A-32 – short review

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Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at another tank, that is currently not available on the EU server, the A-32 – and we will attempt to answer the question: are we missing something, or it’s not worth thinking over?

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A-32 is a medium tier 4 tank. According to World of Tanks wikipedia, it was a part of the light pre-order package, but even though I play the game practically ever since it came live, I don’t remember seeing a single such vehicle in battle. According to WoT Wiki, there are like 8000 of these vehicles on EU server in total, but few of them are played, you’d be very lucky to see one – and there’s a reason for that. It’s worth noting that for a while, A-32 was classified as a light tank, before moved to the medium class.

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Historically, A-32 is one of the T-34 prototypes, or – rather – evolution steps. Here’s what wot-wiki writes about this vehicle:

Koshkin convinced Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to let him develop a second prototype, a more heavily armed and armoured “universal tank” which could replace both the T-26 and the BT tanks. The second prototype Koshkin named A-32, after its 32 millimetres (1.3 in) of frontal armour. It also had a 76.2 mm (3 in) gun, and the same model V-2 diesel engine. Both were tested in field trials at Kubinka in 1939, with the heavier A-32 proving to be as mobile as the A-20. A still heavier version of the A-32 with 45 millimetres (1.8 in) of front armour and wider tracks was approved for production as the T-34. Koshkin chose the name after the year 1934 when he began to formulate his ideas about the new tank, and to commemorate the decree expanding the armoured force and the appointment of Sergo Ordzhonikidze to head tank production.

With that being said, I am sure you can now see where this is going. The A-32 is basically a medium version of the A-20 with comparable handling, but worse gun. Given the fact that the A-20 is one of the least popular vehicles in the game, this does not bode well for the A-32.

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The first problem is that this is a medium tank, so it’s expected to actually fight and not scout (which is probably the only thing A-20 can do at least). For that, it is very ill-equipped. First there is the non-existant armor. Its frontal hull and turret is only 35mm thick and it actually has weakspots (not that it needs them). The only part with actual decent thickness is the mantlet, that is 35mm thick and on its edges overlaps with the turret armor (70mm total), which means it will probably occasionally bounce something, but otherwise the armor is absolutely hopeless against even tier 3 vehicles, everything will penetrate.

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The gun is even worse. It’s the short 76mm L-10U with 66 penetration (66/75/38 – please note wotwiki has an incorrect value of 100 pen for the gold shell, it was actually nerfed) and 105 damage (110 for the golden shell). As you can see, the gold ammo performance (HEAT) is only marginally better and given the fact that you will not be able to use the main HEAT advantage (no pen loss over distance), it’s practically absolutely pointless to fire gold ammo. And it gets worse: the gun not only fires relatively slow (13,13 ROF), it has 2,3s aiming time and terrible, terrible 0,52 accuracy. The accuracy might not be SO bad, if the vehicle didn’t bleed so much of it when moving, but it does. You will LITERALLY (and I mean literally) not be able to hit anything while moving, even close targets. The gun simply fires all over the place because of the terrible accuracy on the move, a stat that is normally hidden and not so evident. In short, the gun is just terrible and useless. This vehicle does have limited MM (it cannot see tier 6 tanks), but the gun cannot defeat most of the tier 5′s and struggles even against tier 4 tanks. Hell, I had arty bouncing my shells.

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The only real advantage of this tank is its blazing speed. It has a 540hp diesel engine, allowing it to go very, very fast. In seconds, you can reach the usual cruising speed of 50 km/h and even on not-so-good surfaces it’s possible to reach 60. Its maximum speed (70 km/h) is however obtainable only on hard roads or when going downhill). Although fast, the vehicle is not TOO maneuverable (forget about T-50), it’s just very fast. Good for a scout (it’s in fact faster than a lot of other scouts), not so good for a medium tank.

Poor gun and the fact this is a medium tank (eg. it has no camo bonus on the move) and MM will throw you on the top of their teams ensures one thing: you won’t be making a lot of money with it. Either you will be actually expected not to scout, but to shoot (tier 4 battles), or you will be on the bottom, completely powerless to do anything with your puny gun apart from scouting, for which all other light tanks (and at tier 5 there are still plenty of those around) are better suited, so once again you’ll be the one drawing the short straw.

Conclusion

As I wrote above, there is a reason noone is playing this tank. It sucks. Its value is probably only as a collectible. I don’t mind not seeing it in shop and given the fact (if the wotwiki info is correct) it was a part of a pre-order package, I doubt it will ever appear in the shop again.

