Tires NANKANG or Maxxis

Your trails sound pretty similar to what I ride. I have a set of Ardent 2.25s that I really like.

I love my aggressor on the rear, rolls and grips well.

yes really, quiet, grips just fine for a daily driver golf, and cheap ($224 for the set) I spent more money on my first set of tires, and realized i didn't need them. These fit my need perfectly.

I also have a minion DHF for downhill and "rowdy" trail or wet/sandy conditions. It rolls a lot better than I expected for such tall knobs

just mounted a few pairs of maxxis tires, dhf, hr2, a dhr, and an ardent exo casings, all done by hand, found them quite easy to mount beads poped right on.

Me and my girlfriend have both been running tubeless Maxxis folder tires on Easton Rims for five seasons and I never had any problems mounting them.

I've mounted and remounted a handful of EXO casing maxxis tires recently with almost no effort at all. Typically I don't even use a lever to mount them, only remove. They all seated on the first try with a hand pump too.

I had both ns2 and 512 on my 17x9 both were 205/45. The nankangs were decent but didn't give me the stretch I wanted like the falkens

I've run both tires on 18x8.5. The falken 215/40's were smaller than the 205/40 AS-1's..I rubbed hard with the As-1's The AS-1's are a pretty true to size. I know what you are trying to do, and the AS-1's won't help. Edit: this is the best picture I have to show how true the tires are..as you can see it's not a great looking tire for the size.

They ARE crap. And that is spoken from someone who has had a set. Two of the 4 developed bubbles in the tread (tread separation) after about 10K miles.