How is World of Tanks Blitz different to WoT?

World of Tanks Blitz is a sirprisingly good mobile version of the original WoT and a very good balanced shooter/tank simulator for iPad. Veterans of WoT thinking of going mobile will be wondering how the mobile WoT Blitz differs from its bigger sibling. Here are the fundamental differences a WoT player will face when playing Blitz:

• Crews are abstracted out. Your tanks still have a crew skill rating, but rather than individual tankers in the loader, radio operator, etc positions, there’s a single skill rating for the entire tank’s crew. Crew management is much less involved.

• There’s no SPGs, and the tech trees are narrower. Popular tanks missing from WoT Blitz include KV-2 and Hellcats. Due to smaller maps  there’s no artillery at all, because the teams are only 7-men strong with maps in Blitz not having the size to justify indirect artillery fire.
• No France, China, Britain, or Japan yet. WoT Blitz has launched with the three most popular tank lines, and there hasn’t been a peep yet on when we can expect the other four. It’s almost certainly in the works for a future update, thoughmaps are very small

• Suspensions aren’t as important. In PC WoT, you often need to upgrade the suspension on your tank in order to be able to mount heavier guns and turrets. In Blitz: every suspension supports the same amount of weight, and the only performance distance is traverse speed. You might want to prioritise suspensions in turret-less tank destroyers, but otherwise you may as well save them for after you’ve upgraded your engines and guns. There’s also no radios in Blitz, presumably because the maps are so small that radio range became irrelevant.
• No France, China, Britain, or Japan yet. Four more nations are hopefully planned for a future update,at least you can play the 3 top tank nations in the meantime.