T-34-85 “Rudy” – the No-Brainer

Rudy Returns Yet Again!

By:

IrmaBecx

So my friend bought the “Rudy” the other day to grind some credits, and if you know me, you’ll know I’m all for that.

“Rudy”, of course, being the best tank in the game.

I tried to explain about when I first got my own Rudy all those years ago; when I finally took the plunge and started driving Russian Medium tanks, having been strictly a German tank purist in those early days, although I had started dabbling in British Mediums also.

If you knew anything about reading stats, you would immediately see Rudy was going to be worth it. You have to remember there were a lot less tanks back then, and the T-34-85 “Rudy” made a tremendous impact in the meta of yesteryear.

Me, I thought I saw something else too. Two things, actually.

First off, Rudy was supposed to be a tier VII rival to the T-43; considered a Russian powerhouse in those days, even though it was quite obviously just a souped up tier VI T-34-85, but looking at the stats, I figured Rudy wasn’t just a tier VI tank only a little stronger.

Rudy was a tier VIII T-44 in disguise, only a little weaker. Fifteen millimetres or so weaker. That’s a little.

The other thing was more diffuse. But just looking at Rudy from a distance, I didn’t feel the usual fear and revulsion; my heart didn’t sink the way it did when I had to face Russian tenks in the wild.

The immediate sensation was I could totally see myself driving “Rudy”.

As I’m sure you know, “Rudy” is actually a Television superstar from Poland. That fact alone is of course fascinating; there actually is a real “Rudy” out there somewhere. You can search “Four Tank Men and a Dog”, and watch Rudy charge against the Fascists in glorious Soviet era black and white.

The Polish thing I made quite a big deal about. I lied to myself Rudy was actually Polish, and not Russian, and therefore my betrayal against the Fatherland would be slightly ameliorated. That means “not as bad as it looks, really”.

Like I said it’s a total lie. Rudy was one of the first generation Premium tanks that were just outright better than their tech tree counterparts, and wearing the Russian flag, it would of course just laugh in the face of any accusations of Bias or overpoweredness.

“What Russian Bias? I am Polish! ”

I realised all my rock star tanker friends and enemies alike would throw all their money at “Rudy” as fast as they possibly could, but more importantly, I realised something else. I wanted to do the same thing myself.

Not because everyone else were going to do it. Because it was just so obviously the right and proper thing to do. I was convinced I was never going to be really happy with my tank collection unless it was crowned by the jewel that is the T-34-85 “Rudy”, and I also knew right away we were going to be friends forever and ever.

So this is it people. If you are reading this looking for some kind of recommendation, then here it is:

“Rudy” is the absolute best in game purchase I ever made in my life.

I would be completely happy with just one single tank in my garage, as long as it is my T-34-85 “Rudy”.

Outside of tier X; after all these years, the T-34-85 “Rudy” is the best tank in the game.

That is all you need to know.

I drove my “Rudy” yesterday, and those couple of games were all I needed to put me back in the “Rudy” frame of mind.

Because Rudy may have Russian Bias coming out every orifice, but you need to understand what Russian Bias is. Outside actual stats, like ground resistance (“What? It’s only a little tier VI Medium tank, it doesn’t need ground resistance…”), once you are out there you need to work for the Bias, because it’s all out there on the edges of performance.

“Rudy” will hit the most insane snap shots, but you have to keep firing in order to get lucky. “Rudy” will bounce dead-certain kill shots off the kinky WW II armour; shot traps and all, because it has just enough beefed up tier VI armour to not get overmatched, and if you are doing over 30, powersliding through a turn, then that kill shot is going to bounce off the front plate, right next to the super obvious driver’s hatch weakspot.

Because Russia.

Because Rudy can dance like Michael Jackson. Walking across the moon like an ethereal presence; seemingly moving in the exact opposite direction you would imagine.

That’s what “Rudy” does. If you dance around the edges of performance, you will reap a fruitful bounty. And that doesn’t mean Rudy is a very complicated drive; only suited for Pro drivers, it just means it can be. You can throw any job in the game at Rudy, and a lot of the times, Rudy is going to surprise you. Disappearing around a corner the last second before the enemy shell whizzes past, on just a handful of hitpoints; the dog has to help hold the thing together in there so it won’t just implode like the Bluesmobile from the savage beating you’ve taken, and then blasting out from the other side, securing the kill with a no-scope return shot across the shoulder.

Outside of tier X, the “Rudy” is going to give you the best games of your life; sooner or later. The better you get at driving, the more Russian Bias you can take advantage of. And it just never ends. Even after all this time, “Rudy” still surprises me doing the incredulous stuff you just don’t ever see. Unless you make some kind of pact never to play tier VII again, the Rudy is the best investment you’ll ever make, because Rudy says like that cop in “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry”:

“My top end is un-limited! ”

I just never get tired of driving it. No matter how much I love bombing around in the ultimate Bias Machine, my beloved Object 140, there will always be time for Rudy. Because the Object 140 may still be the best tier X Medium tank in the game, but it’s not “Rudy”. I told you already.

“Rudy” is the best tank in the game.

I don’t know how else to say it.

So how do you drive the best tank in the game, in the tier VII of today?

Same as you always did. Pedal to the metal. Full on race spec tanking. Rev up the diesel V-12 and drop the hammer; the 85 will be loaded by the time you reach top speed. Slam on the brakes, fire the gun, do a 360 degree pirouette, and you will be loaded again just as you complete the turn. That’s the kind of fierce mobility and firepower you are dealing with.

You basically have tier VI armour. But I mean the CDC has tier VI Light tank armour, and it still does pretty good at tier VIII, right? Don’t get hit. Or if you do, dance and wiggle, and Rudy will shrug off most reasonable shots like nothing.

Rudy has gun depression. That’s so you can aim down over one front drive wheel, and even though your armour is so flimsy, Rudy just goes all red.

“Rudy” means “Redhead” in Polish.

You don’t stop punching the pedal; Rudy wants to rock back and forth, and wiggle and jiggle to find the ultimate gun angle; Rudy likes to move. The completely off the charts mobility stats were one of the things that sold me on the Rudy right away, and when I took it out the first few times, it nearly blew me off the seat. Remember, I was used to Panthers.

These days, we have other speed machines in the game; all Rudys tiers infested with Light tanks of all kinds, roving IS drones that move like Mediums in tier IX Heavy tank armour, and heavy hitting Chinese hull down beasts. Or the 50 km/h “Tank Destroyer” turretless Medium tanks with tier X weaponry? It’s fair to say “Rudy” has been power creeped a little bit.

But that’s not Rudy’s problem. Rudy is still the best. It’s just now you have to work a little harder to realise Rudys awesome potential. There is not a tank in the game the Rudy cannot take down in a one-on-one, or even three-on-one.

Rudy just doesn’t care. Rudy runs away and pops back up unexpectedly. For someone who loved flanking manouvers and stalking lone prey already, driving the Rudy back then was an absolute revelation.

To this day, I am never scared of anything driving my beloved Rudy.

Rudy is fierce, but your gameplay will have to be also. That doesn’t mean Rudy won’t work if you stay back, it just means you won’t see Rudy at the edge of performance; triumphing against the elements of game mechanics time and time again.

But that’s all fine. If you drive Rudy casually, playing solid support and going hull down T-34-85 style, then you are still going to be raking in the credits. Rudy will do casual no problem.

But just be aware; if you do se a slight opening, all you have to do is think “fXck it, let’s go!” to yourself, and Rudy will roar into action in a cloud of diesel smoke and cordite, drop the Adrenaline, and watch Rudy blast out approaching, and often in excess of, three thousand five hundred DPM.

Not a lot of tanks stand up to that, especially if they’re not expecting being pounced on by a tasmanian devil made entirely out of overpoweredness, Russain Bias, and dumb, blind luck, unconvincingly painted over with a thin sheet of cultural reference to hide the worst of the blatant disregard for anything even resembing “balance”.

And yet, Rudy is a wonder of balance. It’s just when you push your luck, you almost always get away with it – especially if you tried it before, and know exactly the split second you need to pull back from the lovely damage farming and pull back to get the perfect bounce off your 75 mm thick front plate that is full of holes, but will actually produce like 300 mm of rapidly disappearing effective armour approaching 80 degrees of angle.

