Huge thank you to all the coaches who signed up, as well as the admins who tirelessly worked away on putting this together! We now have 13 teams on their way to their first real RGL season.

Hey guys, it's looking like we're going to have at least a dozen newbie teams, and unfortunately, that is not how many coaches we currently have.... If you are at all interested, please sign up! If you want to co-coach with a friend, you can sign up together and indicate that you're signing up together. You will have two weeks to get your teams organized; some of the teams are already organized, so it would be a real breeze to get them going.

We're still waiting to hear back from RGL in regards to fee refunds, but could not wait any longer in terms of launching the drive. At the moment we are operating under the assumption that there will not be refunds for S4, and that the only reason coaches volunteer to take on a team is to watch their new players grow and join our scene. The refunds may still happen, but I don't want to advertise something without knowing for sure that it's something I can promise.

Tonight would be a good night to join to coach a mix or two (or at least introduce yourself for future coaching)! We got lots of players and no coaches.

Scrubbed due to weather, next attempt will be Saturday after 3 PM EST.

Just a small update on this - we built a total of 14 teams, the vast majority of them with very little prior competitive experience. They are all now safely registered in RGL and scrimming madly in preparation for their season. It was a combination of about 60 hours of work between 4 people to build the teams, plus all of the individual hours that the coaches have put in to getting their teams ready since they were announced last week. Huge thanks to Grumpy, Tony and Hellcatt for the assistance with the drive, to RoGue for promoting it and jumping in last minute to do a bunch of stuff that the rest of us dreaded, and to all of the coaches and other mixes admins who have taken this project on.

Also, thanks to everyone who applied to coach, we had almost 40 people apply and deciding on the final people was really tough because there were a lot of qualified coaches and obviously not as many teams. We looked at previous experience playing, but prioritized the people who had the most coaching and teaching experience, as well as community involvement and prior team leader experience. A few of the coaches were specifically requested by the newbies who met them on Friday night mixes, and we felt that this kind of connection/trust was something we wanted to foster into the season (ETA: in the interest of fairness, none of the requested coaches will be receiving the RGL refund). If you did not get picked, it's not a personal judgement against you and there is a chance we may be contacting you mid-season if another coach can no longer meet the commitments.

You mean to coach or to play? We have had EU coaches and newbies occasionally. For newbies we request that they actually know how to play the game on the ping they get to Chicago servers, for coaches it's less important unless you need to demonstrate a rollout or a jump or something (but it's doable). I don't really know the ETF2L division skill level so if anyone knows what 8-8 or higher in ESEA Open or playoffs RGL IM is, feel free to chime in.

There are also EU Newbie Mixes but I only just got put in touch with their organizers so I don't know much about them. I imagine they too would want coaches.

Hi friends, with everyone having a ton of free time due to virus, we have a metric ton of newbies every week and not enough coaches. Newbie Mixes has been alive thanks to some monumental effort from staff (or rather, thanks to monumental effort from one particular admin, who has been there every Friday night for the last few years), and we would really appreciate it if some other people would be willing to help out.

The requirement to to coach is at least 8 wins in one season of ESEA Open (so 8-8 record or better) or making IM playoffs in RGL. You will probably need about an hour of your time (15 minutes of explaining stuff before the game, 30 minutes of having the newbies play their game, 15 minutes of talking afterwards).

If you want to bring a buddy to coach together, you can. We as admins are more than happy to talk to you about how to coach, but mixes are less about being perfect teachers and more about encouraging new players to enjoy their first few games of competitive so that they stick around and join our community. If that sounds intimidating, it's really not, because most of them are already there to have fun, all you have to do is be there to let them know that it's ok to make mistakes. We have built a ton of teams and a lot of current competitive players start out in our mixes; if you even help out one hour a month, it would be immense help to us and our regular coaches and would be an easy way to positively impact our community. I will also write you reference letters for volunteering if you want me to, though I'd need you to be there a few times so I actually have something to note.

