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Thanks to all for a fun campaign. We ran every night of the campaign. 51 members participated, 33 played 5 or more and 7 played 20 or more. We had 6 people call including first time calls (as far as I know) by Bombay and Sib, who both did great. Sib went 2 for 3, so pretty sure that makes him the DHO-X career calling win leader. We did seem to improve throughout with notable improvements in focus fire, pushing and individual communication. We had a nice combination of some new strats (well, for this iteration of DHO-X that is) on new maps, and working same/similar strats on maps that we have played a fair amount somewhat recently. A couple of highlights off the top of my head: - A down to the wire match against TEACH (a 1400+ ELO clan) - 7 arty comp win on El Halluf - Breaking the recent Steppes curse (more than once) - We still lost more than we won, but our CW elo inched up slightly and we certainly won more than in the last CW season. I think we have found our current ELO and can look to build from here. Areas for improvement: - our pushes can still be more tight and uniform - Calling was better, but still need improvement on mid-game recognition/flex and appropriate patience/aggressiveness. Some of the strats could be better... callers may consider trying to run the occasional advance as a legionnaire with another clan to pick up some ideas (even if it is what not to do). I think our strats on Prok, Steppes and Westfield are mostly legit, the rest are a bit more work in progress. - We had good participation, but would like to see more. If we are going to significantly progress in CW, it would be great if we could get to being able to occasionally run 2 battles at once. - individual execution. If we want to continue to improve, we need more people to play their tier tens more. Micro positioning is super important, and many more nuanced strats put greater stress on individual execution. If you are unfamiliar with your tank... - individual communication. We have some nice chatter and ideas happening team wide. Next step is to clean that up a bit by being specific and having a touch more of a filter. “arty in A0” and “277 in G6 taking fire from multiple in C8” and using F7 instead of saying “I’m spotted” are great examples of clean communication. “I’m getting wrecked” and “they are pushing” are examples of being too general or adding something the caller already knows. It’s also challenging if multiple people are talking at once... while the caller is also trying to talk. All of the above didn’t happen too often, but they are relatively easy things to clean up. Great job all. Will look to keep the org play mojo going a bit for rest of the summer by running tier X advances at least 2x per week. Ontarget is tee’d up to call this Thursday. Hope to see you there.

**Before commenting, quick reminder that we will run CW again tonight (Saturday the 6th)** Good night last night. 2-2 and if I hadn’t done a full hill push with meds on Prok mid-game, decent chance we would have won the last one. We beat two clans around our elo and were competitive with two clans 200+ higher in elo. We had some decent pushes and that was among the best nights of focused fire I have seen from us. Room for improvement, but not too bad at all. Two of the keys are we had some guys make a couple of good non-called micro(ish) moves and our overall communication was pretty good. Switching up the basic structure of the strats also seemed to be a bit better, so will continue on that theme. The structure of this campaign is that there are three fronts: Basic, advanced and elite. Furthermore, the research/fame point earnings from the basic front will effectively go away pretty fast for those clans winning a lot... meaning the top 25 (maybe more) clans won’t be on the basic front after the first couple of days. At any rate, this is a short campaign and we haven’t run many advances, so going to try and hit as many of the 9 remaining nights as we can... I doubt we make them all (I cant do Monday for example, but maybe xtc?)... we’ll see how it goes Let’s try and keep the positive momentum going. Hope to see you tonight. As a reminder, you need 5 battles in order to be able to bid bonds on reward tanks.

I personally use Aslains Mod Pack, it has a plethora of options for you to use per Gun Sights and map pack. It can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but it's not so bad. https://aslain.com/index.php?/topic/13-aslains-wot-modpack/

Progetto, TVP, or Patton 48. All great X's. All amazing IX's.

Welcome Mack! One of our recruiters should be along shortly to send you an invite. @rewguy79

welcome - you will find a few veterans here (OIF veteran myself) and I too am a stay at home dad on rather frequent occasions... moving ot follow your wife's career will do that to you! Again, Welcome! See you around the battlefield!

The various coupons we get for the WoT prem shop have all sorts of restrictions; no special items, not for gold, spend X amount of money, time limits, etc. It can be confusing. I found that by going to your "My Coupons" tab and selecting a coupon it will display all the items that will work with that particular coupon. Apologies if everyone knows about this but it was new to me. Hopefully, it helps someone 🙂

Thank you, I didn't know that trick; I'll give it a try

Looks like we found a Wot player that enjoys the tier 9

For all you non-Discord checkers... just a reminder!