The gun mantlet will eat a HEAT shell. The tracks too; make sure you run the track upgrade so it takes two shots to break your track. The 75 mm turret sides will also produce 300 mm effective armour looking down a bit at your opponent, but they will autobounce anyway.

The upper side armour is only 45 mm, but that will actually bounce a Box Tenk or an IS 122 mm at autobounce angles.

That is not saying “side scrape against huge guns”; it just means it can be done. If you angle up, the side armour might bounce the shell, because it is thick enough. If it had been 40 mm, a 122 mm would have punched straight through, but Rudy isn’t actually Polish, Rudy is a Russian tank, and has inherited this small piece of Bias from the T-34-85 at tier VI. Literally the only difference between the two chassises is Rudy’s front plate is 30 mm thicker so Rudy can bounce a Death Star.

There is no gun in the game that will overmatch the Rudys front plate or turet cheeks. It would have to be at least 226 mm caliber. Basically, you need a Sturmtiger or “Atomic Annie”.

That is what Russian Bias is, and if you understand and accept that, then Rudy will be the best drive you ever drove. If you like the retro Polish TV series angle, then that’s just a bonus. Because even without the pop culture, Rudy is a truly powerful vehicle; easily able to handle anything you throw at it.

Not every time. But often enough to be astounding, and also more often the more you work at it.

If you are going to buy just one Premium tank, that you can keep enjoying through tens of thousands of games of playing, then the T-34-85 “Rudy” is that vehicle; if you have even the slightest interest in driving a fire breathing Medium tank.

You can run Rudy full race spec and live on the edge, or you can pack some protection kits and play it safe doing support. Rudy is up for anything; a casual game here and there, or serious tier VII credit grinding. Chasing down Light tanks. Breaking through the flank. Destroying lurking Tank Destroyers. Harassing Heavy tanks until they explode from hysteria.

Rudy is not invincible. That is obvious; or it wouldn’t need all that Bias. And it doesn’t actually need it – Rudy would have been a really good tank turned down several notches.

It’s just a T-34-85 on steroids. Does 55 easy. 53 degrees of traverse, stock. Two and a half thousand DPM without a rammer. Eight degrees of Biased gun depression. And it rakes in the credits.

I mean, really…

IrmaBecx says: in a tier VII daily driver; what more do you want?

My T-34-85 “Rudy” on May Day a couple of years ago. This was when the IS-5 first dropped.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, then just pull up your favourite tank stat source, and then don’t compare the “Rudy” to the T-34-85, or the KV-13, or the T-43.

Instead, compare it to the tier VIII T-44 with your favourite 100 mm gun on it, and remember Rudy started out as a tier six tank.

You’ll see what I mean about the “fifteen millimetres weaker”. If you put a 100 mm gun on the Rudy, then nobody would believe it wasn’t a tier VIII tank…

Monday Poetry Corner

Sadness

By:

IrmaBecx

So the game is the best it’s ever been right now; that is my honest opinion.

It saddens me deeply a lot of people don’t seem to care about that.

And it’s hard to describe how invested I am in the game; not just because I’ve been playing it for so long, but because of what it is, how it works, and the tremendous amount of work I, along with so many others, have put into the game. That all still amazes me; will never cease to amaze me.

World of Tank Blitz is the best game in the world.

And writing that I feel immediately like the people from “Little Big”, which is of all things a Russian “rave” band from S:t Petersburg; the first words out of their mouths is “We love Russia” before they say anything vaguely critical about their own society. I’ll just say if you haven’t seen old Stalin rapping in Russian, or girls in “kokoshniks” bathing in Rubles and twerking among goats, you are missing out.

But it is none the less true. I don’t identify sexually as an Object 140, but being a pixel tank driver does form a huge part of my identity, even though I am pushing 50 at a rapid pace and it’s “just a silly game”.

I say that all the time. “I’ll be driving my silly pixel tanks” or “I’ll be playing my silly tank game”.

But computer games have been around since the first T-54 tanks rolled off the assembly line at Nizhny Tagil, and owning a game console past your 16:th birthday doesn’t automatically make you a “nerd” anymore; it practically makes you one if you don’t. Especially when you start approaching middle age and have more money to spend.

And spending all that money on something means it needs to be taken seriously on some level. Certainly playing video games will stir your emotions; even in fantasy you always play to win, and of course you get upset when you lose.

A lot of people don’t deal well with that, and I sometimes find myself among them. I get salty, call people a camper, or a noob, or whatever, and say it’s all hopeless; useless; a disaster of epic proportions.

It is of course not. It’s just a game. And when the salt is gone, there is only sadness.

Sadness at losing of course, but also sadness born from disappointment; not in my useless team anymore, but in myself, letting myself get carried away like that and acting like a spoiled child.

People threaten to kill eachother over losing a game. They spew the most hateful, vitriolic abuse they can think of all over their opponents, their families, their loved ones, and everything they stand for.

And as poorly as I deal with losing, I deal with that kind of abuse even worse. And worst of all, I deal with becoming like those people I deal the absolute worst with myself.

But worse than even that I deal with being made to feel like it’s my own fault. That I am to blame for feeling bad when others act badly. Like I somehow caused it, just by being.

There is the argument, that if I find using a word in a derogatory manner offensive, then that is my own fault. I represent the entirety of the problem, and if I were to go away, there would be no problem.

This is not so. I had a huge problem with the way people were carrying on on the Official Forum, and so I left. The problems didn’t go away; they got worse. And now the Forum is dead. I grieve for that, but I am not responsible. Indeed I was not allowed to be responsible; and if I had, perhaps things would have been different.

Perhaps.

I might also have drowned in all the negativity, and just went down with it.

So where, I wonder, is the next step even going to point towards?

You can see the natural progression of the pixel tank driver. They learn a few things, move up the tiers. And then they hit some kind of limit, and they start blaming things. Game mechanics are bad. The tanks are bad. The teams are bad. Their shots are bad. Everything is bad, and so they get tired of it and leave.

Me, I passed that point long ago. I still play the game, because I imagine I understand something about it that people who give up on it don’t. Or maybe, it’s just that I am so invested in it, I don’t know where else to go or what else to do. I’m not sure anymore.

But if this kind of philistine, luddite “everything is bad” attitude leads to the dementia of Cancrackerism, what does tank philosophy and elitism lead to? Except doing the same thing, with minor variations, over and over again, hoping to get a different result; the very definition of madness?

Is there a way, in which tank philosphy doesn’t lead to sadness?

Hatred leads to sadness, for everyone. Frustration leads to sadness. Anger; at least for me, leads to sadness.

Sooner or later, you are going to have to examine yourself; do a bit of soul-searching, and evaluate yourself, to yourself. You have to make sense,a s a person, in your own eyes, otherwise you cannot live properly. Without coherency, there is only existence; not life.

Is the game alive?

Yes. As long as wee all keep it alive. Wargaming may pay for the servers, but we all need to pitch in as players to make it live. And when we do, likewise we have to look at ourselves and consider what kind of contribution we are making to it.

I felt like a contributor to the community, before I ever got the blue tag on the Forum and the magic press account. But today, I just don’t know anymore. Perhaps I have become jaded and entitled; resting on my old laurels, and demanding to be recognised without anything to show for it.

Again; perhaps.

I just feel there is too much negativity going around; not enough willingness to do anything about it, and I can feel it turning me into a worse person, a worse player, and most frightening of all – a worse community contributor.

I wouldn’t be the first to succumb.

But no matter what happens, I will keep driving my silly pixel tanks, and I will continue to write about pixel tank warfare, philosophy, war, and just generally be the tank philosopher warrior poet in the classic sense I always dreamed of being watching Bushka and Sariel’s early efforts at explaining what it was all about and how it was done.

I don’t know what else to do.

And this week, I am not sure there is solace in poetry. Indeed, there is often sadness in poetry also. Or rather; not in poetry itself, but in the subject matter. Because this weeks poem is by aspiring tank poet Peter Panther; unclear if there is any relation to the other Peter, who flies around in a green Robin Hood outfit and doesn’t ever want to grow up.

Like, I suppose, all of us who still play video games in our middle age. Sariel builds Lego now, and Bushka certainly doesn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry to wear a suit and tie and act all serious.

What I do know, however, is that there can be solace in poetry. And in saying that, I have perhaps tentatively answered my own terrifying question: what does tank philosophy lead to?

