First off, feedback to the Clan as a whole- apparently, we need to come up with a better time or day to run these in the future, as out of all the Clan members who play WoT, we only got a maximum of 9 of us for any frame, and an average of 7 or 8. Also, it conflicted enough with the Clan Wars battles that we lost players toward the end, and eventually scrapped the final frame because we didn't have enough of us who could stick around for it. One suggestion bounced around was doing future battles immediately after the Saturday Clan Meeting, rather than waiting until 7pm EST. This would serve two purposes- more people on at the start who might join in at the last minute, as well as starting earlier to free up players for Clan Wars. It was also suggested that instead of doing all the frames in one night and taking up several hours, we might possibly break it up over several nights to keep the time constraints more manageable and possibly get different players in over different nights, rather than the same folks for every frame, just running different tanks. If either of those ideas sounds better, let us know.
The battles themselves I thought were quite fun. The change of pace of having tanks matched up historically and going for set objectives instead of random matchups or 'bring your biggest tank' deathmatches was quite refreshing, and it was quite a sight to see the tanks all lined up and fighting- several times, especially the start of the fourth frame with a platoon of Easy Eights lined up next to a Patton, I got a big grin on my face just looking around. For a history nut, battles like this are a real treat, and they're also a wonderful break from the norm. Having only Clanners who know each other and are used to working together was great too.
The only thing I didn't really like about the event as a whole was the lack of a defined commander for each side, but that was understandable with the small turnout. My suggestion for the future would be assign a CO for each side (for each frame or for the battle as a whole) who knows the orders and objectives for their side. Let them handle the briefings and give orders during the battle, and let the organizer focus on setting up the teams and the battles- Deathmongrel had an awful lot on his plate, even with just 9 of us to worry about. If this had been a full 15 on 15 for a series of five battles, he would have had an ulcer by the end of it.
I would like to see the event run again with more folks, as I think it was great setup with great potential. It was obvious that DM put a lot of effort into the research and setup, and several of the participants commented with things like 'Wow, I never knew that' or 'I'd never realized that before', which is a great thing to hear in a historical battle. They should be fun and educational, and I think this one was both. If we can get more folks to commit and try it again later with few tweaks, I think this one could be a blast!
