Hellsau's Tank Reviews (please don't delete this, thanks)

IN GAME TANKS

USSR

    T-127 - Good tank. Gets preferential matchmaking so you can platoon with Pz2Js and BT-SVs. Buy one on sale, or if you can find Polka (God rest his soul, he's escaped World of Tanks) you can get a free code from him. The T-127, since it gets pref matchmaking, will be top tier a reasonable amount of the time, rather than being food for tier 4s and 5s.

    Valentine II - Only sees tier 4 battles. Platoons with PzB2s and has bonkers camo due to being a light tank. Don't think about that last one too hard, just get this if you want to seal-club with B2 owning wallet warriors. It is a horrible tank, so if you can, just buy a PzB2, but on Valentine's Day it will probably be on sale for 300 gold. Note - that's too much gold to pay if you aren't seal clubbing with PzB2s. It really is a horrible tank.

    Churchill III - Tier 5 preferential matchmaking heavy. It gets a 6pdr so it has no problem penning anything, and an insane 30% XP boost which trains crews really fast. It is 750 gold on sale - always buy this when you first see it on sale. Reasonable armor except that the turret face is the weak spot, and good players will load gold and shoot through your dumb box turret. Fortunately, if you're in a platoon with two other players in pref matchmaking tanks, you'll just machine gun everything in front of you down.

    Matilda IV - Tier 5 preferential matchmaking medium, that is basically a heavy. Extremely poor pen (86 AP, 102 gold pen) and slower than the Churchill 3. It's fine until you come face to face with a competent enemy tier 5 heavy, or most tier 6s. That 102 pen is just crippling against certain tanks.

    SU-85I - Gets preferential matchmaking, but has 350 HP. It has a disappointing gun, and is just all around junk. It's much worse than the tier 4 SU-85B, for instance, and it doesn't have the ability to use the derp like the regular SU-85, and it doesn't have the giant hitpoint buffer of one of the tier 5 pref heavies, AND it doesn't even be much better pen than the Churchill 3. Just play a different pref 5 - there are so many Russian TD premiums that you can easily train a crew elsewhere.

    SU-100Y - Big gun. The gimmick is that the gold round has less pen but more damage. You'll twoshot most lower tier tanks, some same tier tanks and twoshot the others, and will take a large chunk out of higher tier tanks. It has no camo and is giant and has wonky but overall poor armor, so you need to stay pretty far back and just launch shells at whoever is unfortunate enough to walk in front of you. It's reasonable fast so you can reposition easily enough.

    SU-122-44 - Great tank. Basically play it like an assault gun - just get in there and hold left click on some enemy tank. The gun's pen is pretty poor, and the gold round is also not great, so really you want to just find a tier 7 or lower tank and just bully them. The armor bounces some shots, but your greatest form of defense is simply killing enemy tanks in three shots before they can fire more than once.

    IS-6 - Tier 8 preferential matchmaking heavy. This is not a great tank for making money, since you need a healthy amount of APCR to pen a lot of things you'll see. On the other hand, it's one of the best tanks for winning games - a platoon of IS-6s will wreck whatever is in front of them with their good mobility, good alpha and reasonable DPM, and great armor.

    T-54 first prototype - Garbage. It really needs preferential matchmaking like the Super Pershing. It is trying to be an armored tier 8 medium, but that's laughable. Tier 9 and 10 tanks do not care about your armor, and the D-10T is an awful gun. Being slow as hell is the worst part though, because you can't actually get that terrible gun into position very easily. Good for tier 8 strongholds though where the armor might be workable.

USA
    T2 Light - Fun tank that goes fast and has a machine gun for holding left click on poor dudes. Unfortunately, it gets completely wrecked due to Wargaming neglect. The tank is armorless, has very low view range (260m, less than all but one tier one tank) and the gun's pen is pretty low. There are a few tanks that get similar weaponry at tier 2. The T7 CC gift tank have a huge-clip machine gun with low pen, but only sees tier 2s. The Pz2 has very good armor and much better view range with a gun with much higher pen. The Cruiser 3 tank is incredibly overpowering, offering a high pen, four shot autoloader with a similar total clip damage. The T2LT simply got outclassed through power creep, but with one even bigger defect - the dumb tank see tier 4 tanks! It's the only tier 2 that sees tier 4s, so you very frequently will be tossed into a tier 4 match as the only tier 2 tank. With no survivability, no view range and no pen on your gun, it's miserable. The T2 Light used to see play as a passive scout in company battles simply to fill up tier points, but companies are dead, and that's it for a once great tank. Of course it's also 375 gold on sale so whatever.
    M22 Locust - Tier 3 scout. Lower view range compared to the T-15, but more pen and slightly better camo. Also there are a LOT of US light tank gift tanks. Tier 3 matchmaking is totally broken for people with over a thousand battles, so you will almost always be bottom tier. Good luck scouting for players who have fired their gun fewer times than you have games played!

    T26E4 SuperPershing - Tier 8 preferential matchmaking medium. Slow, bad AP pen, massive and obvious weakspots, with no side armor and with the frontal hull armor's weakspot being the upper plate. Do not play this tank.

    T34 - Regular matchmaking but has a big gun. Basically you're a stock T30, which is pretty good. Peek the turret over, spray a 250 pen shell into someone, and back off for the next twelve seconds. It's quite slow though, so you may never be able to get into a position to hull-down. Tier 10s still beat you to death, but at least you can load gold and have a good chance to pen whatever you're fighting.

China

    Type 64 - Great tank. It's a very fast tier 6 scout (so basically gets tier 7 matchmaking) with a reasonable gun and great camo and view range. Unfortunately, the T37 completely clowns it, the VK2801 full pens it with HE, and the 59-16 and Mt-25 autoloaders crew it up insanely fast. Also the Type 64 has a desperately low ammo count, so you will frequently run out of ammo. Besides all that though, the tank still makes good money and is good and fun in tier 6  strongholds.