Yeah, Aslains. Lots of options, too many really, and it has an installer.

I love it! I might need to make a new blog section - Gaming with dad or some such - and let you guys go wild with game reviews, game tips and the like! With all the experience the dads on DHO have, it would be awesome to give it a platform to reach the world!

Hello all. I live in Central Pennsylvania. I'm a 56 year old day who has a 14 year old son who is an aspiring musician. I haven't played WoT or any other game in a long time. We checked out each others accounts last night and I think we may start playing together on occasion. I don't have a lot of time but I have a lot of fun vehicles that took a lot of grinding to get, lol. I work at a Big Ten University and my job has lots of stress that tries to follow me home at night and on the weekends. To unwind I enjoy military miniatures games (just historical ones) and paint/sell figures in both 15mm and 28mm. I played WoT a few years ago on a regular basis. Was a clan officer and played in a lot of tournaments and even tried some Clan Wars for fun. See ya, Skip

Evidently I was in the wrong area when I posted this and it ended up in general instead of the Introduce Yourself section. See what happens when you give old grumps technology and turn them loose with it. Sorry.

This round of TR was pretty good I'm 140 tokens from Tier 4. I do like that skill plays a bigger part. I'm still not huge on the Tier requirements when it comes to T9-10. So I was forced to buy a T9 because I fell behind by few points. But for the most part I could get at least 50 points in 3-5 battles. Luckily RNG smiled on me and I'm in good shape for a new tank.

Madea gaff worth sharing yesterday. I Used the some blue prints earned in the level 3 tank rewards towards the M103. But in my excitement of using them and jumping up a tier much sooner than expected, I did not do the math on how many blue prints I needed to bring down the XP to what I currently had on the T32. Short story shorter - I used too many blue prints, left XP on the T32 that I will eventually have to convert AND wasted at least 1, maybe 2 sets of Blue Prints I could have but towards another tank. This "You've should have known better" PSA has been brought to you by Wes...who should have known better... Carry on...

I got my Emil 1951 yesterday! Statistically it is not supposed to be better than the Emil 1 with lower DPM and slower speed. But with a higher Alpha and faster clip dump I find I am doing way better in the 1951. Its higher HP/T gets it up to speed faster on the hills even though it is slower overall

