WaterWar

My enjoyment heavily depends on the consumable-spam again. I found the arty and airstrikes to be annoying - more than regular arty as you were never safe anywhere because of the near-vertical impact angle. Also pure same-tier MM is kinda boring in the long run - which is why tier X is a bit dull at the moment because you are so often in pure-tier games.

What I've made so far with only using the Italeri WoT ling (incl. their paints) is the following: https://imgur.com/QzptJsH I did the crusader first, and decided to try and weather it and probably went a bit overboard. I used a wash from "Army Painter" to try and give it some weathering. One day I'll redo the road wheels as they aren't painted particularly nice (or evenly for that matter). But since this was my first ever attempt, I am quite happy with the result. Second tank was the Sherman, and here I was surprised at how dark the Italeri OD actually is. It is the same brown as the actual brown included in the paint set, so I was highly disappointed by that. I was going for a more dark green shade than what I got. So this Sherman is repainted and not very well. This also needs some more love down the road when I am more experienced. It might even be demoted to test bed for different techniques and colours. https://imgur.com/ST5PVq3 Thirdly and most recently I've painted a Chaffee in plain OD. I've done some light weathering/brushing of lighter shades to give it more depth, but I have limited colours available so It's limited what I can achieve. I am more happy with this than the Sherman. https://imgur.com/VAg0YN7 I am planning on buying a bunch of pigments and washes for future projects and I might go back to these and give them some more love. Also sorry for not the best pictures. I just took what I already had on my phone

I am personally not too bothered with historical accuracy in my models. So if a bolt head is the wrong shape or in the wrong position in relation to what the rest of the body is, then I don't care too much. So I go for ease of installation/assembly and then painting. I'll look into the Vallejo model colour - although I'm going to be brush painting it, but it shouldn't make a big difference.

Thanks for mentioning my FC guide.

Very impressive! Mind sharing how you got this nice snow camouflage effect on it?

Looks very nice. I for one like the now too worn look, as I feel that sometimes people go a bit over the edge. What colour did you use for the main body? I plan on doing something very similar at some point, although I'll go for making Tiger 131 (but not through the Italeri/WG kits).

Please no. I would be bored out of my mind if I only saw that game mode. Those arty and air-strike consumables are just frustrating to play against (even more so on top of normal arty).

How easy/difficult did you find 3-marking the S-tank? How is it to play in tier X games? I'm on my way up to it, and considering if I want to try and 3-mark it as I quite like the playstyle of the UDES and 103-0 (in smaller doses).

Ah ok, sorry to have misunderstood you in that case.

What is up with that tone? Don't understand why you go passive-aggresive at me. My point was that I think whatever Polish premium tank they release will sell well, simply because of the fact of it being Polish. Whether WG can/will balance it properly is anyone's guess. I like to think that they won't make it OP because they think it will sell better that way. If they do end up making it OP I prefer to think it is through incompetence rather than an active choice - as I find the active choice as a worse thing.

You could argue that it will sell no matter the stats because of the large representation of Polish tankers. As long as they dont make it balls, then it should sell quite well.

I care about game balance, but I also care about not being bored and only having a small selection of maps is a good way to turn this into a boring game. I personally dont mind if a few maps are unbalanced, as it is utopia to expect all maps to be 100 % perfectly balanced. I already find playing the current maps in a given map rotation pool to be a bit boring as there isn't a whole lot of variety. Sure the new Fjords is not great in the balance department, but my experience tells me that random teams are not good/aware enough to take advantage of the imbalance. I am yet to win a game spawing east, out of about 10 games (granted I've played the UDES, so that doesn't help). Each time my team decided to lick windows and give map control to the west spawn. Small sample size, but shows that what the better players sees as a crazy imbalance, it not something that is seen by the average player.

Yea, the "supercum" community is a shadow of it's former self unfortunately. You guys on NA always struggled a bit with lower server populations, so I suppose now it is just even more noticeable. The EU servers seems to be doing well with plenty of people playing. I saw 300k+ people online yesterday evening which surprised me!