    T-34-3 - Tier 8 preferential matchmaking medium. Big gun, slow reload, terribly inaccurate with underwhelming armor and HEAT for a gold round. This is not the Type 59.

    112 - Tier 8 preferential matchmaking heavy. You get all the inaccuracy and bad pen issues of the IS-6 without all that troublesome armor, while also having to deal with HEAT being awful. The turret is alright I guess, if you can find somewhere you can hull down while still hitting enemy tanks.

UK

    Excelsior - Tier 5 preferential matchmaking heavy. Bad AP pen, but very good gold round for a tier 5 pref. Front and rear armor are very good for tier 5, even though good players will load gold and pen your turret. Extremely bad side armor, so you cannot afford to angle your armor. Fortunately, the front is good enough to bounce a lot of stuff and the gun will kill most things quickly.

    Matilda Black Prince - Tier 5 preferential matchmaking medium. Worthless. The stupid box turret is ~80mm on the front, so even lower tier tanks will go right through it, and it's cripplingly slow and just has no advantages over the . Also the stupid thing has a very low ammo count - 55 shells on a 6pdr is unacceptable. Do not buy this tank.

    AT 15A - Tier 7 preferential matchmaking TD. Very bad. So, get this - this tank was once one of the worst premiums. 850 hp, saw tier 9s, and was just as slow. They gave it pref matchmaking, it has 1050 hp now, and it's still one of the worst premiums. It's a slow, armored brick TD just like the AT line of British TDs are, except the tank has a cupola weakspot, and another weakspot where the damn gun is. People seriously just point straight at you, fire, and shoot straight through, damaging your hull and destroying your gun. It already struggles with terrible speed, it doesn't need such crippling weakspots as well. Do not buy this tank.

Germany

    Pz.Kpfw. S35 739 (f) - Fun tank, but doesn't get easy matchmaking. 74 gold pen against tier 5s, with horrendous pen dropoff, is pretty bad. Bad crew trainer as well with lots of other alternatives for German medium premiums. It really is fun in tier 3 games, and it's fine in tier 4 games. It should get preferential matchmaking. With the matchmaking changes, you can't really afford to play this tank anymore, since it really does get demolished by most tier 4s and almost every tier 5.

    T-15 - Tier 3 scout. Lower pen and camo than the Locust, but better view range. The T-15 trains crews for a large number of extremely good and fun tanks. Tier 3 matchmaking is totally broken for people with over a thousand battles, so you will almost always be bottom tier. Good luck scouting for players who have fired their gun fewer times than you have games played!

    T-25 - Regular matchmaking, but unlike the Ram 2 and Chi-Nu-Kai, it doesn't do something unique. It's basically a T67, that trade its camo, profile, and turning speed for a lot of HP. Very strange tank to play though since it just turns its hull and turret so slowly. Poor view range. It's quite a good tank, but there are so many incredible tier 5s that unless you're training a crew, it's hard to justify playing this tank over a KV-1S or a preferential matchmaking tier 5 heavy.

    Dicker Max - It's a Nashorn, or a stock Sturer. Slow, good gun depression, decent gun. Not fun to play, not particularly good at anything.

    Panther mit 8,8 cm L/71 - This was the first tank they released in the new era of "preferential matchmaking is killing our matchmaker, let's remove all pref mm tanks." They tried to sell this piece of shit for 11500 gold when it first came out - they lowered it to 7300 gold and refunded everyone who bought it 4200 gold. It sold incredibly poorly, causing a minor panic which led to the release of the CDC which is awesome. The Hitler Panther is bad, don't get it.

    Löwe - Slow with a shot trap under its gun that guides enemy shells straight into your turret ring. Has a very large lower plate. They've buffed the side armor so you'll get random bounces while wiggling, but that shot trap is brutal. Imagine trying to fight enemy tanks where you get one 320 damage shell out and they just snapshot you and destroy your turret. Can't really afford to use a repair kit when any shell into your lower plate damages or destroys your engine! Also it really is slow as hell and is laughably the most expensive premium. Avoid this tank.

France

    FCM 50 t - Tier 8 preferential matchmaking heavy. It's a fast, lightly armored tank with a good gun with good pen that will bounce shots when you angle it and put out a lot of damage onto the enemy. It has a frontal ammo rack behind the front track wheel, so use large repair kits. Great tank.

    AMX Chasseur de chars - This is the second best tier 8 medium behind the Obj 416, and it isn't particularly close. VERY fast, good gun with great pen, and incredible gun depression with a small turret profile from the front. The downside is it's has a gigantic side profile and has nearly no armor, so a direct arti hit will most likely kill you, and you've got to basically broadside against people firing HE to avoid a full pen. If you make a mistake in the CDC you'll probably blow up, so it's kind of a high stress tank for a premium, but it really rewards you for the risk. It also has a very weak ammo rack - I suggest getting Safe Stowage as soon as possible.
M4A1 Rev. - So it's a medium T34, but French. It has just as bad gun handling as the T34, but it's slightly faster so if you wanted your T34 to go a bit faster so you could slam 390 damage shells into them, hooray! Unfortunately it does not have preferential matchmaking, it is nearly armorless (it's a tier 8 Sherman what did you expect?) and the gun handling and DPM are pretty abysmal. Also the pen is incredibly bad for a non-pref matchmaking tank - default ammo is 200 pen APCR and the gold is 250 pen HEAT. Fun in strongholds, not an acceptable tier 8 to play in randoms.

