Featured Clan, Clans Wars 3rd stage: Grupo Operacional Portugues

Ectar:   Where did the clan name come from and how was your clan formed?
The clan was created on the 5th of June, 2011 by three friends, right after they left the only portuguese clan in World of Tanks at the time. They wanted to create something different and the main values were to have fun and to promote friendship. Two of the original founders were ex-military and came up with the idea of creating an operational group, which resulted in the name “Grupo Operacional Português” or in English, “Portuguese Operational Group”.
The original structure worked fine until we started playing Clan Wars, at this point we understood that we needed to evolve. We started to have some internal conflicts because of this and after some structural changes on the leadership, Negrao was the only one left from the original founders. He decided that we would not have a leadership of one man but we would have an administration group that would lead the clan, so me and ElMilagro stepped in, as we were already Deputy Commanders in the clan, and we all became “Administrators”. We decided to keep the values, started recruiting the best portuguese players in World of Tanks to be more competitive and we expanded the management to a second administration group where we now have ppinho, CMD42, minha_mae and alexandre12387. Without them it would be impossible to manage our Community.
 
Do you have requirements for joining your clan, if so what is the reasoning behind them?
Yes we do have two main requirements. The first requirement is to be able to speak portuguese as we are a portuguese clan and verbal communication is essential to participate in all our activities. The other main requirement is to have a minimum set of statistics, this allows us to enroll the best players, but we still give a chance to all the other players to be part of our  Community and practice at our Academy till they are ready to be part of the clan.
 
What do you feel is the best aspect of being in a clan and doing Clan Wars?
It allows you to meet better players and to improve faster than just playing alone at random battles. Alexandre12387 and Frenzier are just two of the best portuguese players we have here, both have been in GOP for a year and left to play in Top Clans. They have later decided to come back and have been helping everyone in our clan to improve. And if you want to play against the best clans out there, where else but Clan Wars? With Alexandre12387 and ppinho on the commander seat we can beat almost every clan we get matched with.
 
What was your goal for this campaign?
We aimed to reach the Top 50 Clans and get as many Reward Tanks as possible for our Members.
 
Looking back how close were you in reaching that goal?
I could say we achieved our goals. We managed to finish in 39th place and we were able to give away 51 tanks out of 69 members that participated, this means that 74% of the members that participated got a Reward Tank.
 
What do you think about the theme of the campaign (WWI/The Great War) and do you have any suggestions for themes for future campaigns?
We liked it. It was a good way of teaching bits of history about a brutal conflict and one of the most important events in the 20th Century. For future campaigns maybe why not create something around World War II, for example, stage one being “The Blitzkrieg”, stage two “Operation Overlord” and stage three “Fall of Berlin”.
 
How did you feel this campaign compared to the previous 2 campaigns?
It was an improvement over the last two that is for sure. We liked that Victory Points were now linked to Fame Points, this allowed clans to prove themselves fighting other clans, instead of just focusing on some objectives that could be exploited like in the second campaign.
Our clan definitely improved the results in this campaign in comparison with the two previous ones. We didn’t get any reward in the First Campaign, on the Second we managed to get 36 VK 72.01 (K) but not a good place in the Clan Ranking, and now we managed to achieve our best campaign yet.
 
If you could change any one aspect of Clan Wars, what would it be?
We would change some timezones, because we are in GMT Timezone, so we can’t fight in certain areas. We also feel that the map could be bigger, with more and more clans coming into Clan Wars, the Global Map is not big enough, which doesn't allow smaller clans to enter the map and fight other smaller clans in order to improve.
 
What clan do you feel was a tough opponent and why?
KAZNA, because of their fair-play and we think they are the best clan out there. We have learned a lot playing against them. Our compliments to KAZNA.
 
Which tank do you feel is essential to victory in Clan Wars and why?
Bat.Chat 25t. Because without it alexandre12387 wouldn’t have a tank to play. Joke aside, “In the land of the blind, the one-eye man is king”. In this game without a good spotter, you won’t win, and Bat.Chat 25t is the perfect tank for that, plus if you add alexandre12387 to it, it’s quite OP.
 
What advice would you give to clans who are not yet involved in Clan Wars and are considering getting started? 
You will lose more than you win in the beginning. When you fall, you get up and try again. Always evolve, constantly change and aim for better results, never settle for what you have now. It takes time and patience but if you are persistent enough you will get there.
 
What did you think of the Wargaming involvement with Clan Wars? Would you prefer to see more involvement from WG or less? (or do you have different ideas how we could be involved)
I liked it, it shows that you like to get involved with the Community, and I would recommend you to get even more involved. One idea could be to create an Official Stream Channel were we could get weekly updates of the global map and resumes of battles, just like in a Sports TV.
 
Finally sum up your clan in one word
Portugal.