Hello everyone,

after Wargaming discovering a Japanese hobby kit company uses the Failowe model for their kits, they weren’t happy. However, this is not the only case. Check this out (this was submitted by Vladimir_Lemon). Mobile game Tank War 2013 for Android uses the following picture as its logo:

Looks familiar? Let me give you a hint:

It is clear that World of Tanks is a very popular concept and various copycats are trying to use this to their advantage. I am sure black helicopters were already dispatched Wargaming lawyers will not be happy. Or maybe they will – depends on whether they get paid by the case or by the hour.

Hello everyone,

so, here’s a thought. Yesterday, XZ linked me this War Thunder beta video. No, don’t worry, I won’t bash War Thunder (in fact I find the graphic very, very good and it will take World of Tanks a while to catch up) and yes, I do know this is just closed beta. Just watch it.

Well as you can see, War Thunder will have flippable tanks. Some time ago, Storm announced that World of Tanks will have this too, which got me thinking: do we REALLY need this one?

It’s obvious War Thunder influenced Wargaming plans more or less – even Storm admitted so. Some things it has good, some thing it has bad, but it does have influence. I am not sure that flippable tanks is something that was War Thunder inspired (I doubt that, since it was first mentioned a long time ago, when the War Thunder tanks were not even announced), but if it was, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Let’s look at both the advantages and disadvantages of tank flipping.

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Thanks to EnsignExpendable for posting this.

Yesterday, we talked about ads, so let’s have a look at how to do a good one for a change :) This is a Russian ad for World of Tanks.

After the grandpa opens the window, the gangster says: “Grandpa, how many battles have you played?” and on the bench, the granpa said “I’m telling you, it didn’t penetrate!” and the gangster replies “No! Didn’t penetrate how?”.

I actually laughed (and I rarely do that with ads) :)

Partial source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/269679.html, Zarax’ posts and articles

Hello everyone,

this is something that kinda… bothers me. Today, on developer blog, Yuri Pasholok posted about the VK7201K (Failowe) – according to him, it was a real project with a 150mm (149mm) gun KwK L/38 and a rear turret. There was some development, the Lowe project got cancelled and the attention of Hitler and his merry band turned towards the Maus. This is how the model looked, according to Yuri Pasholok:

The picture above is a model (mock-up) of a rear-turret Lowe variant, mistakenly named “leichter Lowe” (“light Lowe”) by the site called Achtungpanzer (responsible for numerous myths about German tanks). Yuri Pasholok claims this vehicle is historical, but in a serie of articles (the Lowe history is actually pretty complicatged), it was argued by Zarax (and me (see the Tiger Maus section)) that that’s just crap. There was never such a rear turret project of such a weight, the ingame Failowe is a Wargaming fake (the picture above belongs to a proposal for a light vehicle of 70 tons).

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Hello everyone,

for those who are interested in streamers, Rita is streaming right now with Jingles and will be for a while, so you might want to check it out. If you don’t know how, just press the “STREAM” button on the FTR bar below the logo.

- SS

Hello everyone,

since the “Legion” series I posted here around Christmas was apparently successful, I will be continuing the story. I hope you find it to your liking. The previous Legion series part one can be found here, part two here and part three here – if you haven’t read them, I suggest you do that before you read this post.

Summer, 1918 – the city of Samara on river Volga

After the crushing Czechoslovak victory near Lipyagy on 4.6.1918 against the bolshevik forces, another obstacle to overcome on their journey east was the city of Samara. It was a fortified city, it housed the headquarters of an entire Volga district and it was home to both local military command, but also to a strong garrison under its commander of ruthless reputation, Soviet Comissar Dolgushin.

The area looked like this (the broken line from Lipyagy over Kryazh to Samara is the railroad and there is a railway bridge marked over river Samarka too):

When they heard about the fate of the bolshevik troops at Lipyagy, the Soviet staff members tried to secretly negotiate with the Czechoslovaks, because they realized in full that the bulk of the elite Soviet forces in the entire region was destroyed there, but it was also clear to the Czechoslovak Legion that with the elite of the bolshevik army gone, Samara was practically defenseless against the Legion. In a move previously unheard of, the Soviet (ruling committee) of Samara even offered the Czechoslovaks the right of free passage through Samara, despite the fact that only days earlier they called for Czechoslovak destruction and would never even consider this option. Lieutenant Čeček (the commander of the Legion force) refused this offer – for one, he had nothing to gain, since Samara was ripe for taking, on the other hand, he didn’t believe the sincery of the Soviets, fearing treachery.

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Hello everyone,

this video was posted by Yuri Pasholok on his blog. Basically, what happens in it: during the November 2013 airsoft session in Alabino (Moscow), there were military tanks present on the range for some reason. One of the tanks managed to get stuck in a pit full of mud and water – it had to be towed out by another tank. The video actually shows really nicely how rugged the vehicle is and how the engine struggles to get the 40 ton beast from the watery trap. I wouldn’t want to be the guy cleaning it afterwards…