Tankers!

This week our Clan Spotlight will be on [NTR], >Vidya Gaems. [NTR] is a rising star in the Clan Wars world, coming from a humble start all the way to earning 2nd place during Stage III of the recent Clan Wars Campaign, earning themselves M60 tanks. They describe themselves as "a 4Chan clan," as they are a group of members coming from the community of the same name that got together to fight for success. Read their answers to our questions below to see if you can gain a little bit of insight on how to take your clan to the next level.

We interviewed these players to learn more about >Vidya Gaems:

Zazie [NTR] - Commander of [NTR], focuses on eSports, major leagues, and diplomacy. Started [NTR] as a side project for organized play.

OhSlowPoke [NTR] - Deputy Commander of [NTR] who "doesn't really have a specific job in NTR," just a bit of everything.

Please visit the extended interview thread to see more from this interview

What are the future goals for your Clan?

Zazie - To have a larger name than we have right now. We want to be known, since we're still kind of a small-time Clan.

OhSlowPoke - My goal is to get us a lot more consistent. I want to work on getting us not just more prestige, but to get better - stop being "bad@tanks."

Zazie - We'll always be "bad@tanks" -- that's a given. But to get better is a goal, obviously.

How much of your success do you attribute to skill vs. diplomacy?

Zazie - [Finishing in the top five is total diplomacy]. Stage 1 we ended up fighting against [REL_3], which was a not-terrible Clan that we had to deal with. After it ended we stood our ground and that paved the way to diplomacy. So there was a mix of both. Every stage at the beginning of something went wrong, Stage 1 [-M-A-] landed and there was other stuff and Stage 2 was [TYR] and [RUSS] chipping us both nightly. We had 4 to 5 battles every single night for a solid two weeks, and they were all at the same time. We actually stood our ground and kept on with our land.

OhSlowPoke - Once the Clans backed down we went to diplomacy mode.

Zazie - Stage 3 was full diplomacy, and the fact that Riots were in made people unable to hold too much land helped that.

So it sounds like that skill played a role a bit earlier, and diplomacy came later as a result of your success?

Zazie - Pretty much. Part of the problem of our Clan is that we're not really well-known, so we don't get a lot of free diplomacy like many larger Clans do. We can't just land in an area and say, "give us this, and we'll help you out" because no one really knows us.

OhSlowPoke - We have to earn it first by fighting for it and earning the respect of the Clans in the region, which we did.

What process do you have to get ready for a battle?

Zazie - We generally have a base plan for the map, and before the battles pop we all gather and build our teams based on what we want for each team. We don't really do training rooms much unless we screw something up, or we need to learn a map really fast.

OhSlowPoke - A lot of the stuff we do in NTR is allow players to have more input. We have callers, but we find that a lot of our players are very knowledgeable and understand the maps, so before we do a specific plan we generally have an open forum about what tanks we should bring and how we should use them. We then narrow it down to the best strategies. People test things on their own and use that to argue how their plan is better.

Zazie - After we have our team, we'll go over the plan within the 15 minutes before the battle pops. After each game we'll have an after-battle discussion, and figure out what went wrong and what should be done next time; it all gets modified into the strategy of what we do the next time we play it. It takes 10 minutes the first time we play a map, and then up to a couple of hours [cumulative] possibly until we figure things out.

What would your advice be for Clans trying to get on the map?

Zazie - Start small. The first time NTR landed it was on the lowest gold province available (when Africa was available).

OhSlowPoke - Make sure nothing is beneath you. Don't take losing very seriously. If you lose, try not to get so worked up about it, just think about how you're going to win next time -- try again and don't get upset about it.

Zazie - You just have to know your limitations and keep building on them, rather than trying to go for something way, way larger than you can do. Know your weaknesses and how to overcome them. Figure out what you did wrong and then correct it.

What have you learned from the Campaign and Clan Wars in general that you wish you had known when you started?

OhSlowPoke - We never had any callers that were from other Clans, so I wish someone explained to me how all of the maps worked prior to starting. We learned everything by trial and error.

Zazie - There hasn't been a huge specific lesson. The original structure that we started out with was sound, and it's still what we're doing today. It's just calling experience that we needed back then compared to now.

What decisions have you made in the past that you regret now?

OhSlowPoke - My initial chip placement in the Campaign was bad. I picked an area that I thought would be safer than it was. And I made some alliances with people that I thought would be able to hold up their end of the bargain, and they weren't able to.

What was your favorite tier in the Campaign?

Zazie - Tier V was good because you could run Chaffees and T-50-2's and you could do anything with them. I enjoyed tier VII though because of the T71.

OhSlowPoke - Most of our Clan was a big fan of tier VI, myself included. We love doing Medium Tank Companies, so we have a lot of guys who like playing with tier VI tanks.

Zazie - During tier VI I still just played my T-50-2, so I didn't really care about it.

What was the most exciting match you had during the campaign?

Zazie - That would be the match against [VPG]. We had 8 people, including one T1 Cunningham, and we beat them with that while they had a full 15 of mostly M4's. I was in my T-50-2 calling it; that was really fun, and a huge highlight during the Campaign. We set up everything in the city [Highway, defense], they sent a group of M4's into the city and we made sure not to poke. They basically rushed into us single-file, and died to our Pz4 and Ram II. After that we just used our T-50-2 to scout and control the map. We ended up having a Chaffee on our team do 2,500 damage, and I did about 1,700. It was kind of insane, and it shouldn't have worked, but it did.

Medium Tank Companies to win yourself some gold. To read the extended interview, please visit the Clan Spotlight: NTR 8/5/13 forum thread . You can challenge [NTR] this Wednesday at 3:00PM PDT inTank Companies to win yourself some gold.

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