47 thoughts on “A-32 – short review”

    • I saw it once, it was the first and last time as I rammed him with my Pz.III/ IV from 360 down to 0HP, damn impact, was very fun! :D

      But I think I wouldn’t buy one if there was the possibility to.

      • Agreed.

        I’ve seen one drive in a random battle, but only once. That was before the arty nerf in 8.6. The A-32 driver used it to ninja scout, and later as the battle progressed he killed a few arties. I was amazed by how fast this tank was, but the gun seemed kind of useless against anything other then soft targets.

        Might be a fun tank, but probably not as usefull.

        • I have the A-32. I rage sold it after getting owned every game. It actually is a decent tank now. (I must admit I am not a great player so blaming the tank at first might have been a bit erroneous.) I did the support ticket and to say the tank is fun post physics patch is an understatement. You have speed plus the novelty of not being a known tank. So trolling is a great asset. so many want to kill you that they give up winning sometimes just to chase you down for the kill. The gun does suck load premium only for any type of damage what so ever. You will rarely get a top gun in it but you can win. (*sorry for the rambling I am off to a football party) I will respond to any question when i get back)

          • I first saw one back in the 6.x days, in my KV/152, when I was quite a noob. It mesmerized me so much, that in my tunnel vision, when the friendly A-32 passed in front of a enemy, I fired at him :( The A-32 was not happy. If you read this, I’m sorry. I’m better now.
            But still saw some more, especially after the “Get a premium back” policy was set in, but I have never seen BT-SV, PzIIJ or Pz4 Hydro, nor the MTLS (or what it’s called).

  5. I had one of these, did a few battles after beta, got a few scout medals, then ended up selling it quite early on. The inaccuracy the gun gets (dispersion) is just awful. If anyone wants to get an impression of just how terrible it is, here’s a suggestion: Go play the Pz III with the 75L/24, and then imagine that being about 25-50% worse. I decided recently to use my “silver bullet” to recall a tank from WG, either the A-32 or the M4A2E4 betasherman, both being equally useless in my book, i decided on the Sherman, because that actually has SOME value to it.

    @SS: I suggest trying the Pz V/IV next, the Medium pre-order package. It’s a very nice tank to drive and the gun is actually moderatly (MODERATELY) capable of damaging things. It’s still a very ineffective tank, but it is a lot of fun to play and i still take it out every once in a while. Should give a far more ‘fun’ review than that of the A-32. It gets limited MM up to Tier 7 which it is reasonably capable of penetrating things if you use APCR and recently they buffed it in such a way you actually have gun depression if you look to the side in it!

  6. Still have mine (1600+ battles according to VBAddict)
    Fair summary . . . built like a tank so you can take the hits, steers like a cow, gun has crap accuracy but it is pretty fast and the MM is relatively kind. Excellent for ramming arty early on!
    But, nonetheless, a fun tank to play.

  7. I actually own this vehicle.
    The main problem is, that MM puts you in games, that the vehicle is not good enough for.

    It’s the last of me pre order vehicles so I’m not selling it like the Alien and the 5/4 :)

  8. Those tanks were pretty common to see when wot had released, but i havent seen any of those since before 7.0.

  9. I have it and I think that it is fantastic vehicle, as long as it plays tier 4 – on tier 5 it starts having serious problems.
    Low pen is not a problem if you know how to use HE, if you do it well, you can deal full damage (165) to things like Hetzers, various tier 4 tinfoil tanks etc. Only things that are real problem on tier 4 are Matilda and AMX-40, but you can kill those with premium ammo if you aim.
    Also, this tank has excelent stealth, so with binos and cammo net it can be used as passive scout.

  10. In my 17k battles I’ve seen it twice. And I killed one – just when I saw it on the list, I decided to hunt for him even for a cost of losing the battle. Fortunatelly, the guy in A-32 made a suicide scouting just straight on me :)

  11. If I recall it right this little beast was my fifth tank in garage after release. I don’t sell tanks but even if I would this machine would deserve its place in my service. Nice to see topics about this cutie :)

    The gun isn’t the best of tier 4′s but it’s still much better than 76 mm gun of A-20 even though A-20′s gun is ranked one tier higher. In battles of its own tier the gun packs quite a punch . What comes to penetration AMX 40 and JgPz 38 are the only ones which are quite tough opponents even when using HEAT rounds.

