How did your team come to be?
Cheap Ass Gamer started to form in the middle of Winter League 2008. At the time, and with me being a RoosterTeeth fan, I stumbled upon the league, got into the Grifball gametype, and eventually put out a call on the CAG forums for others who might be interested in competing in the official leagues. Since we didn’t see our first official game until Spring League 2008, we had a couple of weeks to practice and start developing plays.

How did you decide on your team name?
With all of the original founding members being longtime gamers and CAG forum members, I decided to base our name on our heritage, so to speak. The leagues have seen many teams change their team name for various reasons — the loss of founding members or a desire to change their team name with each season — but I do things differently, I prefer the establishment of reputation both on the court and off, and permanent team name helps to accomplish this, in my opinion.

With Cheap Ass Gamer entering its 5th Grifball season (4 AGLA, 1 H3P), we still have 3 of the 5 founding members and through our successes and failures I believe we have established a decent reputation in the league and with individual teams. The continued support on the CAG forums and creation of the Cheap Ass Giraffes in GBWL09 established CAG as a Grifball Franchise that I think will be around for many, many seasons.

A history of the team (who you picked up, when and why).
Cheap Ass Gamer played its first official season in GBSL08 with founding members HotShotX, Draekon, SynGamer, Fullmetal 720, and John Ketch of the CAG forums. Through our first season together, I established myself as a semi-suicidal trick runner and team captain (pulled a “Chun-Li” against the GBWL08 League Commissioner).

Draekon became our designated Tank/Hybrid (and all-around “get these guys off me” trouble shooter).

SynGamer went on to hold one of the highest number of betrayals in the league (a number that I now surpass him in) due to the number of times he and Fullmetal went at it during league games.

Fullmetal was our team’s “brute”, so to speak, lots of hammer kills, and aside from personality clashes with SynGamer, that was about it.

John Ketch became our team’s pinch hitter for 2 games after I benched SynGamer and Fullmetal for 1 game a piece after their infighting became too much of an issue and negatively affected the outcome of a game or two. Surprisingly enough, he ended up demolishing the other team in those games he played, and though I hoped he would play more games for us, his schedule simply didn’t allow for it.

Current Roster
For GBSL09 Pro League, Cheap Ass Gamer is represented by longtime players:
HotShotX (5th season with CAG)
Draekon (5th season with CAG)
SynGamer (5th season with CAG)
Kazink (3rd season with CAG, 4th overall)
xBRCx Crymeth4 (3rd season with CAG, 4th overall)

Which team do you have the most epic matches/fun with?
Bleep Bloop!, hands down. Back when we first crossed paths with them (and they were Super Happy Sunshine) in GBSL08, we ended up establishing a lot of connections and eventually started playing a lot of pick-up games with them. Penguin and Jenn over time became really good XBL friends with my girlfriend and I, and the CAG/BB! matchups always result in more laughs than I ever get in any other game online.

Surprisingly enough, Bleep Bloop! probably had the greatest influence on the CAG Playbook over our past seasons. With them being a heavy tanking team, we ending up taking flight to get over them to score (myself being an aerospace engineering student — now a professional — probably also had something to do with it). Bleep Bloop! consistently put up a strong offense and anti-air defense against us, and gave us many challenges to overcome in refining our playing style and ability.

Which team do you look up to the most?
I personally don’t really follow teams in the League other than Bleep Bloop! because of the history and competition between our two teams, and aside from them I’m at the point where I view each team the same: A new challenge to overcome and another chance for an awesome and exciting game for my team to enjoy and improve in.

Which team do you feel is your rival?
It goes without saying that the Cheap Ass Gamer / Bleep Bloop! rivalry is definitely one of the most energetic in the league. We’ve had two seasons where we were placed in the same division with one another, and in GBWL09 we surprised a couple of players and overcame them not once but twice on both the CAG Court and SNGB. On one hand it was great to beat our rivals, but at the same time I did not like eliminating our friends from the playoffs.

Bleep Bloop is one of the best teams in the league and without a doubt provides some of the best experiences CAG has had in our league history. They are the best rival one could ask for: a team that constantly challenges you but at the same time you have some of the best gaming experiences with. Pwnguin, Jenn, Puppy, Cofrog, Wolf, Tortoise, and Hippo, you guys have had the biggest hand in making Cheap Ass Gamer the team it is today, and we not only thankful but absolutely look forward to the next big grudge match with you all.

