Clan Review: Target Practice — Console Based Clan

Did you know that the world consists of Console Clans? Well, if you didn’t — you’re in for a bit of a surprise as we’re about to focus on a local team called Target Practice. Target Practice is a Xbox 360-based clan which started in June of 2008 by Henro “THE KoosK” OKelly and Marko “MG THABO” Swanepoel. To date =TP= features teams in Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — with the odd player focusing on FIFA ’10 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

There’s a total of 27 members — ages ranging between 16 and 45 — divided into two teams: The Phenomenon and The Protoge. You’ll notice that the first letters of the team names hint at the tag TP — something unique to the clan.

The above two teams are for friendly games only. For tournaments and leagues Target Practice likes to enter as many teams as possible. They entered three teams into the Telkom DoGaming Console League and two teams into the GX Friendly League. The GX Pro League will see TP playing with three different teams.

The Teams

The Phenomenon:

Captain: Tyrone “MR MiLiTiA ZA” Brand
Vice-Captain: Matias “CrusnikEnforcer” Castro

Players:
Lance “x12x LANCE SA” Wilken
James “Fire3231″ Husband
Vincent “xDarK LeGi0Nx” Wentzel
Wynand “Mr Jackson86″ Geldenhuys
DarkOne 2 aka Darkie the Beast

THE PROTOGe:

Captain: Wayne “Creepy360″ Crous
Vice-Captain: James “IN54N3 J4M35″ Gibson

Players:
Frank “Frankefour” Ferreria
Martin “FUBAR SA” Castro
Jeduthan “Jed Jungle” Masters
Daniel “DaniBoi06″ Masters
Shaun “Hisshaundavis” Davis

Management Structure:

President/Top Level Management: Tyrone “MR MiLiTiA ZA” Brand
Second Level Management: Matias “CrusnikEnforcer” Castro
Web Admin: Shaun Crous

As previously mentioned, Target Practice started in 2008 where Marko “MG THABO” Swanepoel and Henro “THE KoosK” OKelly felt that they would like to start a team with newcomers. Once the two decided to launch a team they recruited random players who were interested in playing, and learning, on a more social level. Naturally, social gaming lead to competitive gaming where Target Practice voted for team captains for the first time in December of 2008.

By April of 2009, Target Practice was full-on competitive, however they only played friendly matches – neglecting to enter tournaments. A year and a bit later, in December of 2009, Ebenhaeser — one of the original founders — decided to resign as he could not devote as much time to the clan. The resignation of the team President left a gap for Tyrone “MR MiLiTiA ZA” Brand to take the reins, along with Matias “CrusnikEnforcer” Castro in the little chair next to him.

By March of this year the two leaders managed to up the member count from 13 to 30 players. And to this day, Target Practice boasts 27 full-on members where 15 of those play competitively.

Since the relaunch of the team, Tyrone and the guys managed to gain sponsorship from TinyWeb, a hosting company which sponsored them their forum and website. Without this, they would have limited communication — therefore it’s a vital asset to the team. Only TP members have access to the forum, so you’ll need to join – or suck up – to gain access.

Target Practice was previously sponsored by Games Xetra, who sponsored T-Shirts with the clan-name, logo and gamertag for rAge of 2009. Furthermore, Games Xetra sponsored travel and accommodation for Marko Swanepoel, to travel from Durban to Johannesburg, for the Guitar Hero South Africa Championship, where he came second.

The Results

2010 Telkom DoGaming Modern Warfare 2 Console League:
2nd Place – The Phenomenon
4th Place – The Protoge

Second place at the Guitar Hero SA Championship in 2009

The Phenomenon has played 15 games where they have won 13 of those games.

From the games lost, The Phenomenon started to enjoy playing against their toughest challengers: McLoving FC, Tech-9 and AoD: Darksiders for the Telkom Cups and where they are yet to face those teams in the GXLeague. The Phenomenon has never beaten Tech-9, however they have only played them once — and they are excited to play a second time. As for every other team, The Phenomenon has made short work of them.

The name Target Practice, like the clan, has evolved over the years. In the beginning it was used as a joke because Henro was really bad at First Person Shooter games, hence being Target Practice. Over the years the meaning has changed, and according to Tyrone: “The others are Target Practice for us!

With evolution in the name, there’s evolution in the team itself.

By the end of the year Xbox Live servers should be in full force, and Target Practice would love to extend to more games. Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Medal of Honor will fit into their portfolio as the lag on local servers will be reduced significantly. Following this, TP has become multi-platform as Matias “CrusnikEnforcer” Castro has invested in a PlayStation 3.

TP currently boast five PlayStation 3 members since the introduction of the new division in August of 2010. The plan would be to hold a competitive team for PlayStation 3 by the start of 2011.

Progression over the next year would include everyone knowing about Target Practice, as well as many more first place finishes in various tournaments. On both platforms.

On the note of results, The Phenomenon leader Tyrone is extremely happy with the clans results so far. They have finished second in their first ever tournament and they finished second at the Guitar Hero Championship. For the record, Marko lost by 4000 points.

South African gaming is far from perfect, and there’s room for improvement. Target Practice said that competition on the console side of gaming is not that strong, as there are very few tournaments. The participation from Do Gaming and shops such as Games Xetra is great, but more is needed.

With the introduction of Xbox Live the player base should increase, and the amount of competitive players should increase in various games as local servers allow for lower latency and smoother gameplay for competitive — and social– purposes.

Console barely stands a chance against PC in South Africa, but this is purely because it’s the older platform. There have been various PC tournaments over the years, where console play is relatively new to the market. We do, however, feel that Xbox Live will change this.

For competitive gaming console is said to be highly competitive as the community is small and everyone knows each other. Players know the playing style and which guns players like to use, therefore it’s easy, yet difficult to counter various players. It’s an infinite loop of countering the counter. And because players know each other, it’s a lot more personal.

With PC gaming, it’s pretty much similar – however there are lots of players and opportunities to change strategies by watching international team replays. Recording on Xbox is slightly more difficult.

eGamer Overview

Target Practice shows that competitive console play is possible — not that we thought it wasn’t. We did however think that there would be smaller numbers, I mean, how can you play competitively on the couch?

Apparently Target Practice receives about 5 – 10 join requests every week which shows that the competitive market on the console is looking to increase, however it will probably take time. As much time as it took PC to progress to where it is now? We hope not.

South African gaming has come a long way, but we’re at a mid point. There needs to be more competitive opportunities for both PC and Console players to interact with.

I know some of you are probably wondering about PC vs Console – well, if this could be done with ease, it would be interesting to see how the console clans would do against the PC teams. I’m not too sure which teams are better, because a few console players have sick aim. How they move that thumbstick so perfectly, I’m not sure.

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