Clan Spotlight: BADGR 4/28/14

Hypnotik: This week we take a look at BADGR, badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom!   (Absolute TC's this Wednesday 4PM PST!)   Wandorf – Commander, I do everything and nothing Semiorange – Deputy Commander, came from FORGE. Calls battles and does horrible diplomacy Spishak – Calls battles and helps plan strats with the other field commanders Vanagandr – DepComm. Been with BADGR since PURPL and doesn’t do anything   The abridged portal version of this article is available here.   How did your Clan initially get things started? Wandorf – The clan was formed a couple days after the great PURPL implosion. Originally, we had reformed under the name SPICY, which didn’t last very long because it was a terrible name and we needed a lot of support we didn’t have. So we came over to PETCO and now we are BADGR.   Vanagandr – The search for acronyms was really fun.   Semiorange – I got into BADGR when it was SPICY before the merger because I was trying to get them over to FORGE as I was trying to fix FORGE’s issues. What SPICY had was a great group of players. What they did not have was the comradery or the community. You couldn’t get on SPICY TS and find anyone. Guys would show up for battles and that was about it. What SPICY really needed, and what BADGR has now, is people on TS and there is more of a group of guys, not just a couple people who play tanks during Clan Wars. It desperately needed that or it was going to fail.   How is your Clan structured? Semiorange – A normal hierarchy. You have Wandorf who makes the final decision but he does take input from most DCs except Van because, like he said, he doesn’t do anything. He is the leader of our anime club but that’s about it.   Vanagandr – That is a slur against my character.   Semiorange – We all have a little say in it. PETCO is a giant gaming community that is unlike any other one I have been in. We have our Skype channel where the heads of all the Clans come together and they will talk about stuff, but when it boils down to the tough decisions, its Wandorf’s fault. I mean Wandorf’s decision.   What was the process of joining PETCO like? What did you have to change in order to be part of a larger community? Vanagandr – It was a pretty straight forward process. We basically just migrated our teamspeak into the PETCO teamspeak but we lost all of our [TeamSpeak groups] in the process. That was a shame but otherwise we just changed our name.   Wandorf – When we decided we were going to try and find a greater community to join, I actually came over here with Vendetta to see if PETCO would take us. When they heard that we were looking to do this, they jumped at the offer.   Vanagandr – This was right before the Second Campaign. We were going to be on our own except for who we could find for allies during the campaign and we wanted to make sure we had reliable allies, and got as many of our people the reward tank as possible.   What did each side get out of this deal? Vanagandr – We, PETCO, don’t really have formal alliances on the map as much but we have a lot of people in the TeamSpeak that we can hang out with, and a lot of us were already friends with people in PETCO, So I guess it was an integration of the community.   Wandorf – The command got more of a support structure. If I needed to bounce ideas of someone, there are the other commanders. Since we are all friends, we are able to help out each other if we are near. PETCO is not strictly an alliance, more of a group of friends that will help each other out from time to time.   Spishak – Going beyond the map, we help each other with strategies and scrim a lot to hone and tune our tank battle skills.   Do you ever run into any challenges between the divisions? Semiorange – It’s like a family and everyone who has a family knows that you fight just as much as your friendly. There are always inner conflicts and there always will be. If there aren't any, something is wrong. It’s like your smaller brother harassment thing; everyone talks a lot of trash.   So who is the older brother then? Semiorange – It’s always going to be Ziddy, PBKAC. For lack of a better term, it’s their debacle and Ziddy is normally at the top of the giving but as well as receiving because he has been around and everyone knows Ziddy, even Clans that haven’t heard of PETCO. He is considered Commander of all these Clans, at least that’s how pubbies see it, which is not what it is.    What do consider your Clan’s greatest achievement? Spishak – To date, it is getting most of our members the VK because that was pretty hard and tiring.   Where did your members get their Clan Wars experience? Is it mostly from PURPL? Vanagandr – I’m not sure it is mostly PURPL anymore. We have a lot of people from other Clans now.   Semiorange – There was a FORGE influx and many were originally from GSA. Half of that group went to OTTER and the other half went to various other Clans. Now that we are in PETCO, we are back with 90% of the friends we started playing the game with. I have friends in OTTER that I have played with for two, two and a half years now. It was a nice move for some of us because we are reunited with a lot of people now and being in a big open teamspeak, you can go find your friends. When a lot of these guys leave, they stay in the community. There is PBKAC, OTTER, BADGR and though we have taken players from OTTER, OTTER has taken players from us. It makes it really easy to keep your friends. It’s not like going from one rival to another.   