Category: World of Tanks

Reviews, World of Tanks

The review of the  AltProto AMX 30

swedishladyc

Well, Bonjour à tous again and what do we have here this time?

AltProto AMX 30 is the new tier 8 French medium tank available free from the marathon event ‘Legend of The Hunter’                                                

This tank is available for free by playing all 10 stages of the new event. Each stage reduces the cost of the tank by 10% so if you complete all 10 you get it for free.

So lets get inside this Frenchie and see if he or she smells of garlic or Croissant?

The look

Without the medieval look 3D style, which is also available, the tank looks urm, like a tank with some nice sloping armour and a not overly large turret which I hope will be a little bit bouncy. With the 3D style it looks like a medieval knight with a huge crossbow on the turret. Have fun picking how you want it to look.

The stats

The Damage Per Minute is not earth shattering at 2,402 and that’s with a fully trained crew and bond equipment, with an alpha of 300, reload of 7.5 seconds and aim time of 2.17 which is slower than the Progetto or even the T-44-100. It’s classed as a ‘sniper medium tank’ but again as a pretty bad dispersion at 100m of .31 which is worse than the other two tanks just mentioned

Average penetration for AP is 232 at 1,000m/s, APCR 263 1,250m/s for 300 alpha and HE is 50 with 400 alpha and I’m pretty happy with this pen.

The 11 degrees of gun depression is really nice but I guess you pay for that the other way as the elevation is only 15.

Forward speed is 65 and a reverse is 23 km/h. I found this tank pretty agile and manoeuvrable using its speed to peek and crest ridgelines especially with the 11 degrees gun depression. Terrain resistance felt so so even though its pretty light at just 28,000

Armor, Health and others

Hull is 60/40/30 and turret is 150/40/30 so don’t expect to bounce too much when peeking but if you get the right angles you should bounce some from the big gun mantlet but higher tiers will pen you more often than not. It has a couple of weak spots with a cupola on the turret and drivers’ ports on the hull.

Engine, tracks, ammo rack and track repair time numbers are pretty good but it only has 1,250 overall health which is lower than most of its competitors.

Base view range is 380 which again is nothing to write home about.

Playing it

First battle was Westfield and it got up the heavy area ridge line pretty quick from the bottom.  It was fun to peek and fight the heavies there even though you had to be really aware of what was looking at you. I bounced a couple of TD rounds and found the manoeuvrability and gun depression good for that style of fight.

The gun handling for all its uninspiring stats actually felt ok and it felt like playing something like a PTA, that’s I think how you need to play it. You can’t trade easily because of its lack of armour and low health pool so you need to play it like a glass cannon but without much of a cannon. 300 alpha for the reload didn’t feel that good and I always felt I should be reloaded before I actually was.

Conclusion

I think Wargaming have not made this tank over powered in any way and it does feel kind of balanced but the big question is ‘Is it worth the full price?’

 I don’t think so but I do think if you played enough of the marathon to get a good discount and you had the money spare, why not. There are better tier 8 premiums out there but there are also much worse.

The worst part of this tank was no matter how hard I looked I could not find a bottle of prosecco in it anywhere and it calls itself a French tank!

Reviews, Tanks, World of Tanks

Charlemagne – Tier 8 British Heavy Tank

swedishladyc

Well hello everybody!

What do we have here, a French sounding British tank which could be as French as champagne or as English as Johnny-boy? Charlemagne was the King of the Franks and even become Emperor of Rome back in the middle ages so a very adapt name for a powerful tank.

Let’s find out.

First of all this tank is not available to buy in the shop. Its available by completing 2 stages in Ranked battles and then buying with a whopping 15,000 bonds.

The look!!

The tank looks really nice and very much inline with the rest of the British heavies but with a little narrower turret which can never be a bad thing. It has a nice BIG gun (Bonus for me ) plus a pretty slopped upper plate.

Lets look at the stats

Starting with the gun
It’s a big 120mm that delivers an enormous 440 alpha which is scary to its own tier and especially when it meets tier 7 and 6. Standard penetration is 220mm and if you hit the 2 key it changes to 270mm which is fine.

In line with most British tanks the Charlemagne has 10 degrees gun depression making it great for ridgeline fighting as long as the turret armour holds out.

The big alpha and great gun depression comes at a price and the cost of this is the damage per minute is low, the reload time is slow at around 14 seconds and the aim time is very bad being 3.27 seconds and it doesn’t end there. The dispersion at 0.41 makes it a bad sniper and having a incredibly slow shell velocity of only 597 m/s reminds me of derp gun stats. Try hitting a moving target at distance with that. To increase your shell velocity to 924 m/s makes you press the 2 key.

