Re-thinking our ranking structure
While being fully aware that trying to apply the same schemas as regiments did 5-6 years is not going to work, the 13e still intend to give real meaning to its ranking hierarchy. From the get-go, it was important for us to decide how many COs & NCOs ranks we were going to hand out, especially in regards to our full roster size. Even more than that, we wanted the players who join the 13e to have a real feeling of progression that could be seen through their ranks, a progression that's intrinsically connected to their implication within the regiment. We are rather satisfied with what we came up with thus far but were missing one last rank - the equivalent of Grenadier. In our mind, the rank of Grenadier rewards purely high-melee capabilities and is, therefore, to be reserved to an elite, same as the ranks of CplF & CplFoP. We wanted to have a rank that would also reward our most loyal and active SoPs who, although may not be amongst the most skilled players of the regiment, have shown how important they are to the 13e. That's where the rank of Soldat d'Honneur (SoH) comes into place. The SoHs will be, same as the Grenadiers, the very elite core that's essential to the 13e well-functioning and will have to show a certain number of qualities before being seen worthy of such rank. Once they get it, they will be expected to maintain the same amount of activity and involvement as prior to their promotion, in order to show they deserved such promotion. It will still entirely possible for an SoH to become a Grenadier later on. On NW, the rank of SoH wasn't used a lot, mostly because it is not historical but the oldest of you might remember it from Pieter's 17e that used SoH as the rank for the member of the reserve company. We, for a while, considered such a reserve company to be put in place but the majority of the staff doesn't see it fit for the time being so we decided to use the SoH rank for a different purpose. | | The 13e Academy
The 13e Academy players started playing their first matches last month. It was a project very dear to us as the 13e is not meant to be solely a melee stack regrouping some of the very best players of the NW scene but also a way for new and rusty players alike to either improve themselves to try and match their teammates or find their old selves through practice sessions adapted to their current form. That academy project took a lot of time to go live but once it did, we very quickly saw how important it was to help our players perform in such an environment. As our current line-up allow it, we regularly fight some of the very best regiments/regiments of the scene and it's not easy for a player relatively new to the competitive scene to not feel like a dead-weight / burden when being thrown against melee machines that will easily deal with them. Eventually, however, the 13e Academy will remain under construction for a good while till we find, through collective thinking, a way to render it fully operational with a dedicated member of the staff that can fully guide our new wave of competitive players towards a great future. But we know it's a step in the right direction to make the 13e fully operational for the months to come. |