Competitive Play

Competitive play occurs when two parties engage in a match with the victor being awarded a commonly desired good. The greater the perceived value of the good, the more competitive the event is going to be. Unlike the case with professional competitive sports, in JKA those goods rarely if ever include set material rewards like money prizes and are mostly centered around social goods like status, prestige and respect. The primary goal of competitive play in JKA is therefore the testing of one's merit and skills as a player or team against those of other competitors. The competitive event can take on various forms in various gametypes and although competition in CTF has a very strong tradition in JKA, competition most often happens in the context of two parties engaging in some form of saber combat. In all cases, competitive play flourishes the most when situated within a larger organizational structure, like a formal league or ranking system.

The History of Competitive Sabering

The history of competitive sabering is a cross between the history of formal competitive venues in general and the history of great clans and players in particular. Competitive events were almost exclusively played without pickups and without force powers, and were governed by a codified set of rules agreed upon by all the players.

Rulesets could vary widely across events, but the two most common for duels were: The American standard of playing a match where the victor was determined by the player that first scored 10 points, with each point being awarded for a successful kill, and the health of both players resetting after each point. The second standard was the European ESL one where the victor of a given duel was determined by the player who either first scored 10 points or ended up with the most points after a 10 minutes timelimit, and where the player scoring a point continued on with the amount of health and shields that he had left over from the previous fight.

Team Free For All matches were most often held across two rounds with either a specified fraglimit, timelimit or both, and the winner was almost always determined by counting up the scores of both rounds together and awarding the team with the highest score. The most prestigious form of TFFA competition was the 3on3 or 4on4 format, also called Team Deathmatch (TDM), but 2on2 matches were not only widely popular, they were oftentimes highly acclaimed as well.

Although serious competition was definitely possible on heavily modded servers, it most often took place on basejka or on mods that strictly preserved the original sabering environment as much as possible. The reasoning behind this insistence on unmodded servers was that the point of competitive play was to determine the better player simpliciter, that is without any qualification, whereas playing on mods like JA+ that significantly change the sabering system just adds such a qualification. A second popular argument was that modded servers inevitably made the sabering mechanics worse by (oftentimes unintentionally) introducing factors that increased the randomness of the gameplay. Whatever the case may be, the main reasons as to why competitive play never took off within communities favouring modded servers was on the one hand the lack of a central organizational structure, like a proper league, and on the other hand the lack of interest towards competitive play in general by players that frequented modded servers.

The Mythical Past: Late 2003 to Late 2005

The early history of competitive play in JKA is now shrouded in a lot of darkness, because very little tangible information survived over the years. For a variety of reasons, the time period between the release of JKA and late 2005 features very little interaction between the American and European communities. This is primarily due to two factors: First, the fact that both sides had their own specialized competitive organzations, providing them with ample opportunity for formal means of competitive play, and secondly, the way internet latency heavily affects gameplay in JKA was a demotivating factor for both sides and made formal cross-continental competition more difficult.

America and BWN

Although shortly after the release of the game in September 2003, many high-profile clans emerged like OoS, KoP, AIM and BSoV, the early period of American JKA was first and foremost the period of clan Master, a large but elite clan with roots in JK2 run by Master DarkStar. It would be Master that eventually set out to create a formal competitive venue in late 2003, dubbing it Bladeworks Network (BWN). However, although BWN provided a good competitive outlet for the American community as a whole, seeing as there was no real alternative, it lacked the necessary rigour for competitive play to truly flourish, as it had serious flaws that made the system prone to abuse and thus an unreliable means of tracking player skill.

With the eventual dissolution of clan OoS in early 2004, WoV started becoming more respectable as a clan thanks to the efforts of Intrepid aka Kilroy, who took it upon himself to recruit a lot of top ex-OoS players. In just a few months WoV ascended from being an inactive JK2 clan to a serious force in competitive JKA, rivaling other great clans like BSoV, Seraph, JKT, DoX and Loi at that point. Master was still by far the most dominating clan though, with some of their members gaining an almost mythological reputation for their skill in combat.