Life - It's a Killer! It has been an interesting half year, let me tell you! New job, new activities, new classes, change, change, change! It started to rain in January and it just kept pouring until June! I am sure you know the feeling - as Dads I think we all struggle with it. I am talking about: WORK & LIFE BALANCE! It can be hard to balance work and life. Many factors to weigh and many pressures to resist while being distracted by dozens of tasks.... How are we to try and even consider balance? Well, in light of my (tentative, LOL) return after a nearly 6 month hiatus I figured what better topic to talk about than work & life balance! Now, work can be many things. For some Dads "work" might be "chores" or "hobbies," rather than traditional employment. It could be homeschooling your children. It could be caring for a relative. Work is generally a task that needs to happen in order to ensure sufficient resources for a pleasant life. "Life" is the ability to enjoy the fruits coming from "work." Life is relaxing with friends, good meals, vacations, hobbies, gaming, engaging with our children and other family. Its the stuff we look back on and say, "That's what it's all about." The trick, which I am sure you know, is figuring out how much work you need and how much life you can afford! If we could, I am pretty sure most of us would choose to just live all the time. But sadly, my wealth doesn't support such goals. At least, not yet 😉. So if I can't live all day, I guess that means I got to work some. Luckily, I rather enjoy my work. So it makes going to work no nearly as painful as some jobs in my past. Maybe that's you right now; work sucks. I feel for you. I hope to write up a few blogs on ways to help find opportunities to find better work. But today, we just need to find balance. So how do we do that? By setting BOUNDARIES and RULES! You know, those things you set for your children and tell them they can't do certain things? Yah, they work on adults, too! The trick to finding balance is setting boundaries and rules. Of course, setting these ain't easy. Boundaries are often discarded because of discomfort or guilt. Rules get tossed because you break it a few times and it seems too much work to make it stick. But you are a Dad! This isn't the first time where a rule was ignored and then re-established (looking at you "no electronics on the weekend until your chores are done." Don't think I forgot about you!). Dakar's Boundaries and Rules for Dad: Plot Personal Time - This is actually a bunch of things rolled into one; but let's focus on family and self. Each member of your family needs three to four events per week with you. Some of those can be group events, but at least one even each week needs to be one on one if possible. Events could be dinner, game night, or walking to the park. Maybe it's sitting on the couch and watching a movie with popcorn together. During these events, put the phone and tablets away. Focus on being present. Make three to four events per week for events with yourself... you need time too. Some of the is direct self care; physical, mentel, or spiritual. The rest is just decompression and relaxation; gaming, sports (watching or playing), reading, or whatever other hobbies you enjoy. Of course, nothing says you can't mix it up and do self time with others - poker night, clan battles, etc. Set Work Hours - Depending on your particular field, this can be tough. Still, you need to do it. The least you need to do is find a way to make family time disconnected from work time. Find three to four times a week per person where you can turn off the phone and pay attention to them. If you can't do that, finding balance is still possible, but you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of every opportunity when work leaves you alone to focus on family and self. I could write more, but in the end I think it comes down to priorities and long term goals. I never met an old man who wished he add earned more overtime. I have met the man who wished for just one extra minute with his family. Make exercise a MUST DO - This is my worst offender right now. When things pile up exercise time becomes "time to get things done." Which means there are still things to do (cause there is never enough time!) and I am not exercising. Unless you work a job that keeps you moving all day, you NEED exercise. Especially if you work 40 hours or more at a desk... Otherwise you may not live long enough to enjoy life after the desk! Harsh, but true! So make sure you are getting in your exercise. Some cheats to this are making SOME exercise part of your family and self time. Even a simple walk around the park is better than not. Walking with family is even better - help instil positive exercise ethics in them and yourself! Just make sure that you don't make all family time exercise time...each deserves some time on its own. Be Realistic - Know thy self. Don't go through this list and try and do everything perfectly today. Its gonna take time. Set small achievable goals. Haven't been exercising? Do some push-ups and sit-ups/crunches. Right now. Good. Now, when will you do that again? Why not when you wake up while the coffee is being made? Small steps. This week, if you don't normally do it, have a family dinner once week. Even if its take out. Just sit down in one place. For ten minutes. Say hi. That's enough. Once you get those ten minutes, got for eleven! The key is to try, fail and try again. Ask for Help - This ties into "Be realistic." Help comes from all different sources; friends, family, co-workers, DHO. Ask for help in setting boundaries. Ask friends and coworkers not to call during family dinner or family game night. Work with supervisors to set up exercise time before, during or after work - sell them on how healthy workers cost less in injuries, insurance and down time! Ask that friend who does all the stuff how they do it and try out some of their suggestions. Google "how do I find work life balance" and give some of those tips a try. Whatever it is, get the help you need to make this work. Manage Your Mind - Things are never going to be perfectly smooth all the time. You need to be resilient to change. Self-help books on building a resilient mindset can do wonders. THere are some great podcasts and youtube video series out there for inspiration, mindfulness and self care. WHen fear or self doubt happen, you need to take time to address it. Your emotions can get in your way if they aren't kept in check; both good and bad! Set Long Term Goals - What does 5 years from now look like? What does 10 or 20 years look like? Does that plan allow for work life balance? If not, is the plan worth it? If so, how will you manage until then? Re-evaluate regularly - Life is what happens to you while you are making plans. Not sure who said it first, but I find it far too accurate. Unexpected child, new job (or lost job), natural disaster, new friends and family; all of this will mean that a new balance needs to be established. This isn't a one size fits all thing. Your balance is going to be unbalanced at some point. Make sure you make time to check! Set Time for Finances - I put this last, but don't let that fool you. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to build balance. If you don't know what you can afford in terms of balance, how can you ever hope to achieve it? Make sure you are looking at your income, bills, charges, and expenditures at least once a month. Check to make sure you didn't sign up for a free trial and it turned into a monthly bill. Do you go overboard last week on movie tickets? Or maybe its time to consider preparing for and asking for a raise or maybe look for a new job opportunity. If you can't control your finances, they WILL control you. Make sure to keep on top of your finances as best you can and this will have a huge influence on your ability to balance work and life. Start Small - 80/20 Rule - 80% of the effect comes for 20% of the events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle Just a few small changes can make huge rewards. Make a few small boundaries and rules and see what happens. You might be surprised how much impact it can have on your work life balance!

Happy Fathersday to everyone!

