Clan Spotlight: MAHOU
Дата: 13.01.2017 19:50:08
dance210: We sat down with some of the moves and shakers in MAHOU to find out
what makes them one of the best of the best! How did Mahou
first start? BananaCannon: We were originally an anime
social clan, although we planned to do clan wars eventually. I’m
actually the fourth Commander. The first commander was MahouShoujo
(“Muyu”
who really just paid the gold necessary to make the
clan, for the second commander Sayaka_Maizono who first worked
toward building it up. By running into people in team battles and
recruiting just about anyone non-terrible with a vaguely
anime-themed name, the friendly circle grew. We hung out on
teamspeak, platooned together and compared the latest shows between
games of Cards Against Humanity. Arma (Kawaii_Anime_Girl) succeeded
him and ran the clan for quite a while before real life caught up
with him too and he passed the reigns to BananaCannon. We happened
to have some good players and that casual friendship that we were
based on is something that we still rely on, because we genuinely
care about our members and we all liked winning together.
Around the Third Campaign was when we first started transitioning
from a social clan to something more competitive. I wasn’t involved
much in the decisions back then, but it was decided that we wanted
to get people tanks and transition to become more competitive.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: There was one point in
MAHOU’s early history when I was the clan commander where we tried
farming gold during the Civil War and it almost killed the clan.
Ever since then, MAHOU hasn’t been about farming as was the
eventual downfall of other older clans. What are your Clan
goals? BananaCannon: The goal was always to be fair to everyone, in
our own clan and in other clans. We’ve never really been
warmongers, except for the sake of getting fights. Our goal has
always been self-improvement. We like to fight every night or as
much as possible. We feel people get better by playing the game and
we don’t like it when people just sit around doing nothing. We try
to mix it up and we posture ourselves so that we can get those
fights in a fair way and don’t really stir the boat except to get
people to stay fresh and play the game. I think that a lot of
people acknowledge us for that, not simply declaring war on
everybody but being in that position where we fought and improved.
What is your greatest accomplishment(s) as a clan? Eural_NoMemes: Consistently finishing in the
top 3 in everything for a year now. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: I
would say the third campaign was a big accomplishment.
BananaCannon : The third campaign was the first event
that really tested us as a clan wars clan and transitioned us from
a social clan to something more competitive. Certain officers
emerged as leaders and callers, and we learned the strengths and
weaknesses of the players next to us. Those friendships became the
core of our teamwork as we frantically organized to earn players
their tanks. That overwhelming stress, though, forged our desire to
win and exposed us to the fun of regular competitive clan wars.
Eural in particular, who had ironically joined to get away
from clan wars and relax in a social clan, arose as a kind of
beacon to a lot of our players since he actually had some clan wars
experience and invested huge amounts of time in his gameplay. He
would play religiously, do his own research, watch gameplay from
streamers, and network with callers in other clans to come up with
new ideas. He would constantly be bouncing those concepts off of
other officers in the clan to perfect new ideas that people really
hadn't seen before. He obsessively studied the game and through his
objective research and charismatic generosity, dispelled a lot of
the casual misconceptions that every player has. Basically he just
inspired every player around him to be better. And we did get
better - we were constantly looking for the next fight, and gave
our players as many battles as possible every night. We were always
looking for the next fight and we loved playing every night, and
wearing Eural's voice out more than is healthy. In
Godwin's/Chullba War, we proved ourselves to some top clans that
had previously never fought us, who underestimated us and ended up
acknowledging us for being fair in leadership, competent in
calling, and with a friendly community spirit. All that tireless
preparation and Eural's aggressive flexible calling allowed MAHOU
to punch well above its weight, and quickly earned Eural a
reputation as a competent caller. I really feel that now he is one
of the top few callers on the North America server, if not the
best. One thing that helped us recruit so effectively was
that unlike a lot of the strong clans at the time, we didn't care
much about overall stats and set the trend of looking at recent
stats and especially tier ten performance. A lot of the extremely
good superunicum players who simply refused to reroll would be
declined by more elite clans at the time because of their overall
stats, back when "rerolling to -G-" was a common thing among top
players, we would just accept top players who knew their game but
didn't want to make new accounts just to look pretty on a
statistics page. Each player who joined made it easier for others
to follow. It helped that a lot of our original members also had
improved in house from teal to dark purple. Mahou came in
1st in Birth of the Titans. What was your strategy?