Most prone to this kind of idolisation was Master DarkStar. He was widely considered to have been the greatest of all players within the American competitive scene, with an unimaginable level of skill. He was the dominant force behind clan Master, both in terms of fighting prowess as well as administrative authority, and was for a year and a half the single most successful duelist on BWN. Many speculated that he had been an internal beta tester for the game, seeing how he was so far ahead of everyone else shortly after JKA's release, many others thought he was just merely talented. Whatever the case may be, as DarkStar tried to maintain as high a standard of recruitment as possible for that time, Master was thus a notoriously difficult clan to get into. It is therefore to noone's surprise that Master remained by far the most looked up to clan with the highest skilled members in North America, including such former greats as Sword, Predator, Psycho, SiNiStaR, Omega, Wick3D, Ninja! and Oldlady.

However, as time went by, so did WoV's prowess increase, so much so that the clan was eventually recognized as rivaling Master. Things turned for the worse as some of Master's core members, most notably DarkStar himself, became more and more inactive towards the end of 2004 and Master suddenly and surprisingly disbanded in December of the same year. WoV used this opportunity to pick up some of the most notable ex-Masters, including former Master Viper, and became the de facto best American clan for its time.

Some of the former Masters formed their own teams, as did Ironlung with Wu, Keyo with clan Prophet or Oldlady with clan Nurse, the latter of which became a temporary playing ground for a lot of ex-Masters, like Radman or Wick3D aka Raw. Others joined various miscellaneous clans, as did former Master LFT who joined clan YV. Most, however, simply retired, including Sword, Predator and Psycho.

It was at that time in January 2005 that WoV were becoming more aware of their aspirations towards greatness and began restructuring their clan, forming a new rank that was reserved only for its best and most prestigious players and naming it Wovian; the players included were Intrepid, sh0, Sauce, Noir, Kidster, Leif, Viper, Deception and Fusion, later on adding Matrix, Ransom and Autumn as well. They sought not only to preserve their spot at the very top of the American competitive community, they also, for the first time ever in the history of American JKA, actively sought out to compete against top European teams.

Wovian began practicing on European servers a lot to get used to playing with a high ping. They were very quickly recognized as a major contender to many top European clans at that time, although they were completely unaware of the ESL's existence. Wovian played Ozone in an official match on 15.03.2005, a few months before Ozone went on to join the ESL, and they managed to beat the top European clan with a score of 40-25 and 34-40. A few weeks later Wovian Ransom and sh0 would go on to play Zedi's famous main 2v2 team, consisting of Dimension and Twilight, and won both rounds.

In the meantime, DarkStar surprisingly made a return and reformed clan Master under the guise of [Ki], to which most former Masters had flocked once again. However, even though [Ki] quickly rose to challenge the top of the American community, it was widely acknowledged that they could not compete against Wovian anymore, who were now busy with their quest for world domination. In fact, [Ki] never bothered to formally assert itself against Wovian, being content with playing actively on BWN, and indeed, [Ki] would turn out to be very short-lived as DarkStar once again suddenly disappeared in April of 2005, leaving the clan without a leader and eventually fading away into oblivion.

It was in that April of 2005 that Wovian was at the height of its power and officially challenged aXiom to a match. On the second of April, Wovian fielded sh0, Viper and Ransom against aXiom's Dureal, Xerxes and Warp. The first round was to be played on a European server, from which aXiom easily emerged victorious with a score of 68-32. For the second round Wovian tried to counteract the possibility of aXiom adopting a very passive strategy and picked the duel map Bespine Courtyard for the match. Unfortunately, although Wovian won the second round easily with a score of 82-59, they were unable to catch up with aXiom in scores, losing the match with a final score of 114-127.

Even though Wovian managed to play a good game against aXiom, their first major defeat since early 2004 was too big of a disappointment for a clan that was so much used to winning major events and they began falling into inactivity. The resentment that the restructuring caused amongst the members that were not allowed into the elite Wovian section was becoming a burden as well, with many important members feeling betrayed and leaving the clan out of protest. Wovian tried to counteract this development and eventually abandoned its rank structure in late April 2005, but it was too little too late. The German top clan *aiming would formally challenge the team on the first of May 2005, but Wovian was so inactive by then that they didn't even respond to the challenge.

