I'd say go with a company battle or two first. It can be quite rewarding when you're on a winning streak or deeply depressing if you can't even win 1, at the very least it will give you an idea of organised teamwork rather than the shambolic affair that can be random teams.
You need a designated Field Commander - someone who issues tactics and sees them through. The clan I joined picked someone at random to run the games just to let everyone have a chance and to see if anyone is a budding Sun Tzu.
If you do decide to run clan wars, you'll have to land in a province first - this alone can take a while and without the right tactics you won't get very far. If you do manage to land on a province then you'll have to have someone moving the chips, managing the treasury, getting into the whole alliance thing...a hell of a lot of work. I could never find the time to do it thats for damn sure.
Then you'll need at least 30+ regular players on most nights, on mumble at the same time and each with 3 or 4 tier X to field depending on the map and which tanks are locked out of clan wars (if you die in a clan battle your tank gets locked out of other clan wars for a period of time depending on the tank tier). This locking of tanks makes it even more important to have a team full of regular high tier players with multiple tier X tanks.
To give you an idea of the number of tanks required, this is the clan stats page for CRY - and we're considered small fry in the grand scheme of things but we hold our own!!
CRY
http://wot-stats.appspot.com/clan/500001916/cry-cry-havoc
Matches for Europe are scheduled to start around 19:30 but are more often than not after 20:00 for the first match.
Give landing a go, I'd recommend Africa as they seem the smaller clans there. Be prepared to lose badly...but at least you'll get a taste for it.
Gold ammo is not always necessary but you just know that the other team are probably going to be using gold and you are already therefore at a disadvantage.
Don't think i've seen anyone beat it to date!