BananaCannon : A lot of that was reading the rules and
having a lot of experience in the previous campaigns. We actually
were 1st place in the last campaign as well. Even though we were
fielding fewer teams, if you look into the rules and get an idea
about what the actual objectives are, it’s pretty easy to
outperform other clans, if you know you can win.
Eural_NoMemes: It’s still about winning battles. That’s what we’re
all about at the end of the day. BananaCannon: And Wril helped out a lot. As far as winning this
Birth of Titans campaign, Wril was calling almost non-stop. He
earned number 1 in personal fame by a large margin because he was
here every day calling most of our battles and he did an amazing
job. What’s the culture like in MAHOU? BananaCannon: We take
care of our community members and we treat everyone fairly. Our
officers have been tireless and selfless, talking into the early
morning hours resolving the drama of the day and even withholding
their own payouts in the hard times to help the soldiers get a bit
more. We were originally an anime social clan that happened to have
some okay players, and that casual friendship is something we've
always relied on. We genuinely care about our members and love to
win together. We decided early on to distribute all the gold
we earn in equal shares based on simple attendance with no officer
bonuses, and we take care of everyone with advances toward payouts
and incentive programs from clan reserves (for getting new tier
tens for example). We feel that officers tend to show up and get a
fair share already so every soldier who shows up and plays can earn
as much as any Commander or officer, and generally it is the most
active soldiers who get the highest payouts. We were also the first
clan to have every stronghold building reach tier ten, and we pop
three or four credit reserves every evening (basically the daily
limit for building them at tier ten) with hundreds of them amassed
in reserve. The way we take care of our clanmates does a lot to
encourage their loyalty. How do you keep your members
motivated to show up every day? BananaCannon : Don’t
take long breaks is probably the best advice that I could give
somebody. Whenever you stop playing, people will start doing other
things and get out of the habit of showing up.
Eural_NoMemes: We always have something to do.
BananaCannon : Not having breaks is the best thing to
keep your players engaged because then they get in the habit of
coming on every night. And that’s really what’s important.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Also giving them a
reason to play, like credit bonuses. We pop a lot of those.
BananaCannon : We pop three or four every night. If
there’s a single stronghold detachment running, you should always
have a credit bonus running because you will reimburse yourself, as
long as you win a decent amount. If you win 75% of your battles
that’s enough, and we win 80 - 90% of our battles.
CharAznableTheRedComet: We try to have fun with it.
BananaCannon : If you win most of your games, you get
back the boxes for credit reserves. You should pretty much always
run them because it helps your clan earn credits to buy more tanks
and then they can perform better.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : There’s also Slack. Slack is really
important for letting people know when things are going on.
Your clan is part of a community of clans. Which clan(s) make up
that community and what is your relationship with them?
Eural_NoMemes: SNPAI is part of our community. BananaCannon:
SHOJO used to be our sister clan, then they kind of
imploded. And the new thing that is SHOJO is something that we
created but we don’t acknowledge them anymore.
Eural_NoMemes: We also have a brand new MAHOU veterans clan
(MAHOV) for people who are still around on TeamSpeak,
playing Overwatch and other games. It’s for people who don’t really
play World of Tanks anymore but we still want to keep them around
and they might come back for campaigns. We’ve had a few members
retire from Tanks but they’re still important parts of the
community. BananaCannon: SNPAI started off as a subclan.
Basically they were originally made as a clan to be our casual
side, for the casual players. CharAznableTheRedComet: They
were originally supposed to be the retirement clan.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : And then they wanted to fight.