With this onset of inactivity, some of the core Wovian members began to leave the team as well. This included most notably Matrix, who joined DoX. Shortly thereafter DoX would also recruit former KoP player subLime, who was widely considered alongside KoP's Dark_Knight to have been the best dual saberist in the entire American community. With those recent acquisitions and the inactivity of Wovian and [Ki], DoX was looking to usurp the title of NA champions. However, their aspirations would be dashed from an unlikely source. A team with no reputation at all had gained tremenduous momentum over the last few months, defeating various smaller clans, and in August 2005 had become serious enough to challenge DoX to an official match: It was the Jedi Academy Aurochs.

The Aurochs were the first competitive NA-European hybrid team that emerged out of the ideals propagated by the Jedi Academy, which was a school dedicated to helping new players improve in all aspects of JKA. They were also the only competitive team left in JKA to play without poke. As of mid 2005, the Aurochs' lineup included most notably such players like Tido, Jaws! (aka JKXIII), former Master Deqlyn, Sauce, Refl3x, ProXimo, Kain and Masta. DoX did not pull any punches against the Aurochs and fielded their very best lineup, consisting of Matrix, Havok, subLime and skillz. A lot was on the line. After an incredibly close and tense match, the Aurochs won both rounds with scores of 50-48 and 50-46.

The Aurochs went on to play the top clan KoP shortly thereafter and won convincingly with scores of 50-39 and 50-40. Just to make sure everyone got the message, they rechallenged DoX to another game that was held on 10.08.2005. However, this time around DoX was losing so badly that some of their members, most notably subLime in the first round and skillz in the second, ragequit in the middle of the game, forcing DoX to substitute them with lesser players like bWb and brutality. The scores were appropriately convincing: 50-23 and 50-39 for the Aurochs.

For almost half a year the Aurochs, playing without poke, would remain at the very top of the American competitive scene. In fact, in September 2005 they would go on to become the first American team ever to sign up for the ESL and actively compete against the European elite.

Europe: Zedi and ESL

The early history of European competitive play was largely dominated by the ESL - the Electronic Sports League. Due to the success that JK2 enjoyed as part of the ESL, the organization made available a plethora of ladders for JKA on the release of the game in September 2003. This provided an excellent means for competitive play right from the start, but even with a proper structure secured, European competition flourished outside of the ESL from late 2003 to late 2004.

In fact, although the ESL quickly saw the creation and ascension of great teams like aXiom and *aiming, alongside various strategic developments like the discovery of the wiggle aka poke, many of the best European clans from late 2003 and early 2004 could be found playing in non-ESL competitive venues made available by various others organizations like Wireplay or ClanBase. In fact, it would be those other leagues and tournaments that facilitated the rise of clans like RNX, BBQ and eF.

While aXiom][Dureal quickly became famous for introducing the poke into the ESL in late 2003 and thus ending the domination of staffers on the ladders, clans like BBQ with top players like Picto, Remus and Blindside were already ontop of the European scene. In fact, BBQ was the only team to have been a match for aXiom's early 2v2 stars Dureal and Sadrior in late 2003, who lost to BBQ early on in aXiom's conception. It was against this background that in January 2004 a few members of the then recently disbanded clans [SASH] and [dF] founded a clan that would become one of the most famous and controversial clans in the history of JKA: Zedi.

Right from its conception, Zedi had great aspirations: Their purpose was to become the best and most respectable clan ever made. Their original set of members around the time of its conception were Maze, Tox, Cookie, Dimension and Sleepy, the latter of which soon afterwards went out to recruit Dark and Twilight. A few weeks later Envy, pr0 and FeadeR joined the team as well, with Cookie and Tox quickly becoming inactive.

Zedi practiced a great deal before they accepted official matches or signed up for leagues to avoid early losses. They nonetheless incured an early defeat against clan Pain and then, once they had signed up for the Wireplay 4v4 League, lost their first match against BBQ early in 2004. Unfortunately BBQ left the league a few weeks later, disbanding shortly afterwards, but Zedi still had other hurdles to overcome on their road to glory: They were put in the same league division as the top clans RNX and eF.

