Introduction
The Matilda Black Prince is a quirky tank. It is classified as a medium tank, although its horsepower to weight ratio is lower than all, but the slowest, of heavy tanks. As well as this, its top speed is also much lower than many heavy tanks. It has the turret of Centaur, another British tank which is similar to the Cromwell, instead of the standard Matilda turret, which means that the turret is quite boxy. The Matilda Black Prince is a small tank but it is heavier than most other Tier-5 mediums.
In terms of combat capability, the Matilda Black Prince has features that can be abused, like a ridiculously high damage per minute, but also has a few weaknesses, the most obvious are the slow speed and a very low horsepower to weight ratio. Because of this, the Matilda Black Prince can be a very frustrating tank to play, so new players or those who like a fast-paced game should not buy it.
Pros
Damage per Minute
The first advantage the Matilda Black Prince has over its Tier-5 medium counterparts is its high damage per minute output. At 1956.75, it is only beaten by the T-34 and the Type T-34, and it is equal with the M7 – whist, on average, the damage per minute for Tier-5 medium tanks is just above 1800.
The high damage per minute fits in with the main role of the Matilda Black Prince, as a supporting medium. This is because tanks that try and flank your heavies will quickly get destroyed, especially lightly armoured ones; like most medium and light tanks.
Also, you can use this when you are sniping. If you manage to spot a tank you can hold fire until that tank thinks that it is safe to go out. Once that tank far enough from cover, you can open fire, rapidly diminishing its hitpoints.
Reload
Coupled with the high per minute is also the quick reload. The loading time for one shell is around 2.3 seconds, which even is faster than some auto-loading tanks, like the AMX 13 90. The reload speed is the fastest, equal, amongst the Tier-5 mediums – the M7, T-34 and Type T-34 all have the same loading speeds as the Matilda Black Prince.
As a supporting medium, one of the main advantages of having a quick reload is that you can easily damage exposed modules on enemy flankers. An example of this is if a T-34 came to flank one of your allies, you could target the rear of the tank, hitting the engine and the fuel tank at the same time, which will quickly result in a fire.
Also, this quick reload will help when targeting multiple flankers; not much potential damage will be wasted when you destroy each tank, in comparison to a tank that has a huge alpha damage firing at a low hitpoint target.
Maneuverability
Another great thing about the Matilda Black Prince is its maneuverability. The maneuverability of this tank is second worst out of the Tier-5 medium tanks, only better than the Matilda IV. But it is better than all of the Tier-5 heavy tanks, even though it has armour comparable to them.
This, in practice, means that it is almost impossible to flank the Matilda Black Prince. Inexperienced medium tanks, as well as light tanks, which try and flank you, thinking that your heavy armour will mean that your traverse speeds are very low, will be quickly dealt with as they can only shoot your frontal armour.
This maneuverability also means that driving in general much easier, improving the gameplay of the tank.
Armour
Like other Matilda and Churchill tanks, the Matilda Black Prince has great armour. This tank has frontal turret armour with a thickness of 76mm, with the sides being 63mm thick. This means that, even without angling, the front of the turret is too thick for almost all Tier-3 tanks and some Tier-4 tanks. As well as this, the turret has a hidden gun mantlet, adding to the thickness of the turret armour. The sides, with a thickness of 63mm, are thick enough to allow for you to expose some of it to angle the front of the turret, further increasing the thickness.
The hull armour of the Matilda Black Prince is also good. The front is 75mm thick and the sides are 70mm thick. For the frontal hull armour, about half of it is sloped at an angle that is impenetrable to all the tanks that this tank will meet –the only problem with this area is when a shell ricochets off there and hits your tank anyway. The unsloped area of the frontal hull armour is still thick, at 75mm, so that enemy tanks will have a hard time trying to penetrate it. To make it even harder for them, you can also stay at a distance, due to the supporting role of the Matilda Black Prince, and you can wriggle your armour left and right, to put off their aim to cause them to miss.