Japan

    Type 3 Chi-Nu Kai - This tank is bad. Doesn't get preferential matchmaking, but also doesn't get the HP buff that the T-25 and Ram II get. No idea why not - the view range is bad, the gun is unreliable with only 155 gold AP pen. Not sure why this tank doesn't get preferential matchmaking, because it isn't like the armor is any good. Here's a .gif of a VK3601 with the 105mm derp full penning my angled frontal hull with HE on the move: i.imgur.com/R506pIm.gif

HT No. VI (Japanese Tiger) - Finally, the Tiger is a tier 6! It's also garbage. It gets regular matchmaking with the short 8.8 (132mm AP 171 APCR) on a slow, sluggish tank with crap armor and the gun handling is really awful. 950 HP goes really fast when you have vulnerable modules and limited armor, mobility, profile and camo. Don't bother with this, just buy an O-I Exp. or O-I and train a crew in those since they're overpowered as all hell.

    STA-2 - They've buffed this tank, but it's still just a bad STA-1. If you want a bad STA-1 with regular matchmaking, go for it. Otherwise just avoid it - it isn't like any of the Japanese mediums are worth keeping and training a crew for. I definitely wish this tank was as good as the CDC.

Czechoslovakia

Skoda T 40 - The regular tier  6, the Skoda T 25, is a nimble tank with a tiny turret and a 3 shot autoloader. The Skoda T 40 is a slower tank with a short 8.8. Unlike the Japanese Tiger, though, this short 8.8 gets 200 pen HEAT, which goes a long way when you need to fight crap like O-Is or tier 8s. The speed is slightly slower than a Rudy, and doesn't really have armor, but at least it has some capability to peek with 6 degrees of gun depression and a reasonably shapely turret.

REWARD TANKS

Clan Wars Rewards:

    M60 - M48 stand-in. When the M60 came out, it was basically a less armored M48 - the M60 will be easily penned frontally by tier fives. Recently, the M48 was significantly buffed, especially armorwise - and the M60 was not buffed in any way. Hopefully with the HD remodel they'll buff the M60 a bit more. It is a fun tank, basically just roam around and use your sweet gun depression and decent moving accuracy to #snapshotmeta people right on out of the match. Just don't expect to take hits very well.

    VK 72.01 (K) - E100 stand-in. Giant lower plate, but the turret has a much better shame than the E-100's brick. It has a massive, glaring weakspot on the side armor, though - the turret is basically a dome, and that dome continues down towards the back of the hull. If someone is looking at your frontally, they can shoot that dome and most likely pen, and if you hide it behind a wall, they probably can pen your lower plate. Of course this is assuming your opponent knows about the weakspot or are reasonably competent - otherwise you're just going to take a hit to your cupola and may or may not bounce it. You pay for this weird armor scheme by having a 2 second slower reload on the 150mm compared to the E-100, worse accuracy and longer aim time. It's alright but the E-100 is far easier to play optimally.

    Object 907 - It's a Russian tier 10 medium. There are a lot of them. I prefer the 140, then the 907, then the 62a, with the 430 being quite a bit behind them. [s]Soon there will be the T-22sr as a Rampage mode mission reward, and apparently it's totally bonkers, but for now, if you want yet another Russian tier 10 medium, there's the 907.[/s] T-22 heads and shoulders above all other Russian meds until the nerf.

    IS-5 (Object 730) - It's a hybrid between the 110, the old IS-3, and the IS-6. It gets default APCR with the same pen as the IS-3's AP, but has HEAT as a gold round, and HEAT belongs in the trash. The frontal armor is somewhere between the 110's front and the old IS-3's front - it is nowhere near as strong as the buffed IS-3's frontal armor. It's fine, and the reduced accuracy would be a problem without #snapshotmeta and default APCR, so play the IS-5 if you want yet another Russian heavy crew trainer.

    T23E3 - Preferential matchmaking tier 7 medium and also complete trash. It will soon be buffed, but as it stands it's worse than the tier 6 E8 by a wide margin. You get the M1A1, AKA the gun people who want to use the stock turret on the E2 are stuck with. It is not a good gun at tier 7. The tank itself is basically armorless and only has 1050 HP, so why not just play the E8 and get into tier 6 matches? Why not just play the E-25 and have a massively better tank with the same matchmaking? The gimmick for the T23 was that it would go the same speed forwards and backwards, so if you were able to kick it in reverse at 55 kmph, that'd be sweet, but Wargaming chickened out and didn't put its real-life top reverse speed into the game. It is a pity.

T95E6 - Incredibly great turret face with a giant weak cupola. Severe module damage on the hull with a very weak frontal ammo rack. The gun is very inaccurate but prone to sick #snapshotmeta. It's better than the M60 by a lot and worse than the buffed M48.

Chieftain/T95 - Upcoming tier 8 tank. Will presumably have regular matchmaking. Get yours starting April 18th! Updates forthcoming assuming I'm not blacklisted from every clan who wants their clan to survive.

Missions:

    StuG IV - Worthless. If it had preferential matchmaking, it'd merely be bad like the SU-85I, but instead it is a regular tier 5 and therefore terrible. It really needs the actual top Stug gun on it.

    T28 Concept - This tank is what the AT-15A wishes it was. The gun is great when the tank is great, and the armor is spectacular as a top tier. It also can go forwards far faster than you'd presume when you read "T28" in the name, but it does turn awfully slow. Unfortunately, the 105mm gun is not good against tier 9s, and your armor is not good against tier 9s or most tier 8s. When you're top tier, you are god. When you're bottom tier, you struggle. Still miles better than the AT-15A ever will be.

    T 55A - It's a premium T-54! It goes up hills slower because Germany, but whatever. I love it. Totally worth the grind. It is the best German medium crew trainer, so if you're tired of playing your T-25 or getting your doubles on the crappier German medium premiums, grind yourself a T-55A.