5.7k damage in the tier 8 http://www.twitch.tv/action_jackson_/v/420969635?sr=a&t=22s

I'm gonna go ahead and dispute this. First part is right. Men aren't under attack. Full stop. For anyone that needs things to be explained in video game speak: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

Gillette can lick my bum crack.

I haven’t watched it. Mostly because I find the debate tiresome. Focus on being as good a person as you can, respect others as equals unless they give you specific reason* to not be respected. I think that basic idea transcends gender, sexual orientation and class. If you get too fired up about an Ad, or perceive yourself as being called out in some way by a person or group of people, look at yourself and ask why you feel that way or are reacting that way. Change a behavior if you are so inspired coming out of that. Otherwise... be like Elsa and Let It Go (nice non-toxically masculine reference right there)... and then find a way to take cpl_maida out of a tanks game 😜 (note: that is not an easy thing to do). *by specific I also mean something that is rationally and reasonably threatening

I hadn't heard of this ad until I saw it here (I'm absolutely not on social media at all). IMO, one reason it's getting so much play is that it attempts to latch on to the "attack on men" that IS occurring in society today. Speaking strictly in a gender sense (ignoring any issues of race), men are under attack, plain and simple. We're told it's "wrong" to be a man. We're told men are the cause of all/most evil in the world. We're told that almost literally anything a man does can be, and is, seen as a "bad" action. (a very easy example is as posted in a reply here, holding a door for a woman got him glared at). Vocal and outspoken "Mens groups" are blasted as being horrible ideas, etc., etc. Conversely, at the same time as women are demanding equality and fairness (a legit demand), they're also telling us that they're the "universal victim" when it comes to men. I have some single male friends who are legitimately afraid to approach a woman they might be interested in due to the stigma associated with her being female and him being male (evil). I have male co-workers who walk around the office at times seemingly looking over their shoulders in fear of being overheard by a woman saying the "wrong" thing (even though there's nothing actually "wrong" with what's being said). A simple *accusation* against a man of something inappropriate is typically enough to immediately ruin his reputation for good, if not his entire life. A similar *accusation* against a woman and the common response is "Well, we should wait until all the facts come out". Men certainly are under "under attack" of sorts these days... and I'm hoping that it doesn't get worse before it gets better, if nothing else for the sake of my two teen daughters having to grow up in such a ridiculous world.

