Make it a Light

Time to switch things up a bit here and take a step outside my comfort zone. In World of Tanks, I am what some might call a predominately Heavy Tank player. So, a lot of the lessons I learned from there, like relying on armor and more than just decent firepower, with a tradeoff in vehicle speed and agility, can apply to how I use my Main Battle Tanks in Armored Warfare.

Light Tanks were nothing more than a means to an end over there, you had to grind through them to reach up into the Heavy Tank branches. It wasn't until WarGaming started to gift out premium Light Tanks that I started to take a much closer look at them. Little metal boxes that zipped around the battlefield, pew-pew those nasty bad guys. Occasionally, my brain would kick in and I would use them for their intended purpose; mobile forward observation vehicles, better known as scouts.

Now, I figured with a 30% off sale on Light Tanks this weekend in Armored Warfare https://aw.my.com/us/news/general/light-tank-weekend I would give them a serious try here. Although I have an unused tier II M41 sitting in my garage, I chose to cash in on the acquired reputation from playing Marat Shishkin's offerings and dive right into things with the tier III FV101 Scorpion.

First, I switched in Sabrina Washington as the vehicle commander, thinking her skills would be better suited for the taskings and with only one retrofit spot, installed Intercom Systems Mk II, to help with my skill less crew.

Yeah, so much for being smart about things, because during the very first match I take the Scorpion into and right after the countdown timer had ended, the dumb kicked in. I was playing it way too aggressively, allowing that false sense of speed replacing armor to take over.

I had seen other players use this tank, most with high levels of success and naturally thought I could do the same. I was spotting, racking damage and outkilling everyone on my team, as the match progressed.

Light Tanks....

....Main Battle Tanks....

....and Tank Destroyers were falling to my gun. I was feeling invincible!

Then, it all came to a sudden end. Where did I go wrong? First, I played my brand new Scorpion like a frontline assaulter. Perhaps, with more experience and the ability to memorize the map and all the spawn positions, this might work, but not the first game out. Second, I outran my team, there were no guns to cover me as I pushed forward. Having said that, my team did have an excellent artillery player, who was able to use my running around with my hair on fire to deal out some damage and kills to the enemy team.

In the end, the battle was lost, my team was all but wiped out and our last remaining player had no support to swing the conclusion into our favor.

In all, four battles were fought with only that single, first defeat. I would make two trips to Operation: Umbrella and one more back to Operation: Onyx, applying some of the quick lessons I learned from tonight.