I'll add a disclaimer. Maybe if I can be arsed I'll update this guide down the line with the new stats, but let's see.. :3

DISCLAIMER: There has now been even more changes to the light tanks, with the introduction of tier X light tanks - so this guide is now no longer up-to-date. However, you can still use it as a guide for how to compare different sets of light tanks with each other. There have been quite a few changes in relation to the tier VIII scout tanks recently. Three new scouts were added not too long ago in patch 9.3 and the newly released 9.6 patch has rebalanced/buffed some of the scouts. Recently a question was asked in the Ask a Purple Poster-section about what scouts were the best. This question ‘inspired’ me to create an in-depth analysis to help everyone understand how all the tier VIII scouts differ from each other – which is what you see here. I own all five of the tier VIII scouts (AMX 1390, RU251, T49, T54 lwt and WZ-132) and have played ‘the old guard’ extensively. I have however only recently acquired the T54 lwt and T49 (<50 battles) but through my experience with the game and scout tanks especially I feel qualified enough to talk about them and their playstyle anyway. I will in the beginning of this comparison look at the raw stats and hard numbers (similar to my T28 HTC and Cromwell reviews) and how they differ between the five different scouts. I will round off with a look at how the playstyles differ between the scouts. This is NOT a review of all five scouts so I will NOT be talking about crew skills and equipment. I will NOT announce “one scout to rule them all” as that is just stupid. My aim is simply to inform you about the difference between the scouts. This way you can make your own assessment of what tank is best for what you want to achieve. Camouflage values are taken from wotinfo.net. The dispersion values are taken from Tank Inspector and they DO take commander bonus into account. All other numbers are taken from tank-compare.com and do (as far as I know) NOT take the commander bonus into account. Also, I use commas instead of full-stops in the tables because I use a Danish version of Excel, so I apologies for whatever inconvenience it might cause you. Without further ado, let us get on with it! Mobility First thing we should look at is the mobility of the scouts. It is one of the most important factors of a scout tank, as the mobility allows them to get the early spots, change position depending on situation, exploit gaps in enemy defensive lines and acquire flanking shots on enemy tanks. By looking at the above table you can see that all the scouts are highly mobile with a specific power of >20 hp/t and excellent speed limits and traverse speeds. The RU251 is without a doubt the fastest of the scouts with a top speed of 80 km/h and with a specific power of 24.2 hp/t it is easy to achieve this top speed. It is even possible to exceed this limit while going down slopes. It is hard to separate the remaining scouts as they all have similar speed limits and specific powers. The T49 appears to be second fastest but is let down by having the worst terrain resistance values of all scouts. You will only reach top speed going downhill or on hard terrain, otherwise you will cruise around at a solid 60-odd km/h like with the other scouts. When looking at the manoeuvrability when not going in a straight line, the WZ-132 wins closely followed by the T54 lwt.. The WZ-132 has an amazing hull traverse of 56 deg/s and a turret traverse of 48 deg/s. Combine this with the lowest overall terrain resistance values of any scout and the WZ-132 just dances around the battlefield with little effort. It is possible to keep a high speed even doing the weirdest manoeuvers allowing you to circle enemy TD’s and heavy tanks with ease. The same can be said of the T54 lwt. although it is not quite up to the levels of the WZ-132. The T49 and RU251 are both solid in manoeuvrability, and they are the only two scouts that can pivot, but they just can’t keep up with the two Soviet hovercrafts. The AMX 1390 comes off with the short stick in regards to mobility. It has the joint-lowest top speed, worse hull traverse and below-average terrain resistance values. It is still more than capable of moving around the battlefield, but it will be left in the dust by the other scouts when competing for those early positions or when circling tanks. Good thing the 1390 has a trick up its sleeve – but more on that later. Scout-ability Now for second important factor of a scout tank: the scout-ability. It is the job of a scout tank to scout out the enemy positions. This is easiest if you can remain hidden and simply out-spot the enemy by having a better effective view range or by hiding in a bush. If you want to have a rough idea of how to calculate your effective view range, have a look at my other guide that deals with camouflage values and spotting range: All the scouts have a view range of 400 m, except for the T54 lwt. that only has 390 