Mumble info is IP: negasora.com Port: 64738. You can join on Friday after 9EST/6PST and let Rogue (the admin that's there) know that you're there to coach, or you can add me on steam https://steamcommunity.com/id/thebunnysaur/ ETA: you can also join the discord and ping the admins to add you to the coaches channel: https://discord.gg/Whm6AkD

Yep, most libraries are closed to the public anyways so you couldn't go even if you wanted to, but there are still librarians working because they still deliver some services, namely digital stuff (and stuff for seniors, but that doesn't apply). They could have a pretty hefty catalogue of things you can do from the comfort of your home, and a lot of the vendors they deal with have substantially relaxed their requirements for access.

Pick up a hobby.

Your local library may have a ton of digital resources, like free access to online courses, e-books, old/international movies, etc, so you can check it out. AFAIK a lot of them have created ways for people to self-register for a membership so you might be able to get in on this even without having a library card before. I might do a course on Adobe Illustrator or something like that.

Catch up on all the things you said you were going to do and didn't have time/energy to do. I'm gonna jump-start my webcomic and maybe work on my book manuscript but I'm kinda burned out on the latter.

Can confirm that Canada is not doing tests unless you present several high risk factors. Grumpy's coworkers lost their collective little minds and physically exiled him from the store because he had a runny nose (not a typical symptom of COVID-19). He went to the doctor, said "I have a mild cold or seasonal allergies, please test me and give me a note to say that I don't have The Plague," the doctor said he didn't have enough risk factors to waste a test on him. I get the desire for limiting the use of tests because I'm sure there's thousands of hypochondriac idiots demanding a test every day even though they're obviously not infected. I don't have the expertise in epidemiology to comment on how effective it is, so, meh.

I used to work in medical research and the amount of fucking hysteria is insane. No, the surgical masks do not protect you from infection. The reason why doctors/researchers wear them is because doctors/researchers also wear lab coats that cover from thigh to wrist, gloves, goggles that cover cheek to eyebrow, and sometimes also caps and/or pants and/or shoe covers. Together, these items create a disposable/cleanable/autoclavable barrier that can come in contact with a hazard and be shed before the doctor retreats to a "safe"/"low hazard" place, which reduces the rate of transmission of the hazard between the high hazard/low hazard areas. Doctors/researchers also receive training in how to prevent/reduce biohazard transmission, how to use the equipment properly, where to use it and what constitutes a different hazard zone, and, most importantly, how to remove it and dispose of it, and have the tools and means of doing so. Just the mask that you put on and take off whenever you feel like it isn't gonna do jack shit.

My coworkers (I work in a library and my job is public-facing and idiots DO come to the library sick all the time so they can "get some entertainment while they're sick at home") are all wearing gloves now - which is, fair enough, we handle a lot of shit that comes from other people who may have just coughed/sneezed on the thing before handing it to us. I'm like, great, let's lay down some ground rules on how to use rubber gloves - how to take them off, where are the "high hazard" and "low hazard" areas between which the gloves get taken off/put on... and they're all like "no that's too much to remember." Uh, if you're not going to use the equipment correctly, there's no fucking point in using it at all.

The key for dating in general is to not ask someone out because you're lonely and lack self-confidence and think a relationship will somehow fix all that. You ask them out because you think they'll be an interesting person to know and because it's someone that would make you happy to share things in your life with.... Which does mean that you need to have a life to share.

I asked a dude out after meeting him on the same day. Granted it wasn't a total stranger, he was a mutual friend of a group of friends of mine, but I still only knew his name and whatever casual conversations (plus the one time I chased him with a ladle) we had that night.

It's our 10th anniversary in a couple days, so I'd say it can work out.

These gamers are all very great. Guitar pounds and is a very responsible team leader, matches comms well and makes smart plays, trobort screams and makes empty threats, and when I played with recurse he was pretty chill. Honestly I can see playing med for this team being fantastic because they're fun people and 100% will not be toxic assholes to their med.

Very good write-up and break-down. I'm impressed by how quickly you got this out. Thanks, Recurse!

Come meet us in Newbie Mixes on friday nights! https://steamcommunity.com/groups/na6v6newbiemix