Hey Tankers! Welcome to Map Monday.
Our Map for the Week: Glacier!
This map Features a large frozen body of water, with a small snowbank forming a ridgeline for hull-down play in the center,a warship graveyard in the North for close-quarters brawling, as well as a frozen field featuring a scenic mountain road flanking route in the South.
Check out the music video featuring Glacier's majestic Orchestral Score and enjoy some frigid scenery below.
The North
As a general rule of thumb, your close-range brawlers will typically gravitate towards the North, to fight around the carrier and the shipwrecks to the North, which offer plenty of cover and opportunities for sidescraping. Eyes on your minimap! This is a risky flank as each firing lane will leave you exposed to enemy fire from other lanes.
About the Aircraft Carrier:
A bold play up the Aircraft Carrier will favor vehicles with better mobility and hull-down characteristics, as the steep incline will leave vehicles with even the strongest Gun Depression struggling to find shots. Driving up the carrier is a high-risk play with a potentially low return, depending on whether you will be able to spot targets once you get there.
The Middle
The South
If you are in a close-range brawler such as a Heavy, Assault TD, or Hulldown Medium, it’s possible to slow push the mountain road in the Southeast, at the risk of exposing your flank to enemy fire from the village and lower defilade on the South side. The mountain road is situationally viable for Stealthy TD’s as well, since it offers quite a few sniping locations with ample hard cover + foliage.
Keep in mind, you are in a corner of the map! The maximum render range will only allow you to see about halfway up the snowbank in the middle of the map!
As you approach the bottom of the road on either side, you have to cross a big open field of doom to reach the enemy cap. One will often see a successful initial push crumble when reaching the last leg of the journey to the cap circle, as the spawn points are littered with bushes and potential sniper’s nests where Snipers (TD’s, Support Heavies) can set up for a surprise attack.
Southeast Firing Lanes
Defending Base:
If you’re going to defend base: Keep in mind that not all cover spots in spawn are as useful as they may appear. Several locations will not present you with any opportunities to fire at enemy targets until lategame.
As a rule of thumb, deploying in a way where you will not be able to make a difference until after you lose a flank is planning for failure. Instead of waiting for a flank to crumble, take an aggressive early location but fall back early! That way you can keep firing until they’re pushing your base. The longer you stay alive, the more influence you can have on the course of the game.
Finally, some tips from the community:
JunkersHiryu’s first impressions of Glacier (paraphrased from memory. Correct me if I’m wrong on anything, Junkers!)
JunkersHiryu
The North Flank seems like a fool’s push. You’re exposed to a lot of enemy fire from spawn after turning either corner of the Aircraft Carrier. This seems more like a flank that you send tanks to hold, rather than a flank where you should be committing your main push.
You’ll probably almost always want to stay out of the middle. There’s not much you can do from the ice, and you can take fire from so many different locations.
For the most part, the mountain road seems to be the most effective place to bunker down and snipe enemy targets from behind all that foliage. Pushing will likely be along the South Flank in general, but take care when pushing cap as you are exposed to sniper fire when approaching the Cap Circle on either side, from every lane.
For more strategies, guides, vehicle reviews, and general tanking info, tune into JunkersHiryu's Twitch Stream (Typically starting at 2PM PT on Weekdays, also streaming on the Wargaming NA Twitch Channel on Saturdays)
Visual General Map Guide
Big thanks to u/Playmorekv1 on Reddit for inspiring this visual representation! A few small tweaks were made by me in hopes of clarity, but many of these locations are taken directly from u/Playmorekv1’s map guides. You can check out some more of their map guides here and here!
Also, if you'd like to make nifty Map Diagrams of your own, check out Strat Sketch, an easy and super-useful utility for visualizing map strategies real-time. Extremely useful for planning out your Clan Wars strategies.
That just about wraps up my take on Glacier, but I'd love to hear everyone's strategies for the map as well. What are some of your favorite spots on Glacier? Any good strategies to pull off in a 2-or-3-tank platoon? Good spots to take my Swedish Siege TD's? Share your screenshots and thoughts below!
I'd love to hear your feedback on my guide and this post in general as well! Are there any parts you particularly enjoyed and would like to see more of in future guides? Anything that could have been executed better on my end? The idea here is to get some useful information out for new and intermediate players at the get-go, which will be easy to understand.
And in the comments below, we can share useful strategies and advanced tips so hopefully even the most skilled tankers can pick up something useful from the discussion.
Edited by DomoSapien, Apr 18 2018 - 19:35.
formatting