BananaCannon: They were doing Strongholds to get credit
bonuses and then started getting kind of competitive. They had a
competitive side and a casual side, and eventually the competitive
side won out, so they are kind of competitive now too.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: That’s been the story of every clan. That’s
MAHOU’s story, that’s SHOJO’s story. BananaCannon: That
happened to SHOJO too. When SHOJO was made, they started off as a
casual clan to compliment us, then they became competitive. You
really can’t have a clan anymore without at least doing
Strongholds. Once you do Strongholds, you’re likely to start doing
Clan Wars, so it kind of leads into it. You can’t really stop a
clan from becoming competitive if they have competitive players.
You pretty much have to do it for the credit bonuses. And if you do
it for the credit bonuses, you do it for everything.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: SNPAI, even though it is a competitive clan,
those good enough to move up to MAHOU certainly can especially
since we have open, super easy communication with SNPAI to find out
if the player is good. A lot of other clans poach members from
their subclan, making the subclan unhealthy. That’s never been a
thing for us. Not with SHOJO, not with SNPAI. It’s really important
that all the clans in the community are competitive on their own in
their own respective spheres of competitiveness and that they
traditionally don’t intersect with each other. If people want to
move up between them, they can do that.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Having feeder clans has never been our
thing. We’ve always left the option open if a player wants to come
up but we’ve never made SHOJO or SNPAI as a feeder clan. If
you could change anything about the competitive scene in WoT, what
would it be? CharAznableTheRedComet: Bring back the old Clan Wars
map, maybe. I like the old map a lot more than the new map.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : Definitely try to have mechanics in
the game that reward people going out and fighting each other.
BananaCannon: If there was some kind of rule change on the
Global Map that would encourage people to fight. I think a lot of
efforts have been made for that, but it always seems to fall on its
face. And having more clan tournaments. Clan tournaments are one
thing that people have really responded to. I think when people got
exposed to Clan League, they just wanted more and more of that. I
think everyone had a lot of fun, fighting other top clans non-stop
and not having it affect our map. Eural_NoMemes: I’d like to
see some changes to Strongholds where there’s a reason to
participate in Stronghold raids when you don’t think you’re going
to have an 80% or higher win rate. Stronghold raids are a great
format because they allow for competitive play without many
consequences. I think the way to get other clans to participate
would be to take out the loss of boxes and make it so they losers
get some boxes and the winners get a lot of boxes. And also,
#End3amStrongholdtimes. CharAznableTheRedComet: Maybe
something to promote tier X Strongholds. Maybe have an event to
promote tier VIII or tier VI clans that don’t venture into tier X
Strongholds. BananaCannon: Maybe make it more like pubs. If
you win, you get a lot of Experience and Credits. If you lose, you
still get a little Experience and some Credits. Make it that way
with boxes, where if you lose, you still get something.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Maybe something like tank repairs are free
but the ammo costs money. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: I think the
biggest thing with Strongholds is the fact that there’s no reason
for clans to attack other clans that are better than them.
BananaCannon: There’s also not enough incentive for clans that are
the best at lower tiers to move up to the next level. So if you’re
the best tier VI clan, you don’t really want to fight tier VIII
clans, even though you could, when you can keep bullying people at
tier VI. And the same thing from tier VIII to X. Any last
words? Kawaii_Anime_Girl: All the people that we want to shout out:
Gandaran, Comrade_Jeffe. Eural_NoMemes: Inchon, Infi__O_OII, Xeroproject, lozarus. CharAznableTheRedComet:
Shoutout to Cent72. Eural_NoMemes: Wril. We learned
a lot from him and from RUS. BananaCannon: Infi__O_OII, who was a
depcom in MAHOU. He’s been a huge force in calling and working with
Eural on strats. He’s like the shadow depcom in MAHOU that’s always
been really big. Eural_NoMemes: HoHoHaHee from CHAI is someone that I learned a lot from. He’s
been a huge influence on me, helping me figure out what’s
important. Making it so that your members in the clan get what they
want out of the clan. Whether it’s Credits, fights, image, whatever
it is they feel is important, it’s your prerogative as commander to
make sure that they are getting what they want.
BananaCannon: And Oxmathus.