m. This is a quite standard view range for high tier tanks as you can find several mediums with the same view range. The strength of the scout tanks lies in the camouflage values. All scout tanks in the game have the same camouflage value while moving as they do while stationary. Combine this with low camouflage values and you have some quite stealthy machines. The AMX 1390 takes the crown as the stealthiest scout with an amazing camouflage value of 17.67 %. The RU251 is following in a close second with 17.39 % with the WZ-132 lacking a bit further behind with 16.70 %. TheT-54 lwt. and T49 both have quite poor (for a scout) camouflage values of <16 %. It is worth pointing out that I have not touched upon the camouflage values upon firing as they are all poor (<4%). If you want to stay hidden while firing (with any tank really) you need to be outside view range or be double/triple bushed up. Now, these values do not tell the full story as the physical size of the vehicle will also affect the scout-ability. The smaller a scout is, the easier it is to hide in bushes and small terrain features and if it is slim enough you can sneak through tighter gaps (the doors leading into the monastery yard on Abbey is a perfect example). The images below compare the sizes of the five scouts from a side on view (coloured ‘shadows’) and a top down view (only the outlines). I want to thank RoneryKim, Keezoo, Nurkus and Letchy for feedback on the images. Sadly we ended up with four different opinions so I have chosen to show all four different versions of the side view image (indecision much D:). The top two are aligned to the front drive wheel and the bottom two are aligned to centre mass. You, the reader, can just look at whichever you find the best/clearest/most informative (click on them for large version). The AMX 1390 is blue, RU251 is green, WZ-132 is red, T54 lwt. is yellow and finally the T49 is black. It is clear from the images that the AMX 1390 is the smallest vehicle of the bunch. It is shortest, narrowest and with the lowest height (but that not by much). This, combined with the excellent camouflage values, makes the AMX 1390 a sneaky machine that can hide in a lot of bushes and move around undetected. In the middle of the size park we have the RU251 and WZ-132. They have the same width but RU251 is slightly longer (it is the longest of all) while the WZ-132 is slightly taller. Finally the T54 lwt. and T49 are the overall largest vehicles. They, again, have the same width but the T49 is tallest and the T54 lwt. is longest, only slightly less than the RU251. So in terms of overall scout-ability the T-54 lwt. and T49 come off with the shortest stick with the worst view range, worst camouflage values and worse sizes, while the AMX 1390 sneaks in on top with the best camouflage value and superior size. Survivability Sadly it is not often you can stay unspotted all game in a light tank so eventually you will have to fight other tanks. Because of this the survivability of the scout tanks along with their firepower can be a significant aspect to consider. The survivability of scout tanks depends on two things: not being hit in the first place and then having the armour/HP to survive the hit. Not being hit in the first place ties back into what we have already discussed – the manoeuvrability and size of the vehicle. A small and nimble target can be hard to hit and this is the type of protection that the all scouts rely on. They are all small-ish targets with varying degrees of manoeuvrability/mobility and this allows them to dodge incoming shells to great effect. This is sadly their only/best defence as they have no armour to speak off whatsoever (with one exception). The RU251 is overmatchable by >75 mm guns; the AMX 1390 will be overmatched by any >120 mm gun; The T49 is a large target and overmatchable by any >114 mm gun; The WZ-132 has a slightly stronger upper plate that requires >150 mm guns to overmatch and the turret front can only be overmatched by the FV215b (183) firing AP – the sides and rear are overmatchable by >105 mm guns; finally there is the T-54 lwt. that has really strong armour for a light tank: Upper plate of 80 mm and a turret front of impressive 160 mm in the thickest part. This means the T54 lwt. can’t be overmatched except on the side (by a FV215b (183) firing AP) and rear armour. The T54 lwt. experiences quite a few troll bounces, especially off the turret, and this greatly increases the survivability against low-pen guns (other scout tanks). The T54 lwt. has a significant edge over the other scout tanks when in a brawl, even considering the large size. The WZ-132 has a slight edge over the other three scouts as you can sometimes experience troll-bounces off a strongly angled upper plate or turret front – it is still not anywhere close to the T54 lwt.. Another thing to consider is the health pool of the scout tanks. They all range between 1100 HP (AMX 1390 and T49) and 1250 HP (T54 lwt.). It may not seem like a big