Although RNX was a serious contender at that time, Zedi's main threat was clan eF with such great players as Te0, Ri0 and Lazy. This would be Zedi's greatest challenge yet, and in two incredibly close matches Zedi tied eF 196-196 and 122-122. They would go on to beat RNX twice in the league, but lose once outside of it, and defeat the rest of the lesser teams signed up. This would secure Zedi the first place in the Wireplay 4v4 League and they were awarded the championship in early April 2004.

Later on in the same month Zedi signed up for the ClanBase 2v2 League, which was one of the largest tournaments at that time but unfortunately did not feature any of the other top European teams that participated in the Wireplay League a few weeks earlier, and so Zedi would take the championship uncontested.

In the meantime, the ESL had become the go-to league for central European talent, most notably the Germans. It had a very strong German community with a lot of top clans actively competing against one another, including *aiming, eSe, hac, sR and most notably aXiom. In fact, aXiom's ESL dominance had already taken roots in early 2004 when Dureal ascended to the first rank of the international 1v1 ladder with barely any losses. He was also at the head of the most successful 2v2 team at that time, consisting of himself and Sadrior. By the time Zedi won their ClanBase championship in April 2004, aXiom's 2v2 team had been placed first in the 2v2 ladder for four consecutive months with a score of 22-2.

Zedi was at the height of their power in April 2004 and played a lot of matches outside of their formal leagues and tournaments - this included most notably the German top clan Saber Riders, fielding such famous players as BlooDclaw and zentur1o aka EviLWindu. There is some controversy surrounding that match, however, as team sR had to play with rather high pings on Zedi's server in the first round and yet only just barely lost with a score of 80-89. Also, it is uncertain whether this match was supposed to be mere practice or if it was an official clan match.

Whatever the case may be, Zedi was quickly becoming inactive in May 2004. In fact, even though they knew very well about the existence of the ESL and even signed up for it, they didn't any matches there at all. (source) After a few additional games outside of any formal venue, including games against *aiming, hac, XiO and TuA, Zedi officially disbanded in October 2004 for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to the frictions that formed between their players.

The remaining Zedi players, most of them inactive by that point, formed team Presidents and even signed it up for ESL, but they once again failed to play any games outside of two 2v2s against insignificant teams. In December 2004 was reformed when Presidents merged with clan [<<] and brought in new players like AngeL. (source) This created a streak of activity where Zedi would go on to play a lot of clans over a period of a few weeks. However, they once more completely avoided playing on the ESL, despite having league accounts and registered teams.

In the meantime, aXiom established itself as the most dominant force on the ESL. Dureal stopped losing 1v1s entirely by that point, running a score of 142 wins to 4 losses on the international 1v1 ladder, and the majority of the top 10 players on there were on his team. His 2v2 team with Sadrior was equally as successful: By the end of 2004, they were ranked first on the ladder with a record of 28 wins and 2 losses. Dureal also signed up his team for the TDM ladder in early 2004 where they kept a record of 18 wins to 1 loss, beating such top German clans like *aiming, hac and RGA on multiple occasions. The team seemed unbeatable and aXiom would eventually go ahead and host a 2v2 tournament in December 2004.

Zedi would sign up their main 2v2 team consisting of Dimension and Twilight for aXiom's tournament. They reached the finals of that tournament without facing anyone of note, but were now pitched against aXiom's famous duo: Sadrior and Dureal. Unfortunately the match never got off the ground because Zedi repeatedly failed to show up for the match, so aXiom was awarded a default win.

This sparked a controversy that put Zedi's achievements into question. Before the official dissolution of Zedi in October 2005, their results page correctly distinguished between matches that were official, matches that were played as part of the Wireplay or ClanBase leagues and matches that were merely practice, calling the latter 'friendly'. (source) However, Zedi did not properly distinguish between official matches and scrims, so they calculated the practice matches into their overall score, with many teams complaining that Zedi was priding itself on doing well in scrims that other clans didn't take seriously. (source)

The controversy reached a highpoint in December 2012 when zedi´Dimension and zedi´Nanaki went on to show off results on the ESL forums of matches that Zedi played against some of the top German clans at that time. They were widely criticised for bragging about victories of unofficial matches and were called out multiple times to play the teams in the ESL. Zedi did not comment on those alligations and although they promised to play on the ESL, no TFFA matches were conducted. Both Dimension as well as Twilight joined the ESL 1v1 ladder shortly thereafter, but were largely unsuccessful: Dimension most notably played Dureal in a 1v1 and lost both rounds with scores of 8-2 and 8-6.