      • Well, he “said battles of it’s own tier.”

        I’d say Matilda would be a better *coughing* subject :)

        And for maximum effect, I see your KV-1 and rise it to AT 2 :D

        • you can pen the AT-2 with 60-70mm pen
          just shot it’s upper rear/engine

          i killed one this way this in my first battle in the chinese Chi-Ha :)

  12. I’ve got this tank and yes, your review is pretty much spot on.
    You can’t hit shit but if you do, you’ll pretty much bounce, even with premium shells.
    It does, however, go like shit off a shovel and is very good for crazymad arty hunting/entire team suicide scouting at the beginning of the battle. Just don’t try to turn, it doesn’t like turning, at all….

  13. Should have been tier 3 with limited MM to tier 4.

    preorder bonus? More like sucker ridicule…

  14. According to WoT Wiki, there are like 8000 of these vehicles on EU server in total…
    _____
    Where do you see this stastistic?

  15. I used to roll over them in my M4E2A4, in the first few days after release the usual T5 Battle was A32 vs beta-sherman. The V/IV is actually fun to play, and since the rework it looks quite good AND has gundepression while looking to the side.

  16. Still have mine. It was much better before the HEAT nerf, especially in light companies.

  17. I used to see these all the time right after the US server wen’t live…now I think i’ve seen one in the last year. It used to be an ok scout, but as a medium (I have NO idea what they were thinking making it a medium) it sucks. The 5/4 used to be ok too but suffers from some of the same things you ironically list as issues with the A-32 (good speed, poor agility, poor firepower, poor armor, no depression,) it was the PZ 5/4 package that I bought when this wen’t live. I think the best medium of the three that came out about that time (the A-32 was a light at the time) is the M4A2E4, the one they GAVE away. Good frontal armor, ok speed, ok gun, good MM, some depression…it can hold its own if your smart with it. I still play my Easy 4 quite a bit and like it a lot…

  20. Same story with all preorder tanks. Matchmaking is killing thoose tanks. M6A2E1 is very tall so arty can hit him easily, only 29km/h with 24deg turning. He got medicore front armor with weakspots (and 40mm sides can be pened by anything). On top of that, gun got only 198mm of pen with bad 0.42 accuracy and slow reload. Funniest thing is that he almost allways fights against tier 10 tanks where he can do much.

    Now compare it with French FCM 50t, 212mm pen, 0.36 acc, 51km/h, 40deg turning and never sees tier 10 tanks.

    WG logic

  21. Silentstalker: What you should try on this thing:

    - Only HE ammo
    - Remove Speed govern (you will be going 70++ km/h)
    - Side scraping (it is really bouncy if you angle it correctly)

  22. Well… I really liked my A-20… In 300 battles i got over 30 scout achievements, few patrol duty and decent winrate. And of course few kamikaze patch – 20 tones going 70 kph… not many targets can survive it. Sure i had like 5% survival rate… but hell it was worth it :) The power of speed :D

    So… it looks like a-20 but with limited MM – no more battles against 8 tier and bouncing of the is-3 side after ramming… I would really like to have this in my garage. I have seen only twice, once as a target – nobody could catch it, so it ended like 14:5, and once in my team – it was a perfect scout – detect whole enemy team in 40 second and somehow miraculous survived, than went passive scouting (with camonet?) and in the end made deep flank penetration , destroying two arties. He was second in exp after battle.
    ps. remove speed govern – it’s obligatory in those two tanks.

  23. hmmm i am thinking i ran into you one of these days. In order not to give away the name of that acount, i have to ask indirectly, is it possible that the amount of battles fought on that acount in the t7 car + the numbers in your name equals 35?

  24. And for some reason the A-32 gets the highest win rate out of all of the preorder tanks. Go figure, I suppose it’s more forgiving in a lower tier setting where you have a higher chance of meeting newer players compared to the tier 6 v/iv and tier 8 mutant.

  25. I have this tank, I have played it over 2500 times.
    It flies, however like you said it cant turn and the gun when it actually hits is nice, but you have to be within 20 feet to hit anything.

    However it is a freaking money maker…for a 30 second battle of running straight up the middle you will make 20-30k silver. Take out the arty which is easy, and ram everything else, as it is a medium that goes 60-70 it has awesome ramming ability.

    I love this tank.

    US server…