World of Tanks: 1 on 1

To best explain the every day one on one engagements I'd like to first boil down an average battle into the different parts that brings us to these engagements. A better title wound be something like 1 on 2 since the only two tanks you'll ever be actively worrying about on a second by second basis is the tank you are actively engaging against (shooting at) and the next tank that will hit you. However I must hold this train of thought for a moment to get down to those two crucial targets.

The Flanks
At the heart of every battle there exists three flanks that all tanks who leave the base / deployment zone go which is either the left, right, or center flank. A few examples include Enks where there is the city (left), Rails (center), and Field (right) while Himmelsdorf has Rails (left), Courtyard / Tank Alley (center), and hill (right). Now from watching you might think certain maps, especially some encounter ones don't have flanks because of the positions of the spawns like steppes but they do (1/2 line, field, cap). Also please keep in mind that certain flanks like the mountain pass in Lakeville where you're between the mountain and the lake is a valid flank, but due to survivability it is seldom used for more then two or three tanks total.

Engagements
Now out of the 15 tanks on your team lets say three are artillery meaning we're bringing down the total count of tanks that can be on your side of the map down to 12. Out of these we can safely guess (based on map) that about three tanks will head to the center flank, these are generally faster scouter tanks since they want to get early lights (detections) and stop the other scouts from an early base rush to kill artillery. So knocking down another two tanks brings us to a possible 10 which we'll balance between the two exterior flanks (right and left). So lets say your current engagement will be a thrilling five on five (or 8 on 8 if you include artillery)!

Micro Engagements
Even though the current engagement is 5 on 5 due to cover (buildings, terrain, bad gun depression) and reload rates that 5 on 5 can realistically be broken down to 2 on 1 or 1 on 1 micro engagements with just a few seconds between each encounter as another tank reloads or pulls out of cover to take another shot.

So after boiling the battle down to the moment by moment action lets go into the finer details of going through the motions of your tank against theirs. The main thing is keeping your tank from being hurt followed by dealing damage. The longer you live the more you can do so positioning your tank will be your utmost priority, this involves getting into cover, angling your tank, and moving to get a shot.

1 on 1
 The easiest way to die is to have your weak spots shot such as a commanders hatch and the back of your tank. To best protect these and stay alive you'll need focus on the position of your tank in relation to the tank that's shooting you. One of the easiest ways is to use the environment to cover your tank such as being behind a building or rock, or even being on the part of a hill where the enemy tank's gun depression can't reach.

However you'll always be put into the position where your tank will be hit, and in order to minimize the chance of being damage you'll have to angle it. In general my goal while angling is to have the round bounce which generally happens when they hit a piece of armor too thick for their penetration or angled enough that the round actually skips off the side of the tank like a pebble. Besides having this lucky scenario happen my other goal is to have them hit my tracks so that the kinetic energy disperses through my tracks enough that it can't penetrate the side armor. In general this means about a ten degree angle facing slightly away from the enemy tank.

In situations where the enemy tank is behind me however trying to get my front to face them might not be the most viable tactic since they'll get a perfect shot on my side where there are no angles steep enough to induce a bounce. When this happens I try to angle my tanks butt as best as I can so that hopefully they either bounce off my side or disperse in my tracks, it doesn't always work but it is way better then a 100% chance of taking damage if they have a full side shot.

Also remember, always move aka wiggling. The only time to sit still is when everyone that can shoot you can't due to cover or their reloading, otherwise you'll want to continually shift forward / backwards and side to side since if you are sitting still they can aim at your weak spots a lot easier. If you've ever tried hitting the commander hatch on a Super Pershing while it is rocking back and forth from 100m away compared to when it is sitting still you'll see the difference.

So besides using cover (terrain and tanks), angling, and wiggling to protect your tank lets talk about damaging their tank, this will be a bit shorter since the finer points of fighting one on one battles exists in staying alive over dealing damage. Besides sitting in front of the tank and trading blows one of the easiest ways of dealing damage is to just rush past them to get side / ass shots. Of course they'll turn around and shoot you in the side as well if they aren't reloading when you get to that point but especially if you have back up to take advantage of their inability to angle against two directions at once. I do this a LOT against tanks like Super Pershings with my IS-6 since in general it is easier to damage them in the side and I can generally get away with it since they'll focus on getting shots on my side so I can re angle while their busy either focusing on shooting me or re angling themselves.