difference, but those extra 150 HP have a great impact. Quite a few medium tank and heavy tank guns in tier VIII to X have around 390-400 alpha, so in three shots you will, on average, have received damage worth 1170 HP and 1200 HP. This means that the AMX 1390 and T49 will 9/10 times die after taking three hits from these tanks. The WZ-132 is slightly better off with 1150 HP, but you will still die more often than not. Now the RU251 has a 50% chance of surviving three hits as it has 1200 HP, but the T54 will more often than not survive the three hits with the health pool of 1250 HP. If looking at the alpha of TDs then the difference in health pool does not mean as much. All the scouts can on average survive a hit from most TDs but will die from the second hit. The only exception is the JpzE100 and FV215b (183)/FV4005 firing AP. They have roughly 40-60% chance of one-hitting scouts depending on the damage roll. So all in all, the T54 lwt. is hands-down the best scout in terms of survivability in active combat. It has the health and the armour to survive that bit longer than the others. I would argue that the T49 is the worst at surviving being shot at because of the poor armour and large size. Firepower Little disclaimer before I start on this last analysis section: The WZ-132 has two viable choices for guns: a 100 mm and 85 mm. It has been discussed over and over which gun you should use and when. The tl:dr is that it comes down to personal taste. I will discuss the characteristics of both guns for convenience. I will, where needed, be calling the WZ-132 either WZ-100 or WZ-85 depending on the gun. Right, with that out of the way let us continue! Now we will have a look at the final aspect of the scout tanks: the firepower. Being able to fight back and directly influencing the battle by taking out key targets is an important job for a scout tank. The T49 is an odd scout and will be looked at in isolation: It is odd in that it is armed with a 152 mm derp gun that can only fire HE and HEAT rounds. It unsurprisingly has the worst gun handling by a long shot: worst aim time, worst accuracy and worst dispersion on turret traversal. The shots need to be fully aimed if you want a chance to hit anything further away than 100 m. The T49 has a plus side in that it can frontally damage every tank it can meet. The HE shell will simply detonate on the surface of most tanks and deal anything between 100 and 500 HP worth of damage on non-penetrating shots. If you manage to get around the rear of most tanks or shoot at lightly armoured targets you will be able to penetrate the HE shell (assuming it hits) and will deal around 800-1000 HP worth of damage and wreck several internal modules. The low rate of fire can be both a curse and a blessing. You don’t need to expose your tank that often to do damage. You simply pop around a corner, let the aiming reticule settle slightly and then hope for luck and fire. Then while you are reloading you can relocate and find another target to annoy. The flip side is that if you are caught on a reload you can’t really do much to defend yourself and you will be killed. Now, when looking at the other scout tanks we find some more traditional guns. The AMX 1390 is different in that it has a 6-round autoloader whereas the other three scouts just have traditional single-fire guns. They all deal about the same amount of damage (240-250 HP) with the WZ-85 lacking behind (200 HP). The penetration is also quite similar between them, with AP penetrations varying between 170 mm (AMX 1390) and 190 mm (RU251 and WZ-100). The gold penetration is a bit more varied – both in terms of ammunition type and penetration. The AMX 1390 has the best premium round (248 mm of APCR pen) with the WZ-100 following closely behind (244 mm of APCR pen). The RU251 has more penetration (250 mm) but it is HEAT so it has no normalisation and can be absorbed by spaced armour. Therefore I rank it as worse than the two others. The WZ-85 and T54 lwt. are on the short side with 230 mm HEAT pen and 235 mm APCR pen respectively. The RU251 has two unique aspects in regards to ammunition: it has over 100 mm of pen with the HESH (HE) round. All the other scouts have <50 mm of HE pen (T49 not included). This allows the RU251 to easier wreck lightly armoured targets. The RU251 also has faster shell speed with the HEAT round compared to AP rounds whereas the WZ-85 and other HEAT tanks usually have the same or worse shell speed. This means that at range, it can be worth changing to HEAT on the RU251 simply because it makes leading targets easier (also there is no penetration loss). Before the 9.6 patch the RU251 had the best DPM of all the scouts by a long shot. Now after the T54 lwt. and WZ-132 were buffed in 9.6 the DPM difference is not as big as before. The RU251 still has the best DPM with 2323 DPM, but the WZ-85 is following closely behind with 2222 DPM. The T54 lwt. and WZ-100 are both lacking a bit behind with 2000 and 1898 DPM respectively. The AMX 1390 