    Object 260 - It's a better IS-7, from what I hear. Good luck finishing the missions though - I'm working my way through them but there is so many missions which basically force you to sabotage your team.

T-22sr - Ludicrously overpowered. The only way to get this tank is by completing 30 missions in Rampage mode. I am very good. The Rampage mode missions were literally impossible. They weakened the missions to where they're just stunningly unlikely to happen (15 thousand damage in 7 minutes?) but there's a different reason that now makes them literally impossible. Rampage mode is awful and there is no playerbase for it. Since no one actually plays the mode, you can rig the missions if you can corral 20-30 people to just farm the missions and WGA has tacitly allowed this to happen, with further reduces the likelihood of an actual playerbase developing. Rig the missions now - the mode (and all ways to earn the tank) are being removed in 9.15, and the tank will be nerfed somewhere between cripplingly and negligably, depending on Wargaming's tank balance dice.

Other:

    T95E2 - How to receive - Refer a Friend program. It is horrible, and definitely not worth grinding a new account or platooning with new players for a million experience. It is like a Pershing, except with a gigantic cupola weakspot in addition to the tank just being huge. It doesn't even get preferential matchmaking, so just play a Pershing or STA-1. Also, to add insult to injury, you get 250 pen HEAT instead of 268 pen APCR. Sucker.

    ISU-130 - How to receive - forums mods get gifted this tank, and apparently other volunteers can get one. It's basically an ISU-152 without the 152, getting something similar to a JP2 or Ferdinand gun instead, with gimmick higher damage and lower pen AP gold ammo. The SU-100Y gun gimmick is fine at tier 6, but at tier 8, not having a gold round and being stuck with 215 pen is not acceptable on a tier 8 TD that gets regular matchmaking. There's a reason it's not a normal premium up for sale - it wouldn't sell.

    M4A2E4 Sherman - Preferential matchmaking tier 5 medium. The "beta Sherman", this tank was given out to beta testers. It's alright - it's much closer to the T14 than the actual M4. Same gun as the T-14, same well sloped armor as the T14, without the large stockpile of HP and closer mobility to the M4.


GIFT TANKS

USSR

    Tetrarch - Pretty good tank. It gets extraordinarily high pen for a tier 2 tank - 64 pen is good, and 121 gold pen is nearly unheard of for a tier 2 tank! It's also tiny and adorable. Sadly, it has nearly no view range - 260 is lower than every tier 1 tank except the Medium 1, which it ties. That makes its good camo less useful, since you need to get too close to spot your own tanks, and praying for your teammates to spot things at lower tiers is not a good plan. With the map changes, the Tetrarch also has far fewer opportunities to just hammer shells into enemy tanks without being seen. Not only that, but the Cruiser 3 can use the Pompom for a four-shot 160 damage clip, or it can just use a better version of the Tetrarch's gun while also getting 320m view range, so it isn't really a tournament caliber tank anymore.

    LTP - Preferential matchmaking tier 3 light . It's a T-127 but slightly faster and significantly less armored. If that's a trade you feel is acceptable, have fun.

    M3 Light - Preferential matchmaking tier 3 light. It's also garbage, just play any other pref 3. When I started playing, this was the gift for finishing the tutorial, so it should come as no surprise that this is not a good tank. Stunningly bad gun compared to the T-127's, where the T-127 also gets better view range AND good armor.

    BT-7 artillery - NOT pref matchmaking, sadly. It is a BT-7 (gofast tank) that basically only goes fast. Nearly armorless, with a gun that basically only fires HE - it can also fire AP but the AP has 1 less pen than the HE, and deals 54 less damage, so don't bother. This tank was released after the change away from preferential matchmaking and after the newbie protection change, which really hurt this thing. You'll be stuffed into tier 5 matches against stuff that you cannot damage with HE. It's fun for a few games, but expect to get into matches where you cannot contribute. With 290m view range at tier 3, it isn't even a particularly good scout.

USA

    T1E6 - Worse than every tier 1, do not play this tank. It is straight up an inferior version of the T1 Cunningham, which gets more HP in exchange for seeing tier 3s without even the T1's upgraded view range or gun. Nearly worthless.

    T7 Combat Car - Preferential matchmaking tier 2 light, meaning it only sees tier 2 matches! It's a good thing that this doesn't see tier 3s, because it has no gold ammo and only 27 pen in its AP shells. Why bother playing it? Because it gets fifty AP shells at once! Just find something you can pen and hold left click to erase that tank from existance. The T7 got significantly buffed, making it faster with higher pen and faster-firing, so play this over the VIC.

UK

    Light Mk. VIC - Preferential matchmaking tier 2 light, meaning it only sees tier 2 matches! It's just straight up inferior to the T7 in nearly every way. The VIC is much slower and gets forty 9 damage shells rather than the fifty 8 damage shells the T7 gets, which isn't a good trade when the majority of your shells will go flying away from the target. If the VIC wasn't so dang slow it'd be a weird tradeoff whether you want the lower clip damage of the VIC in exchange for potentially killing enemies a split second faster, but the speed really kills it.

Germany

    Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. D - Does not get preferential matchmaking for inexplicable reasons. It's basically a Pz2 that removes a lot of armor and uses a poor gun (23 AP pen?! It gets 46 APCR pen but that gets incredibly expensive for a downgrade from the Pz2 gun). In exchange, it's faster than the Pz2. That is not a good trade. This tank badly needs pref matchmaking, but as it is just don't play it.

