Many solid teams nowadays find their members prior to the beginning of a round composed of players that have played together in the past or have atleast some prior experience together. It is really difficult for a new player to gain entry to these teams, as most are exclusive to "pro" players.

From experience I have to say that finding your team prior to a round is the best way to get a solid group of players together. If you are absolutely new to the game, I would suggest you play a few rounds and get to know some people through skype or ingame messaging before leading a round. If you can get some sort of name recognition, it will help you considerably. If someone knows your ingame name, even if you didnt do anything spectacular, they will be more likely to consider an alliance invitation.

When picking your players, you want to look for activity. Now this is a very difficult thing to spot amongst middle-level players. Look for things like outposts, check a players statistics to see how many battles they have been a part of, or how many wreckages/outposts they have captured. These are generally good indicators of skilled players, many of which just haven't found the right alliance to bring them to the top. Ignore stats like Units lost and units recruited, these can vary based on chassis and do not represent the value of the player.

Once you have located a good candidate, invite them to a skype conversation and ask them if they would like to join up. Form a Skype group and over the course of a round build up a solid team of 10-15 players who are interested. Watch the players on their respective rounds to get a feel for their activity and ability. When you have found your team, set it in stone. Let everyone get to know each other, get to know each others schedules and contact information. The more you can get to know your teamates, the better you will be if conflict arises during the round.

The amount of Pre-Round preparation done by a leader can be the difference between a great start or potentially a conquered alliance.

Ask around during the round prior to the round you are planning on playing. Send a message asking the top 5-10 alliances if they will be returning next round. If you are relatively unknown and look like a new player, most leaders will give a clear answer. If you want to be sneaky, you can even ask for a spot in the alliance, this is frowned upon amongst BD players, but could give you a powerful advantage if you learn their plan before the round begins. When you find out whether or not an alliance is playing, it is up to you how to handle it. Your goal is to find out where they intend to place their colonies in the beginning of the round. This information can allow you to find a prime location where your expansion wont be hindered by experienced alliances.

After you decide on a location, YOU as the alliance leader, should decide where your members place. This innitial organization will set the tone for the round, letting your members know that there will be structure. While placing your members, you can simply set a small hive, or spread your players into "Pods." A Pod is a group of players who start the round together away from the potential hive of the alliance. Pods can be composed of 2-5 players and need to be assessed based on the skill level of the players in them. The more pods you place (less members in each) the faster your expansion can go and the more resource OPs/Conquers you can obtain in the early round. Conversely, if you spread your team out too far, they will be easier to conquer themselves without as much support from your alliance. A happy medium on most worlds is 3 player pods, however, I tend to be more bold than that, sometimes even Opting for 1 player pods (If I trust the player to protect themselves adequately while expanding).

I go as far as to draw out maps (as posted below) showing where each member should place and what their innitial goals will be. This eliminates any confusion in the beginning of the round, your players will thank you for it.

Although it is not crucial to have everyone placed on tick 1, it is a massive advantage as well as an indicator of an experienced alliance. The frozen tick at the beginning of a round allows you to build structures before ticks start rolling. So try your best to get everyone situated before the round begins.

Once you have placed, look around the world, specifically near your claimed territory, for alliances that seem to be boosting. Although boosting is not essential to winning a round, it is a good indicator of players who intend to play seriously. The alliance tab will not be up until tick 2 unfortunately so you will have to scroll around the map to find the potential threats. Once located, shoot each leader a message introducing yourself and determine whether or not you would like to be at peace or war.

The two terms you should know are NAP (NonAggressionPact) and MDP (MutualDefensePact). An NAP means that there will be no conflict between your alliances until a specified tick. An MDP is a promise to assist an alliance if they are attacked by an external force in exchange for their assistance if you are attacked. MDP's shouldnt be thrown around lightly, if you set an MDP, you have commited to that alliance and anything they do.

Anyway, make sure you allign yourself carefully, short NAP's always work out the best in my opinion. Giving an alliance 200 ticks to expand will give you a good idea of how capable they are and if they can be beaten. Any NAP over 500 ticks from tick 1 better be well thought out, otherwise you may be locked into an NAP and miss opportunities because of it.

