Hello everyone,

I was thinking about writing this article for quite some time, but there was never enough information on this man, strangely enough. It’s odd, because Alexej Surin was Czechoslovakia’s best and most famous tank designer probably of all times, yet noone seems to know too much about him and the information was gathered mostly from I.Pejčoch’s and V.Francev’s books. I did not gather them myself either, they come mostly from one post on one certain forum in Czech.

It’s a damn shame really, because this is a person more people should know about. Since the post is about a Czechoslovak person, I will be using Czech versions of names.

Alexej Michajlovič Surin was actually not a native Czechoslovak – he was born in the Russian Empire (nowadays Ukraine) in a village called Polichkovka in the Kharkov district on 10.2.1897. His father was a farmer (not a poor one) and that allowed him to recieve higher education at Kiev Polytechnic Institute – military artillery school. He graduated there with the rank of 2ndLt in the army. He begun his career as a soldier and fought in the second half of WW1 as an officer in the Tsarist Russia army. After the bolshevik coup in 1918, he fought against them with White Russians and after their loss, he decided to leave Russia for good.

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Hello everyone,

8.11 test, scheduled for today, has been delayed until tomorrow for technical reasons (no exact ETA from me, but EiKarramba from German community noted he heard it’s going to appear around noon).

Thanks to FryaDuck for posting this video in comments

Hello everyone,

no list of worst tanks ever would be complete without the infamous Bob Semple tank. Built on New Zealand during the time of Japanese Pacific campaign (mostly as a propaganda vehicle, but also with the intention to actually fight), Bob Semple tank was named after a minister of New Zealand government, Robert “Bob” Semple, who commissioned it. Needless to say, the result was less than spectacular, as you can see yourselves…

Source: World of Tanks RU forum post by Knopka

Hello everyone,

this is a small piece of info I came upon when reading one Russian blog (blogwotlirt) – by the way, to its owner: dude, if you’re reading this, why the hell do you put your blog as a “watermark” even on forum screenshots? I mean, for exclusive content (if you have any) I get that, but forums? Noone does that I think.

Anyway, Knopka (WG RU staff – I have no idea what she does, but she’s marked as a “developer”) states the following:

Basically, a Russian player was complaining that some features of Chínese server are China-exclusive. Knopka responds:

“Every server has its own features. For RU-server, there are plans to introduce tanks with unique looks and unique characteristics in the future.”

Hmm, I wonder if we get such a thing for EU server too, or NA…

Thanks to Marcus2545 (RU) for this one :)

Hello everyone,

if you like tanks and live in Nizhny Tagil (Нижний Тагил), you’re in luck. The city has a history of tank-building and according to wikipedia, Uralvagonzavod is currently the largest MBT producer in the world. This is where legendary tanks such as the T-54A, T-55 and T-62 medium tanks and T-72 plus T-90 main battle tanks were designed. The downside of this is, you might see the tanks a bit closer than you’d like…

And a few more…

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Source: http://wargaming.livejournal.com/2485.html

Hello everyone,

BigAngryCat disclosed a few more bits of info about this World of Tanks record – more than one million players online (1 mil and 114k). It happened on Sunday night (19.1.2014) and according to Wargaming, it was quite unexpected, since the previous weekend it was “only” 937k players online. That’s why one of the players created the following poster – to give players some comparison – and Wargaming via BAC reposts it now. BCA also notices that the number is in fact incorrect and that at one point it was even 1 mil and 119k…

The poster states:

- it’s more than there were Greek, Serbian and Montenegro soldiers in WW1 (1,112 mil)
- it comes close to the amount of people participating in the famous Rio de Janeiro carnival (1,5 mil)
- it’s about as many as there were soldiers of the entire 1st Ukrainian Front before the Oder offensive on 12.2.1945 (1,16 mil)
- it’s more than the entire population of the Russian city of Ufa
- in 78 countries of the world there live less people then played the Russian World of Tanks

Hello everyone,

not so long ago, I wrote about airborne tanks and how pointless they would be in World of Tanks battles. Let’s have a look at the other category, that is sometimes brought up in various World of Tanks proposals and there was a time when players were asking “what about amphibious tanks?” quite often. Since then, this question appeared somewhat less, but it still pops up every now and then. Let’s have a look at it.

Short summary of amphibeans

There are technically three ways for a tank to cross a deep body of water without someone else’s assistance. First (and probably the least important in our context) is deep fording. The vehicle is converted with a fording kit (usually a large snorkel), that allow it to basically ride on the bottom of the water body. A lot of tanks can actually do this in a limited way, including for example the Leopard 2 or T-54 (the T-54AR is a Czechoslovak modification of the T-54 medium tank for deep fording). This is obviously pointless in World of Tanks, as it would completely break the game balance on some maps, if regular tanks could go underwater. Additionally, it would create the same issues as the other amphibious variants, but on even larger scale. We’ll get to that. It’s worth noting that the Maus was theoretically capable of deep fording too, but only with the help of another Maus.

Second are “native” amphibious vehicles, eg. armored vehicles, that are constructed specifically to float on water. There are several of these tanks technically viable for World of Tanks in fact, but they invariably would belong to very low tiers.

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Thanks for Mick42 for the SEA server info :)

Hello everyone,

remember how the tier 10 discounts were the same last year? Unfortunately (fortunately?) they are not anymore. World of Tanks EU doesn’t have any tier 10 discounts, World of Tanks USA now runs a Jagdpanzer E-100 discount, while SEA server has following plan, disclosed by WG staff:

- 7.2. to 21.2. – FV215b (183)
- 21.2. to 7.3. – IS-4
- 7.3. to 21.3. – E-50 Ausf.M

After that, the SEA players are actually voting on what will appear. Pretty nice, SEA :)