Supertest: Object 701, Soviet Tier VIII Premium Heavy Tank [23 Nov ’23]
3 min readOne more vehicle appeared on Supertest today, this one potentially being a bit familiar to those who have been around the game for some time:
VIII 
Object 701
This vehicle has the easily recognizable silhouette of a classic Soviet heavy tank, a 122 mm gun with excellent damage per shot (390 HP), and outstanding armor. Among this tank’s drawbacks are subpar mobility (with a top forward speed of 30 km/h), gun handling parameters, and base view range, together with relatively low DPM for its tier (due to the base gun reload time of 15 seconds).
To fully unlock the true potential of the Object 701, you should play it aggressively on the first line. This heavy is quite able to engage its opponents head-on and be the vanguard of attack during a breakthrough, with less-armored allies following in its wake.
Historical Background
Object 701 represents the precursor design to the IS-4. Several variations of this vehicle were historically tested, featuring two different guns: 122 mm S-34-II (used across most of the prototype configurations), and perhaps a bit more interestingly, 100 mm S-34-I cannon (specifically used on the Object 701-2).
However, it appears the version we have in-game will instead use a 122 mm D-25T, for… some reason? 🤔
Nonetheless, this vehicle represents an important stage in the IS-4’s development, even including the pre-production version (Object 701-6) of that vehicle.
Below, the historical Object 701-5 (likely the closest to the version represented in-game) can be seen:
In-Game Background
That being said, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this vehicle in regards to WoT!
For starters, anyone who’s played the ST-I will likely notice some familiarity in the turret’s appearance — the Object 701-1’s turret was chosen as the stock turret for this vehicle:
Furthermore, the Object 701 itself was leaked in the 2018 UI art dump (shown on the right):
It has been speculated the two vehicles above (IS-4 and Object 701) were both considered as part of a potential restructure of the IS-4 branch, which is thought to have included the Object 701 as the tier 8, the pre-production/early-model IS-4 as the tier 9, and the ST-I (or even the ST-II) as the tier 10. However, even if this was considered at some point, the idea clearly never came to fruition, given the branch’s composition (and the existence of a separate separate ST-II branch) today.
Regardless, the 701 itself was seemingly shelved for a while, only to resurface now. Why this newly-resurrected version of the vehicle was given what appears to be a 122 mm D-25T rather than the historical S-34-II (or even the 100 mm S-34-I, given this would’ve made the vehicle much more unique, especially when the K-2 already exists) is not known.
It is not yet known where this vehicle will appear in the game. Stay tuned for more info!
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