Eural_NoMemes: Shoutout to Gabe for teaching me a lot. Shout to Tigers teaching me a lot and playing against me. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: Shoutout to Eural and Banana.
who really just paid the gold necessary to make the
clan, for the second commander Sayaka_Maizono who first worked
toward building it up. By running into people in team battles and
recruiting just about anyone non-terrible with a vaguely
anime-themed name, the friendly circle grew. We hung out on
teamspeak, platooned together and compared the latest shows between
games of Cards Against Humanity. Arma (Kawaii_Anime_Girl) succeeded
him and ran the clan for quite a while before real life caught up
with him too and he passed the reigns to BananaCannon. We happened
to have some good players and that casual friendship that we were
based on is something that we still rely on, because we genuinely
care about our members and we all liked winning together.
Around the Third Campaign was when we first started transitioning
from a social clan to something more competitive. I wasn’t involved
much in the decisions back then, but it was decided that we wanted
to get people tanks and transition to become more competitive.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: There was one point in
MAHOU’s early history when I was the clan commander where we tried
farming gold during the Civil War and it almost killed the clan.
Ever since then, MAHOU hasn’t been about farming as was the
eventual downfall of other older clans. What are your Clan
goals? BananaCannon: The goal was always to be fair to everyone, in
our own clan and in other clans. We’ve never really been
warmongers, except for the sake of getting fights. Our goal has
always been self-improvement. We like to fight every night or as
much as possible. We feel people get better by playing the game and
we don’t like it when people just sit around doing nothing. We try
to mix it up and we posture ourselves so that we can get those
fights in a fair way and don’t really stir the boat except to get
people to stay fresh and play the game. I think that a lot of
people acknowledge us for that, not simply declaring war on
everybody but being in that position where we fought and improved.
What is your greatest accomplishment(s) as a clan? Eural_NoMemes: Consistently finishing in the
top 3 in everything for a year now. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: I
would say the third campaign was a big accomplishment.
BananaCannon : The third campaign was the first event
that really tested us as a clan wars clan and transitioned us from
a social clan to something more competitive. Certain officers
emerged as leaders and callers, and we learned the strengths and
weaknesses of the players next to us. Those friendships became the
core of our teamwork as we frantically organized to earn players
their tanks. That overwhelming stress, though, forged our desire to
win and exposed us to the fun of regular competitive clan wars.
Eural in particular, who had ironically joined to get away
from clan wars and relax in a social clan, arose as a kind of
beacon to a lot of our players since he actually had some clan wars
experience and invested huge amounts of time in his gameplay. He
would play religiously, do his own research, watch gameplay from
streamers, and network with callers in other clans to come up with
new ideas. He would constantly be bouncing those concepts off of
other officers in the clan to perfect new ideas that people really
hadn't seen before. He obsessively studied the game and through his
objective research and charismatic generosity, dispelled a lot of
the casual misconceptions that every player has. Basically he just
inspired every player around him to be better. And we did get
better - we were constantly looking for the next fight, and gave
our players as many battles as possible every night. We were always
looking for the next fight and we loved playing every night, and
wearing Eural's voice out more than is healthy. In
Godwin's/Chullba War, we proved ourselves to some top clans that
had previously never fought us, who underestimated us and ended up
acknowledging us for being fair in leadership, competent in
calling, and with a friendly community spirit. All that tireless
preparation and Eural's aggressive flexible calling allowed MAHOU
to punch well above its weight, and quickly earned Eural a
reputation as a competent caller. I really feel that now he is one
of the top few callers on the North America server, if not the
best. One thing that helped us recruit so effectively was
that unlike a lot of the strong clans at the time, we didn't care
much about overall stats and set the trend of looking at recent
stats and especially tier ten performance. A lot of the extremely
good superunicum players who simply refused to reroll would be
declined by more elite clans at the time because of their overall
stats, back when "rerolling to -G-" was a common thing among top
players, we would just accept top players who knew their game but
didn't want to make new accounts just to look pretty on a
statistics page. Each player who joined made it easier for others
to follow. It helped that a lot of our original members also had
improved in house from teal to dark purple. Mahou came in
1st in Birth of the Titans. What was your strategy?
