Only the lonely - One of the crowd

During the Stream Event for Armored Warfare today, I could only muster about an hours worth of playtime. Although I took out all my premium tanks, Type 59 Legend, MBT-70 MERC and Leopard 2AV ICE to earn some fast, big credits, it was my artillery, Gvosdika, that I was hoping to cash in big time with reputation.

I will say this now, in case nobody got the subtleties from my previous conversation on this vehicle, I don't particularly like this class. Despite actually getting better using it, it's the playstyle that's the turnoff. 

I have dabbled with this same class in World of Tanks and played it very casually. I didn't like the top down view it offered, the glacial load times and most importantly, how a good chunk of the community over there treated the players who used them.

I don't mind Armored Warfare's approach to the angular view, a definite better step by adding some depth to the gameplay. Still, this class here suffers from a lack of armor and long reload times, but they can be mitigated with a little careful planning and patience.

This picture sums up the biggest drawback to playing artillery, from my perspective, disconnected. See, when I login and play any of my other tanks, even during my solo adventures, I feel like I am part of a team. Rolling with other armor pieces, loooking the enemy in the eye, so to speak and such forth. With artillery, I almost equate the play to a stranger looking in on a battle in progress. 

A few hours after my lobbing shells at artificial enemies match, I connected up with F50ACE for some upper tier action. As I was readying up my tier VII Challenger 1, I realized that I haven't taken this tank out on very many solo missions, seems to only come out when he is around. Not that is a bad thing.

While we played quite a few battles that night, this one stands out from the others for a few reasons. First off, this was the only battle, so far since we started platooning, where we were the top tanks and also the only main battle tanks on our team. We both thought this wasn't going to be an easy fight from the very start.

I can't explain this weird shot, but, somewhere in there, I collect my first kill.

This shot was pure lucky timing and proof that good advice should be considered. F50ACE, along with stuff I have read on the forums, both have stated on many occasions, the Challenger 1 is a tinderbox waiting to ignite. Buying both types of fire extinguishers is the best thing I ever did, along with listening to the suggestion to do so.

A lucky screenshot of collecting the last kill of the battle, just at the capture clock ran out.

Here I am, listening to more good advice. By using some banked up reputation, I unlocked an armor retrofit slot and add a few more hitpoints to the Challenger's numbers.

All ready and raring to go for the next series of sorties.