The Cruiser III was a waste of time, far too few hitpoints to live long (my one attempt ended with being one-shotted by a StuG in the first 90 seconds), the Cruiser II did a little better but it’s slow and equally badly armoured; the Tilly I got to play once and was the last one alive, at which point I got swarmed; and the Vally did best of all but that match came down to our surviving one-shot Tilly managing to take out the last StuG that had killed me. I actually came close to running out of AP in that battle too, last three shells at the point I died. The Crusader I don’t have to try out, but they never lasted long at all.

For the Germans, the Pz.III really is the king in this matchup, the Tillys seem to be very restricted in numbers but not so these – which seems odd because apart from the gun handling, with the setups used in this battle it seems the equal of the Tilly. Less frontal armour (but not by that much!), terrible aim time in comparison to the 2-pdr, but enough mobility to run rings around everything else. That battle really was the easiest by far, the team went in in two groups – slaughtered all the Cruisers, Crusaders, and their lone Vally – then swarmed the last Tilly.

I will play some more, this is very much an initial impression, but it was enough to make me think that it isn’t that balanced at all. The Brits are usually forced, by fewer numbers, into defensive positions near or at their cap, but aside from the Matildas and the Valentines they do not have the armour to carry it off, or even the speed to scout (the poor Cruiser III just doesn’t have enough HP). If the maps were actually tweaked with some of this in mind, with more defensible positions available to the team with smaller numbers, then it’d be a fairer fight, but for now in this HB it feels like the Germans hold all the cards – and if that bears out through subsequent plays then the player numbers will just collapse as much as the previous HBs did.

IMO they should limit the number of matildas to 2. 3 or 4 Matildas is too much. But it is true, for good players this is a sort of easy game mode, they bring better crews, good equipment and knowledge; and when MM in a way does not exist, then these sort of players can really affect the outcome of the match.

I think noob players will hate this sort of game mode.
Maybe good players should be banned from using the top tanks … but it wont happen.

Actually by the end of the last patch the tactics were pretty bloody tight in the Ardennes battle.

On which server? I tried to enter any HB on EU2 and there were never enough players to run even one battle.

But we are moving away from the main problem of your concept:

Potatoes would be forced to play the shittiest tanks. WG will never accept such solution.
Also in the long term, it means that the already small player pool, would dry out completly.

Good combo is StuG for firepower , dealing with Vals and Tildas + Pz3 for spotting and dealing with Crusaders, if you try to improvise a platoon. Dont attempt to go 1 on 1 with a Crus in StuG – 75/24 has extremely low shell velocity , best for slow targets , and has 3 HEATs for close combat , use them wisely. Pz3 has 5 APCRs , which is sufficient to surprise and wear down Tilda to 20%.
Playing as Brit in Crus , well, you sort of fear noone. Stock 2 pounder popopop and any enemy you see is chewed in DPM race. Mobility is not that bad , with all stock modules except 2nd radio.

All in all , not-so-unbalanced , unless 4xMatilda+3xCrusader meets 2xPz3+2xStuG+3xPz2+2PzJg1+1xPz4.
High TD portion tends to split forces by nature , so higher number of Pz3 and Pz4 – better.

OK, I’m not sure how many of the posters above actually played the HBs much in the last patch. I played about 60-70, I think and was amazed by the degree to which each side used sensible tactics. The difference to randoms is that you play the same map and tanks over and over so if soemthing doesn’t work you tend to remember it next time. I remember seeing the US side wordlessly split into two groups and move down the two flanks in pretty close formation. Two blogs of green moving in sync. Amazing.

Anyway in the battles I played last night in my terrible 75% crewed tier 2s, The germans won most of them, because the brits scattered, with the fast tanks 600m ahead of the tillys. Will be interest to see some sounder tactics develop.

And imo it was better to take out the lower tiers as a priority so the numerical advatage is higher and it is easier to get behign the tiggers!