Just had a battle that highlighted bad scout play on El Halluf. Tier IX-VII battle, we're in the North spawn and I'm top tier in my T-54. Each team has two scouts: ours are a 13 57F and a 13 75, they're from the same clan and they're platooned together.
You may recall we talked about light tank play on El Halluf once before here.
Right from the outset both of our scouts drive to B2 and sit there, shoulder to shoulder. The enemy 50 100 shows up, their UDES 16 shows up. KV-3, Jagdtiger, IS-2-II, Type 59G... Our 13 75 leaves, but our 13 57F sits there and tries to brawl.
GLHF!
You may recall we talked about light tank play on El Halluf once before here.
Right from the outset both of our scouts drive to B2 and sit there, shoulder to shoulder. The enemy 50 100 shows up, their UDES 16 shows up. KV-3, Jagdtiger, IS-2-II, Type 59G... Our 13 75 leaves, but our 13 57F sits there and tries to brawl.
Why is this a bad play in World of Tanks?
It's a bad play for a few reasons:
- They're not playing to any of the strengths of their tank. They have no meaningful armor (especially against Tier IXs) and they have nominal alpha, pen and DPM. There was nothing at that corner they could reliably pen frontally and everything at that corner could easily pen them - maybe even with HE. Why would you get into a phone booth with a 50 100 in a 13 57F?
- They're not helping their team. In #1 we showed that they're not going to win that fight - they're basically throwing their tanks away - and they're not going to contribute any significant damage for their team.
They're not spotting anything. The NW corner fight on El Halluf happens at very close range, very little of it over 100m. Everybody can spot for themselves just fine. Furthermore they're not really getting useful intel. We all know that 3/4 of the enemy team are going to C1/C2 so it doesn't tell us anything when the UDES 16 shows up there. Quite to the contrary - it would be useful to know if the UDES 16, or the 50 100, went south. But since we had no eyes down there...
...because they've left everything south of B line wide open for the enemy. Since they're behind the rock at B2 they can't even incidentally spot the C line from there, much less anything else. Sure enough the enemy Type 62 was able to cross all the way to F8 unspotted and get into our backfield. And the enemy SkorpG and T28 Prototype got to the C5 ramp unspotted and started putting shots into us from behind.
With no scouts in the valley our snipers on the C line were blind and outspotted. - They're duplicating efforts. It's almost never useful to have multiple scouts side-by-side. The more vision you have on the map the better. You get more shots, you know where the enemy is going, you can better react or exploit holes in their line.
That's one reason why I always tell my team during the countdown where I'm planning to go in my light tank. I may even specifically ASK other LTs on my team where they plan to go so I can adjust accordingly. If I'm heading to my initial spot and I see another LT on my team going to the same spot, I'll usually peel off and try to do something else.
Because it's usually pointless to have both scouts in the same bush.
The Results
As you might expect our two LT friends died fast and ended up 14th and 15th in XP on our team. Fortunately for us, the enemy team was mostly pretty bad and we managed to win anyhow.
I do want to give a shout out, though to stanleyeung from the MGE clan on the other team who gave a master class in how to play the UDES 16 hull-down. His team didn't keep up, but he used the UDES 16 at the C2 corner extremely well.
I do want to give a shout out, though to stanleyeung from the MGE clan on the other team who gave a master class in how to play the UDES 16 hull-down. His team didn't keep up, but he used the UDES 16 at the C2 corner extremely well.
Other perspectives
I'm going to criticize a streamer and praise a streamer here... :)
First off, the criticism. Let me start by saying that I respect the heck out of LemmingRush. He's a great player and a very good streamer. I've learned a lot watching his videos and I enjoy them. However...
...he tends to play light tanks like mediums and on El Halluf he advocates for doing what our 13 57F did. He's got a video where he shows that in a WZ-131 (and another where he does it in a Type 64 as I recall) and in both of those videos he loses half his HP at the NW corner before finally falling back to do other, more useful, stuff. Both of those videos show him having a great game, but if you notice the great part of his game doesn't really start until he leaves the NW corner. Going NW at the start in his LTs just ends up costing him a lot of HP for very little gain.
On the other side of this coin is 4TankersandDog who show how you can scout El Halluf in a LT. Here's his video:
Still skeptical of my advice? That's totally fine. Try out a few tactics for yourself and see what works best for you and your teams.
GLHF!
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