Zedi's activity remained sporadic for the first few months of 2005, largely consisting of spontaneous matches with various clans. They most notably lost to Wovian around that time, despite fielding their best 2v2 team against the Americans. It was in early 2005 that Zedi had shut down their website for various reasons and replaced it with a score table that did not discriminate between 'friendly' and official matches at all anymore, with no mention of their match against Wovian either. (source)

More importantly, June 2005 saw the formation of a team that would go on to become actually great: no.Limits. Right from the start team no.Limits was recognized as a serious contender after they had managed to assert themselves against top clans like the second ranked LeiSure as well as the old timers *aiming and hac.

However, noone at that time could have forseen what would befall the European competitive community in that autumn - something happened in August 2005 that fundamentally upset the entire order of the ESL and marked the European competitive ever since: Ozone had signed up for the ESL.

The Big Four Hypothesis

The history of competitive sabering has shown that the amount of clans that truly deserve to be called great can be reduced to four. There has been a number of successful but short-lived clans, and sometimes the success of other clans was due to refusing to play the bigger fish in the pond. Therefore, what determines the greatness of a given clan is its consistent and long lasting success against every clan in the world, especially the ones with the highest level of skill. This kind of consistency has only been seen in four clans: starAiming, no.Limits, Ozone and aXiom.

The striking difference between those clans and other top teams in the world can be made apparent by taking a closer look at how those other top clans did against the Big Four. For example, clan TuA is widely considered to be amongst the best competitive clans ever conceived, harboring many excellent players like Hell Raiser, and TuA has not shunned away from challenging the Big Four many times over a timespan of roughly four years. They played *aiming 6 times, aXiom 5 times and no.Limits 6 times. Out of those games, they won not a single one against *aiming, not a single one against aXiom and only one out of their 6 games against no.Limits.

And yet again, it doesn't look any better for any of the other top clans: 333's record against Ozone is one loss, zero wins; against *aiming it's one loss, zero wins too, and against no.Limits it's 4 losses and 3 wins. The top German clan corona has a record against no.Limits of 5 losses and 1 win, against Ozone it's 2 losses and no wins, against *aiming it's 9 losses and 7 wins and they drew against aXiom with 2 losses and 2 wins. The great American clan Number 2 lost against Ozone 3 times, winning once, they lost against no.Limits 4 times, winning only once, and they tied with *aiming 1-1.

Ontop of that, the Big Four were tightly knit invite-only clans that rarely accepted new members and rarely had anyone leave their clans for other team - unlike the case with many other top teams like corona or TuA. So the Big Four was an elite group, harboring not only the very best JKA players in existence, but also staying far above the rest of the competitive world in terms of sheer skill. Everyone knew that whenever a clash between Big Four members was taking place, the resulting games would be the stuff of legends. But how well did the four clans do against one another?

Team no.Limits joined the ESL ladder in mid 2005 and left it in late 2007. After a year long break from competitive play, they rejoined the ladder in late 2008 and stayed for another year till August 2009, when they finally retired. In that time, no.Limits played *aiming on many occasions, starting as early as August 2005, where they won both rounds with scores of 58-41 and 62-59. Although no.Limits would go on to win their next encounter as well, their win-loss ratio evened out in 2006, where victories would alternate between the two teams. Their final match would take place in January 2007 in the finals of the ESL New Year's Cup and would see no.Limits lose the first round 27-35 and a win the second one 53-41, winning the entire match with a score of 80-76.

