Strategy editor manual

01 What it's for

The editor is a minimap you draw on. It does two very different jobs with the same tools:

Either way the result is saved in the Strategy tab, stays readable by the whole clan, and can be played back full-screen in front of the team.

02 Getting in

There are exactly two doors, and they don't lead to the same thing:

03 The interface

From top to bottom:

• The top bar — strategy name, game mode, map, who else is editing, then 👥 Collaborators, ⛶ Full screen, ▶ Present, Save and the close cross.
• The tool palette — the 15 tools, to the left of the map.
• The options bar — undo/redo, grid, snap, pointer, bring to front/send to back, duplicate, delete, clear all. It changes with the active tool (colour, thickness, tank class…).
• The Replay bar — only in debrief mode. Detailed in section 8.
• The steps — the slide tabs and the note for the current step.
• The map — a 10 × 11 grid labelled A1 to K0, as in game.
• The discussion — a message thread attached to this strategy.

04 The 15 tools

Every tool has a letter. Type the letter and the tool activates — faster than aiming for the button.

05 Selecting and handling

With the Move tool (V):

• One element: click it. Handles appear — the corners resize, the one above rotates.
• Several: drag a rectangle over empty space to catch them all, or Ctrl+A to select everything.
• From the keyboard: the arrow keys nudge, Shift+arrows move in bigger steps.
• Stacking: ] brings to front, [ sends to back.
• Copy: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V, or Ctrl+D to duplicate in place.
• Delete: Del. Esc deselects.
• Right-click an element for a context menu.

Everything is undoable: Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y.

06 Grid, snap, zoom

The grid

The ▦ button. It shows the game's A1–K0 grid and is on by default: it's the shared vocabulary for calling out a position over voice. If you turn it off, your choice is remembered.

Snapping

The 🧲 button. Elements stick to the grid intersections. Handy for a tidy diagram, a nuisance for precise drawing.

Zoom and panning

• + / − to zoom, 0 to go back to 100%. The scroll wheel works too.
• When zoomed in, hold Space (or the middle mouse button) and drag to pan.
• A mini-map appears bottom right: click or drag inside it to jump elsewhere.

07 Steps

A strategy can hold up to 12 steps — slides. Each has its own drawing and its own note. That's what lets you tell one phase after another instead of piling everything onto a single image.

• The step tabs sit under the options bar. Click to move between them.
• The “✎ Note for this step” field (140 characters) is shown when presenting. One note = one idea.
• 🗑 Delete step removes the current step.

08 Debriefing a replay

This is the heart of the tool. The principle is “pause = whiteboard”: you freeze the battle at a moment, you draw on the frozen picture, and that annotated pause becomes a slide pinned to that moment.

The Replay bar

What you see on the map

• Every tank carries its class icon, tinted green (friendly) or red (enemy).
• Its tank name is written underneath — the game's own abbreviation: Obj. 260, CS-63, 60TP.
• A faint cone shows where it's looking.
• The ring around the icon is its health bar.
• An ✕ appears when it dies.
• A dimmed tank is no longer spotted: its position is the last one known.
• The base flags are the game's own, including the white one in 7-vs-7.

Suggesting a position

Turn on 👥 Suggest, then click a tank. A ghost appears, joined by a dashed arrow to its real position. Drag the ghost to where the player should have been.

Click the button again to leave the mode and go back to drawing.

The automatic playback

When you start playback again, the slides appear on their own at their moment. Before the first one it's a blank whiteboard: you see only the replay, no annotations running ahead. The step tabs show the timestamp (0:30, 1:20…) and sort themselves into chronological order.

09 The pointer

The 🔴 button in the options bar. It turns your cursor into a glowing dot with a trail, so you can point without drawing.

• While it's on, drawing is suspended: you can click anywhere without creating anything.
• A click makes a ping — an expanding circle, to draw the eye.
• If another officer is editing the strategy at the same time, they see your pointer move live, with your name on it. Yours is red, everyone else's is blue.

This is the tool for talking over a screen share, or when several of you are in the editor together.

10 Presenting

▶ Present goes full screen, without the tools. In a debrief a second bar appears: the replay's.

