That Happened Sooner Than Expected

BAM! I got you!

Tanks is surprisingly popular in our house lately. The first thing I hear when I get home from work is "I wanna play toynks!!!!!" from Twin B, aka Sean. Twin A, Luke, follows up with a "Yeah, tanks!"

It all started a few weeks ago when the boys saw me playing tanks and sat on my lap for a session. The excitement of looking out for bad guys while daddy drove around the map was so much fun that the technophile, Sean, had to give it a try himself.

Well, I wasn't about to let a 3.5 year old in a random battle with 29 strangers. For one thing, he would just get killed really fast and for another, he might start shooting friendlies and get blacklisted. But there is a Team Training mode in which he could drive around the map without outside interference.

Except for one thing. Team training needs at minimum two tanks.

So Sean got his own World Of Tanks account (hooray for free-to-play) and WoT got installed on the old computer (which has an upgraded decent video card so can handle it for the most part). Then I could log in both machines and have Sean roll around on his own.

Well Luke (and yes, I do say to him occasionally "Luke, I am your father") was not about to let Sean have all the fun so he started using my computer and account to drive around too. There is a lot of help from me to get them unstuck so I try to stay on open maps like Malinovka and Prokhorovka but the boys have their own opinions and Sean likes the city of Himmelsdorf (aka "Himmeldorfy!") and Luke like Sand River because it has lots of buildings to crash through.

And all was well... until they discovered the joy of PvP.

Apparently driving around exploring the map and occasionally passing each other was not enough. Sean wanted to shoot the bad guy. And as soon as Lukas realized what was going on, well he was on that mouse and trying to bracket Sean right away.

So we get to the crux of the issue: Lukas is on my account driving around in a tier IV fully upgraded light tank (Pz 38 nA for the win!) and Sean is in a rookie tier I tank. Sean might be able to aim and hit better, as he is the more technically adept of the twins, but Lukas one shots the little T1 Cunningham every time. My wife looks at me and says, "Get Sean a better tank!"

*Groan* I have to grind up a second account?

So last night found me running around Himmelsdorf and Malinovka in Sean's tank desperately trying to earn experience and credits to at least get the Tier II light tank, the M2. I finally succeeded in my quest around 11 pm and had to take it for a test drive to see if he would like it. Boy, is it fast! He should have no trouble zipping around the maps now.

But now he needs a bigger gun to compete with Luke...