BananaCannon : A lot of that was reading the rules and
having a lot of experience in the previous campaigns. We actually
were 1st place in the last campaign as well. Even though we were
fielding fewer teams, if you look into the rules and get an idea
about what the actual objectives are, it’s pretty easy to
outperform other clans, if you know you can win.
Eural_NoMemes: It’s still about winning battles. That’s what we’re
all about at the end of the day. BananaCannon: And Wril helped out a lot. As far as winning this
Birth of Titans campaign, Wril was calling almost non-stop. He
earned number 1 in personal fame by a large margin because he was
here every day calling most of our battles and he did an amazing
job. What’s the culture like in MAHOU? BananaCannon: We take
care of our community members and we treat everyone fairly. Our
officers have been tireless and selfless, talking into the early
morning hours resolving the drama of the day and even withholding
their own payouts in the hard times to help the soldiers get a bit
more. We were originally an anime social clan that happened to have
some okay players, and that casual friendship is something we've
always relied on. We genuinely care about our members and love to
win together. We decided early on to distribute all the gold
we earn in equal shares based on simple attendance with no officer
bonuses, and we take care of everyone with advances toward payouts
and incentive programs from clan reserves (for getting new tier
tens for example). We feel that officers tend to show up and get a
fair share already so every soldier who shows up and plays can earn
as much as any Commander or officer, and generally it is the most
active soldiers who get the highest payouts. We were also the first
clan to have every stronghold building reach tier ten, and we pop
three or four credit reserves every evening (basically the daily
limit for building them at tier ten) with hundreds of them amassed
in reserve. The way we take care of our clanmates does a lot to
encourage their loyalty. How do you keep your members
motivated to show up every day? BananaCannon : Don’t
take long breaks is probably the best advice that I could give
somebody. Whenever you stop playing, people will start doing other
things and get out of the habit of showing up.
Eural_NoMemes: We always have something to do.
BananaCannon : Not having breaks is the best thing to
keep your players engaged because then they get in the habit of
coming on every night. And that’s really what’s important.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Also giving them a
reason to play, like credit bonuses. We pop a lot of those.
BananaCannon : We pop three or four every night. If
there’s a single stronghold detachment running, you should always
have a credit bonus running because you will reimburse yourself, as
long as you win a decent amount. If you win 75% of your battles
that’s enough, and we win 80 - 90% of our battles.
CharAznableTheRedComet: We try to have fun with it.
BananaCannon : If you win most of your games, you get
back the boxes for credit reserves. You should pretty much always
run them because it helps your clan earn credits to buy more tanks
and then they can perform better.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : There’s also Slack. Slack is really
important for letting people know when things are going on.
Your clan is part of a community of clans. Which clan(s) make up
that community and what is your relationship with them?
Eural_NoMemes: SNPAI is part of our community. BananaCannon:
SHOJO used to be our sister clan, then they kind of
imploded. And the new thing that is SHOJO is something that we
created but we don’t acknowledge them anymore.
Eural_NoMemes: We also have a brand new MAHOU veterans clan
(MAHOV) for people who are still around on TeamSpeak,
playing Overwatch and other games. It’s for people who don’t really
play World of Tanks anymore but we still want to keep them around
and they might come back for campaigns. We’ve had a few members
retire from Tanks but they’re still important parts of the
community. BananaCannon: SNPAI started off as a subclan.
Basically they were originally made as a clan to be our casual
side, for the casual players. CharAznableTheRedComet: They
were originally supposed to be the retirement clan.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : And then they wanted to fight.
BananaCannon: They were doing Strongholds to get credit
bonuses and then started getting kind of competitive. They had a
competitive side and a casual side, and eventually the competitive
side won out, so they are kind of competitive now too.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: That’s been the story of every clan. That’s
MAHOU’s story, that’s SHOJO’s story. BananaCannon: That
happened to SHOJO too. When SHOJO was made, they started off as a
casual clan to compliment us, then they became competitive. You
really can’t have a clan anymore without at least doing
Strongholds. Once you do Strongholds, you’re likely to start doing
Clan Wars, so it kind of leads into it. You can’t really stop a
clan from becoming competitive if they have competitive players.