You hit play and it all runs itself — the battle replays, each slide arrives at its moment with its note.

Three buttons at the top: ✨ animates the transitions between steps, 🔴 the laser, ▦ the grid.

Presenting from the first slide starts at the beginning of the battle; from any other slide, it starts at that slide's moment.

11 Collaborating

There are three distinct mechanisms, often confused with one another. Here's which does what.

Presence — who's here

As soon as you open an already saved strategy, you join a room. The badges in the top bar list who's present, with ✎ if they're editing and 👁 if they're watching. Nothing for you to do: it's automatic.

Simultaneous editing — what syncs

Every 0.4 seconds your editor sends the state of your steps to the others and applies theirs. So you see the drawings appear live. Two important safeguards:

• Sending is suspended while you're in the middle of drawing, moving or rotating something — an unfinished gesture is never sent.
• Incoming updates are ignored while you're handling something: someone else's work can't snatch the element out of your hands.

The pointer travels down the same channel — that's what lets you show each other things without drawing.

Collaborators — who's allowed to edit

This is the only one of the three that touches permissions. The 👥 Collaborators button opens the clan's member list with a checkbox for each.

1. Open the strategy in the editor (you must be an officer).
2. Click 👥 Collaborators, find the member, tick their box.
3. Close the window, then click Save.

A ticked member can edit that one strategy, even as a plain private. They can't create others, nor touch any where they aren't ticked. Only officers can change the list itself.

For a debrief this is especially useful: you can invite the player in question to annotate their own mistake themselves.

The discussion

Under the map, a message thread attached to the strategy. It refreshes by itself while the view is open, and the whole clan can see it — no editing rights needed to post.

12 Permissions

The rule is enforced on the server: even by tampering with the page, a member without rights can't save anything.

One exception only: a member ticked as a collaborator on a strategy can edit it, whatever their rank (section 11).

In view mode everyone sees the steps, the notes, the replay and the discussion, and can launch ▶ Present. Moving between steps shifts the tanks to each slide's moment.

13 Every shortcut

Tools

V Move · H Tanks · F Arrow · L Line · Z Area · O Circle · S Symbol · C Arc · M Route · D Measure · R Range · P Pencil · J Marker · T Text · G Eraser

Editing

View

+ / − zoom · 0 zoom 100% · hold Space + drag to pan

14 Two recipes

Preparing a plan for tonight

1. + New strategy, pick the map and the mode — the real bases and spawn points appear on their own.
2. Step 1: the deployment. Tanks tool (H), one silhouette per player, name them.
3. Step 2: the lines of attack. Arrow (F) for movements, Symbol (S) for “Spot” and “Hold”.
4. Step 3: plan B. Duplicate step 2 and change what differs.
5. A short note on each step, then Save.
6. Come the evening: ▶ Present, and L to point while you talk.

Debriefing a loss

1. Battles tab → the battle → Replay tab → ✎ Debrief in the editor.
2. Watch the whole replay without annotating anything. Pick out the 3 or 4 moments that decided the game.
3. Go back to the first one, pause, 📌 Slide here.
4. 👥 Suggest, then click the tank in question and drag its ghost to where it needed to be. An arrow to show the movement you wanted.
5. Write the note: one sentence, the cause — not the blame.
6. Repeat for the other moments, then Save.
7. ▶ Present in front of the clan. You start playback and talk; the slides arrive by themselves.

15 Limits to know about

• Damage and shots only show what your client saw. The game doesn't transmit what happens outside your area of interest. Deaths, on the other hand, are always complete. To debrief a flank you weren't on, re-import the replay of someone who was.
• Re-importing enriches the past. Opening an old .wotreplay file in the game updates that battle on the site — so you can debrief battles from before you installed the mod. Random battles stay excluded.
• A debrief saved before July 2026 doesn't know its battle and will open without a replay. Just redo it once from ✎ Debrief.
• Bases and spawn points are only known for some maps in a blank strategy. In a debrief they come from the replay: exact, and available on every map.
• 12 steps maximum per strategy, and 140 characters per note.