Hello, Water Vikings! As part of our month-long anniversary celebration, we’re launching a limited edition column that looks back at the currents that shaped the Water Vikings across the years. Each piece will spotlight someone who helped steer the army during a different era, letting us trace how their decisions pushed the tide forward. For our very last post in this series, we have second-in-command Stevos interviewing 3 very familiar faces: Claire, Rye, and Cobra. They led from 2024-2025 (with Claire leading from 2023) and not only won Candy Crush Brawl and Beach Brawl, but also led WV to a deep run in Legends Cup, which I’m sure you know of. Check out their interview below!
How long did you lead Water Vikings?
Cobra: Officially, about 5-6 months.
Rye: 1 year and 4 months (June 2024 – October 2025)
Claire: Around 2 years if you count LiT and behind the scenes but officially, 1 year and 10 months.
What are you most proud of during your leadership in this era?
Cobra: Rebuilding WV to what it has became and making a distinct era with all of the wonderful new faces.
Rye: Winning Candy Crush Brawl, it was the first tournament I had ever won (we don’t talk about BB) and after that win, although it was small, the army locked in and we only grew stronger. I’m proud of that achievement, sure, but I felt more proud seeing the army thrive after the fact.
Claire: How bonding in our staff/HCOM team improved and I’d even risk say communication improved too, both are essential to team work in my opinion and they keep the army alive.
What were some challenges you faced during your leadership?
Cobra: Figuring out how to approach restructuring and dealing with a lot of loose ends with inactive staff. Getting us to perform as well as we did in Legends Cup was also insanely hard, as the Blue Summer momentum required a lot of time dedication and me to essentially no-life those 4 months.
Rye: Learned the hard way that some people can handle harsh truth and others cannot. It’s all about how you approach it. Also rebuilding an army’s motivation after a loss, was a challenge that faced me multiple times, and each time i had more knowledge on how to manage it.
Claire: Adapting during my whole leadership was a big challenge mainly because of time, first of all because I joined WV in late 2020 and back then things were different from today in a more system related matter. When I got promoted to leader in 2023 things were also different from when I joined and they kept progressively changing as they still are now when it comes to tournaments, wars, judging guidelines, diplomacy and even CPA community operational. Since things were changing while I was learning how they worked, it was demanding for me to keep myself capable of running the army properly. Other important point was that I hold one of the most asting tenures and I’ve seen many different people pass by the army, adapting to them and how they work, how to understand and encourage each, how to approach and how to command with different co-leaders was challenging but rewarding and has taught me a lot.
What skills did you learn from leadership?
Cobra: How to properly set up a system and direct it by my own hands.
Rye: Time management mostly, but also writing and speaking to motivate people, recruiting (which I can actually do now :D) and teaching new troops how to play cpab without info dumping, tracking, lotssss of tracking, and finally, I learned that help is a strength, not a weakness.
Claire: How and when to step up was a big thing, I’m not the bossy type person IRL at all and when I got the commander role I had to learn how to manage and guide fiercely and assertively. I must say it didn’t even help just in CPA/WV but in my life too.
Are there things you would change during your time in Water Vikings?
Cobra: Probably not. Maybe do more exciting things within the CPA community itself? I still lean on no, because the isolation that we did benefitted us tremendously.
Rye: More than anything I wish I would have been more focused on growing and strengthening the army, especially when it was S/M, I know now that wv was struggling because of my negligence, my lack of motivation reflected on the staff and because of that we had nothing to work hard for. There’s so many ideas I had in my head that I wanted to do for WV, too many, to the point where it was overwhelming and I wasn’t able to do any of it.
Claire: Yes, I don’t regret anything but I wish I had more time back then or even re-organize my availability better to be able to give more to the army, I think my leadership would be more impactful if I had this view back then.
Did you achieve the goals you had set? If so, what were they?
Cobra: Yes, mostly. Rebuild WV to a stable major, win Legends Cup XV, and set the army up for long-term success and stability. The first is undoubtedly achieved, the second wasn’t achieved directly but we achieved other feats along the way, and the third was initially achieved, then seemed rocky, but it’s back to being sound once again.
Rye: My two goals were to reach #1 and to win a tournament, and while I did both of those, I couldn’t have done it without my amazing co-leaders and staff team.
Claire: I’ve always wanted to be the more internal related leader than the “tactical” one. Alongside making and keeping the army in a major status and achieving victory, my goal was to make it a home for my team, make it a safe and growing place for others and acting on getting the best out of them. I think I can say I achieved that after seeing many of my welcomees or staff/HCOM coworkers being loyal and becoming important pieces of the army.
If you could bring back one thing from your era of WV into this one, what would it be?
Cobra: Initiative.
Rye: We did one art competition and it was a lot of fun I hope we can do more of those in the future.
Claire: Motivation.
What’s one thing that WV does now, that you wish you had thought of back then?
Cobra: I can’t say there’s anything here that I didn’t think of.
Rye: If I had to pick one, it would be the mini schedule.
Claire: Organization, the way it works now is way better than it was in my time, it started to improve more when I was close to retirement but that’s mainly because of Cobra’s leadership, not mine, and I wish I could have had this view of a more practical/how-to operation of the army.
Do you remember how you felt when you retired? What did it feel like?
Cobra: Gratifying. Not because I was done, but because I set goals and worked at them and came away with success (albeit internally) as a byproduct. Being honored as a WV Legend was a shock, but something I came to appreciate a lot because it didn’t feel like I got it by being a behind the scenes brain like I did in other armies; instead, I was awarded it because of actually building a newer era of WV. It was nice and still feels nice.
Rye: Hahah, well… you see… I didn’t really get a retirement… but it did feel nice to catch a break.
Claire: Overwhelming but also very wholesome, I didn’t want to retire back then but I had to and I see now it was the best I could have done and I’m happy to see how it turned out. It was a mix of sense of accomplishment but also job is not finished, so I’m HCOV now.
Claire, Rye, and Cobra rebuilt WV to being a major army and allowed 2024-25 WV to be a distinctive era. They all contributed greatly to one of the closest runs in Water Vikings history to winning Legends Cup, and have all been honoured with Viking Luminary and above because of their efforts. They have set the stage for Escot, Mato, and Lydia, our current leaders, and we’ll now see how they build off of Claire, Rye, and Cobra’s successes. With that, we end the Vikings Through The Ages series. We’ve learned lots about various eras and leaders of WV, and it’ll all conclude today, which is our official 15th anniversary. Hope to see you there at the event, check out our discord event page to learn more!
<><><><><><><>
Interview by:
Stevos
Viking General
Post by:
b2
Viking Lord