Clan *aiming would turn out to be the team with the greatest consistency and staying power. They were one of earliest

Chronological Order of Matches

18-02-04	aXiom	*aiming	2v2	62 - 44
13-04-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	44 - 32
14-11-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	32 - 10
14-06-05	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	129 - 128
23-06-05	aXiom	no.Limits	TDM	166 - 134
29-06-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	23 - 27
03-08-05	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	120 - 100
11-09-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	27 - 23
11-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	40 - 16
12-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	TDM	130 - 111
18-09-05	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	72 - 64
19-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	7 - 10
26-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	TDM	126 - 94
05-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	92 - 94
28-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	2v2	28 - 27
07-04-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	109 - 101
14-05-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	116 - 110
18-06-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	77 - 96
10-09-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	105 - 93
16-11-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	69 - 76
20-01-07	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	80 - 76
25-03-07	Zedi (o3)	*aiming	TDM	103 - 85
05-08-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 72
14-10-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	78 - 69
14-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	90 - 65
24-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 56
28-10-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	68 - 64
14-12-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	50 - 57

teams to sign up for the ESL, namely on 21.10.2003, shortly after the ESL made available ladders dedicated to JKA, and would stay on the ladder, playing at various levels of activity, until March 2009. Unlike the other teams of the Big Four, *aiming never reformed their main team or abstained from playing on the ladder for longer periods of time. Their 2v2 team, consisting of *aiming.dev and *aiming.syLezz, was one of the most successful teams in the history of JKA and they were the first ones to beat Ozone's famous players Osiris and inSane in an official ESL match on 29.06.2005. Ozone would take its revenge a few months later, beating *aiming both in 2v2 as well as TDM before they took their sights on team no.Limits. Ozone's core players Dark and Ven would later on, teaming up with JS' Grizzli under the guise of zedi, take on *aiming one more time in March 2007 and win with a score of 41-31 and 62-54.

Ozone was peculiar in many ways. They had the shortest longevity of any of the Big Four, staying only from 25.08.2005 to 27.10.2006 on the ladder and later on partially reforming as Zedi in 2007 - the vast majority of Zedi games in 2007 were played by Ozone's previous core players Dark, Ven, Osiris and either one of the previous Jedi Sentinel players Minneyar and Grizzli. So even if drawing a continuity from Ozone to Zedi were permitted, the clan only remained actively participating in the ESL for roughly two years - a rather short period of time compared to *aiming's six years. In that time, however, Ozone achieved more than any other clan in the history of JKA.

As previously mentioned, Ozone set their sights on no.Limits after their 2v2 and TDM victories against *aiming, and they successfully beat the top team in an incredibly tense match with the scores 36-36 and 36-28. They would go on to lose to no.Limits twice in early 2006, but win a victory shortly after in one of Ozone's final matches with a score of 52-50 and 57-51. Most notably, however, would be the fact that Ozone effectively dethroned aXiom as the world's best team in both 2v2 as well as TDM, tying with aXiom's 2v2 team 1-1 in matches and defeating them in one of the most famous TDM matches in JKA history with a score of 57-36 and 69-55.

Before that famous loss against Ozone encouraged aXiom to take a break, aXiom had already defeated no.Limits with a score of 75-61 and 91-73 in the only match that would ever take place between the two clans. They had also defeated *aiming three times in TDM and once in 2v2 by that point. After aXiom returned from their break in July 2007 and rejoined the ladders, they lost their first match against *aiming in August, but went on to play the team five more times, losing only once at the very end of their career in December 2008.

From a chronological point of view, certain areas of dominance become apparent: Team aXiom was incredibly successful early on from around 2004 to 2005 and then once more in 2007 and 2008. They were unfortunately almost entirely absent in the critical time period of late 2005 to early 2006 when Ozone was at its best. Whereas no.Limits and *aiming remained powerful throughout, both clans became the dominant force in JKA after Ozone had become inactive in mid 2006.