How does a Cheap Ass Gamer / Bleep Bloop! GBSL09 Pro League Championship sound to you guys?

What is the first thing to come to mind when you compare your team currently to when you first started playing together?
Launching. Period. If you play against CAG you know a launch is coming. Whether it’s a single man launch, one of my own massive single man launches (Fact: I launch farther than my teammates, hence I run less and launch more), a two man railgun, an “under-over” shotgun, a “desperation” corner launch, a triple launch over 75% of the court, a flowers, or “backing up” a launch in progress, you know that CAG is not using their hammers to kill as much as they are sending their teammates flying into walls and to the goal.

Aside from our playbook, our team chemistry has improved a lot. Our first season with SynGamer and Fullmetal literally had me breaking up fights and bickering amongst those two. In later seasons infighting changed to complaining about host and getting frustrated during a game. After 5 seasons however, I run a tight ship with Cheap Ass Gamer. I keep the teams small, communication is used solely for tactics, launch codes, and celebrating a goal. Frustration is reserved for only after the game, but quite frankly, we haven’t had a whole lot of that lately.

Do you have any shenanigans you do as a team?
Early in the GBSL09 season we started praying to the emblem on our home court during round 2 of the network test. Honestly it was a totally random thing I did during the test and started chanting out loud over the headset. Over time, less and less betrayals were happening during the “church session”, and more and more players and teams were joining us in our chant during round 2.

It’s one of the odder things I’ve seen in the leagues, but certainly one of the more interesting to take part in.

Is there anything special you do in the off season to prepare for Week 1?
When we first started out as a team, we used to practice 2-3 hours a day, 3-4 days a week. By GBSML08, we cut back to 1-2 hours 2-3 days a week, and these days we don’t practice at all outside of random pick up games, since we tend to have work, school, or family commitments that keep us busy.

We’ve reached a point where we know our playbook like the back of our hand, can pull off launches with 1-2 seconds notice, and get enough pickup games in solo or as a team to get ourselves competitive without practicing on a regular basis, and warming up about 45 minutes before each game.

Is there anything special you do before each game? (shenanigans or otherwise)
Other than warm-ups and our current “church prayer” on our home court, we don’t really do anything else prior to games other than some minor team discussion and tactics.

What sort of strategies do you use? (ie, tank heavy, host dependence, launch happy, etc)
Aside from our launching playbook (which I’ve already gone into heavy detail), we actually do have a bit of a tanking playbook as well. It sounds absurd coming from a team that is infamous for pulling off wins with ridiculously high negative K/D spreads, but are very capable of defending our goal with hammers and tanking our ball runner in for goals.

To me, it all comes down to aggression. Other teams prefer to hold onto the ball and hang back from the goal until they know for certain that their tanks can clear the goal, but we here at CAG will take on a suicide run if we think there’s even a remote chance of stiff arming our way to a goal (and it happens more often than not). So, it might only take us to kill one or two tanks before the opponent backs off of their run, you’re going to have to kill every last one of us before we back down from the run.

In short, we don’t get many kills, but we do get the ones that prevent us from being scored on.

How do you go about deciding who to put in during each game?
It’s quite simple. HotShotX, Draekon, Kazink, Crymeth. Each game, every game. SynGamer agreed to be our back-up in case of any availability issues arose, but even he has work at night during the week. We’ve even played a 3v3 against Anonymous when a member from each team wasn’t available.

In prior seasons, I used to have no more than 6 on the roster, and even tried giving each person beyond Draekon and myself equal time, but I didn’t like the procedure of scheduling who was to play in each game, based on their playing ability and the skill of the opponent for that day.

By GBSML08 , I started drifting towards the policy of the same 4 starters for playoffs, and then cut the team size to 5 and utilized the same 4 starters for every game whenever possible. In moving Tanked and Blind to the Cheap Ass Giraffes and SynGamer back to Cheap Ass Gamer, I ultimately made it possible for everyone really dedicated to the CAG Grifball Franchise to clock in a lot of playing time and challenge, by running two teams of 4 starters and 1-2 backups / trainees.

My apologies for the long interview, and while I know there are some of who don’t like walls of text to read, the CAG Franchise is pretty rich in history and launching shenanigans, so hopefully it’ll be a bit entertaining. Thanks for taking the time to read up on us, we look forward to continually creating a few upsets within the leagues, and entertaining you all with great highlights.

~HotShotX
Captain of Cheap Ass Gamer
Owner of CAG Grifball Franchise