has terrible DPM (1552), but that is down to the autoloader gun. It is able to dish out 1440 damage in around 13 seconds which is an immense burst power but it is left with a reload of around 40 seconds where it can’t shoot. Now, you can have all the DPM is the world but if the gun is inaccurate or with bad gun handling then you can’t use the DPM – and this is where the recent buff to the WZ-132 is important. The dispersion values of the WZ-132 were buffed by around 12% which now puts it in pole position, especially when mounting the 85 mm. The T54 lwt. (also buffed) is close behind with excellent dispersion values while the RU251 is now left a bit in the dust as it was not buffed. The AMX 1390 has poor gun handling and is competing with the T49 as the worst. The T49 has worse dispersion from turret traverse (double that of the AMX 1390) while the AMX 1390 has the worst dispersion from hull traverse. The aim times and accuracy generally follow the trend of the dispersion values, so they just enforce/highlight the differences between the scouts. The final thing to discuss before I wrap up is the elevation angles of scouts. Here the AMX 1390 is worse by a long shot. It can depress the gun by 6 degrees which is average, but it can only raise the gun 9 degrees leaving it with a full range of motion of only 15 degrees (oscillating turrets ftw). The other NATO scout tanks can depress their guns 10 degrees while the soviet designs can only depress their guns 5 degrees. They can all (besides AMX 1390) elevate between 17-20 degrees which is quite solid. So in this department the NATO tanks form a sandwich on either side of the Soviet designs. Playstyles I will now conclude this comparison with a brief discussion on how each tier VIII scout plays different. This will basically act as a summary of all the above sections. The Ninja Assassin: The AMX 1390 has great burst damage, decent mobility, small size and excellent camouflage which allows it to move undetected around the battlefield. Once it has found an isolated tank it can strike from the shadows and deal a crushing blow to the unsuspecting enemy. The AMX 1390 uses its speed to retreat back in the shadows before the enemies can zero their sights. Here it will reload, relocate and prepare a new strike on the next target. The AMX 1390 is the Ninja Assassin of the scouts The Derp Ambush: The T49 is wide, tall and it has a big gun. ‘Murica! It can use the decent camouflage to hide in a bush and prepare a strike on an unsuspecting enemy. After sending a 152 mm shell towards the enemy it can relocate and setup a new ambush. It can also use the mobility to move around the battlefield in close quarters and ambush unsuspecting enemies with a surprise 152 mm to the butt. Of course the T49 will not always behave itself, but when it does it can wreak havoc. The T49 is the Derp Ambush of the scouts. The Glass Cannon: The RU251 is lightning fast and can use the mobility to get into the good spotting bushes early on. It can also use the mobility to move around the battlefield with ease and exploit holes in the enemy lines to wreak havoc. It has an excellent gun with great DPM that can easily cause a lot of hurt. With three viable rounds it can adapt to any situation it might be presented with. The downside is that it has no armour and it will take damage if hit. The RU251 is the Glass Cannon of the scouts. The Fighter: T54 lwt. has the best armour of all scouts. It is possible to bounce a lot of low penetration guns, especially if hull down. This is good as the large size, mediocre camouflage and low view range will often force it to fight other tanks. It has a good gun with a healthy punch and good gun handling, allowing it to brawl like a pocket medium tank and bully other scout tanks. The T54 lwt. is The Fighter of the scouts. The Scout: The WZ-132 has superb mobility, a small size and great camouflage values which allow it to scout out the enemy positions with great ease. It has the mobility to move around and constantly gather intelligence on enemy movements. It has given up on the armour of the T54 lwt. in order to achieve this great scouting platform. The WZ-132 is The Scout of the scouts. Overall I feel WG has done a good job at making each scout feel unique in some way. The AMX 1390 has the autoloader, the T49 has the derp, the RU251 has the speed, the T54 lwt. has the armour and the WZ-132 is the pure scout. I hope you enjoyed this comparison. If you have any questions or comments feel free to ask/discuss. I would not be surprised if I have missed something or neglected to point something out, so feel free to help me cover the holes. Also, no Youtube video this time. EDIT: stupid typos EDIT2 (August 2015): Be aware that my article here makes an error in the traverse speeds. In reality the traverse speeds are also dependant on what engine you have equiped as the listed traverse speeds are with the standard engine. For more detial, read through the comments of this guide, especially Xen's.