In terms of the overall amount of matches won against members of the Big Four, aXiom is the clear winner with an overall score of 10-4. However, they owe 8 out of their 10 wins to *aiming, against whom they maintain an 8-2 record. Considering how often aXiom played against *aiming, one therefore has to take the overall scores with a grain of salt: If it were not for *aiming, aXiom's record against the Big Four would be at a meager 2-2. Ozone takes the second spot in

Total Score in Matches

aXiom	8 - 2	*aiming
Ozone	2 - 2	no.Limits
Ozone	3 - 1	*aiming
no.Limits	0 - 1	aXiom
*aiming	2 - 4	no.Limits
Ozone	2 - 1	aXiom

terms of win ratios: They draw against no.Limits with a score of 2-2, beat aXiom 2-1 and *aiming 3-1 for an overall record of 7-4. Team no.Limits comes in third with an overall record of 6 wins and 5 losses against the Big Four. However, if one were to remove *aiming from the equation, the rankings would look rather different: Ozone would secure first place with a score of 4-3, aXiom would be tied 2-2 and no.Limits would remain third with a score of 3-4.

As for the total amount of wins on the ladder: aXiom once again takes the lead with a record of 114 wins and 13 losses over a time period of 37 months. It is interesting to point out that no.Limits played almost exactly the same amount of matches as aXiom did, with a record of 104 wins and 19 losses, but they only stayed in the ladder for 26 months in total - almost a year less than aXiom did. They were thus generally more active than aXiom, but still far below the peak activity of Ozone, which managed to score 64 wins to 6 losses over a period of just 18 months.

Although *aiming seems to be an outlier in every regard, it is important to note that this clan more than any of the other Big Four aspired to play almost exclusively good teams and oftentimes ignored challenges of lesser ones. *aiming is the team with by far the most overall games played against the Big Four, namely 20 in comparison to aXiom's 14 and Ozone's and no.Limit's 11. It is also the team that played the most clans that were ranked top 10 or higher on the ESL ladder, with 89 of their 103 matches being against the top10 of the ladder (86%), while the next Big Four on the list would be no.Limits with only 76 out of their 123 played against the top10 (75%). Coupled with the fact that *aiming never reformed their team, it is safe to say that they have the longest tradition of exceptional play and great achievements.

	Games	Big Four	Ladder	vs Top 10	Months in Ladder
aXiom	127	10 - 4 (71%)	114 – 13 (90%)	87 (69%)	37
Ozone	70	7 - 4 (64%)	64 - 6 (91%)	35 (50%)	18
no.Limits	123	6 - 5 (55%)	104 – 19 (85%)	76 (75%)	26
*aiming	103	5 - 15 (25%)	69 - 34 (67%)	89 (86%)	65

A Big Five?

But are there really no other candidates for the best and most successful clans in the history of JKA outside of the Big Four? Considering that a good part of the competitive community widely acknowledges Zedi to have had the strongest and most successful lineup of all time, it seems curious as to why Zedi would not count as a member of the Big Four, making it a Big Five.

There are multiple good reasons for this: For one, Zedi did not have the staying power of the other dominant clans in JKA. They were founded in January 2004 by Hybrid and Sleepy and disbanded officially in October the same year, although they did go on to play a few additional games until January 2005 - but even if we count the 3 months after the dissolution of the clan, it is still just merely a year. But that is not the main issue plaguing Zedi's merit.

Although nobody disputes their victories over top clans RNX and BBQ in early 2004, there is a controversy surround Zedi's overall achievements. Back in October 2004, their results page distinguished their official, wireplay and clanbase ladder matches from 'friendly' matches, with the vast majority of them being termed 'friendly'. Even back then a lot of teams complained that Zedi were publishing results of unofficial scrims or practice matches on their page. The allegations reached their highpoint when Zedi shut down its website in early 2005 and replaced it with a score table that did not discriminate between 'friendly' and official matches anymore. In fact, Zedi was called out on the ESL forums about those matters, but did not comment.

In fact, Zedi knew very well about the ESL league and the prowess of some of their teams in late 2004, but decided not to participate or even back up their claims of greatness by challenging said teams outside of the ESL to official matches, even though they had perfectly good reasons to do so, especially in light of the controversy surrounding their achievements. Nobody would be in a position to dispute their skill at that time if they had decided to play other top teams in official matches. However, Zedi never took it upon itself to prove once and for all that they truly belong amongst the greats: In fact, Zedi´Dimension would go on to lose an official ESL 1v1 against Dureal in December 2004 with a score of 8-6 and 8-2, and neither their unofficial 2v2 team nor their 1v1 players were doing very well on the ladders. In light of all that, Zedi does not qualify for the Big Four.