The armour
The turret armour is 170/80/70 which looking at the profile should work as the turret is pointy so peeking ridge lines works until you meet the 2 key but the same applies to most tanks. Keep the turret pointing at the tank you don’t want to get penned by as turning even a little gives a weaker turret side.
The hull is 130/70/38 and you can sidescrape selected targets as long as you don’t over angle.
Working ridge lines is what this tank is about as I said earlier and that’s what you need to find.
The 1500  health pool is pretty average for its type and tier.

Mobility
Is all pretty standard for heavies having a 35km/h forward speed which is a little slow but a reasonable reverse speed of 15km/h.
The power to weight is pretty good so it does get to top speed effectively.
Turret and hull traverse could be faster in my opinion.

Other stats
Nothing really stands out, it has a good ammo capacity of 60, 15 degrees gun elevation and a big gun

To sum up
The gun alpha is really nice, smashing someone in the face with a potential high roll of 550 can really ruin an enemies day, it fights ridgelines really well, it looks cool but the gun handling kind of spoils all the good things but I really did like it and if you play it to its strengths and it fits your play style its an acceptable premium tank.

The cost of the tank is 15,000 bonds for a tier 8 heavy where as you can buy a tier 10 for the same price from the bond shop or for 20,000 you can get the tier 9 Concept 1 B etc so I think it’s a little expensive but if you have 15k bonds laying about doing nothing and you like the look of this tank then why not.

Reviews, Sabaton, Tanks, World of Tanks

The STRV K, The First Tier 9 Premium tank.

swedishladyc

Even tho it wasn’t that long ago since I talked about this in a Youtube-viedo, WG shocked us all with taking this one step longer.

The first Tier 9 Premium Tank!
And come on, together with SABATON!

Please don’t expect a non-biased review (Kappa) as you all know I just LOVE Sabaton so it must be amazing!

Its looks like it’s a cross between a Kranvagn and Centurion which produced a warrior war child tank wearing armour. The 3D style skin with the effects just sets it apart from everything else we have seen so far and with the smexy Sabaton crew it comes with you can’t go wrong. They come with a Band of Brothers and a fully trained skill. The skin is like medieval armour wearing a cloak with a fur collar, pinned by a sword & shield broach with an aura surrounding the tank, the same aura found in the video for Steel Commander, which Sabatons new song, and thats the collab with Sabaton and Wargaming.

So lets dive into the stats

Starting with the gun
390 Alpha with a 10 second (got mine down to 8.73 seconds )reload giving a 2,680 dpm  is pretty ok but nothing special but acceptable and it has 252mm pen when using standard AP ammo and 310mm with the dreaded ‘special’ APCR ammo. What is nice is the shell velocity of both making it a good support tank and hitting at range.

The gun handling is really good and the gun often snaps and hits even on the move.

I got to say I really love this gun and with 10 degrees gun depression it’s good for ridgelines but now we start to delve into what’s not so good.

The armour
This tank really doesn’t have any and even the turret gets penned as it only has 235 on the gun mantlet so peeking ridgelines is taken at your own risk. The hull is 90mm and a pretty big target.

The 1850 health pool is pretty average for its type and tier.

Mobility
It’s not fast and it’s not slow but its ok. Its gun traverse felt good and it felt pretty mobile overall.  Its states 40kmh but reality is less but being more of a support heavy I guess it doesn’t need to get anywhere fast.  

It didn’t feel overly sluggish and different terrains seemed to have very little negative effect on it but it was still hard to reach its full speed.

Credit making
This is the first of Tier 9 premiums and will be used for credit grinding. With the games I had it didn’t seem to be making any more credits than I would have made in a tier 8 premium tank so it doesn’t have a higher than normal credit multiplier but I know people will buy this for frontlines and grinding.

It also can earn you a maximum of 100 bonds per week so that’s a nice feature but 100 bonds are the same for any tier 10 tank.

To sum up
I did expect to find this tank a little over powered but it is actually the opposite. Besides the good gun it’s just average and no better than most of its tech tree brothers and no new ‘super defender’ or anything. It’s a very pretty looking Sabaton inspired tank with a good gun but being the very first Tier 9 PREMIUM tank it will sell very well and also will trigger a huge debate which for now I’m staying out of other than saying I love tier 9 and would hate that tier to be negatively affected in the future.

