In this guide, that I have written after years of experience in Blitz's previous incarnations, I will analyze the different elements of the game in order to provide assistance to newer players. We will cover each aspect of Blitz's armored warfare including different playing styles which differ from my own. Before we move on, I will assume that you have already been able to start the game up, and have at least gone through the first two in-game tutorials. The first tutorial takes place right as you start, the second one begins shortly thereafter, so simply play along and in no time it will happen again. 

On the tutorials, you will be taught the basics - Aiming and firing. After the tutorials, your vehicle will be equipped with a blue firing assistance box. REMOVE it as soon as you can, when the tutorial finishes, as it decreases your attack power by 25% and prevents you from hitting Criticals. Critical hits are when you cause the red needle to stop exactly on the middle, this causes your shot to have twice the attack power. Being able to critical is absolutely crucial to victory and will normally be the decivise factor in many battles, however many take a bad approach to the critical shots, and focus so much in hitting "crits" that they end up missing their shots. First, learn accuracy - and THEN learn the critical skills. On the next tutorial, you will be taught to capture different buildings, which we'll examine.

Vehicles can be divided in two categories, Fast Needle Vehicles, and Slow Needle Vehicles. On Tank Destroyer and Self Propelled Gun, the needle moves faster, and thusly it is normally harder to hit a critical. On Tank and Assault Gun, the easier, slower needle is more suitable for new players.

This is what most players will use most of the time. Tanks are - save for a few exceptions - the only vehicles that have a turret. They are the most versatile, as it is easier to aim and move around with them. They have normally good attack power, their firepower and ease of use tend to draw most players. They feature also a good amount of armor. Most players will use these all the time, but most players also make a big mistake when using them. The vast majority of the tanks have more armor on the front than on the sides, most people forget to have the front of their tanks face the enemy, or sometimes even purposefully make the side or rear face the enemy in order to be able to retreat faster. This is wrong and will get you killed, the side and rear armor of many tanks is quite weak, save for a few exceptions. When you fight, always face the enemy, or at least their general direction.

The Assault Gun is a personal favorite of mine. Normally, they are on their sides and rear as decently protected as the tanks are, but they have as you will notice a LOT of frontal armor. They also lack a turret, this means that you forcibly must face an enemy in order to shoot it, but most of the time this is desireable. Assault Guns can simply normally not be beaten in One vs One battles due to its frontal armor, and otherwise when fighting in groups since they are able to take more of a beating than other elements, they will be used at the front of the Armored Formation. They normally attract big amounts of enemy fire without actually dying, so Tanks and others can use this opportunity to fire upon enemies undisturbed. I like to call the Assault Guns tanks that decided to trade in their turrets in order to be granted very high frontal armor.

Assault Guns only fear two things, being shot on very high angles by a distant SPG, as this ignores its frontal armor, or being surrounded and shot from the sides and back. Sometimes it may happen that you will fight in a large group, and one of the enemies will rush your position to shoot you from behind. In these cases, if you have your comrades around you, you should NOT turn around to face him and shoot him, because that would allow the rest of the enemies to shoot your rear - it is better to have the other allies take him out.

The SPGs are the most popular vehicle type after the Tanks, because their insane range allow them to fire from far away. However, using a SPG properly is no simple deal. One must only fire from far away, because in close combat only a few critical shots will take them out. SPGs have a special feature, splash damage on every shot, so they are better used against enemies which are bunched up together. They can also be used to annoy persistent enemies, most enemies will pull back and try to get away if they notice that a SPG keeps firing on them over and over again. You always have to be careful to be well out of the enemy's reach, as everyone loves to attack SPGs as they are such weakly armored targets. They are normally overlooked, but if used properly can make a difference. The typical situation is when a building is being captured - people tend to remain close together. SPGs can be used to shoot the capper while splash damaging the rest of the people.

These are considered to be something resembling an elite. They normally are very lightly armored, and they have a bit more range than tanks to compensate this. Like AGs, they have no turrets, and normally they seem as simple targets, but they manage to shine when they score critical hits. Normal vehicles have 2x damage on critical hits, but Tank Destroyers have 3x damage. This means that if you hit an enemy where they have little armor from up close, you can hit them for over 1000 damage every time if you critical! In some cases, enemies can be dispatched in as little as two, three or four well aimed critical shots. You should avoid playing Tank Destroyer unless you're good at hitting criticals, otherwise try playing SPG for a while in order to practice, since both share needle speed. In groups, TDs tend to be targetted, let the assault guns and the tanks remain at the front.

