Being a Team Captain is fun and fairly simple. There are only a few things you need to do.
Team creation
Team creation is not difficult. Just select 'Community/My Teams' from the menu, click 'Create a New Team', and fill the simple form. Now there are two important decisions to make: team name, and team management style.
The team name, once the team is created, cannot be changed! Therefore, spend some time deciding on the appropriate name -- one you believe expresses correctly the team characteristics, and one that you would want to keep using for many months (or years) to come.
Deciding whether the team is to be open (anybody may join) or closed (only players in captain's Buddy Lists can join) has significant impact on the team management. In the former case you are likely to get accidental new members from time to time, but you have no way of deciding whether they are suitable for the team. (There is a blacklist mechanism in place; nevertheless, if somebody misbehaves, you can expel him from the team and forbid him to join again). In the latter case ("closed" team), you need to hunt for the new members; also, the joining process is not quite as easy (because of the Buddy List requirement), but this type of team tend to be more stable.
Fortunately, this decision (open vs. closed) is not final. It can be changed at the captain's will. So you could start as an "open" team, then turn it into a "closed" team later, when you have enough members.
Inter Teams Activities
- Monitor the All About Teams forum for opportunities for your team to play in Team Matches.
Use your team's forum to suggest matches to your team, or to observe when a team mate has made such a suggestion. You also may need to use Private Message to communicate more directly to your team mates. Some players don't seem to read the forums all the time. You send a team message by going to Community > My Teams > selecting your team, and then "Message Team". Remember that you are responsible for keeping up team morale and interest. If you aren't excited about the team, no one else will be, and the team will die off. Keep everyone informed and ask your fellow teammates for advice. Start grudge matches or "friendly" matches with other teams, after figuring out which of your team mates are interested in each match. Give out titles to players who play well!
Set up matches. This is a little bit funny. To set up a new match, you go to the opposing team's listing under Community > All Teams. Then you click "Challenge". (But first, it would be wise to send a PM to the opposing team captain, notifying him of your desire for a match and asking him if he is ready to accept the type of challenge that you want to issue.)
- Add players to the match. To get to the screen you want, you go to your own team's listing and click on "matches." Select the match you are interested in, and start assigning players to the match. You'll figure this out. This is actually the hardest part, since there are a host of conditions that each player must have set correctly in order to be added to a match. They are (approximately): Variants allowed, max game limit, holiday status. I think I am forgetting one or two. Some of these you'll be able to observe on the player's profile. Some remain a mystery and the only way to resolve them is to PM Austin for help. Then you contact the player and ask him to change his settings. And you then try again to add him to the match; if it still doesn't work, you do this sequence again. (Austin has promised to improve this process some day.)
Captains also get to set up matches in League play, and that's a different process. This is very straightforward. You can figure it out by going to Events page (Community > SchemingMind Events) and clicking on the league you are interested in.
- In order to assign a new person as Team Captain, you need to send a PM to Austin
Intra Team Activities
Creating a team need not be all about challenging other teams. A team often is most successful when it is a social group as well. Of course, this is not compulsory, but your team will be more attractive if your team's forum is a friendly, active place. Try new things; for example, puzzle competitions within your team, or tournaments for team members only. Remember, always use your own initiative as a team captain, and suggest new things for discussion, or get other members to suggest events. Your ideas will benefit your team and will also give yourself more things to be involved in on SchemingMind!
Document initially created from surfnsuds great forum post: http://www.schemingmind.com/topic.aspx?topic_id=35853-~