In the best of all worlds, it leads to Poetry.

I could live through that.

/IrmaBecx The Desert Fox

8point8

By:

Peter Panther

I am done with fake fun!

My heavies you know can carry

And can be 60 % or so…..

But what the hell

They have the smell of fear of…

playing the Light

Or the difficult Medium

But to gain my win rate

Must I suffer this tedium?

I’ve seen a mini running everywhere

Challenging his executioners

And I thought That is without fear!

Ice runs in his veins

(Is he too callous to be friends?)

Well good for him

Freedom comes from within.

So for my love of words

I was always a fan of Placebo

And knew by instinctual means

What our man Molko

meant when he said

That he was 33 degrees!

And now I know

To counteract the in-game hate

I’ve got to be come so ….

8.8

They moved the posts

Maybe rightfully so,

Now we only play against those initiated

Our winrates drops

It’s time to become 8.8s.

Love life

Laugh at the hate

Embrace your freedom

Go 8.8!

For the benefit of the Vanguard clan diehards, here is the “Goat Twerking and Ruble Bathing” video by Little Big, mentioned initially. Those over the age of 23 may want to mute the rave-rap sounds and play their favourite power metal track, or “Fuck Tha Police” by N.W.A instead while watching.

You have been cautioned:

Unloved Tanks I – AMX 50 B

AMX 50 120 and 50 B – Why Drive The IX?

By:

IrmaBecx

So there are more Chinese tanks coming, but I’m not super excited about driving a tier X SU-152. I don’t think that’s going to come as a surprise to anyone.

They say the T-22 Medium is coming, but I’ve not heard a thing about it from Wargaming; likely it will be a crate tank, or maybe a reward tank for the Pros. You could make the argument we have two tier X Russian Mediums already, and people already can’t decide between them, but I for one am super curious about the V-shaped hull.

I’m pretty much only driving my new Premiums these days, trying to scrape together a few million so I don’t have to worry about resources, and I’m feeling like I don’t really have a project right now.

Stagnation is the death of tank philosophy.

So I started looking at my old projects. There are basically two. The first one is the BAtChat. I haven’t even started the French Light tank line yet, but I am of course getting one. The BatChat is the most Elitist tank in the game; why wouldn’t I? The other one is also French, as it happens, and I’ve been at it for ages. It’s the AMX 50 B.

Why would anyone drive the 50 B? That’s a paper in itself, but basically it’s down to this: The AMX 50 B does 50 km/h.

There is no question, that in a lot of ways the T57 Heavy is just better. It has that lovely 2,5 second interclip reload. It has armour. It traverses faster. Lots of things.

But those things also limit the T57 Heavy in terms of playstyle. You want to hull down somewhere and hide the hull while you wait for the reload, and then fire off the clip as fast as possible. The T57 Heavy is a classic, armoured, burst damage autoloader Heavy tank.

The 50 B is not that. It’s a huge tank; weight almost 60 tons, and the French gun isn’t quite as sharp as the American, except it depresses down further. The one piece of useful armour is right at the front, the middle of the upper front plate.

But like I said; it does 50. For such a big tank, the mobility is simply amazing; all down to the massive 1320 horsepower engine; the 50 B has like 500 horses on the T57. And to me, that makes all the difference. Having speed means having more gameplay options; it’s that simple. And that is why tanks like the BatChat and the Ru 251 are so alluring, even to the best players in the game.

Fine. The 50 B is one thing. But other than grinding for the 50 B; why would you drive the AMX 50 120 at tier IX? Is this not the classic case of the tier X vehicle simply being better?

You would think so. Certainly I thought so. But my friend and colleague “Blitz Jingles” Bushka said something in his second 50 120 review; the thing is actually something pretty unique in the game.

If I had the choice, I would rather drive the K-91. That one has a 100 mm autoloader, and I got to try it out on supertest; easily one of the strangest vehicles in the Russian tech tree, but such a wonderful drive.

So what Bushka said was just this thing doesn’t have tier X Matchmaking. And it still has a tier X 120 mm autoloader that does 1200 damage with each clip.

I hadn’t thought about it that way.

I did like the French Heavy tanks, right up until they changed the AMX 50 100. I still haven’t gotten over that, actually. But anyway; the 50 120 always struck me as just… boring. I didn’t want to drive the tier IX prototype; I wanted to drive the Monster 50 B.

But like the real Jingles says; it ain’t gonna grind itself.

And there are some discounts going on. I don’t have a project. There might not be a better time for the 50 B than the present. And I need to get myself a present for the holidays anyway.

So last night, I pulled up my pants and drove a game in my old 50 120. It went pretty well. I drove a second one, and then I spent the million or so credits to get some tracks and Vstabs on it, because I finally understand the point of the 50 120. It’s like Bushka says. It doesn’t get 50 B matchmaking, but it gets a 50 B gun.

The very next game, I got smashed to bits, of course. But I soon found I was getting into the autoloader playstyle; it isn’t all that different from driving a big gun Medium with a long reload.

But it is different. What the autoloader does is give you options, and that is why it’s so interesting to play. You can do 1200 damage in six or seven seconds. But are you sure you have seven seconds? Are you sure all three will go in? A lot of the time, I find the last shell is used to cover up a mistake from one of the two previous ones.

In other words, you wouldn’t just drive out against a Maus or a Bias-7 that’s on like twelve hundred and fifty hitpoints.

Sadly, tier IX is still the same. And that, ultimately, is why I ended up selling the 50 120 to buy the AMX 50 B.

Like I said, I did get into it. I had some good games. But the constant frustration of Death Stars and T49 cheater tanks made me blind to the special qualities of the 50 120, to the point where all I could think was the 50 B is just better. In my mind, other than bullying tier VIII IS clones once in a while, the 50 120 doesn’t really have anything the 50 B doesn’t.

I mean, let’s look at the upgrade package:

You get one more round per minute, which equates a five second shorter clip reload. four more degrees of depression and elevation. 220 more horsepower. 350 more hitpoints. And although the side armour is actually weaker, the frontal armour is between 50 and 70 mm thicker.

You may think the 50 B doesn’t have armour, but it does. It can bounce the biggest guns in the game off the front plate.

Also, those sneaky Frenchmen must have taken a cue from Volvo and thought a bit about driver safety as well. If you fire straight at the lower plate from a slight downward angle, that’s actually more than 300 mm of armour you need to get through to hit the driver. I did actually get a few bounces off the 50 120, but I do miss those extra 70 mm of frontal armour. I love that 50 B front plate, it’s over 400 mm in places with a bit of angling.

So many times people just aim at the middle, and if you are on point, that’s where your front plate will be; the only piece of armour you have, and the one place they should never try to shoot you, except for the actual gun in the middle of the turret.

In fairness, the 50 120 is a little more agile, and the side armour is actually thicker. But against tier X guns, that doesn’t really make a difference at all; most of them will overmatch it either way.

So yeah. I sold it. Bought the 50 B instead.

And why wouldn’t you? Do you really need two top tier autoloaders? Even if you prefer playing tier IX, I have a hard time imagining the kind of person who likes the 50 120, and doesn’t like the 50 B.

And so that means I’m back to driving my credit grinder Premiums. Basically four Chinese, a Frenchman, and the fantastic “Deutsch-Amerikanischer Freundschaft” project tank. Oh, and the little Black Dog, of course.two

I actually have Vstabs and tracks on it after a few games this morning. And then I have to rebuild my credit buffer. Again.

But I am looking forward to driving it. I have a regular tier X Heavy tank now, so getting an autoloader too seems like a much better idea at this point. And I have been wanting to get it, ever since it first came out.

The AMX 50 B looks fantastic, of course. But in philosophical terms, it’s basically just a combination of three things: a three shot 120 mm French long gun, a small, but massive front plate, and a huge 1300+ horsepower engine. You can tell this is the same people who built the Foch (155).

And although you can’t be as agressive in the 50 B as you can in the Foch, you can still play mid range, as long as you have a team of active players around you. Go with the pack. Maybe follow the Mediums. Or go off alone to find a spot for covering fire, or ambushing low health enemies.

Either way, you want to put yourself in the endgame with as many hitpoints as possible, because that’s where you will start becoming really dangerous. If a Heavy tank takes a full clip from you but ends up taking you out, that’s actually not such a bad trade for them, because they can still hide behind their armour, and they don’t have to worry about you later.

