to TK him.
GabrielAngelos: That’s why all my tanks are locked.
_Shrew: If there’s a game where we haven’t TKed tomhwk, then we failed.
Ant_PRO: We’re just kidding. We never put tomhwk in.
GabrielAngelos: Poor tomhwk. He receives the entire clan’s negative attention.
Ant_PRO: Basically, if someone’s having a bad day, they just take it out on tom.
What’s the craziest thing that’s happened on your TeamSpeak?
_Shrew: Not the craziest, but our TeamSpeak owner dropped off the face of the planet, and we had to find a new one. At the time, our only ally clan was CHAI, and I asked Ox, “Why don’t we talk to HoHoHaHee?” So he let us join his TeamSpeak, and originally our channels were below CHAI’s because we were new, and we challenged CHAI: “Hey, if we beat you in a Stronghold Raid, will you let us be on top of the server?” and we won.
Oxmathus_PRO: HoHo agreed and then we got moved to the top of the server above CHAI.
Ant_PRO: Another pretty crazy thing that happened, and it wasn’t strictly BULBA, but for Chinese New Year, there was a channel with literally over 100 people in that channel singing and talking, having a good time.
Oxmathus_PRO: Karaoke.
_Shrew: Carbonward sang. HoHo sang. It was beautiful. tomhwk sang.
GabrielAngelos: JackQueRudo.
Ant_PRO: Everyone sang.
What’s the recruiting process for BULBA?
Ant_PRO: 10k Personal Rating.
_Shrew: Yep, Personal Rating is the most important.
Oxmathus_PRO: Actually, it’s called Personality Rating, thank you very much.
GabrielAngelos: After Personality Rating, we take a look at your stats, and you’re either a yes or a no, unless we’re unsure.
_Shrew: If it’s close, often times we make them have a 1v1 against diastant in his Batchat. If they can beat dia in a 1v1, they can join the clan most of the time.
Oxmathus_PRO: Most of the time.
GabrielAngelos: Or they’re forced to platoon with Jojo_PRO.
Oxmathus_PRO: Sometimes dia throws.
What would you consider to be BULBA’s greatest achievement?
_Shrew: Probably not disbanding so far. When Ant and I were in NTR, we messaged our good friend NOTsillyputty about BULBA. He was like, “It’s probably a bad idea. Not gonna last a year.”
Ant_PRO: PURPL 2.0
GabrielAngelos: All I’d like to say is reaching super purple overall.
_Shrew: Highest recent WN8 in the whole world.
Oxmathus_PRO: In the last Campaign, we won the medal for winning 30 battles in a row, so I have to say that we’re all right at Clan Wars.
You’re also Number 1 NA in the new Clan Rating system. Are you using that to analyze clan activity?
_Shrew: BULBA’s not a clan where we’re like, “Hey, we’re number 1. You mad?” We have great status, and we’re the number 1 social clan by far, but we don’t really care about metrics.
Ant_PRO: With the exception of Personality Rating.
GabrielAngelos: And WN8.
_Shrew: It’s interesting to see the average battles. This is a pretty neat metric.
What feature would you add to Clan Wars?
All: Removing stats.
_Shrew: Stats are pretty discouraging when you’re working all day to pad your WN8 and then someone shows up in a Tier I to troll you. People cry. I think BULBA cried really hard in our last war against PBKAC, but we got over that and padded a bit.
Oxmathus_PRO: Clan Wars is good for padding win rate, not WN8. I’d also not allow people to bring below Tier IX tanks.
Ant_PRO: I wish we could do Clan Wars with other servers.
Is there any advice you’d give to an upcoming clan?
_Shrew: Make it about the community, and not about the Clan Wars.
Oxmathus_PRO: It’s not a fast process. It’s something that you have to work towards. You need to have a reason for people to join your clan, not just “I’m recruiting”. You have to have a clan atmosphere that people can attach to so those people will never leave, and people will join for it.
Are there any prior leadership decisions you’ve made that you regret?
_Shrew: I don’t think we’ve really regretted anything. We’ve just been easy going and haven’t had too many problems.
Oxmathus_PRO: That’s a good question. Obviously for me, it was the terrible decision of giving Shrew CO.
