World of Tanks

UPDATE of the UPDATE!! : I previously reported that a friend of mine was having a blast with the Chinese Heavy tanks on the way to Tier 10.. I now must report that he is having an awful time with the very high Tier tanks--here is what he had to say:
It is quite possible to combine this achievement with the achievement for researching a Tier IX tank as no other achievement at this point requires researching up to Tier 7, but read o DEEVIUS o's comment above and do your own research--I don't know the best path anymore as my original choice wasn't very good either.

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SOLUTION:
Unfortunately, the earliest Chinese Heavy tank the IS-2 comes at Tier 7, so at the time of writing this you'll have to go all the way to Tier 7 for this achievement.

The Tier 7 Heavy tank requires a minimum of 158,240 XP to research. However, it might be somewhat less because sometimes when you research one package, the next one gets cheaper. Also, I'm not including any packages not directly required to research the next tank in the line, and you might want to get some better packages in the earlier Tiers so that you have a better tank.
From Tier 6 to Tier 7, the extra package is not worth buying at all in my opinion. It just adds a little bit of performance but I did just fine without buying it and that was 16,000 XP saved!

The full list of tanks required:
Tier 1: (you start with this) NC-31
Tier 2: VAE Type B
Tier 3: Chi-Ha
Tier 4: M5A1 Stuart
Tier 5: Type T-34
Tier 6: Type 58 (ALERT!! DO NOT BUY THE WRONG TANK LIKE I DID THE FIRST TIME... Make sure you buy the Medium! I was so happy to be ready to unlock the next tank I went and bought the Light tank and had to grind 33,000 more XP.. )
Tier 7: IS-2 (Once again, don't buy the medium!...)

On the grind to Tier 7, I highly recommend outfitting your tanks to the max with EVERYTHING. That includes:

Crew: It's worth keeping the same crew only once you get past Tier 4 as the previous Tier tanks will be finished too fast to make it worthwhile to trade the crew. Definitely keep the crew past Tier 4 though as your crew should have at least a partial skill by the time you keep moving up. If you have the extra gold, paying 100 gold to train your crew 100% would be a great idea, but not as worthwhile as buying premium membership with gold.
I recommend training Brothers in Arms first on your crew.

Equipment: at least 3 equipment, and especially if you have any gold, get some of the complex equipment that requires gold to remove.
Recommended Removable Equipment: Camouflage Net, Binocular Telescope, and Toolbox.
Recommended Complex Equipment: Gun Rammer, Enhanced Gun Laying Drive, Coated Optics, and maybe Improved Ventilation.

Ammo: Premium Ammo and possible some HE as well if it's an option. The Premium ammo is VERY pricy in silver, however I found it worthwhile for the grind! I switched to it if I saw that I would be facing a tank with really good armor from the wrong direction. (Note: You can switch to buy Premium ammo with while it's highlighted to switch currency)

Consumables: ALWAYS have all three consumable slots filled!!
I generally had the cheap consumables: Small Repair Kit, Small First Aid Kit, and Manual Fire Extinguishers equipped for the first 5 Tiers. I started using the same but upgraded premium consumables(which you can buy for silver by switching currency just like ammo as long as you already have one in your inventory) once I hit Tier 6.
You have many choices, but I found those the best. The Tier 6 Chinese Medium seemed to get hit really hard a lot of times so I needed quite a few in the long run. They are 20,000 silver apiece, but if you have Premium membership, you'll get silver quite fast anyway and it should be worth it.

External Vehicle Additions: I highly recommend fully outfitting your tank with the camouflage you can buy for each environment. Tier 1 only has summer maps though so don't buy any camouflage for the other environments!
You can get the camouflage for 7 days quite cheaply with silver, and that's what I would recommend because you probably won't need to use the tank for more than time. I bought every environments camouflage for my tank otherwise. I don't know how much it helped, but I wanted any advantage I could get!


And finally, a few tank tips: For the first 4 tanks a Run and Gun approach works well. You're fast enough especially with the Tier 4 M5A1 that you can be like a bee and sting wherever you like. However!
Once you reach Tier 5 and 6, it gets MUCH harder to speed around. You can still go quite fast, but I recommend changing your tactic and possibly equipment for more long distance shooting and stationary scouting. Find a good hill near your team that you can see a long ways, hide in the bushes or behind buildings and trees, and go for the assists while doing long range shooting.
If you're working on other tank achievements at the same time though, feel free to dash in, get some quick kills/XP, and die, then work on your other tanks. This was my final achievement, so I couldn't afford to dash in, die, then wait 10 minutes when I could've been getting XP!

In my Tier 6, some of my most successful matches were when I carefully watched where my team went, following a little, then depending on how many enemy artillery and the Tier, I would make a dash for the weakest spot in the enemy. If I was top tier in the match, I would do this more often. If I was in a Tier 8 match though, I would go for some very careful spots and support my team.

I hope this helps! I had fun most of the way, but by the end I was calculating how much gold I needed to buy to get this achievement with free XP.....