How is the… King Tiger (C)?

Seeing how the previous review I did didn't achieve what I wanted, I'm going to try something simpler and just review a single tank.

Today, I'm going to be going over the King Tiger (Captured), a tier 7 American premium heavy tank.

Acquirement

The King Tiger(C) is acquired through linking your Twitch Prime account to your World of Tanks account, and claiming a Care Package. The King Tiger is not a permanent addition to your garage, only being available to you as long as you have Twitch Prime. It will be removed from your garage if you cancel Twitch Prime. (Note, I am not sponsored in any way by Twitch or Amazon, obviously. I will not get a thing from any clicks or anything like that.)

A Twitch Prime account is free if you have Amazon Prime, and have linked your Twitch account to your Amazon Prime account.

You'll be set back roughly $13 a month in the US for an Amazon Prime account. But a Twitch Prime account also gives you free games, free loot for other games, and the ability to subscribe to a streamer of your choice for free. Currently there's an opportunity to get a 12 month Nintendo Online subscription! So even if you don't want the King Tiger, it could still be worth it for you.

Anyway, enough of the unpaid shilling. On to the tank itself!

History of the vehicle

This vehicle is, obviously, a captured King Tiger. This particular vehicle was captured by the 83rd Infantry. That unit tended to make use of a variety of captured equipment, including other panzers, like the Pz IV and StuG. The Tiger II in question was knocked out by a shot to the side of the turret, just behind the loader. You can see this on the style that the tank comes with. Where this tank ended up is unknown.

Firepower

Hard stats

Being the 8.8cm KwK 43 L/71, it has 203mm standard penetration, and 237mm premium penetration. Both of these shells have 240 alpha in the current version of the game. As for the HE shells, They have 44mm of penetration with 295 average damage.

AP/APCR/HE

203/237/44

240/240/295

Soft stats

The gun has a base dispersion of .35, with 2.4s aim time. As the tank is currently not on tanks.gg, I cannot look at the gun handling values. The gun handling does seem to be very similar to other tanks with the KwK 43 at this tier.

As well as those stats, it has a base reload of 8.15, giving it a rate of fire of 7.36 rounds per minute. The base DPM is 1,767.

These stats can be boosted by equipment and crew skills. With my current set-up, I have an aim time of 2.34, a dispersion of .034, a reload of 7.17s, a rate of fire of 8.37, and a DPM of 2,008.

My current crew.

Armour

Given that it's the Tiger II, a WOT player would expect the King Tiger to have poor armour. If this was tier 8, it would have poor armour. But, as I stated at the beginning of the review, this is a tier 7. As such, the King Tiger has rather decent armour, provided you use it correctly.

F/S/R, turret

185/80/80

F/S/R, hull

150/80/80

Notice that the rear armour is the same as the side. This is rather important, as it means that no HE shells are able to penetrate your rear armour, as would be the case with tanks such as the AMX M4 45, where tanks with >40mm HE penetration are able to penetrate the front and sides.

Turret

Unfortunately, the King Tiger shares the 40mm roof of the Tiger II, leading to guns >121mm being able to overmatch. Given this, you should be careful to not let any Russian or Chinese heavies get a shot at your turret roof.

The shape of the turret is something to note as well, as the sides will become weaker when you turn even slightly away from someone.

Hull
The lower plate is a 100mm, leading to the lower plate being the go-to spot to shoot.

Another thing on the hull to note is that the bottom of the sponsons are 25mm thick, leading to tanks with >75mm guns being able to overmatch. Looking at the model, you'll see that they sort of slope up the further forwards you go, meaning that this weakness is almost always visible, and greatly limits the effectiveness of side-scraping against people who know of this weakness, or those who get lucky when shooting at your angled side..

Mobility

One of two main weaknesses of this vehicle is the mobility, having a P/W ratio lower than 10 when fully kitted out. The top speed is nothing to write home about either, as it can only go to a terrible 38km/h top speed.(I'm ignoring the existence of the Black Prince to preserve what's left of my sanity.) The traverse speed is also terrible at 22 degrees per second base.

This thing is no speed demon.

Camo

This thing has utterly shit camo. At 7.3% while stationary, it cannot even sit in a bush and remain unspotted. And while moving, it's spotted from the fucking moon, with a concealment rating of 4.62%. This does take into account the camo bonus from the style.

Spotting

The view range of the King Tiger isn't actually that bad, being 380m base. This is joint best along with all the tanks that aren't Russian or Chinese. Or Polish.

Oh, and it has 710m signal range, so you'll have a decent map update speed.

Verdict

I actually quite like the tank itself, as it proves that the Tiger II would be balanced at tier 7 with only a few soft stat nerfs.

The King Tiger is a good premium tank for those who don't have any premium tanks to speak of, as it does make decent credits due to having such good standard rounds.

However, as to whether it's worth picking up is up to you. While Twitch Prime is good, rewarding people with an exclusive tank is a bit manipulative. But then again, what else is new with companies?

Overall, the tank itself is rather good starter premium, and would be worth picking up if it were to go on sale by itself. Which, as of now, is incredibly unlikely.

So yeah, that's a review. Might have been a bit wonky with the wording, but I hope it's legible for most people.

Unsure which vehicle I'm going to cover next, or if I am going to cover another vehicle. I guess we'll see. I am open to suggestions, however.