World of Tanks Halloween Minigame "Dark Front": Quite Addicting!

I am thoroughly impressed by Wargaming's new "Dark Front" WoT minigame. I'm sure it won't be around long after Halloween, which is a shame, because I've been playing it more than my usual battles lately. And not just due to the in-game benefits, but also because it's just a great time. This is one of my runs:

There's 5 people per team, and 7 minute games. The basics are shown on the loading screen:

Although there's a lot that these basic guidelines miss, and it took me awhile to figure it out. They call the NPC tanks "Undead" because... Well, they're coded to be stoopid. Until you get far away from base, then they get 9 hitpoints and waaay smarter. Took me a few run-ins alone with the wrong NPCs to figure that one out.

If you die out in the field, you lose all of your Green Matter you've collected. Basically, you've been a huge waste of time and resources. Sucks to suck. And you have to go allll the way back to base to heal, which inadvertently turns in your Green Matter. So ultimately, when you leave base, you get 1 HP bar to gather all the Green Matter you can. High stakes, just like usual WoT battles. I dig.

They also included effects called "Essences", that you find out in the field that gives the whole team different sorts of bonuses. Some of them are really fun - one makes everyone really fast, another makes your reload time ridiculously short. Essences are generally found far away from base and used at the very end of a round, if at all.

My general strategy is to stay near people at the beginning, but not necessarily by their side in a pack. It's important at the start to collect your own Green Matter near the base. As the game goes on however, teammates need to start helping each other out with the bigger "Undead" NPC tanks. When you kill the NPCs, you get an amount of Green Matter equal to their hitpoints, which is really awesome far away from base where the NPCs have 7 or 9 HP. It is very difficult to take on these bigger guys alone.

Anyways, I think Wargaming really outdid themselves with this one. I'll be playing it until they inevitably take it away and replace it with some other silly, overhyped minigame that isn't even as good.

If you have World of Tanks installed, let me know! Let's play!