Finnish T-34 — A "Russian" Tank

You’ve seen this tank way too many times, let’s acknowledge that. You’ve seen Russia and China use it; now, we have Finland using it. The Finnish T-34, like its Soviet and Chinese counterparts, has a parallel playstyle to the early and late versions of the T-34 series, in which its angling can bounce off any shell given the right angle, along with an arsenal of APHEBC and the APBC rounds to utilize to take out your opponents with. This tank, one of the many captured Russian T-34s during the Winter War from 1939–1940, is sufficient enough for angling and reliable firepower to achieve in capturing capture points, or reaching positions to surprise and take down enemies with.

Armor and Survivability

Like all T-34 variants (both Early and Late), this T-34 is given the iconic 60 degrees of sloping on the hull, despite its 45mm exact armor thickness. The frontal and side slope is good enough to deflect most AP shells that would typically penetrate your tank in the front. The turret has about 45mm of armor as well, but with minimal sloping compared to the hull. Unfortunately, due to such sloping of the armor, it makes the interior of the tank tightly compact, and the turret’s cramped interior isn’t much better; you’re susceptible to AP or APHE snuffing you out with ease if you get flanked. Three weakspots you must note when playing this tank are the turret mantlet, the MG port, and the driver’s hatch, as all three are easy ways to clean out the crew should the enemy use APHE.

Firepower and Ammunition

The stock 76mm APHEBC, BR-350A (MD-5 fuse), has 87mm max penetration, which is usually enough to frontally penetrate most tanks, as long as careful placement is used since this shell can’t frontally pen all tanks, and thanks to its HE filler it’ll wipe out the entire interior of the enemy’s tank with ease.

The APBC round, BR-350SP, is a solid AP round that has a higher penetration value than either stock or modification APHE at the cost of the HE filler. With a higher pen value, it can take out slightly stronger targets, but without HE filler to clean out the crew, it relies on careful placement of shots and shrapnel to take out the enemy target, as long as you know critical components like ammo or tightly packed crew member.

The APHEBC round BR-350B (MD-8 fuse) has better penetration than the stock round and slightly less pen than the APBC round. It is the go-to shell after using the APBC round to fully maximize taking out targets. This round can frontally penetrate almost most tanks at its BR, some with sloping like the M10 or M4 Sherman. While it has slightly less penetration value than the solid AP round (negligible), its HE filler is more than enough, just like the stock APHEBC round, to get the job done.

The HE and Shrapnel ammunition, OF-350M and Sh-354T (both stock alongside APHE like all WW2 Russian tanks), leaves much to be desired as both are only helpful against light targets and SPAA and only have a practical use for Overpressure against SPAA and open-top vehicles.

Its gun handling is pretty casual, not suffering too much from gun bounce as it stabilizes pretty quickly once you stop the tank. Its turret traversal is sub-par, but luckily isn’t as slow with 23.8°/s (32.9°/s if upgraded), so you’ll still be relatively able to respond quickly to certain situations like close-range combat or changing targets in mid to long-range combat, though keep in mind of its 9.0s reload speed (6.9 if aced so that you can neglect it).

Despite having decent ammunition for long-range usage, its scoping is not very good, as its magnification is only 3.5x gunsight zoom, making engaging targets at a distance challenging. This won’t hinder Arcade Battle players since aim assist is available. For Realistic Battle players, those used to sniper roles with other tanks will find themselves using close-range tactics because of the bad zoom magnification.

Mobility

With a forward speed of 55 km/h (49 km/h), wide tracks, and a generous Power-to-Weight ratio, one would exploit this tank’s speed to help bring it to a position where you can ambush unsuspecting enemies at corners, and even assault enemies with its mobility, assuming that you’re playing this tank with its angling. Its reverse speed, in both Arcade and Realistic battles, is problematic when trying to reverse out of a bad situation (-8 km/h in Arcade/ -7 km/h in Realistic), so make sure that you plan accordingly and study the map of the battle you’re in so that you don’t find yourself in a sticky situation. The wide tracks of this tank thankfully allow it to traverse in terrain easily that would otherwise slow it down.

Enemies Worth Noting:

There are a couple of tanks that can (and will) destroy your T-34, so keep these in mind so you know how to combat them:

• M4 Sherman (CHA and RHA; flank RHA to destroy with APHE, as CHA can be penetrated anywhere). 
• T-34 (Russian and Chinese; flank to destroy either). 
• Tank Destroyers (M10, StuG, SU-85, flank to destroy; For weakly armored TD, use HE). 
• Heavy Tanks (KV-1 and 2, Churchill, T14; flank and aim at turret to destroy, as hull may be impenetrable, even from the side)

Playstyle

As mentioned above, with this tank’s armament and model, you need to play these two tactics to combat enemies either weaker or greater than you:

Ambush: With its impressive forward mobility to allow it to reach certain positions before your teammates, not only will you be able to reach capture points with ease, but you’ll be able to get the jump on enemies through flanking, or ambushing the enemy’s side, to take them out with your APHE.

Assault: This is also a viable option, as with proper angling of this tank (35-45°) you can bounce most shells that would otherwise penetrate you frontally and you would make the best use of your angled side armor, placing stress on the enemy and giving you time to push forward.