Ant_PRO: Whoa, I’ll have to disagree with you there. I think that’s the best decision we’ve made in this clan.
_Shrew: I agree.
Ant_PRO: Operation Ax the Ox was a success, and the clan’s been uphill since then.
GabrielAngelos: BULBA’s mostly been YOLO. I think it was not shackling Carbonward to his computer so we could run BULBA more.
So who’s the real Commander of BULBA?
_Shrew: Really, there’s no CO of BULBA; we all are. I’d say Ox does the most in terms of getting everything together, but the idea of a single BULBA CO is kinda silly. There doesn’t need to be one. We’re not here to manage people, we’re here just to lead and make BULBA a fun community to be in.
Oxmathus_PRO: Basically, I don’t have to micromanage people in game, and I don’t want to have to micromanage them as a personality, which is why in our clan description, we say “Go Away! Drama Queen and Drama King!!” I don’t deal with people’s issues anymore.
Who’s been your greatest rival?
Oxmathus_PRO: Purely, I’d have to say -G- to start, but then it’s mostly been OTTER after that. It’s mostly just for the plain fact that there are only so many good recruits on the server, and we compete with OTTER for recruits. That right there already creates a rivalry, so that’s an issue.
Ant_PRO: ACA-T.
Oxmathus_PRO: And ACA-T because they beat us in Clan Wars before.
Ant_PRO: Did we ever get back at them? They still have a 100% win rate against us. They’re too good.
What’s next for BULBA?
_Shrew: Find a peaceful position on the Global Map where we can be next to our friends in CHAI and PINGU.
Oxmathus_PRO: Have a break from fighting people.
Ant_PRO: Continue our ongoing quest to—
GabrielAngelos: Improve clan stats
Ant_PRO: No, to not implode.
Oxmathus_PRO: Not disband is a pretty high priority.
Ant_PRO: It’s an ongoing goal for us. Everyday it’s like, “We did it, boys”.
_Shrew: Another big thing is figuring out how to pay out the gold.
Oxmathus_PRO: Since we don’t really require activity, it’s kinda hard to find good ways of paying people out.
GabrielAngelos: The current server war has done wonders for the payout system.
_Shrew: It’s really put Ant to work.
Ant_PRO: I hate my job.
GabrielAngelos: He used to ask for gold, but since we’re at war, we discontinued that policy.
Is there anyone you’d like to give a shout out to?
_Shrew: Huge shoutout to CHAI and PINGU for being by far the best allies possible. They have great COs that really care about their members and allies. And I’d like to shout out to lozarus. When I first started doing diplo, he really understood that Ant and I didn’t really know our way around, and he was really kind and really generous. More generous than we were expecting and I definitely appreciate Loz, even if he’s on the enemy team of this war. Big shoutout to Hoho. It’s a smile and laugh I want to protect.
GabrielAngelos: I love you Hoho and RyanGetzlaf. You’re amazing people. I’d also like to keep fighting THUGZ up north.
Oxmathus_PRO: Everybody we’ve been fighting in this war, or who we’ve worked with. I’d also like to thank Allurai for helping us map PBKAC in our earlier war.
Ant_PRO: You stole my line! I’m done. Also, since he’s dead and gone now, shoutout to Carbon for getting the clan going.
Oxmathus_PRO: Carbonward came in about 3 months late, but this was before Gabe joined, and he basically helped me run the clan during the last campaign.
Ant_PRO: Also, a shoutout to all of our allies! You guys played even better than we could on certain nights! #HOHO #CHAII #MAHOU #PINGU
_Shrew: Shout out to _vode_an_.
All: We’d also like to thank Wargaming for giving us a Spotlight.
Any last words?
Ant_PRO: We’re coming for you, ACA-T.
Oxmathus_PRO: We’re always recruiting excellent players.
_Shrew: Be on the lookout for a giant anime meeting that anyone can join. It’ll be posted on CR/D, hosted on CHAI TS. It’ll be a great chance for people who like Japanese cartoons or just wanna vote on random stuff to join us. And Brettk42O2 is the best 4202 player in the world. That’s all I have to say.