So the graphical update didn't pique your interest? Because that is what got me back to the game after a 15 months hiatus. I had been walking around in a nostalgic haze for a few months, thinking back on the grand days of WotLabs and the social shenanigans in the game with my clan, LAVA. Then I saw that they updated the graphics to catch up to the more modern games, and I decided to plunge back in to see if the game was any better than when I left. Also I had a little itch for some short competitive games of some sort, which WoT fits perfectly. I must admit that I actually enjoy the game a good bit now. I like almost all of the changes that they've made with the 3-5-7 MM, change of the MM of light tanks and arty rework. I still find RNG to be a bit annoying at times, but I'm not too bothered by it. Taking a 15 month break made me realise that no-one gives a damn about your stats out in the real world. So it makes it easy for me to just pick a tank and zoom around and have fun without really giving many damns about how well I (don't) play. When did you stop playing? Any particular reason, or just the game growing a bit stale?

Hello Rexxie. It's been a long time and I just want to pop by and check if everything is good and well over on the NA side of world of tanks? I can see you are still active on WotLabs - so I assume you are still playing semi-regularly? :3 What tanks are you enjoying driving around in at the moment, if any in particular?

I have everything to the max. I like my games to look pretty when I can run it. The only two things I've removed are: motion blur, as I don't see the purpose of fake blurring; and then also grass in sniper mode as that makes it easier to see where hills start/end.

Without de-railing the thread too much: Yes, I am back in business - although without even being close to the same level of commitment and dedication as before :3

I was on the fence for buying this tank, but decided to do it. I am so glad that I did. I like to play my light tanks, and this thing is amazing to play. So small that it is so easy to hide in misc. bushes and indentations of the terrain. The clip size is good enough to act as a little assassin - striking from the bushes. I took the advice mentioned earlier in this thread and run binocs on it - damn it is nice to burn through the camouflage of other light tanks when they try to sneak into a bush. This is quickly becoming my go-to tank for when I dont want to take the game too seriously and just want to relax.

If I understand this correctly, then I should have 12 orders/skips if I complete every mission set for the first three tanks with honors - is that correct?