There are a few vehicles which qualify as exceptions to the above or other rules, and should be mentioned. 

When looking at its stats, it appears to be especially weak. However, when one purchases it, the tank has more upgrade slots than the rest of the vehicles of its tier, which means that it is at least as good as the other tanks, but because it has more options for upgrade, I consider it to be better than its counterpart - the early Sherman.

It is a SPG, but it has, incredibly, a rotating turret and good armor. I consider it to be a tank with a long range and splash damage. This vehicle is excellent.

A very good vehicle, it has more upgrade slots than the other vehicles of its tier, similar to T-24.

An exceptionally strong Assault Gun, which should always be used. Unusually, it has stronger armor on the rear than on the sides.

What is unusual about this vehicle is that as far as I know it is the only one which features the same armor ratings on all of its side. It is able to resist the same damage from all sides, and the armor is in fact not bad. Also, it looks unique even visually.

Both sides, later in level 20, are able to use a vehicle which is BOTH a Tank Destroyer and Assault Gun. For the Russians, it is the GAZ, for the Germans, it is E-25. This vehicle proved to be very popular, combining high speed, high armor and high firepower.

As the tuturial showed you, you have different skills you can learn. Which skills one should learn and in which order vary accordingly to different doctrines. Also, it does not matter if you regret having learned a skill - you can later select it and cancel it, and you get the points back.

The most basic skills are the buffs. They are Repair, Supply, Fortress, Yell and Accelerate. You should always have those to the highest level possible. On your skills tray, set them so that when you activate them, you will trigger Supply first, Repair second, and the rest in any given order, in case that you may not have enough FPW to activate them all.

Aside from those, I consider the following skills to be very important:

Exhaust (Drains enemy FPW)

Overpower (Makes them stop and be unable to fire)

Confuse (Makes them motionless)

Turbulence (Makes them slow down)

You should use these in battle in three different ways.

A: To recover when fighting at a disadvantage, if you're getting owned, Overpower (Referred to as OP) can be used to recover. If you're facing a turretless enemy, use Confuse and move out of his aiming reach, so it works as a de-facto OP.

B: To get others to shoot the enemy. In large groups, people tend to focus on any enemy suffering from any of these effects, especially overpower. This is useful to "mark" someone to be killed.

C: To prevent them from getting away. If you are fighting some enemies and already have the advantage, do not use these special shots right away - save them in case that the enemy tries to run away. Most enemies WILL try to run away when wounded, if you save these just for that case, you can stop them and kill them.

Last note: Remember that using an Airstrike also inflicts "Confuse"

Healing yourself and others is very useful. There are three main ways of recovering HP. The first is a skill named Recovery, however its limitation is that you can only use it if you do not get shot for ten seconds. In battles, recovery is best used to help a teammate. Maybe to heal an assault gun who is at the front, or to heal a teammate who is close to death. Some people prefer to use the Reviving skill, but I dislike it because you're brough back to life without FPW, meaning you're as good as dead.

The most useful method is to use a skill named Spirit. It will heal you up even if you're in the middle of the battle, its only bad thing is that it has a long cooldown period, bu t it is anyway a lot more useful than the other two methods.

Finally, there's repair packs that you can buy at the store. They are the same you've seen on the tutorial. Most people do not use them, normally only certain veterans do. Although I dislike them, I have started to use them simply to be in even conditions against my enemies. There are other items, such as Invincibility, Speed-up and other packs that provide other boosts, but I refuse to use them as they cost Victory Points instead of simple Credits.

Buildings are simple, but sometimes have implications that most people overlook.

In some maps, such as notoriously some factories in Budapest, some buildings' defensive guns have "blindspots", a small sector you can place yourself in to capture where the guns will not be able to shoot you. These are normally easy to discover just by using common sense. Since shooting and killing NPCs shows hotspots on the map, sometimes it is desireable to use blindspots.

In other cases, when taking buildings, most players tend to shoot ALL of the guns and then take it. This is wrong. One should only shoot normally the minimum of guns needed for one to be able to capture the building, and the reason is that afterwards the surviving guns become friendly NPCs and can aid you in pushing back the enemies when they try to take the building back.

Keep in mind that there's the Overhaul skill, which fixes buildings as well as Gun NPCs. This is useful when fighting outnumbered, in order to be able to hold on better.