Toldi III - Hilariously bad. It is almost certainly the worst tank in the game. 700 DPM, 270m view range, reasonable acceleration but mediocre top speed, very poor armor including 13mm of side armor, and 64 AP pen is whatever, but 80 gold pen is unacceptable. Also it sees tier 5s. This tank is straight up worse than any tier 1 tank, and even with 230 HP there isn't a tier 1 I wouldn't rather play in a tier 2 match (or probably even tier 1 match) than the Toldi. 700 DPM is so outrageously bad that you would take a full minute of continuous fire to kill a KV-1, but wait no you'd never kill a KV-1 because you literally cannot damage it except on the upper half of pen rolls on gold from a point blank 90 degree shot on flat armor. Literally the worst tank in the game, which is impressive given how bad the Valentine is.

Japan

	Type 97 Te-Ke - It’s alright. Average gun, average view range, just a normal tank. Kind of pointless to play with only two crew members and only one good Japanese light - the Ke-Ho - to train a crew for, so you might as well just play the Ke-Ho.

FANCY TANKS

USSR

        BT-SV - Preferential matchmaking tier 3 light. Goes insanely fast in a straight line due to unbelievable acceleration power, but it has trouble turning. It's basically a weird moving polyhedron, so it can bounce a lot of machine gun fire and the odd cannon shot, but it isn't as bouncy as the T-127. Same gun as the T-127, so if the BT-SV ever goes on sale for cheap, it might be worth it. Sadly, it isn't worth $100, no matter how many gold or credits get packaged with it. Do not reward Wargaming for that kind of behavior. It isn't particularly overpowered compared to a tank you can get for 375 gold, so don't pay an exorbitant amount for it.

    SU-76I - Preferential matchmaking tier 3 TD. It went on sale for a few days, and allegedly was so overpowered they pulled it from the premium store. Newsflash - any tier 3 with preferential matchmaking will be overpowered because that's what preferential matchmaking does to a tank, it makes it win more. Anyway this is an average tier 3 TD with 300m view range and the worst gun in the game, the Russian 76mm. 86 AP pen and 102 APCR pen is workable on a pref 3, though, and 110 damage and 1500 DPM is pretty good. Its frontal armor is also immune to machine guns, though 60mm of armor isn't going to stop much at tier 4. If this tank was put on sale again, I do not believe it would outperform the T-127, especially not with the map changes. No more Province or Malinovka at lower tiers really lowers the ceiling on how well a turretless tank can perform.

    A-32 - Preferential matchmaking tier 4 medium, seeing tier 4s and 5s (like the tier 4 heavies do.) This tank is kind of atrocious - it's like an A-20, a notably terrible tank, but with 75 HEAT pen for the gold and 320m view range. Goes fast, I suppose. It was a pre-order tank, and the WoT playerbase are incredibly whiny, so don't expect it to go on sale.

T-28E with F-30 - Tier 4 T-28 with the KV-1 gun? Yes please! The thing is laughably inaccurate, and the tank itself is a T-28 so it's gigantic and armorless, and it sees tier 5s and 6s that can easily oneshot it but who cares? Drive around at a reasonable speed at the start of the match, spewing good pen shots at the enemy, and then if you ever see a distracted enemy, pull up next to it and hold left click for ten seconds and watch it die. It's actually a pretty great crew trainer for Russian Mediums. It holds two Radiomen which are sort of worthless....except you could pay 600 gold to swap them into a different tank and role, which is actually sweet. It's still pretty difficult to play and really punishing when you mess up since it's armorless, but that gun is pretty nice when it hits. Also 280 damage HE shells are a real deal at a tier where you can face Toasters and Hellcats and such with reasonable frequency.

    KV-220-2 / KV-220 Beta-Test - Preferential matchmaking tier 5 heavy. This tank is bananas. It is the stock KV-1 turret on a KV-3 hull, which means you can turn 45 degrees to most tier 5s and some tier 6s and just bounce everything. The turret is the weakspot, but even if you say in allchat, "my turret is my weakspot, shoot where my gun is to damage me, my hull is immortal" you will most likely just bounce tons of shots on your hull because pubbies are adverse to advice. I may say the Russian 76mm is the worst gun in the game, but fortunately this is NOT the KV-1's stock gun, it is an upgraded version. 99 AP pen and 121 APCR pen is workable, though competent KV-1s and KV-1Ss will eat you up for din. Definitely worth buying for $20 - it shows up in the gift shop quite often.

    T-44-122 - Never been up for sale (yet), it is a T-44 with the 122mm AKA the wrong gun. Go buy a T-34-3 if you want to try it out, but I don't recommend that.

    T-34-85M - It's an uparmored T-34-85 that pays dearly for it in the gun department - not getting the top gun from the T-34-85 while also not getting preferential matchmaking is unacceptable. It is also slower than the normal T-34-85. Do not buy this tank, buy the Rudy instead.

    T-34-85 Rudy - One of the Berlin tanks, it is a T-34-85. Fantastic, definitely buy it if you ever get another chance. It originally came with a crew that had Brothers in Arms as the 0th skill, meaning you ground out the second skill as fast as a normal crew got their first, and that is an excellent way to get me to spend money on fancy tanks. The fact that all the Berlin tanks are also good tanks helped.

    ISU-122S - One of the Berlin tanks. It's an SU-152 with the 122mm on it - kind of like a SU-122-44 that shoots faster. The armor on the ISU-122S is bouncier than you'd expect, but it is definitely the worst of the Berlin tanks. It originally came with a crew that had Brothers in Arms as the 0th skill, meaning you ground out the second skill as fast as a normal crew got their first, and that is an excellent way to get me to spend money on fancy tanks. The fact that all the Berlin tanks are also good tanks helped.

    IS-2 - One of the Berlin tanks. It is kind of a mix of the IS and the Chinese IS-2, but closer to the normal IS. Slightly worse at climbing hills but slightly better frontal armor.  It originally came with a crew that had Brothers in Arms as the 0th skill, meaning you ground out the second skill as fast as a normal crew got their first, and that is an excellent way to get me to spend money on fancy tanks. The fact that all the Berlin tanks are also good tanks helped.