Speed and firepower is what you need to finish off the game a winner, and if you time it well, you can make all the difference for your team; either taking off huge chunks of damage and leaving the reds an easy kill, or finishing off two or even three low health tanks in mere seconds.

The dream of the Magic Clip. Three perfect shots.

But you are most powerful as part of your team; backing them up, and taking refuge behind them and their covering fire while you reload the clip.

The AMX 50 B is a team player. Let’s see if I can be one too?

Monday Poetry Corner

Not A Hero

By:

IrmaBecx

Writing about the Vietnam war last week, I feel I had left something out. Something another war poet showed us earlier.

Brian Turner had the same traumatic experiences in Iraq Tim O’Brien had in Vietnam; only ever able to fully express them through poetry. But while was there, he also studied Iraqi poetry; although he didn’t tell anyone about it in case they should consider him “weak”; wanting to learn how the landscape and culture expressed themselves, through poems, for the people who lived there.

I never heard Tim O’Brien make the same claim. I may be wrong.

Here is something I think they both would agree with. This is the preface to Wilfred Owens’ “Poems”. It was discovered among his papers, and can be found after the first preface by his friend, mentor, and editor Siegfried Sassoon; famous war poet also of the first world war school.

Owens was killed in 1918. Died like a hero and an Officer, trying to save his men. He wrote his mother only days before, saying his nerves was in perfect order and he had come back to the front to help the boys.

He doesn’t mean “the lads”. He means young boys, barely out of school.

Owens writes poetry about trench warfare, and tells it like it is. The stark horror; the madness and futility of it all. Sassoon taught him how. To listen to his dreams and put them down on paper.

But perhaps more stark and chilling, is Owens’ own posthumorous foreword to a book simply called “Poems”, claiming; increduously, the book isn’t about poetry at all.

I will let him explain.

“This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,

except War.

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.

The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are not to this generation,

This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next.

All the poet can do to-day is to warn.

That is why true Poets must be truthful.

If I thought the letters of this book would last,

I might have used proper names ; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,-my ambition and those names will be content ; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.”

The letters of his book did last, although Owens himself did not. The book, at least, survived Prussia.

It is not to his generation, he says. Maybe to the next. I think it’s to the one that came after that. My generation.

Because without people like Wilfred Owens, we would never know the true horror of trench warfare and mustard gas, of endless artillery barrages, and countless meaningless offensives across the barbed wire and mines of no man’s land straight into machine gun fire. Owens himself died a hundred years ago this year. None of his friends are left to tell us about it.

How, then; are we to know our own history? Where we came from? Except through the crystallized dreams; the fixated nightmares of poetry?

Ngyen Van Be was not a hero, but he still had poems written about him as if he had been one:

“And from the bullet splattered sound of your battles,

Nguyen Van Be, rose the great roar of your explosion.

An explosion that shattered those evil American night-flying crows…

We shall live like you, you who knows not retreat.

And every battle shall be fought as your fought it –“ forever.

We shall follow your shining example.”

-Duy Khan, Hanoi Weekly, 5/5 1967

What happened was, Van Be was missing, presumed dead after a firefight, and the North Vietnamese cooked up a story about how he had thrown himself against an American tank, slamming an anti-tank mine against it, destroying it and killing dozens and dozens of his enemies.

Ngyen Van Be was hailed as a hero and a shining example of the fighting spirit of the Vietnamese people. They made him out to be some kind of warrior saint:

“Do you hear the explosion of mines to destroy the Americans?

The chorus of hatred resounds all over…

During a battle, three times you showed your gallantry…”

Only Van Be wasn’t dead. He was a P.O.W. The Yanks quickly found him in some camp, and paraded him all over the news; “he’s not dead; he was captured without firing a single shot!”

So not a hero, then.

But, it turns out, Ngyen Van Be was a poet.

I found a poem of his, and the dates and circumstances match close enough for it to be unlikely to be someone else. The FNL had a pretty efficient postal system in place, and several letters were found among Ngyen Van Be’s papers, as well as this short poem.

This; then, is what I felt was missing the other week. The other perspective. And although you can sense the schooling of a totalitarian system behind these few lines, I still think they offer as much freedom of expression as is needed in this context.

A poem from the legendary tank killer Ngyen Van Be; “legendary” in the sense he didn’t actually ever kill a tank.

They just said he did.

They also said it was an “M-118” tank, and no one can remember any tank in Vietnam being called that, so…

Anyway; for your pleasure and edification:

Autumn passes away, winter comes, and then spring returns.

I am as always enraptured by my mission.

Before me, flowers bloom in brilliant colours in front of someone’s house,

A Bamboo branch sways gracefully, reminding me of the native village I love.

Our unit stops to rest in an isolated area.

My shoes are still covered with dust gathered during the march.

I hurriedly compose this letter to you

And send you all my love.

-Ngyen Van Be

Baby Panther is Legit A F!

How To Be A Panther Driver

By:

IrmaBecx The Desert Fox

You will note that doesn’t say “how to drive a Panther” in the title.

That’s not what this is about.

It’s about how to be a Panther Driver. A “Panther Mann”, like Guderian called them in the Panther-Fibel. Which is all in verse, by the way; even Guderian’s foreword. How’s that for tank poetry?

And when I say “Panther Driver”, I mean someone who drives the E50 Ausf. M, the E50, and the Cosplay Panther; someone who grinds their credits with a serene smile in their Panther 8.8; someone who drives all things Panther, and who thinks about any other tank they drive solely in terms of Panther tanks.

And if you want to be such a person, it starts right here. It starts with the Baby Panther.

Don’t even think about grinding the E50 Ausf. M. until you know you can drive the Baby Panther. Until you love the Baby Panther. Until you think the Baby Panther is the greatest of all Panthers, and the best tier VI tank in the game. Only then are you ready for the Cosplay Panther and Panther One.

Lucky for you, the Baby Panther is the real Panther. Original and unadulterated, the proper MAN design. Panther Actual. Numero Uno Panther Supreme.

Lucky for you; Baby Panther is completely Legit.

I put the new Jade Shards camo on mine, to make it look more Swedish. I cry myself to sleep every night because I’ve missed both opportunities to put the “Bastille” camo on it, but this one is also magnificent.

It’s important to look your best in such an amazing vehicle.

Even more amazingly, the Baby Panther isn’t in the tech tree anymore. It’s turned blue like a teamkiller, designating it’s new collectible tank status.

Only for tank nerds, apparently.

Why? The MAN Panther is the original Panther design, and it seems ludicrous it isn’t in the game anymore.

I learned so much driving the Baby Panther, and I almost got my second ever Raseiniai in it last time I drove it in earnest; seconds away.

It’s been a while. I’ve been driving the tier X UltraPanther instead.

But I’m not ever going to sell it, that would be madness. No other tank can bring be back to my roots like the Baby Panther; it’s almost like I don’t drive it out of… reverence? At tier VI, I usually drive the VK 28 “Bewilderbeest”, the Cromwell B, or the new Type 58 instead.

But as it is now a first generation blue tank, I thought I’d try and get back into it, and try to explain why you are a total numbskull if you had the Baby Panther in your grip and let it slip through your fingers for a mere pittance of gold and a garage slot.

Because, like i said; The Baby Panther is totally Legit.

First, you have to understand none of the other Panthers are the E50 M. That’s the only big bully; the only one with any kind of significant armour. Most significant in it’s class, in fact.

The Baby Panther is not that. It’s a fierce beast for sure, but only in the right circumstances; where the Baby Panther can fight on it’s own terms. Can dictate the terms of the engagement. That’s what you want to do.

Also, these days you can be absolutely sure, anyone who is out there driving a Baby Panther is driving it because they want to. If you are lucky, they are just trying to Ace it and then sell it off, but as more time passes, the unlikeliness of that will increase.

In just a few months, you can be dead sure whoever is driving the Baby Panther out there is a Panther driver in their hearts. And you should always fear the enemy who fights with their heart.

Therefore, you should fear the Baby Panther. But why exactly? What is it that makes the Baby Panther so good other than the Panther Legend itself?

It has a bone stock German 7,5 L/70, not a lot of armour, it’s no speed machine, and it’s as big as a house. Why would you be afraid of it?