Vanagandr – We had a couple of callers come from OTTER and elsewhere.   Spishak – I came from SSGS.   Vanagandr - It was right about the time of the second Campaign and when we were integrating into PETCO that we started picking up callers. At that point it was Scorpion_King and I, and I am an awful caller. It pretty much ended up being us two most of the time and that was not working.   Wandorf – Vanagandr and I are the only ones in command from PURPL. As Spish said, he’s from SSGS. Semi is from FORGE. We still have some of the old PURPL members.   Is there anything you could have done to make the transitions your Clan has gone through easier? Vanagandr – Yes. I had a really good acronym. Honorable… wait one second.   Wandorf – Basically, he came up with a bunch of acronyms and BADGR was the only good one. We were not going to be HORSE.   Vanagandr – It was the "Heroic Organization of Revolutionary Socialist Equines." Horses are terrifying and would strike fear into enemies everywhere.   Wandorf – If we had taken that name, we would have attracted all the bronies.   With such a huge teamspeak, do you have interesting stories to tell us? Vanagandr – Well we have these 2 tags... A long, long time ago, someone gave themselves Channel Commander and gave everyone in BADGR the “Really Likes Animals” and “Ponyphile” tags and so now it’s a tradition. Just about everyone is BADGR gets emblazoned with it.   Semiorange – We are a little laid back in some senses and you can see that on the Clan Wars map. It’s a very laid back, fun clan. We had Wandorf’s birthday which we have a 2 hour twitch of him but that’s not allowed to be displayed until we have a horrible falling out and then it will just be in CR/D.   Wandorf - As far as wild and zany things, you may have heard about the BADGR Anime Club.   Vanagandr – To be clear, I am not the leader of the anime club by consent, rather, I was elected by a bunch of people I don't know, some people I do know, and Tioga. This is not a democracy, it is a tyranny of the people.   Can you explain why your Clan icon is holding the Ransack button? Wandorf – That came about when we decided to take a Canadian Safari with OTTER a couple of months ago. I was talking to Allurai one night and discussing OTTER’s cool new pirate otter. He said give him a few minutes and he came back with that logo. I really like it so I don’t think I’m going to change it.   Vanagandr – Since we have been with BADGR, we have only had 2, maybe 3, icon changes. One had a purple storm trooper helmet on them.   How do you keep Clan Wars fresh and interesting for you? Vanagandr - We have Zeppelinisgod post for us.   Semiorange – Fights get picked by all Clans and finally one Clan has had enough to come hit you. That is how we got into the THUGZ thing. We had an inactive member that got us into the whole THUGZ ordeal. It is good for us. We need some sort of fight. We get fat and lazy. We have never been known for training. We pick a team 3 minutes before the battle pops and you run with whatever you got. You try something new and have a little fun with it and then whine and complain when you lose. Or at least that’s what I do.   Wandorf – Shoutout to Zeppelin for making most_rage_inducing_Wardecs_NA.   Do you have a favorite WarDec? Wandorf – I don’t think it’s on the forums anymore, it got nuked.   Vanagandr – “1 2 3 4 I declare a unicum war” was my favorite even if it was kind of my fault.   Semiorange – My favorite was the G one.   Wandorf - That one still exists but the one I was referring to was Zeppelin wardecing all Latin Clans - the one that devolved in Argentina versus America.   What strategies would recommend to new Clans who are getting started in Clan Wars? Wandorf – Avoid landing in the United States of America at all costs.   Vanagandr – It used to be Africa you start off in but now you work from the north down.   Spishak – Probably just the basics - know weak spots, play together, cover tanks and focus-fire.   Vanagandr – In general, there is a hierarchy of clans. The clans don’t necessarily move around too much unless they get started with a reasonable base that is already experienced to begin with. I think it’s more that the players move upwards as people leave for higher clans or more powerful clans implode.   What do think is the biggest mistake a new clan makes? Wandorf – Going into Clan Wars too early when they don’t have enough tier Xs to do anything on the map.   Vanagandr – Wardecing -G-.   Wandorf – New Clans should really make sure they have enough tank depth with tank locking before they get on to the map.   Semiorange – Tank locking is one of the big ones. We see a couple clans that will land every now and then and the first fight they give us won’t be bad for their skill level but the next night they show up in tier IXs. You aren’t going to win consistently with IXs.   Do you have a particular strat you like to run on certain maps? Vanagandr – There was this infamous thing with PURPL where we had Batchats everywhere.   Spishak – Our yolo rush on Malinovka   Semiorange – The Clan Wars meta has changed, it’s not as much strategy as it is countering what side the team is going to push 15 tanks down. It used to be where we had more strategy but now it is a lot of rushing. It is a lot of heavy hitting TDs and heavy armor rushing down one side. We have strats for a few maps still.   