    KV-5 - Preferential matchmaking tier 8 heavy. So it's a giant brick, except full of massive and obvious weakspots such as the cupolas on top and the radioman drums on the front, with a very low pen gun, AND the parts of the armor that are not weak are still easily vulnerable to tier 8 and 9 gold ammo. Bad players will still whiff shots by hitting bad angles on your "weak spots" and it's easy to trick pubbies into shooting your side hull armor by heavily angling or just showing tracks. The poor pen on the gun is a real bummer though. It really cannot deal with the buffed IS-3. However, it gets very good DPM, it's very tall so if enemy IS-3s are really dumb you can shoot into their roofs, and it is heavy but can pick up a lot of speed for sick rams. Don't bother buying it since there are so many good Russian heavies, but if you want a decently fun gimmick tank, it's alright. It also goes on sale incredibly often. Please do not drive at the enemy backwards, the top part of your rear armor is around 80mm and has an engine hitbox behind it.

IS-3A - ugly IS-3 with the IS-5 gun (default 221 pen APCR, 270 pen HEAT). Roof weakspot still exists, even if you may be able to hide it in more positions, but the frontal ammo rack is still there and is a major problem, because this tank does not have a loader. It was designed to use an autoloader, and that is modeled in game with a faster reload and no loader. Unfortunately that means no Safe Stowage (unless you want to train Safe Stowage on a different crew member just for this tank) so get ready for your rack to get damaged constantly, thereby negating the slight reload advantage. Also, this thing is ugly, especially compared to the beautiful IS-3.

USA

    MTLS-1G14 - Preferential matchmaking tier 3 light. It's never been on sale, and for good reason. It is part of the BT-SV and Pz2J, but unlike the BT-SV which is mostly fair, the MTLS is far closer to the Pz2J in power level. You get a 37mm "dual automatic cannon" which is just unfair and extremely fun to use. It fires ten 40 damage shells, which just chews enemy tanks up, while also being on a reasonably mobile chassis with reasonable armor with good view range. It's only available on press accounts and tournament accounts, so if you ever get a chance to play on one of those, play on this tank.

    M4A3E8 Fury - It's mediocre (upgraded from bad). It's an E8 with less armor and no preferential matchmaking, which isn't great because the mantlet on the Fury is extremely easy to pen. Otherwise it's just a premium E8.

    M6A2E1 - Preferential matchmaking tier 8 heavy. Gets the 105mm from the T32, with a giant slab of front armor on both hull and turret, but extremely poor side armor and a gigantic profile. I would totally buy this tank because it's the KV-5's gimmick of good armor with a weird layout but it actually gets a functional gun, but sadly this was also a pre-order tank and the WoT playerbase is full of terrible whiners.

    Ram II - Removed from the in-game store. It used to be 875 gold on sale. Regular matchmaking, gets a 6pdr, but is incredibly inaccurate due to the terrible aiming time. Bunch of HP. Poor view range at 330m. Just play the Churchill 3.

    T14 - Tier 5 preferential matchmaking heavy. Removed from the in-game store. It used to be 750 gold on sale, so don't spend $50 for this tank if it ever shows back up. Poor gun (the M3 Lee gun) with bad accuracy and pen, but the armor and mobility are adequate. The front armor is heavily sloped, but it is thin, so artillery and random derp guns hurt a lot. The side armor is heavily spaced so if you angle at thirty degrees you can bounce a lot of stuff.

M4 Improved - Not actually improved. Gets a flattened turret face and the low pen M3 Lee gun with no option to use the Derp. The frontal hull armor is slightly better? Not worth bothering to play. It's also gone on sale a stunningly low amount. It was sold for a week or so, no one bought it because it was crap, and then...nothing. Presumably they're trying to keep it rare and maybe hype it up to sell it later? It's just weird. Had they put the 105mm on this, it would have sold a ton even if they packaged it with some gold at $30, but hey who am I to tell Wargaming how to make hundreds of million dollars a year?

M56 Scorpion - Hilariously poor. Actual armorless - 1mm of front armor, 0mm on the side and rear, while also weighing 7 tons. If you touch a teammate, you take a lot of damage - if you touch an enemy, you explode. The gun is mediocre, the tank is not fast even with 29 HP/t because Wargaming hates fun, and it requires an incredibly unfun playstyle because if you get lit, you will die. It's the only premium US TD because again, Wargaming hates fun, so you might get one for the crew training, but it probably isn't even worth it for that.

China

    Type 62 - It's like the WZ-131 without the top gun. It used to have extremely good HEAT pen but they nerfed it without any compensatory buffs, which begs the question of why the E-25 hasn't been nerfed yet but whatever. Like most tier 7 lights, this tank cannot really fight the M41, but otherwise the thing holding this tank back is that the WZ-132 is awful, and the 59-16 is only good in strongholds, and if you're going to grind a crew for the WZ-131 using the Type 62, then why not just play more WZ-131?

    Type 59 - Preferential matchmaking tier 8 medium. It's better than the T-44 - similar gun, far better armor, preferential matchmaking. The T-44 is terrible though, so just because this tank is better than it doesn't make it overpowered. The Type 59 is legendary for what it represented - before you were able to buy gold ammo with credits, most lower tier tanks could not damage a Type 59 frontally, leading to widespread calls of the tank being pay-to-win and overpowered. It was removed from the shop and unfortunately will never return. However, there is a way to receive one - message Metro2033fail in-game and follow his instructions.

    WZ-111 - Preferential matchmaking tier 8 heavy. A much better version of the 112, it was the reward for a month-long grindfest. It's also been up for sale in the premium shop for $70 a few times. It's alright, but it may or may not be better for grinding credits compared to the IS-6, and it is significantly worse for winning games. It's nothing special.

