Caliban

The Caliban is a high-alpha British heavy tank. It has weak armour, decent mobility, and a high alpha derp gun with fires HESH.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
5. Gameplay advice
6. Overall
7. Is it worth getting?
8. Most recently sold for:
9. Camo cost:

Armour

vs 182mm AP
Flat ground:
-Upper plate 170-180mm
-Lower plate 120mm
-Turret 165mm.

The Caliban has no armour to speak of.
If the tank could be angled then at least the hull could be decent, however due to very weak 40mm side armour, this tank can’t angle.

The only tanks this will bounce are tier 7 tanks with 165mm of penetration or less. All other tier 7s, all tier 8s, and all tier 9s will be able to auto-aim at this tank and penetrate 100% of the time.

When using gun depression, most tier 7 tanks will have a hard time penetrating the Caliban on its turret and hull. However, most tier 8 tanks and all tier 9 tanks will have no problem penetrating the tank, even when using gun depression.

Playing against a Caliban:
Shoot HE at the rear engine deck. The Caliban has 40mm of side armour, the only tanks’ HE that can’t penetrate this are 75mm guns with 38mm of HE pen. Every single other HE shell will easily penetrate the Caliban’s side armour.
Shoot above the sideskirts into the engine bay, alternatively there’s a small spot right in front of the turret that can be penetrated as well. If you just shoot its flat sides without aiming, you will hit its sideskirts, which absorb HE.

Gun

Caliban has a 6 inch (152.4)mm gun
-The reload time is 18.5s

Caliban only has 2 shells, HESH and AP. HESH is the premium round.
-With HESH the Caliban will have 860 damage per shot, giving it 2786 DPM. 
-Penetration with HESH is 170mm

-With AP Caliban does 580 damage per shot, giving it 1879 DPM.
-Penetration is 218mm on AP.

–Gun handling is 0.38/0.38/0.19, or 0.32/0.32/0.16 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Aim time is poor at 5.8/6.2s, however its still usable if you’re used to derpy tanks, and it’s fairly similar to the 5.7s aim time of 122mm heavy tanks.
-Dispersion is 0.474/0.426
-Gun depression is a nice -8 degrees, as this is the smallest tier 8 heavy tank, -8 will be plenty.
-Shell velocity is terrible, 500m/s on AP, and 354m/s on HESH, however it wouldn’t be a derp tank if it had great shell velocity.

If you decide to use Calibrated Shells, the DPM on HESH drops to 2591, and DPM on AP will drop to 1747. The reload time will go up to 19.9s, and HESH penetration will be 187mm, AP penetration will be 229mm.

Other than its high alpha damage and good DPM with HESH, nothing about this gun is too impressive.
Gun depression is ok, but nothing special; shell velocity is poor so it can only really be effective in close ranges, or mid-range if you can lead shots well.
Dispersion is very poor and gun handling is worst in game, though the base aim time is quite good, so it balances out those other two factors. If the Caliban sits still and aims, its actually decent due to this aim time. Sometimes it won’t need to aim as it has the ability to splash pretty big damage with HESH.

Mobility

-Top speed is low, 30km/h forwards, and 14km/h in reverse. 
-Acceleration is very good, having 16.4hp/t on hard terrain and 11.7hp/t on medium terrain.
-Traverse speed is also good, with 41.5deg/s on hard terrain and 29.6deg/s on medium.
-Ground resistances are a decent 1/1.4/2

Basically this tank is very mobile, but limited due to its low speed of 30km/h. It can accelerate very quickly and turn quite quickly, so in close-range battles its mobility will seem great. Though if it has to travel for any far distance, the low top speed will hold it back.
Other than the top speed, Caliban actually has good mobility.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

Caliban has no special provisions/consumables.

Gun Rammer/Calibrated Shells:
There is an argument for either equipment piece here.
Calibrated Shells: You penetrate more armour even though you shoot less often, so your effective DPM is higher.
Gun Rammer: You have more chances to shoot enemies even though you can’t penetrate as much armour, so your effective DPM is higher.

Try out each equipment piece, as this choice will be different with each individual player. Some may appreciate shooting more often, getting more chances to shoot. Sometimes you don’t have to aim or penetrate, just lob a HESH shell at them and do splash damage.
Other players will prefer higher penetration, being able to penetrate more enemies with HESH and AP, and doing damage more consistently, even if its slower.