What's involved in the recruiting process for your clan? Vanagandr - Our requirements right now are 5 Tier X Clan Wars viable tanks, 2000 WN8, and 4 nights of availability per week. Anyone who meets those standards is eligible to join, but we make exceptions for people who have a ridiculous number of battles or a very high recent WN8 and haven't had a chance to carry their battles from earlier to their quality of play right now. If we see someone in pubs who's really good or when people come to us, they're referred to me and then to DrunkenWarlord. Then we just make a decision based off of them meeting the requirements and if we have space right now.   What do you think clans typically should pay more attention to that they often don't, or how to get high quality new members into a new clan? Vanagandr - One thing that gets on my nerves is something that people pay too much attention to is the recent WN8. They'll equate their recent score to an overall score, and it means that overall during the last 60 days you've only had the equivalent of someone who's gone bad at the game to being good at the game. It's just not a useful metric unless you're comparing it to everyone's 60-day. Overall stats are a much more useful and relevant metric.   Wandorf - What clans shouldn't do is advertise in battle. It's a good way of getting people to not like you.   Semiorange - Yeah, that's the most annoying thing. Getting your name out there is easy, you get on the map, but getting on the map is not easy. You have to train, it helps a lot. A clan of horrible players that can focus-fire and trade damage will still win. Going back as far as PURPL's start [when I was in GSA], we played with each other for a year and our strats were okay, our focus fire was good, but the one thing we did was share our hit points very well. When PURPL came at us they didn't do well against us at first, even though they were all "unicums" because they pubbed it. It shows that if you can focus-fire, share hit points, and not poke out - if you get your guys to do that, it doesn't matter if your clan averages 3k WN8 or 1800, you're viable to be in the top 20 clans. If you have a clan with less stats but good discipline, you will have no problem getting up there. That discipline goes a long way for new clans.   Vanagandr - To the advertising in game, an analogy I'd make is fishing. If you go out and trawl for fish, You may get a bunch of fish, but you can't really guarantee anything about the quality of those fish. If you're fishing with a rod, you can see if one's good enough or throw it back if you don't need it. What I'm trying to say is you're going to have an overall better quality of players if you look at everyone on a individual basis instead of just advertising and trying to get everyone in.   Spishak - For new clans, I don't think there's an easy way of doing it. You're going to have to get on the map somehow. The new players and new clans that are coming in, you don't see as many of them using the forums. It's like they don't know they exist yet, and don't get the correlation between the clans system and forums until a few months in.   Vanagandr - The forums are great because you can miss a conversation about something related to the game and you can go back and read it later, and get just as much out of the conversation as if it were happening right in front of you. I think a lot of people would have a better grasp at the game if they looked at the forums to see what people are talking about. There's a lot of insightful conversation that goes on in the forums, but there is some less insightful stuff of course.   Semiorange - I think recruiting for small clans is always going to be hard. Having been in small clans, everyone wants to be better than they are. If they don't, then they don't belong in a clan anyway. Everyone wants that next step, and to be better you need to play with better players. If you have a core group and can get to a mediocre level and can hold land, you'll keep your people. If you can't get that, that's when you have your problems and people don't want to stay. It's easier to move than it is to recruit.   Vanagandr - That's how I got where I am. I think I went through 4 imploded clans and one that I left because I realized none of what they were doing on the map was succeeding. When I joined PURPL, I was green in stats, and now I've gotten much better by playing with good people.   Other than CW, what does your clan do to build a community and keep people interacting with each other? Spishak - The anime club, for one.   Vanagandr - We made a mistake and brought Tioga060 into our clan. It was a grave error.   Vanagandr - As far as building our community goes, I'll just accept platoon invites from anyone within the clan. Every once in a while I'll run into people I haven't played with before and find out that they're really chill guys.   Spishak - I think we tried to do historical battles together.   Anything you guys would like to add? Wandorf - As far as clan management goes, I used to do a lot of gold tracking and stuff manually. I just wanted to say to any clan managers reading this, try out the WoTManager system (http://wotmanager.com), it'll remove a lot of stress from your life.   Vanagandr - You can also see info from the recent past to see what players are and are not showing up lately.