    59-Patton - Terrible. Bad armor with a giant cupola, shoots HEAT instead of APCR, regular matchmaking. This tank is in dire need of a sizable buff in multiple areas, because it is a total joke right now.

UK

    Sexton I - Total garbage, do not buy this tank. The 25pdr is a really bad gun on everything. It looks cool - a howitzer that gets an actual AP round? Yeah no the gun is trash on everything that can use it. If you put it on the Alecto instead of the 3.7mm howitzer, you're awful, and that's on a tank that doesn't take 11 seconds to reload the blasted thing!

AC 1 Sentinel - The crossover with the Armored Core series was unexpected but not unappreciated. Having an actual Walking Tank in the game opens up a lot of the map to flanking maneuvers that simply weren't possible with only treaded vehicles in the game. I like to take my Sentinel up the west side mountains on Mountain Pass - you can fire downwards onto the southern enemies from a good height with your pulse rifles, or use your missiles to hammer the enemies on the bridge or in the bowl, and if the enemy ever pushes through you can slide down and finish the enemy off with your laser blades. Anyway the Sentinel is a very bad tank in reality, being a less armored, significantly worse Matilda with the same APCR pen as the Matilda has AP pen, so just don't bother with this crap. It isn't worth any amount of money. If you enjoyed the first part of this review, please blame Australia for not pursuing mecha technology back in WWII.

    TOG II* - Preferential tier 6 matchmaking. Land boat. Gigantic with 1400 HP and no armor and is basically stationary. Arti will murder you, O-Is will two-shot you, the enemy will all rush to shoot you and your teammates will never attempt to shoot them back while they murder you. It was alright before the advent of O-Is and before artillery returned to popularity, but now it's stone unplayable. You just cannot bring a TOG into battle knowing there's a better than 50% chance the enemy team has an O-I that is faster than you, has better armor than you, and has a gun that will twoshot you.

    Cromwell B - Fantastic. One of the staples of tier 6 Strongholds due to great speed, great mobility, great pen and theoretical damage output, and simply being fantastic in a wolfpack. Unfortunately it basically has no chance of being a sniper tank outside of praying to #snapshotmeta, so it really needs your team to actually be aggressive with you to hammer the enemy down, so it's merely excellent in random battles. British Mediums are a crappy line to train a crew for, but that's the only real slight against this tank. Get one whenever you have a chance.

    FV201 (A45) - So it's a less armored Black Prince? Okay. Good luck selling that. Oh they gave it away during a grind marathon? Wait, no, they gave it away at a discount ($15) where if you ground this tank for about 200 battles (inside this tank, mind you) you could get it for free. Tank is bad, don't bother. Still better than the Challenger or the nerfed Black Prince, which is just stunningly petty of Wargaming.

FV4202 (P) - Very bad. The turret is paper even if it's technically sloped, the gun blooms pretty bad, it's slow as hell, it has no armor and bad module placement, and the raw damage output is mediocre which when combined with the poor gun handling leaves a lot to be desired. Good pen and gun depression are the selling points of this tank, but it's just too goddamn slow to actually get to spots to put that plan into action, and it's too slow to reposition to different spots to try to deter artillery from raining its fiery vengeance upon you.

Germany
    Pz.Kpfw. 38H 735 (f) - Used to be called the Minimaus because it was functionally immortal to almost everything it fought. It is now bad - there have been far too many high pen guns added to its tier range, gold ammo can be bought for credits, tier 2 TDs will see your matchmaking range, and you'll see a large number of tier 3 matches if you're trying to club. The map changes definitely helped the tank since you can brawl and hope to avoid the tanks that will easily pen you, but there are quite a lot.

    Großtraktor - Krupp - I wasn't trying to type Krupp Stahl, the tank actually has "- Krupp" on the other end, but the tank is basically Krapp. It's no Toldi, since it can at least put some damage out, but the tank is armorless, gigantic and not fast, while seeing tier 5s where it gets 87 gold pen. It's also only been sold for outrageous amounts of money. Don't bother.

    Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. J - The most overpowered tank. Functionally immortal to almost everything it sees, with the majority of the stuff that could actually damage it dying swiftly to its autocannon. You could easily push 80% winrate with a platoon of these, probably 90%+ if a concerted stat padding effort is made. The sickest part? They buffed this tank! It used to have weakspots on the sides where Pz1Cs could pen half their shots with gold. Those are gone now - Pz1Cs simply cannot damage your tank at all without being directly above it, or by ramming it at a high speed. Simply disgusting and possibly worth the $100 price tag if it ever comes up for sale.

    8,8 cm Pak 43 Jagdtiger - Preferential matchmaking tier 8 (presumably, they "accidentally" gave it regular matchmaking for a patch but who knows what they're doing). Slow, makes tons of credits, does not make a ton of wins or fun. That's about it. Hilariously enough it has better armor than the JP2 or tier 9 JTiger as those TDs got pretty severe armor nerfs, while the lower plate of the JT88 got buffed for some reason. This tank is probably the best money maker if you want to just get drunk as a skunk and just hold W and left click on some people.

    Pz.Kpfw. B2 740 (f) - Very good stat padder. Sees only tier 4 matches, and has enough armor to totally ignore most tier 3s and several tier 4s. The gun has extremely bad pen with extremely severe pen dropoff at range, and there are several tanks that can just eat you up for din, but still you're going to always be top tier and can always contribute. The worst thing about this thing isn't that Matildas will wreck you, it's that M3 Lees will wreck you, and that's far more humiliating. Still worth picking up if it's ever on sale at a reasonable price, since it's a massive step up from the Valentine II.