*updated this post to remove my specific teams, and put in the "Sure2Win" team guides by Khasino and Skrilla* Hey Commanders! I decided to write up a quick post to show you guys my current Blitz strategy. My main goal here is for me to talk about my overall strategy for getting the most out of the game mode. Not about what teams to use where, but mainly how to structure your team rotations to consistently gets wins and get to Tier 8 and stay there. This is mainly just what I have found that works best for me. Obviously, your rosters won’t be exactly like mine, so your mileage may vary, Hopefully I can explain my process well enough to maybe help someone who hasn't really focused too much on Blitz or might not understand completely how it works. Blitz Basics: (If you already know how Blitz works, and you just want the meat and potatoes of my strategy and Blitz team rotations, you can skip past this section.) Let me start off with the blitz basics just to get them out of the way. The Blitz game mode in MSF is a "tournament" style battle mode, like the Arena mode. The main differences between Arena and Blitz are that Blitz is on a rotating 4-day and 1-day cycles. The cycles go from Mon - Thurs, then Thurs - Sun, and then Sun - Mon. The start/end times are always at the evening refresh supply stores refresh for your current time zone (I.E. mine start/stop at 6pm central time). There is a "Timer" on the main blitz screen that counts down how much time is remaining in the current blitz cycle. The rewards for Blitz change for each cycle. Each Blitz is titled based off the featured character rewards for that cycle. You earn a small amount of rewards for each blitz battle that you win. And, larger rewards for each milestone tier that you achieve during the event cycle. The milestones will give you a significant amount of Blitz credits and gold. So even if you don’t really care about the featured character rewards, it is worth it to try and clear as many blitz milestones as you can, just for the credits and gold. In addition to the milestone rewards, you also get rewards based off the rank you achieve in the event. The ranking is typically tiered and group together in percentages. So, rank 1, 2-15, 16-100, 101-1500, and then the top 1-10%, 11-25%, 26-60%, and finally 61-100%. There is a "Rewards" button on the blitz battle selection screen, where you can view the milestones and ranking tiers. The down and dirty of Blitz is, score the most points as possible, to get to the highest rewards tier as possible, as quickly as possible. "To win the game, we have to score more points than the other team" When you select a team and complete a blitz battle, each member of that team will now have a cooldown timer. This timer just means the time until you can play that team again for "free". If you want to run that same team again in another battle, it will cost 5 blitz charges per character for a total of 25. The cost increases after 3 matches. The cost is 3x 25, 3x 50, 3x 100 etc. I never run battles that cost 100 unless I have tons of charges left and am really pushing hard to maximize my score. You don't have to pay to play if you don't want to. You can run a team, then wait for the 2-hour refresh timer to expire, then you can run that team again for free. You start off in tier 1, which had a score multiplier of 1.0x. The score multiplier gradually increases each tier until you get to tier 8 which has a score multiplier of 4.0x. The more you play and win, the higher you score will be at the end of the event. My Blitz General Strategy: Here is my general strategy that I use for most Blitz events, and I modify it as needed depending on how hard I want to go in that Blitz event. Fighting in blitz is just like fighting in any other mode. You want to have a stronger/better team than your opponent. Choosing a proper opponent is very important to your success. If you choose an opponent that has a better synergy than your team does, you will most likely lose that battle. so, cycle through all 3 opponents and pick the team that you think will be the easiest for you to beat. There will usually be a stand out choice of a team with the least amount of synergy, I.E. a team with 5 random characters that don't complement each other at all. I start with the bottom of my roster and work my way up the ladder. *NOTE*This is where the saved squad management feature really comes into play. If you haven't saved your squads yet, then I highly suggest you do that now, as it will make selecting your next team ALOT faster. The reason I start from the bottom and not the top is because using the lowest point teams early in the lower tiers with the lowest score multipliers, will allow my highest power teams to run in the higher tiers and will take advantage of the higher multipliers even more. So, I try getting to at least tier 4, 5, or even 6 before I even run my high teams. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with running your high-power teams in the lower tiers, you are just potential missing out on more points by waiting until you have a higher multiplier. This strategy is also very dependent on how deep your roster is, and how many teams you must run. Right now, I have 13 squads that I have in regular rotation for every blitz. And I probably have at least 1, maybe 2 more that I want to add in somewhere. Don’t worry if you don’t have that many teams, you can still use this strategy. So, there are 4 nodes per tier. 1-1,1-2,1-3, 1-4, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, etc... these 4 nodes provide a slight increase in difficulty with each node. I group my teams in a way that they also increase in power in groups of 4. This is also a benefit of working from the bottom up, because yours teams will increase in power naturally. As compared to starting with your highest power team, your next team will be less powerful. It is backwards from what it needs to be. Choosing the right teams: Choosing the right teams to use, is very important. Also, just as important, is choosing the right opponent to battle against. This is where the grouping of teams in groups of 4 that gradually increase in power works so well for me. Because I know that each team will be slightly "better" than the previous team. So, my teams will be scaling up along with the opponents. Try to keep the characters in your teams at a similar power level. For example, you don't want to put a character that is at gear tier 10 and abilities at 6,6,6,4 on a team with 4 characters all at gear 4 and abilities at 3,3,2,1. That imbalance of power will make it difficult for you to win. Because the opponent teams will all be well balanced in power, so your low-level characters will die quickly leaving you with only the 1 higher level character, so you will be at an instant disadvantage from the very start of the match. The teams that I use are based on a few factors. the most important of those is team synergy. this matters a lot in the entire power range, from low to high. A team with low power, but has good synergy, has a good chance at beating a much higher power team with poor or no synergy at all. For example, my defenders + punisher team is around 150k, and I regularly win against team in the 190-200k range. I would start by saving squads that have obvious synergy together based off their traits. I.E. Shield/Avengers/Brotherhood/City/Defenders etc. There are practically limitless combinations of teams that you can create. This is you will have to use your imagination to create teams that work best for you with your roster. If you want some help making teams, here are a few resources to help you build your teams. TL: DR Blitz is a great way to get lots of rewards, but you must play it smart, and put in a lot of time to really maximize your score points/rewards. It’s all about team compositions and structuring your team rotations to get the right teams playing at the right node/tiers. Start at the bottom of the roster and work up to the top. Get as high as you can and don’t lose. Don’t get frustrated if you lose, you just go back to the 1st node of that tier (unless you lose on node 1 then you go back to node 1 on the previous tier. So, don’t lose on node 1!) Sorry is this guide was super long, but I just started writing it the info blast just sort of happened. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment here, or find me in discord. Thanks! Happy Blitzing!