Triumphant tanks: Na’Vi take down Hellraisers in World of Tanks season final

Na'vi win World of Tanks

If you’d said the words “World of Tanks eSports” to me a few years back, I would have stared at you like you’d suggested a land invasion of Russia in late December. In these more civilised times, however, I’ve taken a bit of a shining to it. It uses big teams of seven and the game’s close simulation of armour and shell interactions to make exciting, tense matches. The Grand Finals for this year of competition happened last weekend, with multi-game all-stars Na’Vi taking the trophy for the second time in three tries.

World of Tanks is one of the best free PC games you can play.

The final was an absolute barnburner, with Na’Vi looking down and out before a key mistake from one of the Hellraisers team left their tank stranded on a hill, having to watch as his team-mate was executed. From there it all went a bit wrong, and Na’Vi eventually triumphed. Here’s what their manager, Dmitry ‘de1uxe’ Repin, had to say about it:

“It was awesome just to be at Grand Finals, but winning the championship is on a whole other level. The whole event was massive, and the Wargaming.net League really stepped up their game from last year. Using Tier X tanks really lets us play the best we can. We can’t wait for what’s next in the League.”

The prize pool and standings broke down like this:

  • 1st Place – $150,000 – Na’Vi
  • 2nd Place – $75,000 – HellRaisers
  • 3rd Place – $35,000 – Wombats on Tanks
  • 4th Place – $20,000 – Not So Serious
  • 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th place – $5,000 – Tornado.Rox, YaTo, SIMP and Kazna Kru.

Our Jordan was out there to take it all in, explosions, treads, mud and the rest. He’ll have a thorough write-up of the horrors of war soon, but if you want to experience it all yourself, here’s the Twitch archive of the final day.