World of Tanks is a massive online battle arena game in which players take part in pitched battles featuring hulking battle tanks from the World War II era.
Players earn experience and credits to develop their crew further and work up to bigger and better ‘tiers’ of tanks. Originally released on PC, then later ported to consoles, World of Tanks Blitz is the mobile version of the game which has since been ported to PC.
As with other versions of World of Tanks, Blitz is an incredibly popular esports title with tournaments and competitions happening on a global scale.
World of Tanks Blitz Twister Cup
Developed by Belarusian company Wargaming, there are few gamers who don’t know about World of Tanks, as well as Wargaming’s other titles World of Warships and World of Warplanes.
What you might not know though is that mid-November, a tournament was held in Belarus for World of Tanks Blitz. An Asia-Pacific team known as ULTIMATE Feast captained by an Aussie competed against the world’s best player in an invite-only event. I was fortunate enough to catch up for a quick chat with ULTIMATE Feast captain B_SaltyMadd.
PowerUp! – First of all congratulations on coming 6th at the Blitz Twister Cup, it’s a feat in and of its own to even participate in such a fierce competition.
What sort of traits do you look for in a World of Tanks teammate?
B_SaltyMadd – As we are not a team that over-emphasize on personal skill, we look for teammates that are able to play with us as a team. Of course, they themselves have to be somewhat capable in the game as well.
PowerUp! – As something of a World of Tanks amateur who rushes the point, can you tell me what sort of planning goes into preparing for a World of Tanks match?
B_SaltyMadd – We usually prepare our matches by studying the tactics and use all the opportunities to make sure our team-play is on the right track.
We would use stratsketch (a very useful website that helps planning deployment tactics), and training room sessions to make sure everyone knows what to do.
PowerUp! – How do you decide which tanks each teammate will play, their role and the right gear for the job?
B_SaltyMadd – We often assign roles based on what tanks they play the most, their specialty, play-style and experience in those tanks.
The roles shift as we introduce new tactics into the mix, and everyone will get to try to play their tank from a new perspective, which also helps them to understand each other’s role and help them to understand how to work with their teammates in the best possible way.
PowerUp! – What’s a typical day in the life of a World of Tanks pro player? How often do you train and what does a session consist of?
B_SaltyMadd – It may sound surprising, but our day as a “pro” player may not be much different from how everyone else plays.
We start up the game on our devices and we just have a go at it as everyone would normally do. But when it comes to tournament gameplay, we would go pretty serious.
To us, every tournament battle is a training. We believe that joining tournaments and playing against serious opponents benefits us more than just theory-crafting in training rooms. We do organize private training on occasions, but it’s mostly when we are crafting new recipe for the next opponent.
PowerUp! – How do patches and changes in Meta influence your playstyle? Individually and as a team.
B_SaltyMadd – Patches and changes in Meta definitely influence a lot in tournament play-style.
New patches that introduce new Tier X vehicle, or introduce any changes to existing Tier X vehicles will make every reconsider tactics and perhaps adopt new playstyles into their tournament gameplay, which is why we always join any tournaments available to make sure we are up-to-date with the latest tactics and tank meta, and try to shift to counter them or adapt to it.
PowerUp! – What’s next up for ULTIMATE Feast?
B_SaltyMadd – We may have come last in the Blitz Twister Cup, but to us (and more importantly to me), this is only the start of our team.
Our next goal is to become the first team in Asia to obtain the invitation to Blitz Twister Cup for the Second time, and also to lead the Asia server meta forward (we may not be the best team for the job, but we will definitely try to do our best), so we stand more of a chance in the next offline tournament.
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I’d like to give a big thanks to B_SaltyMadd for his time and a huge congrats to ULTIMATE Feast for representing APAC on the world stage.
I look forward to seeing more from them, it appears I have a long way to go if I ever hope to ‘git gud’ at World of Tanks. But hey, if they ever need someone to jump in a Panzer II and scream “FIX BAYONETS” over the microphone as they blitz across the open ground to get into melee range, well then I know a guy.
Keep up to date with the happenings in the World of Tank scene over on their Twitter page, and don’t forget you can follow PowerUp! on Twitter for more gaming news and daily articles.
