The winter holidays are here, and Arcade Cabinet returns with a couple of very fitting and suitably chill activities: Snowballs and Ice Age. Both sets of rules change the game’s physics for the sake of sheer light-hearted fun. The battles take place on six snow-covered maps in Tier VIII or Tier X vehicles.
In the Snowballs mode, your shells turn into lumps of snow, flying by ballistic trajectories and leaving snowy splashes on enemy vehicles—that is, if you score a hit! The Ice Age mode is all slippery: Your mammoth machine has much less traction than usual and can be easily sent drifting—with style and some consequences, including smashing into an unlucky opponent‘s ride.
Mode Availability
The snowy and icy fun modes will be available on a special schedule. First, Snowballs will pop up on December 23 and stay until December 25, followed by Ice Age from December 30 through January 1. Both modes will make a double comeback on January 6 and will be available simultaneously until January 8.
MODE | START | END |
---|---|---|
ARCADE CABINET: SNOWBALLS | December 23, 10:00 CET (UTC+1) | December 25, 23:59 CET (UTC+1) |
ARCADE CABINET: ICE AGE | December 30, 10:00 CET (UTC+1) | January 1, 23:59 CET (UTC+1) |
ARCADE CABINET: SNOWBALLS & ICE AGE | January 6, 10:00 CET (UTC+1) | January 8, 23:59 CET (UTC+1) |
You can enter the Snowballs and Ice Age modes via the mode selector or via a special window in the lower-right corner of your Garage.
The Maps
We mentioned above that all the snowy and icy frolicking will happen on SIX wintry maps. Sure, the basic game has three of these for 15v15 battles—Mannerheim Line, Erlenberg, and Glacier—but we have also given the winter treatment to three more locations: Karelia, Prokhorovka, and Malinovka. Have a look at these classic open-air maps covered in snow and ice!
Snowballs
In this mode, your shots look like veritable snowballs instead of fireballs, and they even crash onto enemy armor plates like them! (As you know, ice will suffice for destruction just as well as fire.) Out of all the shell types, high explosive ones are the most like snowballs, so they are the most efficient in the mode. We also tweaked the way they travel to make you feel like you are lobbing these snowballs rather than shooting them. To recreate the brutal and unpredictable nature of snowball fights in the game, we shortened reload times and boosted engine power for every vehicle.
Battle Modifiers
Shells follow curved trajectories.
The efficiency of all HE shells is increased. (This does not apply to arty HE shells.)
The armor penetration of all shells except HE ones is decreased by 25%.
Reload time is decreased by 25%.
Engine power is increased by 100%.
Ice Age
Sliding on slippery slopes is not all this mode is about! It’s quite logical that while drifting, you need better aiming for the entire process to be fun. Therefore, while in this mode, you will get less dispersion from movement and traverse, and all rounds will fly faster. (There are a lot of action movies with precision shots taken while sliding, but none of them feature tanks.) Together with increased turret traverse, a higher top speed, and double the engine power, this produces some neo-tank (or matrix tank) effects—icy cool AND on ice!
Battle Modifiers
The Rules
Except for different physics, Snowballs and Ice Age have the same set of rules, as follows:
- Battles are all single-tiered, fought in either Tier VIII or Tier X vehicles.
- You receive XP and credits for battles, and you can use all types of regular reserves (Personal and Clan ones).
- XP multipliers for the first victory of the day work in the modes, and credits are put into the vault.
- Snowballs and Ice Age battles don‘t contribute to Daily Missions or Personal Missions, but they count towards the mode progression.
- Snowballs and Ice Age battles do not give you bonds, except for the event progression rewards—see below.
- Holiday Ops bonuses to XP and credits earned apply to Snowballs and Ice Age battles.
- You may play in Platoons if you wish (and are eligible for the bonuses if you do).
The Rewards
For every launch of the modes, you can complete a short series of Battle Missions and earn some bonds.
BATTLE MISSION | CONDITIONS | REWARD |
---|---|---|
Step I | Win two battles and get into the top 12 of your team by XP earned each time | 100 bonds |
Step II | Win three battles and get into the top 12 of your team by XP earned each time | 100 bonds |
Step III | Win five battles and get into the top 12 of your team by XP earned each time | 200 bonds |
The third “combined” launch of Snowballs and Ice Age counts as a single event, meaning the maximum total number of bonds you can get during all the three launches is 1,200 bonds.
Are you ready for cold weather fun? Put your warm padded helmet on, and prepare to shoot snowballs and drift on ice!
more HE damage? BZ, caliban and gonsalo go brrr
Maybe is more Damage on non pens not exactly on pen damage. That would benefit High damage low pen HE
Instead of this garbage, I’d like Frontlines running during Holiday Ops, so I can actually play and have fun, while grinding credits and XP in my own tanks.
More important things to be doing than playing this shit for Christmas
1.2k bonds u can farm them in cuple of days
this event is a fucking joke
they could have brought us something nice where u can earn something nice
most of the players have already all the tanks in the game
Someones upset they cant spam premium ammo and cant go hull down anymore lol
Learn to play
the entire game has been balanced around premium ammo for years now buddy
“most of the players have already all the tanks in the game”
This is so fucking far from the truth, 90% of the ACTIVE player base dont even have all tanks in the game, and if you count all accounts its problaby more like 99%
Besides, this mode is just meant for a bit of variety and fun outside of random battles. If you like it its 1200 bonds for free if you dont just dont play. And on top of that, personal reserves, clan boosters and the christmas bonuses applies to the event so if you want a relaxed way of farming credits this is litteraly perfect.