Is it worth the euro to buy it? Well, you can grind it for free so free is always good.

Reviews, World of Tanks

The review of 122 TM.

swedishladyc

Well, hello again and what do we have here this time.
We have the new marathon tank, the Chinese medium 122 TM which you could get for free.

So, let’s see if what Wargaming say about this tank, is it just Chinese whispers or not?

This tank was available for free by playing all 10 stages of the new Lunar Challenge mission. Each stage reduces the cost of the tank by 10% so if you complete all 10 you get it for free.

The look.
For some reason the first thing I noticed was ‘it has a BIG GUN’ and it does and we will definitely be coming back to discuss that further a bit later on.

With or without the super colourful and full of fireworks camo this tank looks very different. It has what looks like spring roll launchers on the side of the turret and another on top which must fire spring rolls at the enemy? They are only cosmetic and are not part of the hit box but they can interfere with people trying to shoot the weak cupolas. Other than that, it looks like a normal Chinese/Russian medium tank.

So, let’s get into the chop suey.

The stats

The first thing I noticed and I know many have too is the smal DPM of only 1430 which makes it the lowest DPM tank of any tier 8 medium and this fact will dictate how it should be played and also how it should be played against but the good news, the really good news is it has a 400-alpha gun.

Standard ammo has a decent 233 pen and HEAT is 299 so no complaints there but remember the HEAT is slow. The playstyle will be medium to long range so with the penetration drop off at range don’t be surprised to see a lot of HEAT coming in your direction.

Gun handling on paper seems to be ok with some good and bad mixed in but that reload of 17 seconds base is what takes everyone’s attention away from the good points. For a Chinese tank, -8 gun depression is good and means you can play ridgelines and the 2.21 second aim time is also acceptable. Dispersion isn’t great and Vertical Stabilisers is recommended to help with that.   

The ammo count is 30 rounds and where you might think this seems low just remember that long reload time to, I doubt you will be running out.

Mobility
Forward speed is 50 and a reverse is only 15 km/h. The forward speed on paper seems ok but in reality, when you play the tank it feels slow and sluggish and won’t see 50 that often unless it learns to cliff dive. The reverse is a very low 15 meaning peaking can be nasty. Terrain resistance is bad and the tank feels really sluggish for a medium.

Armour, Health and others

Hull is 120mm and the turret is a nice 280mm and with 1400 health overall. I was happy with the armour until I looked at the 2 huge cupola which is easy pen unless at range. The tank will do very well and be able to bully lower tier tanks but of its own tier and above it has nothing special to stop it getting killed.  People will need to learn to try and block the weak cupola’s which are large with their barrel and or wiggle a lot.

View range is also really low with only a 370 base so it will be hard to max out a good view range without using food and optics if your crew isn’t really good.

Some good points are the crew from your 121 will fit perfectly in this tank and it actually has an ok camo rating.

Playing it
I didn’t know what to expect when I played it for the first time and the games were over so fast as everyone seems to play differently through marathons. The first thing I noticed was how sluggish the tank felt and how slow it was at accelerating, it felt closer to a heavy and climbing the hill on Westfield to join the heavy fight seemed to take forever.

I also found the sluggish nature of the tank and the really bad 15km/h reverse speed a hinderance when trying to play the ridgeline up there and everything seemed to pen me. I found the long reload a problem and as soon as people realised it was so long, I started to get hit 2 for one on reloads.

The way to defeat this tank is to use your superior reload speed to shoot it twice and most tanks you are going to meet can. If you get caught on your own or you try and sit and trade you won’t have a very enjoyable time.

I couldn’t play many games but I soon realised that this tank needs to be played medium to long range where you can use its ok accurate gun and good alpha but without getting pushed on the reload.

I think all of the bad things about the tank are there to balance out the alpha of the gun and rightly so. Its good that wargaming may have slowed down on introducing OP tanks that just change the meta and power creep all the other tanks. Balance is good for the game. This tank will be a beast in lower tiers but that can be said for most higher tier tanks.

Conclusion
Is it worth the full price? I don’t think so but I do think if you played enough of the marathon to get a good discount and you had the money spare, why not.

Reviews, Tanks, World of Tanks

The new mission tank Bat-Chatillon Bourrasque

swedishladyc

So, what do we have here?

 Mr Frenchman who has a little body but a BIG gun and you know how much I like a BIG gun.

Today I’m going to review the new challenge reward tank, the (baby Bat Chat) Bat-Chatillon Bourrasque French medium Tank.