Team America

The Big Four consist solely of European teams, but what about the other side of the continent? Even though Wovian expanded very late into the European scene and officially challenged both Ozone and aXiom in early 2005, winning against the former and losing against the latter, they basically stopped existing in May of the same year. But what about the most successful of the American teams: Number 2?

Although Number 2 did beat a variety of top teams for their time, their overall TDM ladder record is not very impressive: 21 wins and 17 losses over a period of 6 months. They also do not boast a very high win rate against the Big Four, losing 3-1 to Ozone, 4-1 to no.Limits and drawing *aiming 1-1, with no games played against aXiom. So they have neither the staying power nor the success required to be counted amongst the greats. However, what if we take the American JKA scene as a whole? Could a potential Team America, spanning the highpoints of Wovian, Number 2, Dynamite and Sin rival the greatness of any of the Big Four?

Team Dynamite had a ladder record of 21 wins and 6 losses over 17 months, drew no.Limits in September 2006 with a score of 51-34 and 26-39, and was tied with *aiming in matches with a score of 1-1. Sin was active for a period of 8 months, although they idled on the ladder for almost a year, and left the ladder with a record of 27 wins and 7 losses, losing to zedi (Ozone) once in 2007, overcoming *aiming 1-0 and losing to no.Limits 0-1.

In total, a potential Team America would be at a 33% win percentage against the Big Four with a score of 6-12. Their teams actively participated on the ladder for a total of 31 months with a final ladder score of 69 wins and 28 losses (71%), with 70 of their 97 games (72%) being played against teams ranked 10 or higher. If one compares that to the statistics of the Big Four, Team America does indeed better than *aiming. This is made especially pertinent by the fact that Team America even has a positive overall match score against *aiming: namely 3 wins and 2 losses.

So if one were to be so inclined as to take the achievements of all the best and most successful American teams and put them together to form one grand continental team to pitch against the Big Four, then such a potential Team America would indeed just barely exceed *aiming as a member of the Big Four - turning it into a Big Five.

Notable Games

Chronological Order of Matches

18-02-04	aXiom	*aiming	2v2	62 - 44
13-04-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	44 - 32
14-11-04	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	32 - 10
14-06-05	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	129 - 128
23-06-05	aXiom	no.Limits	TDM	166 - 134
29-06-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	23 - 27
03-08-05	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	120 - 100
11-09-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	27 - 23
11-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	2v2	40 - 16
12-09-05	Ozone	*aiming	TDM	130 - 111
18-09-05	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	72 - 64
19-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	2v2	7 - 10
26-10-05	Ozone	aXiom	TDM	126 - 94
05-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	92 - 94
28-03-06	Ozone	no.Limits	2v2	28 - 27 (ELO)
07-04-06	Ozone	no.Limits	TDM	109 - 101
14-05-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	116 - 110
18-06-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	77 - 96
10-09-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	105 - 93
16-11-06	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	69 - 76
20-01-07	no.Limits	*aiming	TDM	80 - 76
05-08-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 72
14-10-07	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	78 - 69
14-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	90 - 65
24-08-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	59 - 56
28-10-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	68 - 64
14-12-08	aXiom	*aiming	TDM	50 - 57

Total Score in Matches

aXiom	8 - 2	*aiming
Ozone	2 - 2	no.Limits
Ozone	3 - 1	*aiming
no.Limits	0 - 1	aXiom
*aiming	2 - 4	no.Limits
Ozone	2 - 1	aXiom

	Games	Big Four	Ladder	Months in Ladder
aXiom	127	10 - 4 (71%)	114 – 13 (90%)	37
Ozone	70	7 - 4 (64%)	64 - 6 (64%)	14
no.Limits	123	6 - 5 (55%)	104 – 19 (85%)	26
Team America	97	6-12 (33%)	69 - 28 (71%)	31
*aiming	103	5 - 15 (25%)	69 - 34 (67%)	65