Before we get started with the action on Friday, we thought it would be a good idea to explain the basic ideas and rules of the Wargaming.net League to the new people who have joined us. We hope to be able to shed a light on the gamemode that's being used and some of the tactics the teams use because of it.

The competitive mode: 42/7

42/7 might seem like a weird name for a competitive mode but all of it's secrets are already presented in the name itself. Each team consisting of seven players, hence the seven, receives 42 “tier points”. Tier points are points that represent the tier of a tank, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest.Of course with seven players in the team this means that not everyone can control the highest tier tanks.

Tournaments also have the opportunity to choose what they want to maximum tier of a tank to be. For the Wargaming.net League this limit is eight, because of it all teams opt to go for five tier eight tanks and two tier one tanks, culminating to 42 points.

Tanks and tactics

You might be wondering now, why do teams use two tier one tanks instead of going for a more equal line-up (Tier six for all seven players). The tier eight tanks might be slower, but what they lack in speed they make up for in damage and health. Able to take a lot of hits and deal a ton of damage makes them the perfect choice for the competitive scene. The remaining two points are spent on two T1 tanks, which are mainly used for scouting purposes.

A team will send a T1 tank to either side of their formation to spot flanking or defensive enemies. The tier eight tanks will try and take out the opponents tanks while staying safe themselves. The tier eight tanks that are most commonly used are the T69, Pershing, IS3, AMX50 100 and the AMX 13 90.
 

Wins, Losses and Draws

Unlike in other competitive games, a winner isn't always clear in a match. The possibilities for draws exist and they happen more often than one would assume. Every match between two teams in the Wargaming.net League consists at least of a best of five, this means that the teams will face off in up to five maps.

A team can win a match in three separate ways, the first is the simplest and consists of destroying all of the opponents tanks, the second way is capturing the enemies base. Each team has a control point, a base, that they have to defend while also trying to capture the opponents. The more tanks are on a control points, the quicker it will get captured, but the timer will stop if a tank in the control point gets damaged. This means that the teams have to make quick and fast decisions on who is defending and who is attacking when and where.

The third way to win is having more tier points than your opponent when the time runs out. Every map has a 10 minute time limit and when it reaches zero, the team that has the most tier points, based on tanks alive, left achieves victory. The extra rule here however is that a team needs at least 8 more tier points than the enemy to achieve this victory. If this is not the case, the map will be a draw.

Maps

The current map pool consists of the following maps:

• Ensk
• Steppes
• Ruinberg
• Prokhorovka
• Himmelsdorf
• Mines (Hills)
• Abbey (Monastery)

We hope to have been able to shed a light on how the game works and the thoughts behind the teams choices. We hope to see you at the LAN Finals or tuning in on Friday and Saturday online!