T28 Heavy Tank Concept Review So I just unlocked the T28 Heavy Tank Concept (T28 HTC or Concept for short) as a reward for completing the second set of personal missions. I have played a few games (17 at time of publication) to test it out. I thought I would write this review for those of you who are not sure if they want this tank or not or just curious as to what this tank can (not) do. If you want to know the history of the tank, you need to look elsewhere. All I know is that it is an early concept/proposal of how the T28/T95 should look. The tank only existed as a wooden model and WG built the in-game tank from (images of) that. There is an article on FTR explaining it in more detail. I will in this review go through different aspects of the T28 HTC as it is portrayed in patch 9.5 including characteristics of the gun and tank, what equipment/consumable to use, skills to consider and finally the play style of this tank. I will try to keep it as concise as possible. You are free to skip the sections that you have no interest in or already know. Characteristics In the following section all the numbers and characteristics are given with 100% crew taken into account and are taken from “Tank Inspector”. Armour: This tank is all about the armour – it is what makes the T28 HTC the tank it is, which is not surprising considering it is related to the T28 and T95 tanks. The armour thickness is listed as 203/101/50 mm on the front/side/rear respectively. This is however not telling the full story of the armour layout. The only part of the tank that is 203 mm thick is the ‘lower plate’ and a strip of armour on either side of the gun. The upper plate is actually between 51 and 64 mm thick. This may sound like weak armour, but the angling of the armour is where the ‘protection’ lies. The whole upper plate is angled at around 75 degrees with the upper part angled slightly less (1-2 degrees) than the lower part. This heavy angling means that AP and APCR will auto-bounce the upper plate. This type of protection has a significant advantage but also a significant disadvantage. The advantage is that since the armour relies on auto-bounce angles rather than raw thickness you can bounce high pen guns shooting AP or APCR. HEAT doesn’t auto-bounce at these angles, so if you are hit by HEAT with a pen of 250 mm or more it will go straight through your upper plate (and lower plate, but more on that in a second). The disadvantage of the sloped armour is that once the enemies have an angle of impact of less than auto-bounce (by shooting down onto your tank) your armour is useless. The sides are a uniform 102 mms thick with near vertical profiles. If an enemy manages to get around your side you will be in serious trouble. Your rear armour is a worthless 50 mm thick, but then again you should ideally not be shot here in the first place so it is not a big problem. Now, what IS a big problem with this armour is that any gun with >200 mm of pen can go straight through your ‘lower plate’ as it is 203 mm thick with no angling worth mentioning. Another problem is all the damn MG- and viewports on this tank. They are everywhere and they can all be shot if you are facing straight at an enemy. The two on the sides of the tank are only 102 mm’s thick and present a large surface to shoot - similar to the cupola on all of the British AT tank destroyers. Some wiggling can throw off the aim of some players, but the tank traverses so slowly it is limited in effectiveness. Fortunately the T28 HTC can actually relatively easy hide the weak spots (something the British cannot do as easily). The gun traverses a whole 30 degrees to either side, which allows you to angle your tank and hide at least one of the MG ports behind the hull of the tank. Since the MG ports are located quite far back on the tank, you can hide the other MG port behind a building while still being able to shoot at the enemy. If done perfectly then you present a near-impenetrable tank to every same-tier gun you might face. Also, since this tank is still quite rare, a lot of people have NO CLUE where to shoot, even though the MG- and view ports are visible to them. This means that they will spray shots straight into your front plates in a panic to stop you. I’ve had quite a few laughs as tanks panic trying to pen me. I had a WT Pz IV loading APCR and bouncing my upper plate because he had no clue that he could just go straight through the lower plate. Quite amusing I must admit. The picture below shows the angling and corner placement in practice, although only in principle. I over angled the tank a bit in my rush to get a nice picture. I have one last piece of bad news in regards to the armour of this tank, and that is the roof. It is only 25 mm thick and stretches along the whole length of this tank (see picture below). This means you can be triple overmatched by any >76mm gun and arty will have a field day if they hit the top of your tank. The overmatch is not that big of a problem, but the arty vulnerability is a huge negative as you are a slow, fat target that they will shoot at – a lot. Mobility: The mobility is again staying true to how the T28 and T95 behave: This tank is no speed demon and turns like the Titanic. It has a top speed of 29 km/h going forward and 10 km/h in reverse. The traverse speed is a whopping 18 degrees/s. It has a decent (for the armour and tier) HP/t ratio of 13.71. I noticed that when accelerating on hard terrain it felt like it reached the top speed quickly and kept the speed as long as you went in a straight line. As soon as you want to turn this thing you have to clear your calendar for the next two days. Also, stay as far away from any soft or medium terrain you can. This tank has a horrendous terrain resistance of 1.438/2.014/2.493 on hard/medium/soft terrain respectively. I made the mistake once of driving into some soft terrain. I never made it out of there. The only positive thing I can say about the mobility is that this tank can pivot – and even that doesn’t help on the horrible traverse. Gun: The T28 HTC uses a 105 mm gun that is almost identical to the one found on the T32 but with a ROF buff. It has a healthy penetration of 181/224/53 mm with a decent alpha of 320/320/420 for AP/APCR/HP respectively. The alpha is above