Because when driven right, you won’t see the Baby Panther at all at the start of the game. Maybe it will flash on your mini map, but you won’t see it. It will be watching you instead.

When you do see it, all you’ll see is the gun mantlet and maybe a bit of angled plate. The Baby Panther will be working positions, using cover to hold on to it’s hitpoints for the endgame. And all the while, it will be putting in irritating shots, wearing you down, stopping your advance, breaking your tracks, and ruining your day in all sorts of ways.

And then, towards the end, the Baby Panther will be coming straight at you. You will be on low hitpoints, busy with something else, and the Baby Panther will just drive straight up to you and drop the adrenaline, quite happy to take a hit or even two; just as long as you get “tooken out”, like Ol’ Dirty Bastard used to say.

The End. Game Over. Baby Panther poses for the victory photo.

To do all this, the Baby Panther really doesn’t have a lot of tools at it’s disposal, but it does have everything it needs. You have three bits of armour; front plate, sides, and gun mantlet, and they all work fairly well. What they do is work well with an otherwise very dynamic and imaginative playstyle; you angle up in the midst of things to get a calculated bounce off your side armour or front plate, or you go hull down and rock back and forth so they may not even hit the gun mantlet.

A little kitty cat with sharp claws, that sometimes seems to have nine lives just as long as you help it along with the dancing around. Allow the Baby Panther the opportunity to get lucky, and it will get lucky. You don’t need all your hitpoints to win the game; all you have to do is kill them all or cap all the bases. I have done that on a single hitpoint, which isn’t ideal, but it is possible.

And the Baby Panther lives off possibilities.

So juking and wiggling will allow you to get lucky, but so will keeping the gun firing.

Like Quickybaby says; you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

But the prerequisite for that is Position, and your positional play determines the realisation and efficiency of your firepower. In a good position, you can put out steady damage without taking any in return. In a bad one, you will have to trade hitpoints to do damage, and that’s not going to be worth it in early game situations. Just drive away, and find a better one. Go see if you can help someone else. Go take some shots at a camper or hull down Heavy tank and get them turned around. Or, just spot for the team; see what the enemy are doing, and where they are.

Because, if you know where they are, then you also know where you want to be. And although the Baby Panther is no Bewilderbeest, it will still get there fairly quickly.

Learning these relocation tactics is the essence of Baby Panther gameplay; of all Panther gameplay. If you have a bit of experience with tier VIII, and you know how to drive the Baby Panther, you can pretty much jump in a Panther 8.8 and start racking up the damage like nothing. It’s the same principle, even though the tier and the tanks are different.

As a Panther driver, you need to be self reliant; and trust in your gameplay a lot more than in the tank.

All you need to trust the tank to do is what it’s supposed to; move where you need it to be, mitigate incoming damage; mainly by not being seen at all but sometimes with the armour, and put the rounds where you want them to go.

The Baby Panther can do all this, but that is all you are getting. It doesn’t have a gimmick, except being fairly historically accurate. At least it looks right. There is no actual thing the Baby Panther can do beyond what you would expect from a mid tier Medium tank. It’s not bad at either mobility, armour, or firepower, but none of those factors stand out in particular either.

That means you have to use all of them to get the job done. You need to try and stretch the capabilities of the Baby Panther to the limits of it’s performance, only then will the Baby Panther start to shine. And when it starts surprising you time and again in those extreme situations, by getting the job done where you thought it wouldn’t,

…that’s when you will grow to love the Baby Panther for real.

And when you do, as I said, you can move right along up the E50 M line; all the way to the top if you want. And why wouldn’t you?

The E50 M is a magnificent tank. And if you have slogged your way through the Panthers, you will not only know how to drive it already; you will also feel how monstrously powerful it is compared to all the other Panthers in the game. It does everything the other Panthers do, only so much better. It is what you always wished the other ones were.

And I sometimes forget the little-est Panther is not the E50 M only at tier VI. Because it isn’t. Or very rarely, at least.

But that’s fine. The Baby Panther can take a beating if it has to, and I don’t blame the tanks for my own mistakes.

And you will make mistakes in the Baby Panther. That’s the only way to learn. Like I said you have to push the limits to get the most of it, and that means pushing the limits to find out where they are in the first place.

Because when you understand exactly what the Baby Panther cannot do,

Then you can concentrate on what the Baby Panther can maybe do.

And then you try to live through those possibilities.

That, is how you become a Panther driver.

E50 Ausf. M of Destiny

The Spear of Destiny

By:

Irma Oden Becx

I’ve said before the Leopard 1 was the first tier X tank I never thought I would ever, ever get to drive.

I did. It didn’t take that long, even; the Leopard 1 was my third ever tier X tank. Soon after, I got a magic press account from Wargaming because I write stuff like this, and so I could drive all the Leopard 1 I ever wanted, for free.

And if you are reading this; you probably helped pay for all those free resources.

If you did: thank you.

But the magic press account isn’t the same. I’ve had the same account, under the same name, since August 10:th 2014. That’s the one that counts. That is where I have all my laurels and accolades; my scalps and trophies, taken in battle.

Earned in battle.

And after all this time, I can be quite the warrior at times. When I get all my ducks in a row, and manage to keep my focus.

But I didn’t drive the Leopard 1 first thing I did. I drove the Object 140; at that point the most powerful tank in the game, because that was my greatest enemy.

Because, if the Leopard 1 was the first tank I didn’t think I would ever get to drive, the E50 Ausf. M was the first tank I did.

The German people fought against their enemies until death; until the very end.

Not because they were especially honourable, but because they fought for a lie. The lie that they were the chosen people; chosen by the gods to realise some great destiny. The lie of no compromise; of final victory, or final defeat. The grandest lie, perhaps, of all.

If you ask a defeated enemy to yield; they will yield, unless they believe their death would serve some higher, honourable purpose.

That is what is called “honour”.

And you have to be very careful, because these lies about grandeur are seductive. I was called upon to serve my country, and I stood up to do it. The same way millions did before me, I was ready to learn how to be a warrior. And I did learn. Then they gave me some badges and a piece of paper that said I was an excellent soldier, but unreliable and insubordinate; very capable, but not good at taking commands.

All I really learned was it was all still a big lie, and a lot of things about human nature and the negatives of group dynamics based on violence and hierarchy.

More lies. Because you know how to make a soldier. You break someone down, and then you build them up again, according to a strict hierarchy. Simple rules. Obey, or be punished. Serve, or be degraded. Do or die; in the literal sense.

The punishment for desertion is death, in practically all armies. Mine too, in wartime.

When I was a soldier, the war was somewhere else, and yet uncomfortably close. At one point, it was discussed having my regiment sent down to former Yugoslavia, but things seemed to quiet down, and nothing ever came of it. That’s about as close as I have ever been to war.

And still, growing up during the cold war, I already knew all about it. I knew what would happen. I knew how it worked. I knew it would destroy me; destroy my whole life, and everything I knew, even if I kept on living; just as it has destroyed millions before me, who lived to see the other end of war.

The cold war, they say, ended in 1990. And maybe it did.

But for me, the war will never end. Because I was a child in wartime. It may not have been here, and it may not have been me, but we all lived under the threat of either nuclear holocaust, or conventional warfare. The guns were loaded in Berlin. Two superpowers mere meters apart, mere miles from where I lived. The same Berlin where those Germans had fought for every piece of rubble, because the all-encompassing lie they fought for wouldn’t allow them to do anything else.

And the Nazis were wrong. They were. I believe that in my heart.

But so were everyone else, because war is in itself wrong. It shouldn’t ever be. It should never happen. No people should have to live under the constant threat of death, violence, or persecution. That is what I believe.

So why was the German E50 M my first tier X Medium?

Because all of the above.

As a child, I played nothing but war games. It was the only thing that interested me. I would throw myself into innocent dreams of daredevil heroism, “Bravery, Honour, Loyalty”, like the Walloon Legion Rexist badge says. If I had known I’d be sitting here with almost a hundred different pixel tanks at my disposal at age 45, it would have shattered my young mind; no matter how much science fiction books I had read already.

I remember in one, someones brain was transplanted into a huge tank on a planet light years away to fight in a galactic war. You have to admit driving pixel tanks on my Ipad isn’t terribly far removed from that?

So here I am, then; living in the future of my wildest dreams. and what do I drive?

The E50 M. My “Spear of Destiny”.

