WinBolo takes an instant to learn but a lifetime to master. You drive a single tank around a top-down island shared with up to 15 other players. The basics are simple — shoot, capture, build — but games turn on tactics, territory and teamwork. Here's what you need to know to hold your own.

You drive, aim and fire your tank, managing three resources as you go:

• Shells — your ammunition. Fire them at enemy tanks, pillboxes and structures.
• Mines — lay them to defend territory or trap opponents. Any tank that drives over a mine takes damage.
• Trees — harvest forest to gather wood, the raw material for building roads, walls and boats.

When your tank is destroyed you respawn, but you lose ground while you're out of the fight — so staying alive matters. Refill shells and mines, and repair your tank, by visiting a friendly base.

Pillboxes are automated gun turrets dotted around the map, and they are the heart of the game. A neutral or enemy pillbox will shoot any tank that comes into range, and the closer you get the harder it hits. The more a pillbox is hit, the angrier it gets — each hit makes it fire back faster, so a provoked pillbox quickly becomes deadly. Leave it alone and it cools down over time, slowing its fire again.

• Taking a pillbox — wear it down with shells until it goes neutral, then drive over it to pick it up. Pillboxes you own stop firing at you and your allies.
• Placing a pillbox — drop a captured pillbox anywhere you like to fortify a position. It will fire on your enemies automatically.
• Repairing — use trees to repair a damaged pillbox you own and bring it back to full strength.

Take care driving around with pillboxes onboard your tank: if you are killed they drop where you fall, and any player can pick them up. Controlling pillboxes means controlling the map — most fights are, one way or another, about taking, holding or destroying them.

Bases are refuelling depots. Park on one you own and it refills your shells and mines and repairs your tank, drawing down the base's own reserves until they replenish over time. A neutral base can be made yours simply by driving over it. An enemy base has to be shot repeatedly first — keep firing until its armour is gone, then drive over it to capture it. Be careful while you do: any pillbox nearby reacts to each shot on the base as if it had been shot itself, so attacking a defended base can stir up everything around it. Denying the enemy their bases — and protecting your own — is a core part of winning a longer game.

Using harvested trees you can reshape the map to suit you:

• Roads let tanks move faster — build them to flank the enemy.
• Walls block movement and shells — throw them up to shield your pillboxes from fire and seal off chokepoints.
• Boats are the only safe way to cross deep water without drowning. Shallow water is survivable but hostile: the longer you sit in it, the more shells and mines you slowly lose.
• Forest hides tanks from view and is your supply of trees — the same trees used to repair pillboxes and lay roads. Trees grow back only slowly, so don't over-farm an area or you'll be left with none when you need them.

Your tank doesn't build anything directly — the work is done by your builder, the LGM (Little Green Man). When you order a build, repair or harvest, he runs out from your tank in a straight line to the target square and straight back again. He can't cross water, so anything across a river or the sea is out of his reach.

If he's shot by a tank, or sets off a mine, he's killed — a replacement parachutes in to wherever your tank was at the time, and you can't build again until he arrives. You can use this against opponents too: line up the gunsight and drop a shell on an enemy builder as he travels to take him out. If he was carrying a pillbox to place, it's dropped where he falls — free for anyone to grab.

WinBolo is at its best in teams. Allied players share bases and pillboxes, can't damage each other, and see each other on the map. Coordinating pilltakes, covering an ally's push and walling off a shared front is where the real strategy lives.

Alliances can be set up in the lobby before the game begins, or formed on the fly during play. To ally mid-game, open the players menu, select the player you want to team up with and choose Request alliance. Freeform diplomacy games let alliances form and break as the match unfolds; tournament-style matches use fixed sides chosen in the lobby.

A side wins by capturing and holding every base and pillbox on the map. If you're signed in to WinBolo.net, ranked games update your ELO rating and your team partnerships automatically — no manual reporting. For the exact conditions a game must meet to be ranked, see the FAQ, and try the What if? Calculator to see how a result would move your score.

The fastest way to improve is to play. Jump into the Active Games, and ask questions in the Forums — the community is happy to help new pilots.