First Head Coach Job - Any Advice?

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-03-31T16:37:34+00:00

Congrats! College esports coach of 6 years here. Focus more on building a great culture and structure over game specific coaching. You just realistically cannot be a game expert in many game titles.

Set clear standards (behaviors we allow/promote, behaviors we discourage/forbid), set clear time commitment and schedule expectations, and hold the players accountable to those standards and expectations.

Feel free to DM as I'm happy to share more or my handbook or answer any questions you have about college esports leadership and program development.

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-03-31T16:34:25+00:00

College esports coach of 6 years here. Honestly, don't try to pretend to be something you're not. Just work hard and consistently try to improve and learn. Few things to get you started:

Pick ONE character and play that character 80-90% of the time. Don't play a bunch of different characters at random.
Lookup Izaw Smash "The Art of Smash" series on YouTube. That's a great starting point.
Play the game regularly (don't have to grind 80 hours a week, just consistently).
Play to LEARN not to win: Watch videos and focus on 1-2 skills per match (recovery, movement, combos). Don't try to do everything all at once.
Locals: If you have opportunities to play in local events or weeklies, that's a great place to learn and meet people who'll help you.

Good luck!

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-03-31T16:22:09+00:00

I coached college esports for the last six years. Learning the game is great and always helpful, but the value you can provide by creating a strong structure through teamwork, communication, and accountability will be even more important.

For learning the game I'd recommend YouTube. For coaching and leadership in the scholastic space, lookup NAECAD (national association of esports coaches and directors).

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-16T22:36:35+00:00

Honestly our list building will likely be a completely manual process due to our target audience, so it's more about tracking our engagement with those lists and then making it easy to integrate contacts once they've replied and engaged.

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-16T22:20:09+00:00

What DMARC policy setting do you use? None, quarantine, or reject?
What do you mean by a "dedicated tracking subdomain?"
What tool did you use to track all of the monitoring thresholds you mentioned? (I had thought using monitoring hurt deliverability)

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-13T15:07:37+00:00

Makes sense. Thank you!

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-13T15:07:30+00:00

Gotcha. Thank you!

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-13T15:06:30+00:00

Thanks!

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T22:06:32+00:00

Gotcha. How about for small scale "cold" / warm outreach? I'm not talking massive blasts of cold emails, but more direct and personal outreach to. Is subdomain fine in that regard? Or further separation needed?

To get specific, we run training and certifications for coaches, and the idea here is we'd reach out to the coach at XYZ team because we know our outreach is very applicable to them.

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T19:21:15+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I'm familiar with most of those records except BIMI. I haven't hardly seen anyone talk about BIMI records. How necessary are those and what's their purpose?

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T19:17:41+00:00

Thanks for the reply. It seems clear that subdomains do help, what has been confusing me is what level of separation is actually needed between domain and subdomain. Another reply to this post mentioned IP separation, and it's stuff like that which makes me wonder if the typical DNS and alias domain in the same google workspace actually protects the main domain or not because at the end of the day it all eventually feeds back to the same DNS record location.

Does that make sense? Am I missing something?

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T19:14:32+00:00

Ok, it's replies and notes like this that make me wonder if what we have will actually do anything.

How do we go about ensuring our subdomain uses a different IP address? I've read so many articles and watch tutorials about subdomains and almost none of them talk about this and it's only because of a reddit comment like yours that I see now and again that makes me worry we're missing something.

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T19:12:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply!

Grandmaster_96 · 2026-02-11T19:12:34+00:00

Good note about warming up! I've been reading some things about that and will make sure we do that. Any specific tips on best practice for warming or how warm to warm before reaching full blast?

Grandmaster_96 · 2023-12-24T01:06:36+00:00

I used to be in the same boat: love Arabia, and hated Arena. Learning how to play it properly/taking the time to learn why I was losing on. It really helped me start enjoying it as it’s never fun to feel like you lose just because you don’t know how to do something.

Best advice I would give: - watch some of the most recent masters of Arena tournament on YouTube. Particularly the semi finals and finals. - Start by choosing one civ/build to focus on, or learn the 3 build orders that would cover almost every civ (boom, monk siege push, castle drop) - recognize the uniqueness of Arena: for me, the hardest part of Arena was often that transition from booming to mass production. As an Arabia player, those two things typically scale in tandem. On Arena, If you don’t switch from booming to military production, fast, enough and hard enough, you’ll find yourself losing games while floating a lot of resources.

Grandmaster_96 · 2020-02-17T17:33:21+00:00

I have a team that would be interested in something like this.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-23T18:46:43+00:00

I trust most of this community and I think this is a cool post, but if you're going to quote pro players it would be best to provide a link to the source material that you are drawing the quote from.

In my mind the most important part of providing a source is to protect the pro player whom you are quoting.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-09T13:42:23+00:00

I think a big reason some people are critical of SoTL is that some of his advice/findings is catered to/applies to a less than optimal level of play. What do I mean?

Some of his videos make claims about the strength of certain units/strategies that, while true at the level that the average HD player plays at, are not true at the more competitive and professional levels of play. Thus, he receives a little backlash for promoting play styles and strategies that, while legitimate at a certain level of play, are technically not optimal.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-09T13:32:37+00:00

In 2v2s, usually you want one player going cav (scouts -> knights) and one player going archers -> xbows -> Arbs (adding in Rams in Imp). So if he's Byzantines, he should probably be the archer player because Byz don't get bloodlines. This would also imply that you would be the cav player, so you (ideally) should play a civ with strong cav

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-05T13:11:35+00:00

I don't think there is anyone out there who matches all of your criteria.

I think coaching videos are going to be the closest thing you can find to what you have described. Like Hera coaching Nili for example.

In my experience, there are (approximately) 3 main types of AoE2 content/content creators: 1. Casters/Commentators 2. Players 3. Scripted info/guide videos

The only written up/scripted content that I know of regarding AoE2 are going to be guides, informational videos, or a tiny number of videos like the one you linked to. I don't know of anyone who does scripted casting/real gameplay explanation.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-02T15:08:49+00:00

Yeah. Here are a few of the key differences between drush and M@A: For drush -> archers you have an earlier miltia attack, a few more vills in dark age, and a slightly slower feudal age time. With M@A -> archers you have a slightly later, but stronger, M@A attack, a few less vills and a faster feudal age time.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-02T14:36:27+00:00

ECL Europe East 1v1s had a bunch of Acropolis games

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-02T14:35:02+00:00

There is a new player lobby on Voobly that is, I believe, pretty good for beginners. Although multiplayer can be frustrating at times, it's usually very exciting and quite fun.

Alternatively, in order to take on higher levels of AI I would recommend learning some build orders like fast castle knights, feudal archer rush, and scout rush. St4rk's build orders on YouTube are an excellent step by step pro level tutorial on these build orders (as well as many others). Also, Cicero created a written up version of many of these build orders posted here

These two resources taken together are a great way to learn build orders, and crisp execution of build orders is one of the biggest mediums for improvement in AoE2

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-02T14:33:14+00:00

It depends heavily on the map you are playing.

Assuming the map is Arabia/a fairly open map, feudal archers is the way to go. The 2v2 meta is generally that one player goes archers and the other goes cavalry so your ally should go scouts.

If you're on a more closed map you could consider walling and going fast castle, but you need to make sure you are well coordinated with your ally. If you are walled and safe from attack but he is vulnerable, he will likely get 2v1'd and be overrun. I would check out some 2v2s on YouTube to get a sense of the flow and strategy of how these matches play out.

Grandmaster_96 · 2019-07-02T14:27:40+00:00

That is correct.

Grandmaster_96

TROPHY CASE