Rewind On Ritch

Posted by: xilef

One of the three new additions to the new London Mint team is Richard Gibbs, alias ritch. He will be playing for the CS:Source team, alongside HenryG, HudzG, Hughsy and url. Although his history may not be known to a lot of the Mint fans, ritch is no newcomer to the UK scene, and this article will give a little background to one of the UK's most prolific gamers.

Ritch's story in gaming began the same way as many other players, with a reccomendation from a friend. When Ritch was in first year of comprehensive school a friend gave him a copy of Counterstrike 1.5 on disc. He was not immediately hooked however, and due to his slow internet, it was shelved for a while. Ritch returned to the game for 1.6, but still was not interested, and found the game boring. It wasn't until a year later, following a PC upgrade and an increase in internet speed, that ritch discovered CS:Source and his gaming career began.

After meddling about in lower end UK teams for a while, such as Si.CSS and Kokaine, ritch progressed from the Enemydown scene with his first team Converge. This team marked a major point in ritch's career, as it was here he was discovered by some of the top UK players, and played alongside Kyle "fatal" Mardell. When Converge collapsed, ritch and fatal joined together to form Suffocation. However, this did not last long, and it swiftly led to the creation of the infamous room26.

room26 at Starbytes Winter Warmer

room26 was a plateau from which some of the UK's top players were created, with ritch and fatal teaming up with ben0 from Zboard to make one of the top UK teams. They competed at the top of the UK scene for a while, culminating in a win at the Starbytes Winter Warmer. This tempted ben0 into the reforming of Zboard, alongside fatal ritch HenryG and Shab.

Unfortunately this lineup did not last very long, and while the players were all incredibly skilled, ritch left shortly after due to personality clashes. Having had enough of the UK scene, ritch looked towards Europe, upon which we saw the creation of dRagonality. Here he played alongside some of the biggest names in Europe, including rootbeer, jiMMy, cozman, and tyron. Although they never managed to bring in any major achievements, dRagonality were very much considered an upper echelon team for the period of their existence, and gained huge respect from the community with their gameplay. The demise of this lineup eventually lead to an all UK lineup, under the USA organisation Devastation. Here ritch met his current teammate Hughsy, and although this was another short lived lineup, it obviously helped in the creation of the current Mint lineup.

Over the next few months, a new squad had been developing elsewhere in the scene, Reason Gaming. Upon the announcement of TheCGS, Reason Gaming decided to remove Haz and Ferus from their squad in order to make an all UK lineup, and bring in Ritch and Shift from the collapsed Devastation lineup. This left their squad as HenryG, url, jon0o, shift and ritch, the squad that provided the roots for the original London Mint lineup. They quickly rose to the top of the UK scene, and after a succesful string of events, a change was inevitable to keep up with their growth.

Reason at LAN79

Although Reason supported them to the best of their ability, they could not fund international LANs like LAN79 (where the team came 4th), so the team had to look elsewhere for support. Under the great leadership of HenryG, the team soon found their way into 4Kings, where they would first meet their current manager, Ben Woodward. Shortly after their pickup, Shift quit gaming, and Hughsy was asked to join the team from Auxilia, leaving the team with 4 of the current players in the Mint squad. Their time in 4Kings was continuously at the pinnacle of the UK scene, and they were the first UK team in a long time to compete at the top of Europe. Winning the illustrious Intel C2E challenge and the Clanbase QPad Cup, 4kings were considered the team to beat in the UK. They had an incredibly stable roster, and up until The eXperience LAN it seemed it would never end. However, ritch had problems with the travel arrangements to The Experience LAN, and had to leave on very short notice, which resulted in his removal from the team.

4Kings at i30

Toying with inactivity over the last year, and never really finding a UK team that suited his top level play, ritch bided his time. Eventually TheCGS season was over, and London Mint were searching for replacements for jon0o and beta, and ritch was very much the logical choice. Having amazing chemistry with the rest of the team, and a wealth of experience to back it up, ritch slotted into the team perfectly, and rejoined his old teammates on the London Mint team earlier this week.

Ritch has always been a somewhat controversial player in the UK scene, due to his very out spoken opinions and occasionally controversial comments. However, in the run up to the combine ritch has shown his dedication to the game, and has ironed this out completely, and maintained a professional demeanour ever since in an effort to make him suitable for CGS. This shows the calibre of player ritch really is, and if he can maintain it he will only grow as a player. The sky is the limit for the current Mint team, and if anyone was going to help take them there it's Richard Gibbs.