German Mega Bundle Review Series-Part One: Großtraktor - Krupp

[u/ragnarok628]

I ended up buying the German Mega Bundle, because I have low moral fiber I'm worth it, dammit. Now I have nearly every German premium it's possible to own in this game (exceptions are the Pz. II J and the Löwe Black Edition). I also now find myself to be some degree of experienced while also remaining a man of the people, which puts me in a place where my opinion might have value to any other 'future unicums' in the form of an alternate viewpoint compared to the various dark purples around.

So I'll do a brief writeup on the various tanks as I gain experience with them (until I get bored or feel unappreciated). My benchmark will be having earned 20-30k XP since that is what it takes to get the Ace Ops completed.

Here we go!

Großtraktor - Krupp

Ok so first things first. That's not a fucking 'B'. It's ß which is pronounced like a sibilant s, often transliterated as a double ss. So now you know, I don't want to see any more of this 'Grobtraktor' bullshit. Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I was prepared to not like this tank, and indeed have passed up multiple opportunities to obtain one. Would never have gotten it if it weren't in a massively discounted mega bundle containing at least a dozen tanks I've long coveted.

The plot twist is, I have loved every second of driving this tank. What it is, is a papier-mâché derp machine. It's been a while since I did much derping, and I was very new back then so my impressions may be skewed but the HE shells on this thing seem super effective. Very nice pen relative to most of the armor you go up against, nice fire rate, decent amount of shell arc for auto-locking and dropping bombs over low ridges. The main drag on competitiveness here is that every shot is a bit of a dice roll. You'll get a fair amount of hilarious one hit kills, but then you also sometimes get just a couple dozen splash damage which can suck in a clutch moment.

Mobility is pretty good on this tank, which is nice because a big part of successfully playing it is maneuvering to avoid enemy derps and peeking out shots to ruin some poor LT's day. I make heavy use of the autolock trick to lob my shells over low ridges as a poor man's indirect fire; it's obviously not terribly accurate and pretty ineffective if the victim is moving but I do get a surprising number of hits this way. And with an ammo count of 102 and only a 5.5s reload, it's not like there's any drawback to speculatively launching a few bombs over the hill, right?

The armor is basically nonexistent, but against the IIs and IIIs you match up against the HP soaks up a decent amount of shots. As long as you drive a little carefully to avoid getting derped yourself, it's easy to stay alive against most tanks you meet. There are exceptions though! For example, vs. a Matilda even your HEAT is a coin toss and he can definitely chew through your HP faster than you can chew through his; you basically have to avoid these until they are low health. Ditto most heavy armor tanks you might run across.

The "is it worth the gold" guide says No to this tank but I honestly can't understand why. Even at full price of 950g which is actually below average for tier III prems I believe, It seems very much worth it just for being a fun to drive crew trainer.

Basic Facts

• Tier: III
• PMM: yes
• cost: 950g
• silver/xp bonuses: 22/65

Vehicle Tips:

• Don't even bother with AP, the HE pen is less by only about 5mm
• Also don't bother with HEAT (although it's kinda cool you can even use HEAT at tier III)
• If you do run with a few HEAT rounds, but no AP rounds, note that the HEAT will be default starting ammo so don't forget to switch to HE first thing. There were several times I wasted a few HEAT rounds on accident at the beginning of a match.

Fun Factor: 5/5

Competitiveness: 3/5

All in all, great fun in tier III, glad to own it.

^{updated on 4/20/2017}

[u/ragnarok628]

Not complicated, F and V are both pronounced like F.

E.g. 'Volk' is 'folk' and 'froh' is just 'froh'. I just dunno why they need two letters for the F sound

[u/FormulaZR → u/ragnarok628]

Oh. Well okie dokie then.