This Friday the Polar Challenge starts for the Object 274A, a Tier VIII Russian Medium. It's your standard World of Tanks Marathon event - you have to do daily missions over 10 days. If you do all 10 missions in the 10 days you get the tank for free. Most people will come up short (we'll get into that momentarily) and will get a discount to buy the tank with real money - and the remaining rewards.
Let's dig in a bit...
Eyes on the Prize
The most obvious prize for this marathon is the tank. It's a Tier 8 Russian Medium and it is a premium tank, which means you do get extra credits and crew training from it.
At a glance the advertised stats are pretty impressive. It's a brawling medium, sort of like the Obj 430 line is. It wouldn't be unfair to describe it as a slightly-worse (well, it's 1 tier lower) T-54.
🔎Here's a Tanks.GG comparison page you can play with
The alpha is a very nice 320 and the standard pen is a quite good 227 (That's better than the T-54; but not as good as the Obj 430). Gun depression is -6 degrees which is basically the same as comparable Tier 8 Russian MTs. Base reload is 8.63, but adding a rammer will get you down around 7.75 and boost the DPM to nearly 2500, which is quite respectable.
Base gun dispersion is around .36 which is better than the T-54 (but not as good as the T-44-100 or STG) but the standard shell velocity is 1043 which is much better than any of the comparable Russian MTs.
One downside is that it only has 1200 health, which is less than the comparable Russian MTs. Also the shell costs are considerably more than the T-44-100, and somewhat more than the STG, which means it might not be a great credit earner.
Top speed is a very good 58, but P/W ratio is kinda meh. It should be more sluggish than a T-44-100 or T-54, but a bit more nimble than the Obj 430 or STG, so it might be worth adding a Turbocharger.
With a good crew and mounting a Turbo, Rammer, and Optics you've got a pretty good tank - 2528 DPM, 63 top speed, camo approaching 33 stationary and 25.5 on the move, 461.5 view range and 220 frontal turret armor...all of this in a Tier 8 premium.
UPDATE: I got mine and took it out for a battle. It's not OP, but it's pretty good. Russian gun handling. With the turbo I didn't find the mobility to be awful (though it's not fast). The armor is pretty good. I may try swapping out the optics for VStabs or Improved Rotation - just to try it.
Other prizes
The tank isn't all you get though - you also get a garage slot, a zero-skill BIA crew, training books, premium time, boosters and a bunch of other stuff as well.
What do you have to do?
Here's the catch...the marathon really is a marathon. You have 10 days to complete 10 stages by doing missions. The stages have two different "paths" in that you can either:
Grind a bunch of base XP in a Tier VI-X tank (Commitment)
Two things to remember here:
- Tier 5 or lower tanks DON'T count - so don't think you're going to grind this out in your PZ-IC or KV-1.
- You have to finish Top 10 in XP on your team for that battle to count. So you may have the occasional bad game where your score doesn't count at all because you finished 11th (or worse) in base XP.
Update: Fixing my math. :-)
The thing is...the amount of total XP needed is in the vicinity of 254,000. This may require 500 or more battles for the average player. If the average battle time is 6 minutes that would be at least 50 hours of play, which is an average of more than 5 hours a day, every day, for 10 days.
If you have a family and a job that may be tough to do.
Do great things in a Tier IX or X tank (Mastery)
This can be faster, because it's possible to do it in just a game or a handful of games if you play extremely well. But it's possible you'll never do it - the very first mission is to get a High Caliber award. You could play all day and maybe never get a High Caliber.
On the other hand you could get a High Caliber in your very first battle, then you're on to stage 2 in less than 15 minutes.
💡My recommendation
If you have Tier IX or X tanks you should play them. You don't have to declare which mission you're trying for - so while you're trying to "Do 3500 damage and be top 3 on the team" or "Get High Caliber 4 times" you're still accumulating Base XP, so even if you can't do the Mastery mission you'll eventually finish the Commitment mission and advance to the next stage.
Consolation prize...
The good news is that even if you only play an hour or so a day you can probably get through 5 or 6 of the stages, and you get 10% off for each stage you complete. So ultimately you'd get to buy the tank for 50% or 60% off. Also, when you buy the tank as part of the Polar Challenge you ALSO get all of those other rewards (boosters, training books, etc) that come with any stages you didn't manage to finish.
Frequently asked questions
❓ Do I have to start on the first day of the event?
No. The stages are cumulative. You can do them all on the 10th day if you're good enough to complete them all in just 24 hours.
❓ Do I have to wait all 10 days?
No. When you finish a stage you unlock the next stage. So you can do them all in just a day or two if you're good enough and willing to grind that much.
❓ What does the tank cost to buy?
The package on NA is $75.35 to buy, if you have no discounts.
Post-Progression Missions
A lot of players, including me, used to approach these marathons as "I'll play pretty much as normal for the 10 days, and see how far I get. Hopefully I get at least 5-6 levels done and then I'll buy the tank for 50-60% off when the marathon has ended."
Wargaming has gotten very smart though...they've created a set of Post-Progression Missions for additional benefits.
But here's the thing...the Post-Progression Missions start the day after the Marathon starts, there's one mission per day AND the missions expire. Which means the Marathon starts on the 26th, the first Post-Progression mission starts on the 27th.
...and you can only do these missions IN THE OBJ. 274A. Which means you can't even start the Post-Progression Missions until you HAVE the Obj. 274A.
And the Post-Progression Missions are NOT cumulative - they expire each day and you can't do the previous ones later. So if you don't get the Obj. 274A until 8 days into the marathon, you'll only be able to do the last 3 or 4 Post-Progression Missions.
So for most players that means if you want to get many of the Post-Progression rewards, you'll need to buy the tank sooner, rather than playing out 10 days and seeing how much of a discount you can get to.
💡My approach
Looking at the Post-Progression Missions I don't really care that much about the first two sets of rewards. They're mostly just boosters and Premium time and I have plenty of both. But the 3rd Post-Progression mission includes a Universal Training Manual, which I care a bit more about.
So...I'm going to play the first 2-3 days and see how much discount I can grind on the Obj. 274A. I think I can probably get at least 20% and maybe 40% if I play particularly well. Then on the 4th day (when the 3rd Post-Progression Mission goes live) I'll just buy the Obj. 274A and grind it from there.
What Dez has to say..
What do you think about the Polar Challenge? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
GLHF!
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