AAD and other things

Well, I hope all those who read this had a safe and fun silly season. We at Adelaide Gamer did, most certainly. Not much in the way of games though, except for a bit of Tanks. And a recce on some modelling, for when I get the chance.

In the World of Tanks I have seemed to shift up a gear in my playing style, although it isn't necessarily immediately obvious when viewing the stat pages I think I am playing a lot smarter than I was a month ago. This is reflected in steady kill ratios of 1 per game or higher, and climbing averages for experience across my stable (T34, T34-85, IS2, SU-85, MS-1(!)).

I have also joined a clan, the ANZAC Armoured Division (2nd Battalion) - or AAD2 for short. The core of the clan consists of committed long term WoT players, it was formed in April 2011. The original AAD is presently 89 members, the 2nd Battalion has 30. The 1st Battalion is the gang who will provide the armies when Clan Wars finally starts up a Asia-Oceania server and fighting the daily round of battles in the quest for World Domination at a time more suitable for oceania timezones than does the present North American based server (early afternoon aussie time).

When you realise the First Battalion is composed of those with top level tanks waiting for the clan wars to start, and that the Second Battalion is for the more relaxed, less developed Tanker, then you'll probably understand that I give no secrets away when I say that the plan is to hit the ground running when Oceania opens up for conquest, grab territory and hang onto it. Apparently there's some well established russian clans with the same idea, so it will be interesting.

On a more mundane level, the AAD runs a basic forum and Team Speak set up which, when combined with a little message discipline and the ingame information streams in WoT, provides good forums, meeting points, communications networks and information storage to run a pretty major operation. The TS server set up is good, with channels for individual platoons, companies, training ground players and miscellaneous use, as well as main lobbies. Very functional and focused, without being neurotic about it. Kinda like us ANZACs (Australia New Zealand Army Corps, from WWI and Gallipoli) like to think we are.

Oh. And I'm chasing down some putty for the T34-85 model, and eagerly awaiting the end of silly season so I can set up and use my new air compressor and spray gun.

And there's a Knizia game of the Hobbit to learn and play.

And S&T is releasing its Germany-Russia 1920 hypothetical game in a couple months.

2012 looks like being a very good year.