You pretty much have to do it for the credit bonuses. And if you do
it for the credit bonuses, you do it for everything.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl: SNPAI, even though it is a competitive clan,
those good enough to move up to MAHOU certainly can especially
since we have open, super easy communication with SNPAI to find out
if the player is good. A lot of other clans poach members from
their subclan, making the subclan unhealthy. That’s never been a
thing for us. Not with SHOJO, not with SNPAI. It’s really important
that all the clans in the community are competitive on their own in
their own respective spheres of competitiveness and that they
traditionally don’t intersect with each other. If people want to
move up between them, they can do that.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Having feeder clans has never been our
thing. We’ve always left the option open if a player wants to come
up but we’ve never made SHOJO or SNPAI as a feeder clan. If
you could change anything about the competitive scene in WoT, what
would it be? CharAznableTheRedComet: Bring back the old Clan Wars
map, maybe. I like the old map a lot more than the new map.
Kawaii_Anime_Girl : Definitely try to have mechanics in
the game that reward people going out and fighting each other.
BananaCannon: If there was some kind of rule change on the
Global Map that would encourage people to fight. I think a lot of
efforts have been made for that, but it always seems to fall on its
face. And having more clan tournaments. Clan tournaments are one
thing that people have really responded to. I think when people got
exposed to Clan League, they just wanted more and more of that. I
think everyone had a lot of fun, fighting other top clans non-stop
and not having it affect our map. Eural_NoMemes: I’d like to
see some changes to Strongholds where there’s a reason to
participate in Stronghold raids when you don’t think you’re going
to have an 80% or higher win rate. Stronghold raids are a great
format because they allow for competitive play without many
consequences. I think the way to get other clans to participate
would be to take out the loss of boxes and make it so they losers
get some boxes and the winners get a lot of boxes. And also,
#End3amStrongholdtimes. CharAznableTheRedComet: Maybe
something to promote tier X Strongholds. Maybe have an event to
promote tier VIII or tier VI clans that don’t venture into tier X
Strongholds. BananaCannon: Maybe make it more like pubs. If
you win, you get a lot of Experience and Credits. If you lose, you
still get a little Experience and some Credits. Make it that way
with boxes, where if you lose, you still get something.
CharAznableTheRedComet: Maybe something like tank repairs are free
but the ammo costs money. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: I think the
biggest thing with Strongholds is the fact that there’s no reason
for clans to attack other clans that are better than them.
BananaCannon: There’s also not enough incentive for clans that are
the best at lower tiers to move up to the next level. So if you’re
the best tier VI clan, you don’t really want to fight tier VIII
clans, even though you could, when you can keep bullying people at
tier VI. And the same thing from tier VIII to X. Any last
words? Kawaii_Anime_Girl: All the people that we want to shout out:
Gandaran, Comrade_Jeffe. Eural_NoMemes: Inchon, Infi__O_OII, Xeroproject, lozarus. CharAznableTheRedComet:
Shoutout to Cent72. Eural_NoMemes: Wril. We learned
a lot from him and from RUS. BananaCannon: Infi__O_OII, who was a
depcom in MAHOU. He’s been a huge force in calling and working with
Eural on strats. He’s like the shadow depcom in MAHOU that’s always
been really big. Eural_NoMemes: HoHoHaHee from CHAI is someone that I learned a lot from. He’s
been a huge influence on me, helping me figure out what’s
important. Making it so that your members in the clan get what they
want out of the clan. Whether it’s Credits, fights, image, whatever
it is they feel is important, it’s your prerogative as commander to
make sure that they are getting what they want.
BananaCannon: And Oxmathus.Eural_NoMemes: Shoutout to Gabe for teaching me a lot. Shout to Tigers teaching me a lot and playing against me. Kawaii_Anime_Girl: Shoutout to Eural and Banana.
Clan Spotlight: MAHOU