There has been quite a bit of discussion about strats.  Let me set the record straight.  We are open to new strats.  The TIME for the discussion is NOT right before a battle, and it is NOT right after a battle.  It is easy, suffering from a loss, to say “strats suck”.

NO strat is perfect, but we need to have SOMETHING to work with.  The strat we have is the strat we have until we have a new one.  So, what is the proper way to bring a new strat into consideration?  It isn’t by sitting in channel saying “we have to do this or that”  It IS by taking a little map, putting little dots on it, and saying HERE is what I am thinking.  Now, if you have submitted a strat and it has been turned down, I guarantee you it isn’t because it was dismissed out of hand.  We may look at your strat and just think it sucks…

Believe me, the admins spend countless hours pouring over things.  We want to win every bit as much as you guys do… so much so that we formed a clan and poured all this time and money into supporting it.  A lot of the ideas you bring us, we have thought of… we have tried them, we have shot holes in them, so if you bring us a strat that we think is something we have tried and tested, we might dismiss it…

Now, dismissed does not mean discarded.  We have them all, and sometimes we take parts of one and put it with another, and try to hobble something together to make a strat we think might work.  Just because we don’t put a strat in place doesn’t mean that we don’t like you.  It isn’t personal.

Now, if we DO discard a strat, and you have absolute faith in it, and you listen to our reasons, and you STILL think you have a point, then one of two things is going on… 1) You missed something 2) WE missed something… there is the entire possibility (hard as it may seem) that we made a mistake.  If you put forth a strat, and you DID WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO (i.e. documented the fuck out of it and brought it to us in a way that we can review) and you think we dismissed it prematurely, there is a way to settle that… it’s called a TRAINING ROOM.  The proper place to try new strats is in a training room, and if you have submitted a strat, and done what you are supposed to, and don’t think it is being given a fair shake, then you absolutely have the right to request that strat be tested in the training room.

One of two things is going to happen… most likely, your strat is going to fail by the flames of the burning tanks over a tactical issue that you missed, in which case you will see the error of your ways, and maybe make a BETTER strat.  Alternatively, you will get the chance to prove an admin wrong… and who can pass up THAT opportunity?

But, let me make this perfectly clear, for anyone that might have missed it… the time to bring these issues up is NOT in the middle of Clan Wars… and probably not in the heated emotional moments after a loss.  It is to be done with the calm reason of a seasoned general.

And let me say this also… DO NOT EVER counter a Battle Commander in the middle of battle.  If they tell the E100s to roll and shoot on the move, don’t sit there in the middle of battle and say “they have better accuracy if you stop”  You can talk about that later… and it MAY just be that the important element that the Battle Commander was trying to get across is that you need to get those damn tanks where I need them ASAP, and if they hit anything on the way, so much the better… Maybe, just maybe, they are trying to do something you don’t quite get or understand at the time, but I stress to you that in the heat of the battle, when they are trying to get things done, they don’t have time to discuss it.  That’s why it is called an order… and I don’t care WHO you are, WHAT your stats are, or WHAT tank you drive… if I am commanding a battle, and I order my platoon sgt to do something, and that isn’t EXACTLY what you do, you WON’T be a platoon sgt next match… of all the things that I can be negotiable on, that absolutely isn’t one of them…

End of bitch session… let’s roll…