Turan III prototipus - Horrible. Literal garbage, possibly worse than the Matilda BP. So it has no armor, so all the 105mm HE Derps will full pen you, it's slower than a damn O-I Exp on flat ground and matches speed uphills, and the gun is mediocre but only carried 32 shells. You cannot kill 15 of any enemy your matchmaking will send you - you would lose to 15 tier 3s if you didn't get good high rolls or rams. You get 570 HP, which is a plus, but that's less than the T-25's and the T-25 is an actually good tank besides. Avoid at all costs.

    Pz.Kpfw. IV hydrostat. - Preferential Matchmaking tier 5. 550 HP is pretty beefy for a pref 5 medium, but the tank is otherwise poor. It's far too slow and the gun is merely adequate, while it also has very bad armor and bad view range. It isn't on the level of the Matilda Black Prince, and there's a limit on how bad a tier 5 with preferential matchmaking can be, but this really isn't that desirable. That it was first bundled with a $99 Razer mouse, and has just been sold on NA server in a $100 bundle with a pile of gold and credits (and equipment for the tank including Spall Liner because WGA are assholes) makes this tank just never worth your time or money.

    Pz.Kpfw. IV Schmalturm - Preferential matchmaking tier 6. Horrendous. Please never play this tank, it's too damn slow with no actual advantage.

    Pz.Kpfw. V/IV - Preferential matchmaking tier 6. It was a preorder bonus tank alongside the excellent  Allegedly being rebalanced as a tier 5. It's already a tier 5 in the Console version where it has an astonishingly high HP stockpile, and is known as the Rampanzer because it's a damn tier 5 Panther. Probably won't be sold on NA anyway but a man can have dreams of Rampanzerinos.

    E 25 - Preferential matchmaking tier 7. Better than almost every tier 7 TD. Has better camo and mobility than an ELC with an insanely high DPM gun with great accuracy. The pen is weak, even the 194mm pen APCR, and the tank only carried 60 shells so you may or may not run out of ammo before killing all 15 enemies. You are very likely stay unspotted in positions you would never expect to survive through. There is no reason for this tank to stay so massively overpowered AND keep its preferential matchmaking. There isn't ever a battle where I'd rather start as a JPanther than an E 25. It was given away to most players during a moderate grind event, and may or may not ever go on sale again, but it's worth it to buy it since it's just such an amazing vehicle.

    Panther/M10 - Preferential matchmaking tier 7. Known as a Warcrime Panther because the tank is so bad among other reasons. You are a stock Panther with 1300 HP, and that's about it. The E 25 is significantly better since the Warcrime doesn't really have any survivability outside of its big HP poor. It doesn't have camo or armor, and the gun simply cannot scare off enemy tanks, and the DPM is so low that you can't really finish off enemy tanks before they take a large chunk out of you. The E 25 has 2800 DPM, the Warcrime has a bit under 1900, and it really feels bad to play the same gun on the Warcrime after playing it on the E 25. Dang that E 25 is amazing.
IeKpz M41 90mm - It's a tier 8 light premium! It's a worse RU 251 with 100 less HP and ammo rack problems. It's fine, it's certainly not as horrible as the WZ-132, it's just not as good as the RU 251. If you want to play a premium high tier light tank, there aren't many options so this is as good as you'll get.

Kanonenjagdpanzer - Incredibly bad. Imagine a giant E 25 with regular tier 8 matchmaking without any of the actual things that makes the E 25 good. It is incredibly inferior to both the E-25 and the JT 88. Don't bother with this tank

Panzer 58 Mutz - Much worse than the CDC. It trades a lot of the engine power of the CDC for some meaningless armor.. You'll still get penned by almost everything, but maybe you'll save yourself from some enemy HE full pens. It also has lower DPM, and it's pretty noticable. It's still probably one of the better tier 8 mediums, certainly better than the Panther 2. The Mutz is missing an extra half a second on its reload, and that just keeps the tank a little bit too weak to endorse.

France
    FCM 36 Pak 40 - French TDs are a dead-end line now with a large number of stinkers, and the FCM still gets tier 5 matches on Sand River where you're just too slow to be fun. It no longer has Province to totally break in half with the 400m view range, and most of the lower tier maps are city maps where the FCM struggles. The poor Pak 40's time has passed it by.
    105 leFH18B2 - Not in store due to being overpowered as fuck. This is the secret reward for playing the French artillery line. If you didn't buy this when it was removed from the store, you made a very bad decision. If you weren't playing then, well at least you were never tricked into grinding French artillery. It was significantly nerfed by a few changes - first, HEAT ammo was all around nerfed, gaining several new disadvantages against spaced armor and the like, as well as the pen on the leFH's HEAT dropping from 150 to 104. Then, the overall accuracy was changed, leading to snapshots being far better than fully aimed shots. It makes the leFH a little worse, but not by much. It's still the best tier 5 artillery, better than most tier six artillery, and it still leads to incredible winrates even solopubbing.
    AMX 13 57 GF - Fun, expensive, not good. The tank is a bit sluggish due to the whole French light syndrome of weak engines, even if it gets up to a good speed. The gun fires 8 shells with 1 second between them, which is just incredibly fun, and the clip reload time is actually a reasonable 15 seconds or so. #snapshotmeta is really good for this tank, since you can just hold leftclick on enemy tanks and pen half your shells at 500 meters if you want to play at a distance, or just close in and dump 700 damage on some poor tank's butt. Unfortunately you'll just get totally clowned by most other tier 7 lights, all tier 8 lights, and any tier 9 or 10 tank with reasonable speed which really limits what you can do with this tank. Also the gold ammo really is necessary since 143 pen just does not cut it when you cannot aim precise shots (and really isn't even adequate against most tier 9s or 10s except with 90 degree side or rear shots) so this tank costs a lot to run.

Japan
Czechoslovakia