Ding ding. Round 2 motherfuckers. I'm back with another wall of text to prove that I really don't have a life.

WORLD OF TANKS: CLAN WARS

"Man this **** just sounds scary"

WHAT IS CLAN WARS?

Clan wars is just like any pub match where it is 15 vs 15 hot tank-on-tank action. However, all 15 combatants on each side must be from the same clan. This allows for some very special tactics as all 15 players coordinate and work as a team to dismantle their enemy. Gone are the days of pubbing where you simply drive to your favorite spot for the tank you're playing and shoot ****** players that don't know LMB is "fire". Now you must coordinate where to concentrate your forces, focus fire tanks, and come in with a viable strategy for the particular side of the map you are playing. In the end, it boils down to shooting tanks, but to excel you must have great player discipline and competent commanders. Battles occur from around 1800 Eastern (#blameCuba) to 0000 Eastern, but usually a single clan's battles are tightly grouped in the span of an hour or two.

Why should I play?

First off, it's fun. After pubbing endlessly for thousands of battles it's so nice to have 14 other players on your team who actually have brains. The strategy and competitiveness of the matches is really cool and the pace that many matches play at is mind boggling. Rarely Never in pubs do you ever have 10 vs 10 engagements where everyone is fighting to the ***** in a hyper-aggressive coordinated push. Finally, if your clan makes it on the map you can start earning gold that accumulates in a clan treasury until the commander decides to pay the soldiers. If you do well in clans wars you get free mad goaldz.

HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

First off, it should be clarified that CW is unrestricted in tank choice. You can bring one tier 1, or 15 tier 10s. All loltraktors, or all E 100s. If you want to stand a chance, you had better bring a full team of tier 10s that most suit the map your clan is attacking/defending. This begs the question: what tanks are used frequently?

Grinding tier 10s

It's a big day in any new(ish) tanker's life when they buy their first tier ten. I clearly remember the happiness I felt scoring that mastery badge just 7 games in, so much so that I still have that screen cap from "back in the day" (about a year ago). If you just bought a tier 10 and you want to play clan wars... brace yourself. There's a good chance you just bought a totally useless tier 10 from CW's perspective. I know you just poured >2k games into one tank line and how ever many months (took me 13 months), but some tier 10s just aren't good for clan wars. Sorry.

Used-all-the-*******-time Tier

If your tier 10 is in this list, rejoice, as it is actually effective.

• T57 Heavy Watch out for upcoming nerf. Could really hurt this tank, but no details are known yet.
• T110E5
• Conqueror Gun Carriage
• E 100
• Bat Chatillon 25t
• IS-7
• Obj. 140

Still-used-often-but-not-as-much-as-those-I-just-listed Tier

Don't Fret, we still love you.

• M53/M55
• T110E3
• WT auf E 100
• IS-4
• T-62A
• STB-1
• Leopard 1

Unique-tanks-that-are-both-strat-and-map-dependent Tier

You probably won't be playing every night, but hey, tank locking is still a thing... so just maybe.

• AMX 50 B Upcoming buff coupled with nerf of the T57 might make this swap places with the T57 (I sure hope so because the 50B is ******* awesome).
• T110E4
• Obj. 263
• Obj. 261

Tanks that are weaseling their way into top tier clan meta

Interesting picks recently by top clans.

• E 50M
• FV215b

Tanks-that-fill-a-very-specific-role-and-therefore-don't-see-much-use Tier

Now you're playing once a week or less even if you show up every night.

• FV215b (183) I think this is switching to the "Bless-your-heart Tier" in 9.2
• JagdPanzer E 100
• Foch 155
• Obj. 268
• Geschtzwagen E 100
• Bat Chat 155 58

Bless-your-heart Tier

I'm sorry if you ground out these tanks thinking you were going to play clan wars...

• M48 Patton
• T92
• FV4202
• Maus
• Obj. 430 this is only here because it's just a worse Obj. 140; will still get picked if you 'need' another Soviet medium
• 121
• 113

There you have it, every tier 10 listed out based on use. Now you can pick what you want to grind. But wait... if you own one of the most preferred tier 10s, why grind anything else?

TANK LOCKING

This is why. Every time you die in a CW battle where gold is at stake, your tank is unusable in another CW battle for a period of time. There are conditions that shorten the duration of a locked tank, but to be safe assume that any heavy that dies will be unusable for 7 days, any medium 6 days, and 5 days for a TD or artillery. This means if you're are primarily a heavy tanker and you plan on playing one CW battle a night and die in said battle you'll need 7 heavies to be able to play each night, and that's a lot of tier 10s.

Tank locking is the motivating factor in top clans requiring many tier 10s from their players. If you can't field 15 ideal tanks against a clan that can field a perfect team, you had better hope that your players' skill or the clan's strategy will be able to close the gap.

HOW TO FIND A CLAN THAT FITS YOUR SKILL LEVEL

I tried to create a skill based map of CW's that is based on clans' traditional stomping grounds. In this map green are the weakest clans (that still hold land on the map, mind you. "Weak" is a very relative term here) with yellow spanning the middle and red being the top dogs. Roughly these colors coordinate to these WN8 requirements:

Green- 1000-1500 WN8 overall

Yellow- 1500-2300 WN8 overall

Red- >2300 WN8 overall

So here's what you do to find a fit for you:

1. Honestly evaluate your skill level. As I've said before, http://wotlabs.net/ will give you an honest opinion of your skill as a player. Go plug your name in and see what it tells you.
2. If you fall into one of these skill brackets, go start clicking on clans in that region on the global map.
3. If you find one that looks decent, go check them out on WoT CS. Check for issues in the player history like a mass exodus of players (>15 in the span of a few days) that may indicate internal stress of the clan. This could be a red flag.
4. Read up on that clan's specific requirements and if you meet them hop on their teamspeak.
5. Talk with their commander or a recruiter and ask some questions about the clan, play in a few platoons, see if you fit in.
6. If this is all going swimmingly, then you should receive an invitation to join the clan on the main website.

If you're not meeting the requirements of any clans currently on the map, look at what's called a "landing zone" province somewhere in the green regions. A landing zone province is a location where your clan can compete in a miniature tournament to establish a stake on the global map. These look like bulls-eyes with an arrow pointing toward the middle. You might also see a red landing zone with a little fire symbol next to it, this is a riot zone. Riots occasionally happen on normal pieces of land that turn them into a one-day-only landing zone. This is a great way to establish a claim in a landlocked portion of the map without fighting your way there from a landing zone. Click riots and landing zones in the green regions of the map that I made and look who made it furthest in the tournament. Here is an example: You can see that The Devils Orphans [HELL] made it to the battle with the land owner before finally losing (For those of you with more CW experience, yes I realize Hell was clearing the LZ along with Alloy, but this was a high population LZ to show the process of an LZ tourney where the final battle did not end in a victory for the person challenging the land). This indicates that HELL was good, just not good enough. If you're like HELL, where you're getting good, but you're not good enough, join a clan like that to get some clan wars experience under your belt. Usually clans that are on and off land have lower requirements than those that regularly hold land.

My recommendation is to always join the best clan that will let you in. Apply for 3 or 4 clans, one that you know for sure you can get into, one or two that you're right at their requirements, and one that is just outside of your requirements. If you play in platoons with recruiters really well and aren't a **** sometimes you can get into clans that you otherwise could not.

I saw a post the other day that included a list of clans that are worthwhile to join at multiple skill levels, but I cannot find it now. /u/meem1029