Another detail is that most people give a great value to airfields. However, they're rather worthless compared to other buildings. Avoid giving AFs more priority than they deserve - once you reach level 11, the damage an airstrike will do is negligible, airstrikes are only powerful until you are level 7. It is better to fight for a depot, factory, or a power plant.

The HQ is in some maps a very important building, although in some others it is near useless. In maps such as Wien, with lots of city combat and lots of NPC guns scattered around the city, holding the HQ is vital. All the NPC guns scattered everywhere and also at the city entrances make it very hard for an armored formation to succeed, this also makes the city a very defensible target, the HQ should always be held. But in other maps like Budapest, the HQ is nearly useless, if not completely useless altogether.

The military skills are interesting, as they allow for further customization of your tankman. There's many variants, but my favorites are the following:

Firstly the Right Assault column. The extra 50 ammo is very useful, since many vehicles simply do not have sufficient shells. But having this saves you Upgrade Slots, as you do not need to waste them in adding ammunition boxes. Then, the second part lets you have an extra 1000HP. Most shots go for less than 500, so lets roughly say that this lets you survive two "normal" shots, or one extra TD shot, or four weak 250-ish shots. It's not a lot, but when fighting, it makes a difference. It is also extremely useful if you like to play assault guns, as it makes their front armor be proportionally even stronger.

After this, you get a skill which will decrease the attack of enemies by 50% - within a certain range. It is useful in 1v1s as well as in larger situations, but one has to be very close to an enemy to use it. Sometimes I just ram enemy formations and use it right there, if I have buddies following this works well.

The last skill you get is the "über shot", which is best used in Tank Destroyers. It makes one hit kills possible, which as you will come to know is otherwise damn near impossible in Blitz. I almost forgot about quick capture - the ability to capture for 550.

There is another skill tree section I am fond of, the leftmost section in scout. It has a skill that is useful for defeating frontal armor and AG, and it also has another section which allows you to use what we called "Super Hide". The first shot after coming out from hide is highly boosted in damage, similarily to the über shot but in a more moderate fashion. This one is useful for Tank Destroyers. Another option is to go with one of the support columns, they are less impressive but the skill at the bottom is EXTREMELY powerful when it comes to teamplay - it heals everyone within a certain range, so it's like Spirit, but it will heal your comrades at the same time.

The suppression skill, also known as "hide", is extremely useful. It is useful primarily when fighting against an enemy that outnumbers you. By being able to use this skill, it is possible to sneak around the main enemy formation to go "hunting" for weaker, isolated targets, in a sort of guerilla warfare. This is ideally done with two to three other partners to come along also hidden. Normally we'll look around waiting for someone who is respawning, then when the person goes from the factory to the front, he gets jumped. Other times, we attack wounded people at a depot, and sometimes we can sneak up to SPGs or even a factory to capture. Keep in mind that if they use scout, they'll see you. Because of this, I'll eventually get Hide 3, to be well concealed. Once that you're discovered and see people scouting, discontinue the use of Hide for a while, or they will kill you over and over again when they catch on. Sometimes it is possible to use a non-cloaked player as a bait to drag someone away from the main group to be finished by hidden comrades.

The usage of slots varies in different zones. At first, you will only have armor available, you should use it. Later on, you'll have 2x2 +500HP blocks to use (you must scroll down to see them) - use them, and fill leftover spots with armor, all the way until 11.

Once you are 11, you get better Muzzle Breaks - they give you a faster reload time. Normally, from here onwards I use ONLY muzzle breaks in order to fire much faster than the enemy, to win. However some people prefer to use the green +attack blocks combined with these.

15-16 are tricky. You will be tempted to invest in passive defence in the form of the new, big armor block, and you have more place for upgrades. Normally I use some muzzle breaks until I reach the minimum reload time possible, and use +attack for the rest. At this point, HP blocks are no longer useful at all because the standard HP of the tanks is too big anyway for 500 to make a big difference, so if you go for defence, use armor.

On 16 and 17 you get the late improved muzzle breaks and +attack blocks, using these in combination is much more effective than when you are 15. Using armor means more survivability, but most older players prefer to focus on all-out attack and bank on killing the enemy faster than it can kill you, because if you use a low attack config, the enemy ussually runs away successfully.

Most VP parts are not worth buying, but I normally purchased later at 20 the Breech Mechanism, which gives the bonus of both the +attack as well as +reload. These parts were very popular.