The sides of Matilda Black Prince’s hull are also thick, at 70mm. This means that it is possible to angle your tank at a near 45 degree angle with low tier enemies, making the whole hull impenetrable. The sides also have the addition of having tracks, acting as spaced armour. This means that shells that could normally penetrate your side armour can be absorbed by your tracks, and the tracks also absorb splash damage from SPG and howitzer shells. With these thick sides, you can side-scrape effectively too – using the sides of your tank, which some players will automatically assume are easy to penetrate, you can stick them out of cover and use them as bait. These inexperienced players will bounce off your side, leaving you able to pull out, put in a shot or two and then get back into cover.
Cons
Horsepower to Weight Ratio
The first thing you’ll come to know about the Matilda Black Prince when you come to play it is that it is slow. This isn’t a “heavy tank” type of slow; this is a “Matilda” type of slow. Whilst most heavy tanks can cruise at around 25 to 30km/h on flat ground, the Matilda Black Prince will struggle to get to its top speed of 22km/h. This is due to its extremely low horsepower to weight ratio of 6.33hp/t.
Having such a bad top speed and horsepower to weight ratio means that the Matilda Black Prince will constantly lag behind, which is the main reason why the main role of this tank is that of a supporting medium. Even then, if your team manages to defeat your enemies quickly, you can’t even do that.
There are only a few ways of reducing the effects of this, and even then their effects are minimal, which makes this weakness such a big disadvantage.
The first is to train your driver up. A driver at 100% training will make this tank so much easier to use, and if that driver has skills that make the tank go faster, like the Off-Road Driving, this is made even better. You can also permanently place a trained driver there, instead of using the driver’s slot to train a driver for a different tank.
Another way is to install Improved Ventilation, Class 2, to increase the major qualification of the driver, and also the commander as his training will also give a slight bonus to that of the driver. Buying Pudding and Tea also increases the major qualification of the driver, so that can also be used.
Even when using these methods for increasing the speed of the Matilda Black Prince, the tank will still be slow. This means that you should also think about where you want to go, choosing a place where you can support your allies whilst being an area close to your base.
Aim Time
The aim time of the Matilda Black Prince is also another problem. It has a value of 2.3 seconds, when the reload of the tank is pretty much the same at 2.3 seconds when rounded to one decimal place. The problem with this is that shots that you fire when you are moving will almost always miss, because the reticle bloom whilst shooting and moving is too high. Also, you might not shoot straight after you reload, because you might be unsure about whether you are fully aimed, especially when you are tracking a fast moving target.
To get around this, you can install an Enhanced Gun Laying Device. This will make sure that, most of the time, your aim time is faster than your reload, meaning you can shoot with confidence – as you know that almost all of your shots will be fully aimed.
A more time consuming method is to train your gunner up, which isn’t advised. This is because premium tanks are supposed to be used as a crew trainer, in conjunction with being a credit earner, and having a gunner specifically for the Matilda Black Prince is a waste of a slot, especially when the aim time isn’t as significant a problem as the low horsepower to weight ratio.
Shell Capacity
Another reason for increasing the aiming time of the Matilda Black Prince, using an Enhanced Gun Laying Device, is because of the tank’s low shell capacity. The tank only has 55 shells, and when it can spit them out at a rapid pace shell conservation is a key thing to remember when using this tank. There are two reasons why this affects the Matilda Black Prince.
The first is because of its bad aim time. You should aim carefully before you take a shot, because each shot is valuable.
The other reason is because this doesn’t allow of flexibility in shell selection. This basically means that you have to predict how many of each shell you will use in a battle, because if you don’t pack enough AP shells you will end up using expensive APCR shells or low damaging HE shells. It could also work in the opposite way too, you might not have enough HE shells to deal with a heavily armoured capping tank or you might not have enough APCR shells to deal with a tank with heavy frontal armour right in front of you.
The solution to the first problem is stated in the beginning of this section; you can use an Enhanced Gun Laying Device. This is an expensive method but it can be worth it in the long run, especially if you predict that if you will use the tank a lot in the future. Another solution, as discussed before, is to have a trained gunner but this uses up a crew slot that could be used for training a gunner for a different tank.
For the second problem, the solution is also stated; you just have to predict what shells you will use throughout a battle. When you first buy this tank you can look around on the internet to find out what shell load outs other players use. Then, after playing a few games in it, you can finally determine which shells will suit what you will do, overcoming this problem.
Play-Style
Here are two play styles for the Matilda Black Prince.
