I don't play my WZ-111 that often, but decided to take it out this morning in part because I was enjoying HTs and figured I'd try to get the x5 bonus towards field mods on it. Got a battle on Prok that I thought I'd talk about a little.
We were in the North spawn in Standard mode.
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| The Prokhorovka map in World of Tanks |
The lineup is key
The very first tip I offered in my Five Things Good Players do more Often than Average Players article was to Look at the Lineup. This was key in this battle because there were three important things to know:
- It was a Tier 9 battle, so I wasn't top tier, and the enemy had an AE Phase I and a Tortoise, so I wasn't going to be very successful trying to bully/brawl their 9s.
- There were no arty! On Prok, in a HT, this is very important.
- Each team had only 1 LT. Ours was a Hotch, theirs was a 13 57. That wasn't great for us, the 13 57 should outspot the Hotch; it was just a matter of how good/crazy the Hotch driver was I guess.
Why is no arty important?
On Prok, in a heavy, having no arty is important because it means that E6 is open. E6 (and F6 from the other spawn) is a great position for HTs because it gives you shots on the hill or to the 1/2 line, you can poke the ridge and get shots on the enemies directly across from you, and if your team pushes in deep enough you can often even get shots on the arty or TDs sitting pretty far back. And the ridge gives you cover for your lower plate so you can play most of that hull down.
The WZ-111 only has 5 degrees of gun depression, but with careful maneuvering you can still make E6 work.
But the AE Phase I
One concern with going to E6 is that if the enemy AE Phase I went to F6 he could play hull down and give me a lot of trouble if I wasn't careful.
Sure enough, the AE *DID* go to F6 but fortunately he was a little timid, we were able to keep him spotted while minimizing our exposure, and our 1/2 line group was pretty aggressive, so they had early side shots on him and were about to put him down without too much trouble. In fact, he only managed to fire ONE shot the entire battle, which is a pretty dismal performance from that guy in what seems like very good matchmaking for him.
The gameplay
From E6 I had no shortage of targets, and RNG was smiling on me. I had shots on the T54 Mod 1, Standard B and the T26E5 on the hill, as well as the Leo who was way back around G2.
We didn't have the gun depression to do anything for the AE Phase I, but didn't really need to. We even managed to get a little bit of spotting damage when we'd poke our spotting point over the ridge to take a peek and see the enemy tanks that were in the middle.
Time to push
One key moment came several minutes in. The AE Phase I was already dead and the enemy Tortoise and SU-130PM were in the F6 area. The Tortoise was basically permaspotted and had taken a lot of damage from our guys on the hill and on the 1/2 line.
I was watching to see if he'd rotate away from me, figuring I could take one shot from the SU-130PM, but if we could take the Tortoise out and push over the ridge into F6 that would be key.
Sure enough, he rotated towards the 1/2 line because he was taking fire from that side, and I took the opportunity to push over the ridge. Fortunately our T32 and Tortoise saw me go and followed my move. I didn't get a shot on the Tortoise but our Tortoise managed to kill him quickly.
As expected I ate a shot from the SU-130PM but with my downhill speed (and the WZ-111 is fairly mobile for an HT) I actually was able to ram him to death pretty easily.
Shelter from the storm
After I ram-killed the SU-130PM I knew I was lit, in fact I bounced a shot from their Scorpion off my turret. Fortunately the corpse of the AE Phase I was sitting right there, so I backed up a few meters and parked directly behind it - taking cover from any enemy fire from the 1/2 line until I could get un-spotted again.
One other important point...
Before I made this move I checked to see that the enemy on the hill had already been pushed back down their own side...so I wasn't going to eat multiple shots from the Standard B or any other bushwankers at H0. And knowing that my team owned the hill, I deliberately pushed on the Eastern side of the E6 buildings so they could give me a bit of cover from their 1/2 line shooters.
From there it was mostly cleanup on aisle 6 time. I killed their Standard B as he tried to run across the K line to join their guys in the SW corner and got some other good/lucky shots into TDs and HTs in the SW as our 1/2 line guys pushed further forward and lit them.
Mop up
Now that we owned F6 and the hill, and our 1/2 line guys were doing well it was basically clean up time. There were a handful of enemy tanks left, all of them basically in the SW corner. I pushed down the 6 line then realized it would be helpful for us to have some spotting from the middle.
It was a bit of a risky play because I knew turning West was going to get me spotted and I just hoped I'd be low enough down in the dip to not have to take too much damage. Luck be with me as I headed to the H5 bushes, I did get lit, but bounced all three of the shots the enemy was able to put on me. In the process I lit their SU-101 and SU-100M1...and my teammates quickly sent them back to the garage.
At this point I'd pushed all the way to the H3 ridge, and just worked back and forth behind that ridge, showing only my turret, and managed a few last spots/shots into their Tiger I, KV-3, and IS-2-II (actually my shot arrived a moment after a teammate killed him) before the game was over.
The results
Nice win, 1st in XP, 2nd in damage. 4K combined, 5 kills.
GLHF!
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