The introduction of ingame flagging under the alliance-orders tab, was a fantastic addition to the game that allows leaders and their members to communicate on the map itself. I myself, am rather active with updating orders, but I know others are less inclined to take up map space.

Several different orders that I find effective are as follows:

- An order displaying everyones name/phone number. In crisis times this can be vital to getting a quick text message off and can save tons of squads. Of course it is at the disgression of your members whether or not to place their number on the map.

-An order on top of leaders of NAP'd alliances as well as an order near your hive displaying the names and tick times of standing NAPs. This will help clear up any confusion with your members about why certain alliances are blue.

- Any time a large army is confronted on an outpost or colony, it is nice to write out an order saying what the squad count is or even showing the detailed unit report. This will avoid wasted spams and set up your allies to succeed. So tell your allies to post these, and make sure you keep up with deleting/editing them when necessary.

- When planning to launch an attack on an alliance, I forewarn my alliance 50 ticks prior to the launch, and have each member fill a certain number of their outposts with an order and a spam designated to hit it on the launch tick. This is the best method I have found to desimate an enemies network before they even know what hit them. This requires a lot of coordination and leadership, but the time spent is well worth it. Deleting all of the orders afterwards is a pain in the butt however.

- Tell your alliance to place orders on their colony when they are in need of oil/lumber, this is an effective way to transfer resources, but remember to delete it after sending.

- If a Vote is needed, tallying it in an order can help your allies see what the general concensus of the alliance is on important issues.

- Place orders where you want gate/radar combos to be placed. The best way to get everyone involved is to place 10 orders in areas your network needs improvement, and to designate players to build in each one. For the cost of 2 OPs per member, you now have 10 gate/radar combos and no one can complain about selfish players not placing any ops.

All of these tactics require the ministers and the leader to actively update and delete obsolete orders so that the board does not get too cluttered. I encourage my players to place orders for every situation because recording intelligence will encourage smart play.

Communication is Key, but sometimes skype can be overlooked or orders misplaced/deleted. So it is important to also have a solid written notice of current events in the round. As a member of an alliance, I know how frustrating it is to recieve dozens of mass messages a day.

So when I became leader, I developed the strategy of sending out a single "State of the Union" message every time things get a little disorganized. I normally send one out every 50-100 ticks depending on how organized my members are without it.

The mass message contains useful bulletted or numbered information that informs everyone in the alliance of all the different situations. These bullets can include NAP updates, War Declarations, Strategy talks, Yelling at players for innactivity, new gate/radar needs, Votes on important issues!, or anything else you need your alliance member to read!

I try to keep my State of the Unions to 1 full page message ingame, although I have been known to make a 2 pager if necessary. This message allows players to refer back to your statements, so think them through. It also promotes players to communicate with you so that the interests of your alliance influence your decisions.

I will link an example of one of my messages when I get the time.

If you want your members to play selflessly for the alliance, practice what you preach. Send at that resource OP or Radar rather than the conquer right next to it. Send some squads to help someone out with a pesky player. DEFEND OUTPOSTS! No one respects a leader who isn't willing to sacrifice his units and personal score for the betterment of the team. Build Gates/Radars/Nukes. Overall, be the best player for the team that you can be.

- Do not rant on players for sniping, tell them their fault but let them off easy (unless it is a reoccuring issue).

- Do not post rude or innappropriate broadcasts or send taunting messages to players in other alliances

- Treat your enemies as if they are your allies, be cordial but firm. Do not let them walk over you, but dont walk over them either. It's ok if things get heated, take a minute, calm yourself, and remember how to spell... Think to yourself, is ALL CAPS REALLY NECESSARY TO CONVEY MY POINT and Do I *Censored* have too many *Censored* *Censored* words in this *Censored* message? Odds are, if all caps or *Censored* are involved, you are better off not sending the message.

- Be sure to communicate with the community in the round, good broadcasts about what is happening, perhaps a congradulations for a war well fought etc...