Supporting Medium
The first is playing as a supporting medium. This will happen a number of times, as its low top speed and horsepower to weight ratio means that the battles between your team and the enemy will often happen before you can get to the front lines.
In this role, you will be around few hundred metres behind your allied tanks. You should choose to shoot at relatively low armoured targets when you are doing this role, because you will still get a few unlucky bounces on the more armoured tanks, even though the penetration of your shells are enough for most tanks on paper. And, unless you don’t have any other targets, avoid trying to shoot the small weak spots of high armoured tanks, like the AT 2, because your gun has a relatively bad accuracy of 0.41m dispersion every 100m. Only shooting at targets with weak armour means your high damage per minute is used to its full potential, netting more credits and experience.
Brawler
If your team is especially slow or you receive a push from a faster heavy, like a friendly T1 Heavy, you can also play the role of a brawler.
In this role, you’ll be battling it out with other tanks, mostly heavies, whilst taking a few hits for your allies with weaker armour. What you should do, if you choose to take on this role, is use your armour to lure your enemies into shooting you, so you and your allies can take shots of their own in relative safety. The safest way of doing this is to stick out the sides of your tank at a very steep angle, somewhere in-between 65 and 85 degrees – this is dependent on how much penetration the shells of your enemy have; if there are low tiered enemy tanks you could use a smaller angle, which is more likely to bait them into shooting at an impenetrable area, but a higher tiered enemy would need a steeper angle because otherwise they will deal damage to you. Once the enemies have fired at your sides, you can reverse out of cover, fire a shot or two and get back into cover to repeat the process.
Equipment
Here are a few recommended pieces of equipment for this tank.
Enhanced Gun Laying Device
As discussed before, the Enhanced Gun Laying Device is used for increasing the aim time, so that you are fully aimed as soon as you reload. This means that you don’t have to waste time aiming or so that you don’t waste valuable shells to misses, as your shell capacity is only 55.
Medium-Calibre Gun Rammer
Although this negates the aiming advantage of the Enhanced Gun Laying Device, the extra damage per minute output can be useful at times. An example of this is if a group of enemies come from around a corner. The extra damage per minute will help deal with the enemies quicker, and you don’t have to wriggle, your armour to put off their aim to avoid taking damage, for as long. This is also helpful in those rare moments when you and an enemy have the same hitpoints remaining and the same base alpha damage and reload speed; those extra milliseconds that you shave off can save you an early trip back to the garage.
Medium Spall Liner
This is mainly used to protect you from indirect SPG fire. The high armour of the Matilda Black Prince means that a lot of enemy SPG shells won’t penetrate your armour, meaning that a spall liner will reduce the damage you tank by even more. This is good because your slow speed means that you could easily be targeted by an SPG, and the extra protection means that you will survive more penetrating, or splash, hits.
Improved Ventilation, Class 2
The improved ventilation is just the standard equipment used to improve the performance of a tank. It is relatively cheap to purchase, at a low 200,000 credits, in comparison to the comparatively high cost of an Enhanced Gun Laying Device, at 500,000 credits. This saves you from choosing a piece of equipment if you want don’t want to think too much about it. The best parts about the improved ventilation is the fact that it will boost the horsepower to weight ratio of the tank, due to the driver being better, and improving the aiming speed, from the gunner.
Toolbox
The Toolbox is a handy piece of equipment. This is because the 25% increase in repair speed means that the improvement in repair speed will largely reduce the amount of tanks that can shoot your tracks faster than you can repair them. This saves you from using a repair kit for repairing damaged tracks, and it is also helpful because other destroyed modules will also be repaired faster.
Conclusion
The Matilda Black Prince is a deadly tank, if used in the right hands. It has a high damage per minute, which is near the top of Tier-5 medium tanks, and great armour. All of its disadvantages, apart from its slow speed, can be nullified to a bearable level, which means that an experienced player can easily do well in it.
But, bear in mind, that, if you are an inexperienced player or a player that likes fast tanks, this tank might not be the right one for you.
Thanks to all who have read this review, and, if you have this tank, make sure you take some of this advice 
Edited by Death2846, 28 March 2014 - 03:36 AM.
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neokai, on 26 March 2014 - 10:40 AM, said:
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. About how to support well, you can read again in my T14's review 'cause it's just the same.