average for a tier 7 TD and can really hurt lower tier tanks. The penetration is slightly below average, but it can load a healthy APCR round that can go through the front most of the targets you will face. Some tanks will require weak spot knowledge, but it has an accuracy of 0.384 which is decent for weak spot sniping at medium ranges (this is before the 9.6 accuracy changes, mind). The rate of fire is 6.257 RPM which equals a reload of 9.589 seconds (without a rammer). This leaves you with a DPM of just over 2000 which increases to 2224.8 DPM with a gun rammer. Quite decent for the tier but nothing fantastic either. The gun depression of this tank is -4 degrees which can be quite tricky to work with in some locations but as long as you stay on flat ground (cities) you won’t have any trouble. A combination of low bloom values (see picture below) and low speed in general results in overall good gun handling. I didn’t experience problems with having to wait long for my aiming reticule to settle. Visibility: I have played without 6th sense so I haven’t been able to get a good feel for the camouflage, but I expect the values to be horrific. You are not going to be camouflage sniping anyone unless you are outside of spotting range. The T28 HTC has a healthy view range of 370 meters which when combined with binoculars will allow you to out spot some enemies. Misc.: This tank sadly has standard MM spread which means it will see tier 9 games. I’ve found that you can still make an impact, as your armour relies on auto-bounce rather than raw thickness. Your health pool of 880 HP is middle of the park for the tier (although significantly less than both the AT-15A and AT7 – your main competitors), but will leave you struggling in high tier games. This tank would be godlike if it had a health pool similar to the AT-7 as it would be able to take a beating AND still survive more than four penetrating shots. Equipment and consumables Equipment: The equipment setup is quite standard for this tank. I have a Large-Caliber rammer, Enhanced Gun Laying Drive and toolbox installed on mine. You can argue for swapping out the toolbox with vents or binoculars, but that comes down to how you want to play your tank. I play mine as a brawler, meaning I will be tracked over and over and I want to have the tracks back up ASAP. Consumables: I run a standard consumable set. I have not had any problems with module damage or crew deaths (besides a commander once in a while from shots into the million MG- and view ports). In fact, according to Tank Inspector the T28 HTC has increased module health on all internal modules. A nice little plus as it means you will not be ammo racked that often. You can, to some effect, use a premium repair kit as it will allow you to repair your tracks even quicker. Skills Since this is a premium tank you can use whatever American TD crew you might already have. If you, like me, do not play American TD’s and your T28 HTC therefore will have a dedicated crew then I recommend the following skills: You need mobility skills as you want to improve on the horrendous mobility of this tank. This means Clutch Breaking and Off-Road Driving for the driver together with repairs for everyone else. I Safe Storage is not a priority as the ammo rack is quite healthy, so just pick what you feel like. Tactics Because of the poor mobility I found that you don’t have a lot of tactical options available to you. You are too slow to react to changing conditions during the fight, so you need to be able to anticipate where you will be needed the most during the countdown timer. Pick and flank and make sure you win it or delay it enough for your team mates to flank behind. My general tactic in this tank is to go to the nearest brawling/city area where I then find myself a building/rock where I can use the traverse of the tank to hide the weak spots. I work down the enemies in that location while tanking shots. If you find yourself top tier you can easily lead a charge straight into the enemy – as long as you make sure they don’t have shots on your side/rear armour. The 8-line on Himmelsdorf is fantastic for YOLO-pushes. Once the area you are in is cleared you can enjoy the scenery while the battle moves faster than you. Base camping is sadly not a bad option on some larger maps like Redshire. You need to be careful not to be isolated because that will end in your death. You do not have the traverse to prevent people from circling you, so you need team mates to slap anyone trying to get on your back/sides. Also, avoid arty like the fucking plague. They will shit all over you the moment you are spotted (as I’ve found out one too many times on Redshire and Prokhorovka). If they have arty you need to find a spot that is at least partly arty safe, while still leaving you part of the game. Summary and verdict Just to summarise this review in a few pros and cons: ++Good armour ++Wide gun traverse +Decent gun and DPM ~Possible to hide major weakspots ~Celebrity status in most games because of rarity -Low gun depression -Team dependant -Large weakspots --Slow traverse --Arty magnet I personally like the tank as it is a tank where the armour actually works within the tier. You can truly bully people as they have limited knowledge of your tank, or you can even be able to hide your weak spots making them waste their shells on you. The mobility is frustrating at times and arty focus is never nice. Speaking of focus, a lot of people want to look at your tank and ask you questions which can be annoying at times, but also quite fun Overall I will keep this tank as a relaxing “I don’t give a fuck and you can try all you want to pen me”-tank that I play when I am tired and don’t want to concentrate. I hope you enjoyed this review and learned something new. If you have any feedback and/or questions I will be more than happy to listen/answer them to the best of my ability. Here is a small accompanying video commentary from my YouTube-channel:

I just wanted to say merry christmas and happy new year to everyone now that it is finally christmas (at least here in Viking land). This thread can act as a thread for everyone to spread some festive cheers! I wish you all favourable RNG and happy grinds in the new year. GLÆDELIG JUL (MERRY CHRISTMAS)