World of Tanks

[NightTrain]

Anyone else playing this? It's free, and it's a hell of a fun game. You play on a team of 10 other players against a team of 10 on a bunch of different maps with diverse terrain, like cities, towns, ruins, forested valleys, desert, etc.

The tanks are all from the 1920s to the 1950s. Each tank has it's strength and weaknesses, and they've tried to keep them historically accurate as far as their performance, size, firepower, accuracy, armor, etc. Some are prototypes that never made it to the battlefield but were put in the game for balance.

There's 5 different classes : Light, Medium, Heavy, Tank Destroyers or Artillery (self propelled) from 7 different nations : USA, Britain, Germany, France, Soviet Union, China and Japan.

You start out in a Tier 1 (first level tank) that is very weak, and when you get enough experience points and money from battles, you can upgrade your tank with bigger guns, better turret, better suspension, bigger engine, etc. The highest level tank you can get is a Tier 10, and they are impressive.

Mobility is key, except with Tank Destroyers who hide and snipe, and of course Artillery - both of these have tremendous firepower but are themselves lightly armored. The goal in a battle is to take over the enemy's base or destroy all 10 opponents.

Light Tanks are fast and maneuverable, lightly armored in consideration of their speed. I have a couple that reach 80 MPH, their primary mission is to scout the map to find where the enemy tanks are, and if you're good enough (and sometimes some luck), you can zoom in and take out the enemy Artillery that are pounding your team mates. American examples would be the Stuart and Chaffee.

Mediums are good all around tanks, fairly fast, decent armor and pack a good punch. They can maneuver around a heavy tank and shoot them from the sides or rear, where the armor is weakest. American examples would be the Pershing or Patton tanks.

Heavy tanks are heavily armored, slow and pack a very strong punch. Getting hit by one of these in a light or medium can blow your turret off your rig. They generally brawl with opposing Heavies and advance the line to the enemy's base.

My tanks are all Lights, Heavies and Tank Destroyers. I have my favorites in every line, for the Lights I'm working up the German line and my highest is a Tier 7. My highest Heavy is a Soviet IS-3, Tier 8, but favorite is the IS-6 because of it's sloped armor. I angle it to 45 degrees to my opponent when in a brawl, and the sloped armor ricochets or deflects most of the rounds hitting me... and the 122mm cannon really packs a wallop. My highest rig is a monster German E-100 Tank Destroyer - it's very slow, but it has a 170mm cannon that rocks the turrets off of anything except a Tier 10 Heavy - and sometimes them, too.

Anyway, just finished a pretty good game in my IS-6 Heavy, check out the medals I got for that battle, I killed 3 other tanks :



Another result in my Tier 5 German Leopard (light tank), I killed 7 other tanks :



You can also play in a Platoon with 1 or 2 other friends so you can work together on the battlefield... it's a blast.