I call it that, because of “Castle Wolfenstein”, of course. It was the first time I got to fire the MP40 in simulation.

Oh, did I mention; I always played the Germans when we played war? It was because of what I said earlier. No soldier is truly honourable, because war is hell. So I figured I could just as well wear the coolest uniform. I didn’t want to fly a Spitfire with a posh accent, I wanted to fly a Messerschmitt BF-109 in a black leather jacket, a crusher cap, and a monocle; the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross jauntily around my neck.

“>>Achtung, Spitfeuer!<<”

That’s all it was. Not “Die Fahne Hoch.”

And so I’m not a WW II buff. I am not a tank connoisseur. I am just a child playing with his frightening war toys, because he is still afraid of the war. The war that ruins everything; the dissolution of society, the holocaust and armageddon.

Ragnarök.

The twilight of the gods. Our old gods, the Germans said. And also my old gods, Tor, Freja, and Oden.

The whole Germanic fantasy. They tried to steal that from us and tell us it was theirs, but it’s not. It’s still ours. Our heritage, and there is nothing Germanic about it. That is the lie, trying to seduce you into believing in something greater than yourself, but not for your benefit.

For someone else’s. Someone who functions very well in a strictly hierachic society. In a dictatorship.

If you remember my piece of paper from the Army, you’ll know that’s not me.

I understand all this, and yet my fascination remains. And with the E50 M especially, because it represents precisely the fantasy aspect. The Jägeru also, of course, but the E50 M more so, because it is in fact a complete fabrication. Wargaming made it up for our enjoyment.

And I’ve said before it’s a brilliant fabrication, because it’s so plausible. It follows known wartime design directives, and design philosophy; it’s basically a huge Panther tank, massaged into a hyper efficient shape like a purpose built race car.

The Object 140 is the same. It was actually built, but the version we have in the game is the dream of the Object 140; I’ve often called it “Russian Bias Personified”. Likewise it’s like they just painted a thin coat of pixel varnish over the very embodiment of their respective design philosophies: the Non Plus Ultra top tier vehicle.

Top of the line, top of their game.

And when I first drove the E50 M, it was everything I had dreamed it would be. Bombing around the same maps in a fifty ton beast doing over 60 km/h on the straights just made them seem so much smaller.

The exhilarating sense of freedom was so intoxicating, I just drove around with wild abandon; throwing myself into fierce up close combat at the slightest hint of an enemy.

My once most hated enemy the Object 140 especially.

It was unquestionably the best tank in the game once. And I still think it’s the best Medium tank in the game, all things considered.

These days, it is one of my most prized possessions. My grandest wreath of laurels, the crossed swords to my Iron Cross that is the Spear of Destiny. My most treasured and beloved combat trophy of all.

The scalp of all scalps.

The face of war that threatened me as a child, was mechanised warfare in Europe. The face of the enemy, when they finally revealed themselves, would be a Soviet T-series tank in matte grey/green with a red star painted on it.

The exact same tank that’s in my garage now, wearing the name “Terror”.

The Object 140 is the face of my childhood terror, but I am not a child anymore. I just remember being one. And the same way I wore the uniform of the enemies of my grandfather Oden as a child, I now wear the image of my own childhood enemies in make believe battle against my friends, and for the same reason.

Because war is terror. And it tries to seduce us into violence.

But the Object 140 is not my enemy anymore, it is one of my most trusted lances.

Because a tank is a spear, in a philosophical sense. The spear becomes a rifle. The rifle becomes a cannon. The cannon is put on tracks. You put some armour around the gun crew, and the spear is now a tank.

And I broke it. Broke the sharpest spear of the enemy. I defeated my childhood terror.

I beat the Object 140 in earnest battle. And I did it in the E50 M.

At that point, the E50 Ausf. M had the lowest DPM of any tier X Medium, and the 140 had the highest. But I found out that doesn’t matter if they can’t punch through your front plate, and they aren’t really that tough anymore after you plow straight into them going 55 with that front plate they can’t shoot through, and then you start dancing and taking their tracks off again so they stay still while you shoot them.

Driving the E50 M taught me even the best tank in the game could be taken down. And that that was more satisfying than actually driving it.

Driving the Object 140 taught me even the best tank in the game can be dead in the water in the wrong situation. And that being the best tank in the game doesn’t mean what you imagine it does.

Driving both of them taught me any tier X Medium can be the best tank in the game, if you just play it well enough. And also that no matter what the best tank in the game happens to be this update, all I want to do is drive my beloved Medium tanks.

The E50 M now has 8 degrees of gun depression over the front, and that was enough to put it in the Twister offline finals. The Object 140 was there as well, some teams not trusting their BatChats to do the heavy spotting.

The old spear is still sharp, it seems.

We who drive it have always known this. The E50 M, when driven by someone who knows and loves it, is one of the most formidable tanks in the game; it always was. Even before all the buffs.

The Object 140 is perhaps the purest Medium tank at tier X in terms of playstyle. It can do everything.

The E50 M can not. But it can do some things the Object can’t and those things can be a huge advantage. Both tanks will relocate very quickly, but they will go to do different jobs. They each play to their particular strengths.

And the strengths of the E50 M are obvious. It has a powerful chassis, can hull down and side scrape, and puts the rounds exactly where you want them. Let those facts inform what you try to do with it, and you can wreck entire teams on your own.

I am a lone wolf. Don’t platoon very often.

But the E50 M is a big bad wolf, and it works best in a pack. You shouldn’t go in expecting to do all the work yourself, what you want to do is facilitate the work of others.

The essence of Medium gameplay. Being an annoying presence to the enemy all through the battle.

If there ever was a tier X Medium tank to recommend as your first, I would say the E50 M is the only one that comes close. All the others have caveats.

The first one being: why would you want to drive a tier X Medium at all?

For me, that’s easy. It’s the most like driving a BF-109 with a monocle.

That’s all it is.

The endless fascination of the Spear of Destiny.

Amazon

Mary Anne Bell is running through the forest, her face painted black with charcoal.

She is not Mary Anne anymore.

But she can feel all her body; the blood moving through her veins, she is full of electricity, and she is glowing in the darkness.

She is on fire. She is burning into nothing.

She knows exactly who she is.

And you can’t feel like that anywhere else.

Mary Anne the Amazon Greenie is a myth. She embodies the spirit of war; guerilla warfare as fantasy; as dreams of anti-hero honour and righteous bloodlust.

“She took greedy pleasure in patrols. She was good. She had the moves.”, Says Rat Kiley, who is telling the legend of Marianne Bell; “the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”.

And it’s a great legend. Mary Anne, seventeen years old from Cleveland Heights and straight out of highschool, gets seduced by the powerful drug of war; “that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure that comes as the needle slips in and you know you are risking something.” Rat explains.

“…you become intimate with danger; you’re in touch with the far side of yourself, as though it’s another hemisphere, and you want to string it out and go wherever the trip takes you and be host to all the possibilities inside yourself. Not *bad*, she’d said. Vietnam made her glow in the dark. She wanted more, she wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and after a time the wanting became needing, which turned then to craving.”

Tim O’Brien, who wrote the story, knew the truth of this. He spent two years in Vietnam, having been drafted straight out of College.

But he doesn’t *tell* us the truth about it. There was of course no Mary Anne Bell. He tries, by what is known as “versimilitude”, or “truth-likeness”, to *explain* the truth of War to us, by telling us her story.

Mary Annes lust for war is justified, because she is innocent and pure. Rat Kiley is insistant the fact she was a girl doesn’t matter; we have to rid ourselves of that sexist way of thinking. The war affected her the exact same way it did everyone else.

Only *she* wanted to be a part of it. *Needed* to be.

“I’m here, I might as well learn something” she says. “There’s the scary part”, is the solemn comment from their Officer Eddie Diamond; “I promise you, this girl will most definitely learn.”

Rat Kiley loved Mary Anne.

I love her too.

I want to be like her when I drive my pixel tank.

Rat Kiley is standing on a ridge, looking to get some spots while smoking a cigarrette.

He is just standing there, watching the moon, and then off to the west a small column of silhouettes appear. At first he doesn’t recognise me – a small, soft shadow among six other shadows. There is no sound. No real substance either. The seven silhouettes seem to float across the surface of the map, like spirits, vaporous and unreal. As he watches, it makes him think of some weird opium dream. The silhouettes move without moving. Silently, one by one, we come up the hill, pass through the wire, and drift in a loose file across the Cap point. It is then, he picks out my face. My eyes seem to shine in the dark – not blue, though, but a bright glowing jungle green.

