Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3291114.html

What is the Stronghold mode?

New mode for clan players, available within the game and not tied to the Clanwars. A clan has a virtual base with buildings, road leading to it and additional constructs. Can be created by the commander of the clan free of charge, whenever he wishes, but the clan has to have at least 20 players.

The clan can develop its “stronghold”, construct buildings on it in order to access various economical bonuses, that can be activated for limited time. For example, increase of creditmaking of vehicles in the game, or increase the crew training speed – everything depends on stronghold development strategy. In the future, new features will be added to this mode, such as upon reaching a certain level of the stronghold, players will be able to attack enemy strongholds and defend theirs. During such battles, there will be unique features such as air support (bomber raid), artillery fire mission, minefields and others.

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Hello everyone,

it was in 1944, when Germany released the last of its Big Cats, the mighty Tiger Ausf.B, otherwise known as the Tiger II or the Königstiger, and threw it on the front to stop the tidal wave of the allied onslaught. At 70 tons, it was a real monster, carrying the powerful 88mm L/71 gun, but it came too late and too few (less than 500) were made to make any serious difference in the war. It was also very expensive to produce, resource-requiring and it was plagued by mechanical issues. Nevertheless, the King Tiger remains one of the symbols of the German tank power of WW2.

During the last days of the war, King Tigers were still active outside of Germany and today, I’m going to write about those, that were active in Czechoslovakia. The Königstigers were usually organized in heavy tank batallions (schwere Panzerabteilung, sPzAbt), each consisting nominally of 45 vehicles – those were further split into companies, each company was then split into three platoons, each with four tanks. The rest of the vehicles of the batallion were command tanks of the company and batallion leaders and their deputies. The batallion was also supplemented with AA tanks (Flakpanzers), ARV’s (Bergepanzers), APC’s, trucks, cars and so on. These numbers were however purely theoretical, as late in the war, full state was practically never achieved and it was common for tank batallions to be at half strength or even less. In the end, it was even decided to nominally reduce the amount of companies per batallion to two.

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Send your 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, 9.0.3, 9.0.4 replays at darthworas@gmail.com

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3288746.html

So, in 9.1, Valentine II (Soviet premium) will apparently be nerfed, according to Storm this will return it to the state it was in in 8.11, after they screwed it up in 9.0.

Now – 60mm frontal and sides:

In 9.1 – this part gets nerfed to 30mm:

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Hello everyone,

today, I am going to write about a project, that might have ended as the LT Vz.35 (or Panzer 35t, as you know it from the game), the Praga P-IIa. In order to understand the way it worked – unlike the decentralized British or American production, Czechoslovak tank production was basically a competition between two large companies from the beginning of Czechoslovak tank design in late 20′s to 1948-1950, when both were nationalized – ČKD (Praga) and Škoda. Before the war, both companies had their successful tank designs – Škoda Š-IIa, also known as the LT Vz.35 and Praga TNH-S, also known as LT Vz.38 (widely regarded as the best pre-war and early war light tank in the world). The same system of competition was used by the Germans of course.

Such was the case in the 1935 competition for the IIa program. Based upon a 1934 army general report on the status of tank forces, it was decided to split the earlier category II (light tanks) into IIa (cavalry tanks) and IIb (more like infantry tanks). It’s worth noting that the division between both groups was nowhere near as prominent as for example in the case of British tanks. Praga, having won the earlier competition for the category II itself with its Praga P-II (LT Vz.34), was in good position to offer its services to the army once more.

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Hello everyone,

this post goes to all you clanners out there, fighting in the World on Fire event, trying to get your T23 premium tank. I have a very good advice for you – get friendly with a WG employee, it might prove… advantageous for you. Check this out.

This is WiliamDrake, a Wargaming employee (support department, if I recall correctly). He participates in clanwars right now in a regular clan, so he has to follow the same rules like everyone else, right?

Well… not quite, it seems. You know how there is a 48 hour cooldown for re-joining another clan, when you leave your old clan? Not if you are a WG employee!

Waiting 48 hours would probably mean losing the chance to get the T23 premium tank, so rules have to be set aside. Which makes me wonder – what OTHER rules has this guy bent?

By the way, wanna hear something funny? WiliamDrake is noone else than the infamous “Lukas” (or Luk4s or some other mutation of the name), known from the Dakillzor afair. Last year, in connection with that affair, he was accused of rigging clanwars – nothing was ever proven (or it was swept under the rug), but one has to wonder…

Hello everyone,

okay, here’s something from the Russian server – new Wargaming cartoon about… uh British unorthodox (read: Home Guard) anti-tank tactics, called “anti-tank hammer”. I will comment after the video, keep in mind however that this is an OFFICIAL video, made by Wargaming and posted on their channel. It’s obviously in Russian and only in Russian, but I think the pictures themselves speak volumes.

So, uh…. am I the only one who doesn’t find this even remotely funny? The video is based on one of the emeregency Home Guard tactics, that was planned – the Home Guard members were to rush the tank and basically jam its tracks and hatches with crowbars and hammers, while trying to knock the tank out with pouring gasoline on it (in the engine compartment etc.) and setting it on fire

I get the “fun factor” in that from today’s point of view and noone even back then considered this viable, it was pure desperation, because at that point Britain (with a handful of foreign pilots helping) basically stood alone against the entire nazi-controlled Europe.

So I guess in next part, we can expect a Russian stereotype drunk muzhik hugging Hitler? Yep, that sounds better – not sure the Putin censorship would allow that though.

Hello everyone,

this video was featured at the end of last week’s video replay summary after the final credits – for those of you who missed it. It’s… interesting :)

Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

a quick and short update about the new CW features the players are allegedly testing. This info is unconfirmed, but it’s quite possible it’s true, as something like that was specified for testing before.

- bomber raid, used as a consumable
- artillery fire mission, used as a consumable

There are no details on how exactly this will work, possibly something like in War Thunder.

- bot-controlled bunkers, allegedly with a placeholder model (E-100 turret on a concrete stand), this is supposed to be connected with the new upcoming Stronghold mode.

Personally, I am skeptical about the entire bot turret thing. There are only two options: either the bot will be “cheating”, compensating for the enemy target speed and direction (eg. his shots will hit very often), or it will work like current autoaim, in which case it will be extremely easy to deal with (bait tank drives around, bot fires at it, misses, second tank knocks out the bot).

In part 1, we talked about the LP and halftrack-based AA projects, now it’s time to have a look at the other platforms, specifically the T-34.

Oh, yea, almost forgot. Several people asked me to post a picture of that 88mm PaK 43 on HKL6p halftrack tank destroyer proposal. Here it is:

T-34/85 with 57mm R10 AA autocannon

In the beginning of the 50′s, a new platform was sought for the future anti-aicraft vehicle for the Czechoslovak army. Two platforms were proposed to be used:

- the ST-I (Jagdpanzer 38t), that would carry twin 30mm autocannon (30mm PLDvK)
- some sort of halftrack, specifically the newly developed PPT-8 tractor or the HAKO APC (modernized German halftrack), both with the same twin 30mm autocannon
- T-34 with a 57mm gun

As far as I can tell, these projects (apart from the single-gun T-34) never reached any stage beyond a miniature wooden mock-up. The mock-ups survive in the VHU military archives, they were probably proposed by Konstrukta Brno, according to M.Dubánek.

30mm PLDvK on HAKO APC

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