This tank is available for free by playing all 10 stages of the new Bat-Chatillon Bourrasque Challenge mission. Each stage reduces the cost of the tank by 10% so if you complete all 10 you get it for free (free is always GOOD)

There are two ways to complete each stage, Commitment and Mastery. Commitment is a base XP grind (tier 6 to 10)  and  Mastery is different challenges in tier 9 and 10 and is  directed towards the better player. You get other goodies while you grind and if you hate grinding and have spare dollar then just go buy it from the shop and you still get all the extras.

The look.
I love the look, its small and sneaky but has a huge thick canon 😊 and has so much sneaky value its closer to a light tank. It’s very small, cute but can deliver a whopping 2 x 360 alpha in just 2 seconds as it’s a 2-clip autoloader so therefore I will compare this tank to the other tier 8 premium autoloaders and auto reloader mediums available.

So lets get into some detail.

The stats

Its not on tank.gg when I wrote this review so I used the in-game comparison system for this review and its set against the Skoda T27, Progetto 46, Lorraine 40t.

The BatChat has a 105mm gun making it the biggest out of the 4 tanks and with a 2-clip autoloader delivering 720 alpha in 2 seconds that’s pretty nice burst damage but then you have to wait 20 seconds to reload which means you need to play this tank really cleverly.

Shell penetration is the lowest with only 190 for standard and 240 for premium rounds but all that might well change in the future with the ammo rebalancing. I do like the burst damage but you pay a penalty with the gun handling, the aim time is terrible at nearly 3 seconds and the dispersion sucks 0.39 making it the worst of the bunch. Things don’t get much better when we check out the gun depression/elevation of just -6 and 13 respectively. Wargaming have tried to balance out the 2 shot alpha by making things like aim time really bad.

Damage per minute is around 1,900 plus which isn’t too bad for an autoloader and it’s reload is 20 seconds with a 2 second inter clip but it does only have 2 shells (an extra shell would really make this tank fun). Turret traverse is really fast compared to the others and helps make up a little for where this tank is weak.

The gun is nice when it hits and when it pens but you will need to be hitting that 2 button and hoping the RNGesus is smiling down on you with every shot unless you are close.

The hit point pool it’s the lowest with only 1,250 HP and it has zero armour so you will need to NEO everything that’s firing at you because everything that you will meet can pen you. Its pretty fast at 62 and with a reverse of 32 km/h but its traverse speed is not that good so turning won’t feel as good as in some of the other tanks.

The stat that really make this tank also stand out is the concealment rating.  It has a rating of…..wait for it, drum roll!!!! 36.8 which is way more than most and propels this tank into the realm of some light tanks and I think this is how you will see this tank used. It will sit and wait using its stealth and then suddenly unleash 700 plus damage before rapidly relocating but it can equally use its mobility to relocate to where the damage is and unload its full load on tanks busy with others or in the end game it can assassinate lonely wounded tanks.

I played this tank and I actually like it so if you want something different and like the challenge of an autoloader you will like this but if you want the best tier 8 premium tank go buy the Progetto 46.

It’s a tank with a high skill cap  and  it will be dangerous in the right hands.

Is it worth it? YES AS IT’S FREE and FUN!!

Pictures, Reviews, Tanks, World of Tanks

To open 200 boxes, cudos to Wargaming!

swedishladyc

This year, as a CC, I was lucky to be able to get 200 boxes from Wargaming.
A really nice gesture that I couldn’t wait to get home and open.
Was busy on the Friday, but yesterday before my 5h stream, I started open them.
And boy, I was lucky!
Started out with 2.4k gold and 5.5 million of credit and 0 days of premium.

Started of nice with some different camos and gold, and credits.
As before I already got the Progetto and the E75 TS (from Gamescom) but ofc I didnt have the two barrel tank Obj. 703 version II, or the SU-130PM (that I always wanted) so I was crossing my fingers for those.
Just soon after starting to open the boxes, I got the movie, of a tank, coming full speed through the woods.
What could it be?

I was really lucky, got the SU, and if that wasn’t enough, I got it 2 more times, so that ended up in 21k of gold instead. Opened alot of more boxes and suddenly, there was a new animation of a tank coming through the woods.
That could only mean that a two barrel love would enter my garage!

There it was.
The new tank that everyone is talking about. Yey!