I peer off into the distance towards the camping spots. A haunted look – partly terror, partly rapture.

But it doesn’t matter, because I know exactly who I am, and you can’t feel like this anywhere else.

Because this is *not* war, but fantasy. The fantasy of war.

My fantasy, based on Tim O’Briens reality half a century ago. The reality he tries to express through “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”.

I take a greedy pleasure in short flanking. I am good at it; I have the moves. All camouflaged up, my face smooth and vacant, I seem to flow like water through the dark, like oil, without sound or center. I shed my armour. I stop driving Heavy tanks. There are times, apparently, when I take crazy, death-wish chances—things that even the Yolo Noobs balk at. It is as if I were taunting some wild creature out in the bush, or in my head, inviting it to show itself, a curious game of hide-and-go-seek that is played out in the dense terrain of a nightmare. I am lost inside myself.

And if you are unlucky, I will be somewhere out there in the distance.

Odd movements, odd shapes.

Late at night, when you are out on ambush, the whole map will seem to stare at you – a watched feeling – and a couple of times you’ll almost see me sliding through the shadows.

Not quite, but almost.

I have crossed to the other side. I am part of the land. I am wearing my best camouflage, and a necklace of human tongues.

I am dangerous.

I am ready for the kill.

While you tremble in fear of the Crouching Noob/Hidden Yolo, do take some time to read Tim O’Brien’s excellent story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”. You can find it online, or in his collection of short stories, “The Things They Carried” (1990).

I can’t imagine Tim O’Brien would ever read this, but if so I apologise for the frivolous butchery of the original text in the above.

Stay safe out there. It’s a real jungle.

AMX 30 Prototype!

AMX 30 Prototype – A Love Letter

By:

IrmaBecx

So if you read my previous post on the tier IX AMX Prototype Medium tank, you may have guessed I am now a proverbial “happy camper”.

And yes. 14.000 Gold is a lot of real world money; it’s an extravagance for sure to be driving a tier IX Premium. I will clearly state it’s not going to be worth it for everyone; perhaps not even for most.

But if you are in the game for the long haul; like I am, then tanks like the AMX 30 Premier Prototype will be worth it for you in the long run; because they have such freedom of movement, and limited protection.

For someone who has driven the Leopard 1 or PTA, the 30 Proto is a revelation, because it has the *one* thing you always wished the Leo had: a gun mantlet.

Add to this the thing is pretty low to the ground and has a pretty small, flat turret, and you can see where I am heading with this.

Yes; it’s one of those irritating, face-bouncing gun depression Mediums, in line with the 7/1, the Indien, or the STB-1.

But that’s not why you drive it.

You drive it because it has the most *superb* speed and mobility in that lightweight French chassis. I keep saying it’s more like driving a Light tank than anything else; the thing will out-turn a Leo no problem.

And with the superb 100 mm SA 47 on it and some fancy French cold war Vstabs, it has the same surgical instrument playstyle Light tanks do.

Only, as I said, it has a gun mantlet.

A good player will be able to work wonders with that one single piece of protection, and keep snap shotting all day, building massive damage.

And you do get there. If you stay with it.

Not saying I have “arrived” as a tank driver quite yet, but I do have quite a bit of experience, and I understand the gun depression playstyle.

This is the gun depression playstyle with a turbocharger.

So I’ve not driven more than a few games yet, but the AMX is exactly like I remember it from the press account; it’s a wonderful drive, the gun is razor sharp, and if you keep your cool, you can have some amazing games.

For the connaisseur, there is also the argument the Premier Prototype is something quite rare. It’s a fast 100 mm Medium with gun depression. If you don’t like the T-54 (like me), then you don’t have a lot of choices, unless you specifically like Chinese tanks (like me), and both T-54 variants have half the gun depression the AMX has.

The ammo loadout mat not look spectacular, but it is actually quite good. You get regular AP with high penetration, and then regular APCR that trades normalisation for penetration. The gun handling is easily good enough to put the rounds exactly where you want them, even if you go for a super speculative shot.

It’s like I used to say about my old Mauser I used to have. “The rifle shoots a lot better than I do, anyway…”

And there is no question the AMX 30 Premier Prototype drives a lot better than I do. In my particular case, I think I’ve made a good investment for the future. I’m certainly enjoying driving it immensely.

Will you feel the same?

Maybe. I knew exactly what I was getting into; I tried the tank out when it dropped, and I’ve driven a lot of weakly armoured tanks at tier IX.

You will get HESHed by skill stars, overmatched by tier VIII Heavys, break your tracks, get caught in crossfire, and ram yourself to death falling off ledges and bridges.

Driving a high tier MEdium with basically no armour can be a real chore.

But it has to be said: to me, the AMX 30 Premier Prototype is one of the absolute finest tier IX Medium tanks in the game, and although it was really expensive, I’m super happy I bought it.

IrmaBecx says make sure *you* know what you are getting yourself into, and you may just end up feeling the same.

Living like “Léon”

The Professional

By:

IrmaBecx

So I am watching “LÉON”; sometimes also known as “The Professional” (1994).

The film was actually written around the charachter “Victor – The Cleaner” from the 1990 French film “Nikita”, specifically for Jean Reno.

“Léon” is teaching Mathilda how to assassinate people.

The rifle is the first weapon you learn how to use…

Because it lets you keep your distance from the Client.

I am thinking of how I used to sit on top of hills with my German 88s and 105s looking through my scope for victims, and how true what he says is for tank driving.

The first tank you learn is the Tank Destroyer.

The closer you get to being a Pro, the closer you can get to the Client.

More truth, I am thinking. The better you get at driving Heavy tanks, the more you can get in people’s face with them. I did that too, learned to face hug in my Tigers and heavy Medium tanks.

The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn. OK?

The knife. A short blade for close encounters. A Light tank, or a fast, lightweight Medium.

That is what I *want* to learn. I always did. Ever since I saw that Leopard 1 drive straight up the hill on mines, just *scaling* the cliff face like a huge jungle cat; I knew the Medium playstyle was the highest form of tank driving, and although I felt at the time I would never, ever get to drive the magnificent Leopard 1; I *also* knew that was *all* I wanted to do.

Position.

Again, I am struck by the tank driving wisdom of Leon, the Cleaner.

Nothing gets you killed like being out of position, especially in a lightly armoured tank. And you know this, because you came up driving Tank Destroyers.

Mathilda tries to open the shades on the scope to get some spots, but Leon says “No”.

Never take it off until the last minute, it reflects light. They see you coming from a mile away.

And… always dress down. Never brighter than the floor.

You could do quite well in a Light tank, following these rudimentary directions.

Let’s practice now. It’s the best way to learn.

You see what I mean?

Leon lets Mathilda pick her target.

Keep calm.

Don’t take your eyes off him

Breathe easy

Watch his movement

Pretend you are running with him

Try to feel his next movement…

This is perhaps the best advice of all.

Nothing gets *me* killed like losing my concentration, after all these thousands of games, I still noob out on a regular basis, and I don’t always have Xeno there to pick up the slack.

But yeah.

It’s what I want to do. It’s who I want to be as a tank driver. The knife fight.

I have some of the sharpest knives in the game. All the best tier X speed machines, except the Bat Chat because I’m still scared to drive my Leopards.

But you all know that’s not enough. The best players in the game used to play nothing but Russian Mediums back when HEAT rounds went through everything like butter, except the turrets of Russian Medium tanks.

The Object 140 today is a much better tank than it ever was back when it was the most overpowered tank in the game (and yes, I drove it back then), in a much better Meta.

Sometimes.

Because you also have the same players coming up, and old jaded campers with no other ideas in their heads sitting in bushes with their huge guns just waiting ever so patiently to ruin your day.

I hate that.

I hate it because it’s the antithesis of the way I want to play the game, and I understand in saying that I also want the game to be a certain way; just like my friend Titus who basically thinks it should be a down-to-the-nut WW I tank simulator for tablets.

I don’t hate him for that, I just disagree. And disagreements don’t have to turn to hate. It’s quite enough just switching to HEAT rounds.

Anyway.

