CCDC Hub
Welcome to the CCDC hub! This page exists to catalog my articles on CCDC, both in the "How to Win CCDC" series of posts, as well as some of the perspectives I've had as both a red and blue teamer over the years. Additionally, I want to highlight other people's perspectives on the competition.
Welcome to the CCDC hub! This page exists to catalog my articles on CCDC, both in the "How to Win CCDC" series of posts, as well as some of the perspectives I've had as both a red and blue teamer over the years. Additionally, I want to highlight other people's perspectives on the competition and share links to their experiences.
Who are you?
You can get a little more information about me with that handy little Bio button at the top of the page, otherwise the elevator pitch is that I spent 2 years on the blue team at St. Cloud State University, winning Minnesota both years, then attending and losing regionals in 2019 and 2020. I took 3 years off before coming back in 2023 as a red teamer for Minnesota and Indiana. In 2024 I took over the leadership for that team as the previous lead wanted to free up time for other commitments. In 2025 I continued that role, took leadership of the Mid-Atlantic Qualifier Red Team, and participated in Midwest Regional Competitions for the first time as a red teamer. Additionally, I work at SpecterOps as an Associate Adversary Simulation Consultant.
How To Win CCDC
This is what I assume most of you are here for. I maintain a series of blog posts designed to help newer or inexperienced teams to help get them up to speed and competitive. The idea is that a rising tide lifts all ships, and I especially want to help the teams that struggle. I believe that teams that struggle the most have the most growth potential, and I want to help you realize that potential. This is my way of doing that.
- Competition Overview
- Team Dynamics
- Scoring
- Injects
- Red Team
- Incident Reports (Coming soon!)
- Resources
Red Team Thoughts
These articles essentially act as my recaps for previous years. What went well, what didn't go well, fun stories, and more.
- 2024 Post-Mortem
- 2025 Minnesota and Indiana Debrief
- 2026 CCDC Aftermath
Other's Thoughts
Here I want to highlight other folks who have participated in CCDC in some aspect. Current and former competitors, red teamers and volunteers. I want to highlight these stories as they can give a wider variety of perspectives on various aspects of the competition, and more specific regional advice for the regions I don't participate in.
The first person I want to highlight is Akshay. I call my guides the "How to Win CCDC" as an homage to mubix's presentation of the same name, but unlike me, Akshay actually won CCDC. having been part of the team that won nationals in 2025.
The next piece I want to highlight is mubix's presentation. The ancient version of this started my obsession with helping out with this competition, but there's a new version for 2026
sshell has a solid post containing a high level overview of the competition and a retrospective of nationals 2025 from the red team perspective.
sshell
California Polytechnic State University has 2 team members who posted blogs after Nationals 2024, and they are both pretty solid reads.
Blue Team Thoughts
These articles consist of my thoughts from my time blue teaming. I consider this time as the foundation my career stands on, and this time remains precious to me to this day. I can confidently say that my time on the blue team, grinding in our dusty forgotten classroom for endless hours is the single most impactful thing I've ever done with my career. This is why I care so much about ensuring the competition is as good as it can be for as many people as possible and why I've been so heavily involved over the years since.
Shout Outs
I need to shout out mubix for his How To Win CCDC presentation and website for serving as the inspiration and supplying good information for the early days of this series of articles.
I also want to give a shout out to Grafftix and AGrapplerNamedSam for helping me proofread and sanity check the 2025 update of these articles. These two guys are awesome and have helped improve these articles significantly!
Changelog
2026-03-31: 2026 overhaul
2025-02-24: Updated with 2025 debrief link, and updating some of the information on this page post competition for MN and IN 2025.
2024-09-17: Included a link to my 2024 MNCCDC debrief
2024-08-26: Added Megalinks to page to complete CCDC Resources
2024-07-16: Removed reference to practice strategy article due to it being canceled. It was cancelled due to difficulties in balancing usefulness and effort on my behalf
2024-06-05: Added Red Team article
2024-05-03: Added Injects section and removed The Ultimate Prize and Resources bullet points
2024-04-29: Added Team Dynamics and Shout Outs section
2024-03-29: Initial post