When I opened all of my boxes I ended up with 121k of gold and I had about 14 million credits. And also 130 days of premium.
And what did that mean?
Even tho I was sober at the time, it was time to unlock the beasts that I’ve been longing to get.

Using a part of the gold I converted free XP and thanks to the blue prints I could easily get the heavy bad ass 60TP tier X and the laserboy Leopard 1.

All and all, I got a really good piece of ingame stuff and finally I have 2 new tier X which I love playing.

This also meant I could do my 5h stream on my own account because I could play the tanks I fancy the most.

A great and fun event every year, and this one in particular.
Thank you so much Wargaming for the boxes, I’m really happy I got the opportunity to get those!
Love you!

Pictures, Real life, Tanks, World of Tanks

All I want for Xmas is… a gingerbread tank!

swedishladyc

A few years ago when I visited the Swedish Tank museum, I got this tank cookie cutter.
And yesterday when making gingerbread cookies, it was, as always, the perfect cutter to use.
This year I even made a little hole in it, so I could hang it in the tree we decorated after the cookies have cooled.

And just for the record..
One of them accidentally became a little different.
Let me present to you; the “Dick”er Max.
Hahahhaha….

That got a special place in my kitchen from now 🙂

Reviews, Tanks, World of Tanks

The Renegade, a new challenge tank!

swedishladyc

Shelloooooo and welcome back!

Today I’m here to show you the new Challenge reward tank, the M54 Renegade Tier 8 US Heavy Tank.
This tank is available for free by playing all 10 stages of the new Renegade Challenge mission. Each stage reduces the cost of the tank by 10% so if you complete all 10 you get it for free (free is a great price to pay)

There are two ways to complete each stage, Commitment and Mastery. Commitment is a base XP grind (tier 6 to 10)  and  Mastery is different challenges in tier 9 and 10 and is  directed towards the better player. You get other goodies while you grind and if you hate grinding and have spare dollar then just go buy it from the shop and you still get all the extras.

The Look

It’s a typical looking US heavy with a nice big 105mm gun that packs a nice punch (you have never heard me say  I like big guns right?)
To me it looks like how a heavy tank should look like, big gun, lots of meat, intimidating, in your face and it looks ready for action!
I just love the ‘Dead or Alive’ skin that its comes with  and reminds me of a certain cowboy that hangs in my stream (Benji)….

The Stats

Tier 8 is full of premium heavies so I will just compare it to some of the other US heavies namely the T26E5, T32 and the Chrysler K.

 Tank GG shows values without equipment or consumables added so in game things will be improved.
The Renegade has the best DPM with an impressive 2,208. Its 105mm gun gives a nice 360 alpha with an acceptable 9.7 reload (8.07 with rammer, vents and coke) and a good aim time for a heavy of 2.4 seconds.
Penetration of 226 AP and  255 APCR is also but you will need to tap the 2 key for many tier 9 and 10 fights.
Shell velocity on AP is 1,080 and even faster with ‘special ammo’ so hitting moving targets is easier as you don’t need to aim to far in front with that speed.

Dispersion of 0.36 is good and it feels even better when you play it showing a pretty acceptable bloom. I found the turret rotation not to be too slow and with -10/20 gun depression and elevation ridgeline fighting is good. The tank needs to be played hull down so the depression helps with hunting good fighting positions out and making use of what’s already available.

Lets see if this heavy is heavy or if its pretty speedy.

With a top speed of 45 and a reverse of 17 its way out in front of the other heavies we are looking at and it feels nice to drive. The extra speed means it can relocate a lot better than the others and you are not wasting time staying in no damage areas or travelling across the map. Tank traverse is better also and the tank feels manoeuvrable.

How meaty is the meat?

The renegade has 250 turret and 152 hull meat (armour) so you need to play it hull down and it comes with a standard 1500 hit points for tier 8 heavies.
There is a huge weak spot on top of the turret with the cupola so moving backwards and forwards to try and put off your opponents shots is advised .

I also found a weak spot on the turret ring so you can pen them even with 190mm pen guns if you know where to shoot when they side scape against you.

The view range is a really nice 400m base so if you have a good crew and you run food you can cap view range by using vents which also adds to other stats so the overall tank performs better than if you played it with optics.

I really liked the tank and if you see mostly tier 8 battles then you can dominate a lot of the time if you can get the right fighting positions. I was happy with how the gun behaved and  I did enjoy the speed and mobility.

The fact you can get this tank for free really means it’s worth it or if you don’t want to grind all the way just grind as  many as you want and use the discount in the shop.

Good luck lovers!