I bought the 140 after they gave it regular AP rounds, which is actually quite a buff. It allows you three degrees better normalisation, letting you penetrate side shots at a steeper angle. That’s 12% more target all around on flat ground. But it’s not the most *glamorous* it’s ever been, that’s for sure; playing second fiddle to the T-62A, which can still hull down against Heavy tanks.

But that’s not the point, because the Object 140 has the sharpest edged blade in the game; you can see it right there at the front of the upper plate. I love the 140 to death, and I always will, because it’s just the best tank in the game for living on the edge, and the object 140 will keep you on the right side of that knife edge you push yourself against more often than

Any.

Other.

Tank.

Don’t bother checking, I think the winrate is like 50% on my Object 140. But that’s not the point; that’s not what I’m saying.

I tell people the Object is the best Medium tank in the game; same as it ever was, and they always misunderstand me. It doesn’t mean it’ll give you a 73% winrate no problem.

What it means is, for filling every nook and cranny of what you could conceivably call the “Medium tank role” in the game, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible for a Medium tank to do, the Object 140 is the best.

The *Greatest* Medium tank in the game. For a knife fight wannabe like me. And there is some circumstantial evidence. Several players I know say they had their best Medium game ever in the Object 140. They may still prefer the T-62A, the Patton, the Leo, or even the STB-1. But they had their *best game ever* in the Object 140.

To me, nothing else is good enough. I want the best game ever.

And when I play that game, I want it to be in my favourite tank, with my favourite camouflage on it. I don’t care what map; I just care about looking my best when I do it.

Because looking my best is also *feeling* my best. And I know that sounds like a lot of Hippie crap, but we do in fact all play this game for enjoyment, and having done that for a pretty long time, again like the Monthy Python Pope; I may not know anything about Art, but I know what I *like*.

I like stabbing at huge, lumbering tanks, with a sharp blade, at close range, until they are all wrecked and I’ve won. That’s what I like.

And Luc Besson taught us all something else.

He taught us the Fifth Element is Love; and all you have to do to kill the Death Star and save the world, is say you love Milla Jovovich, and then kiss her.

And yet; somehow, that was the hardest thing for Bruce Willis to do; no matter how Die Hard he is.

If you really love doing something, then you’ll be Hard to Kill, like Nico. That was Stephen Seagal, in case you don’t remember, or wasn’t born yet.

Hating the Skill Star isn’t getting me anywhere. Calling people cowards and campers helps even less, because it spreads negativity, and tends to reinforce the negative behaviour of others.

Also, it makes me feel bad about myself. I don’t want to be a salty old Gold NOob; I want to be a famous Medium tank knife fight poet philosopher.

My rockstar friends would probably say I am “getting there”, which sounds patronising, but is in fact more true than you think. I have a few tricks up my sleeve by now, and I’ll go for the hare-brained scheme every time just to see what happens; which makes me unpredictable. And also, the “getting there” is of course the whole point for me; the journey of learning and exploration; the gathering and dissemination of knowledge.

There’s a lot of that going around right now. Several well established platforms providing information, and Wargaming are both on Twitter and Discord dropping hints about upcoming stuff. Even if you don’t have the patience to keep up with General Discussion, lurking in the official Blitz Discord is worthwhile for the info you get.

Or, you can be like Léon.

Hide yourself away from the world, hone your skills, stick to your regimen, and hope the Fifth Element really *will* come out in 1997.

Which, I can tell you; it did. 🙂

Happy Tanks Revisited

Salt of the Earth

By:

IrmaBecx

So I didn’t worry a lot about the pillaging of lower tier tech trees.

I don’t play a lot of low tiers.

But you may recall I keep a small fleet of tier II vehicles around for casual tank driving. I call them my “Happy Tanks”.

And of that fleet, there isn’t a lot left these days. “White Death”, my VAB Mk B got moved down to tier I and lost the three shot autoloader. Dam. I was going to use that to practice for the BAt Chats and AMX 50 B.

My Ha-Go with the Girls und Panzer camo also got moved down to tier I. I guess it still has the camo, right?

But I can’t feel bad. Tier I deserves to have two such fine vehicles; it’s going to make your first few games of blitz more interesting. Overall, I find the fleet of tier I vehicles more diverse now.

And I got to keep my tier II Happy Tank Extraordinaire: The T7 Combat Car.

It was a gift from Wargaming, and I sold it off immediately the first time around, because it’s so quite obviously useless. Always regretted that, because it wasn’t on my press account, so when I started taking an interest in these little tier II jewels, I was kicking myself for not having it around.

Not going to make that mistake twice. I took it out last night, and it still makes me smile when I drive it.

Happy Tank Confirmed.

And you may not have noticed this, but there is actually a new Chinese tank in the game.

I know I keep going on about them.

But I mean, I blasted through those tanks as fast as I could, and I still drive predominantly Communist tanks just now. I even called my friend and colleague Sk8xtrm an “insufferable Noob” because he gets irritated by the lack of gun depression on the “Weazel” WZ-120.

Out of control here… Yes, all my three new Chinese tier VIII Premiums have the “Jade Shards” camo on them.

Also the Baby Panther, but that’s another story.

So anyway, I figured now two of my old tier II Happy Tanks are gone, maybe this one can be my *new* tier II Happy tank? And you know what?

It totally is.

*Little LT vz. 38 ready for som gun depression no-scope action*

I had a feeling. The gun says “Skoda”, so you know that’s going to be good.

My friend Titus Scato taught me that on the old Forum. Don’t run the German 5 cm, run the Czechoslovakian 4,7 cm instead; it’s better in every regard except alpha damage.

I cleaned house with the Panzerjäger I after that.

But this is the *new* tier II. The tank is like 1800 credits. And then I spent a lot more buying Vstabs and all sorts of things, loaded up with Pre-Soviet era AP shells, and just rolled out, because there’s no other way to know.

It’s a Pz 38 (t) of course. I drove it before. And rolling up towards the hill on Mines, it felt vaguely familiar.

Quite nippy, I would say. I got the improved controls and everything. It took me a while to figure out, but the armour is actually quite good in the new low tier Meta. Just a bit of angling is going to get you bounces galore, and then when you start no-scope peek-a-booming, they basically can’t touch you.

Well, *me*. I have like 25.000 games at this point.

Managed to get into three or four games, and I came away feeling I had made a good investment. To the extent I will be driving low tiers at all, the vz. 38 is a definite go-to tank. Nice balance of performance, good, solid shell speed, workable penetration, and really good gun handling with Vstabs on about a 7 second reload for 40 Alpha, I think it is. 38 maybe?

But yeah. Low tiers have changed a lot. And stayed the exact same.

The pace *is* slower. It’s more like a high tier game; you can’t just roll up and murder people anymore. But it still offers the same chaotic, cut-throat, noob-a-licious, seal clubbing, stet-pedding fun it always did.

I am sure it’s recency bias, but perhaps even a little more so now than before?

I can spot a seal clubber a mile away. I smell them. Catch them by the way they move and play. Hunt them down and club them right back.

And with the new matchmaking, it can sometimes take a while to get a game at all, but I didn’t see any steamroll victories. More like drunk children beating eachother senseless with pillows in slow motion.

Again; same as it always was.

But more importantly; it’s still fun. You can go down there and play a silly little tank of your choosing, and just have a relaxing, hilarious, nerve-wracking good time.

Speaking of “choosing”, in my professional opinion, as a tank philosopher poet in the classic sense and gold noob Community Contributor low tier efficiency training afficionado, you have absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain by choosing the new Chinese LT vz. 38 at tier II.

It has nice gun depression, and both peek-a-booms and turn fights really well, armour gets quite a few bounces from juking and wiggling alone. FAst enough to relocate effectively, and can do all the Light tank jobs you need, plus some Medium tank ones, since you can actually bounce a few shells.

I have to say I always liekd the look of it, too. For a low tier tank. They actually built quite a few in my country, having bought the blue prints off the Germans in 1940.

So there you have it, folks.

IrmaBecx says the new Chinese tank is a hit; no surprises there.

It’s my new “Happy Tank”. And I think WG did a pretty good job with the low tier rebalancing.

In case you are wondering; yes, the T7 Combat Car is still *completely* useless, but still about the most *mindless* fun you can have in tier II. Mine has the orange and blue balloon camo on it, just to be cheeky.

Seal club safe, people!