Enhanced Gun Laying Drive/Supercharger:
The shell velocity of this tank is low, but the aim time of this tank is also poor, so whether you take the gun laying drive or supercharger is your choice.
Supercharger improves your AP shell velocity from 500m/s up to 650m/s, and HESH from 354m/s to 460m/s.

First try the tank with the gun laying drive,as this tank’s gameplay means that usually its fighting in fairly close range, and you can get by without needing that shell velocity in many situations.
Enhanced gun laying drive will give you faster aiming time, and the Caliban needs all the help it can with its gun’s accuracy, so use the gun laying drive to make its aim time better.
If you really find that the shells fly way too slowly, only then use the supercharger.

Improved Assembly:
There is no armour on this tank to enhance, so don’t use enhanced armour. The Caliban has the lowest base HP of any tier 8 heavy tank, 1700 HP. As it also has no armour it makes it a tank with low durability, so you need to use improved assembly to increase its HP from 1700 up to 1802.

Vertical Stabilizer:
Again the tank needs all the help it can with accuracy. Using vertical stabilizer is a much better choice over refined gun, even if you wanted to play this tank at long ranges, its completely unsuited with its terrible shell velocity, long aim time, bad dispersion, poor gun handling, and unpredictability of the HESH shell.
Its a tank that plays in close ranges, it sometimes has to use its mobility to get around enemies, and it benefits hugely from having improved dispersion-on-movement.
For these reasons the tank would benefit much more from making its close quarters performance better with vertical stabilizer.

Gameplay advice

The Caliban has a strange playstyle, its a support heavy tank. 

This gameplay style means that the Caliban plays on the frontlines, but lets its allied HT go in front of it to take hits and be its armour, as the Caliban itself does not have any. Outside of this, it does the usual things that heavy tanks do, which is just shoot and trade damage.

-Don’t be afraid to not aim. The gun handling, and dispersion of this tank are terrible, even though its aim time helps balance it out, the tank still needs to sit still and aim in for almost 6 seconds. Add to this the fact it really can’t penetrate very thick armour, and you get a tank that needs to aim for weakpoints.
Sometimes its best to not waste time aiming your shot in. Sometimes its better to take what damage you can, and in this case its HESH splash damage. The Caliban, like a KV-2 or Smasher, has the advantage that even though its accuracy is terrible, it can get away with not aiming at all and still doing 200-400 damage with a HESH shell splash.

-On the other hand, if you do decide to aim AP or penetrate HESH, make sure to aim fully. If your shot is not aimed all the way in, you will very likely miss. Either shoot HESH for splash damage without aiming, or you fully aim in the shot, there is no in-between.

-Stay with allied tanks. The long reload and poor durability make this tank very team reliant. If your team isn’t there to support you, there isn’t anything to deter enemies from rushing you.

-Use gun depression whenever possible. Though the turret armour isn’t strong, it is still a very small profile, so its much better to use gun depression and expose only the turret than to just fight on flat ground.

-Generally the tank needs to be played conservatively, don’t confidently push without having strong allied support, and play carefully. Caliban is usually the tank in the “support” role, its unable to lead an attack itself without getting completely torn apart by its lack of HP and armour, and the fact it has a long reload.

Overall

Overall the Caliban will struggle in many situations, however it will also be very fun in many situations. Its an unpredictable derp tank that’s not really meant to have the greatest stats, but just be a different flavour of gameplay.
Its stats hardly even show its a heavy tank, this is more like a Conway or FV215b 183 than a proper heavy tank.

It has terrible armour with low HP, and has the least accurate gun in tiers 7-10. The mobility is also completely unimpressive, even though the engine power is good, its limited by a low top speed.

All that aside, the Caliban has got good DPM on its HESH and decent penetration on either shell whether it uses calibrated shells or not (but no “real” premium ammo with high pen). Its overall mobility is good in terms of both acceleration and traverse; and it will occasionally bounce tier 7 tanks when using gun depression.

Overall the tank really isn’t a conventional heavy tank, this tank is meant to be derpy and fun, and it achieves that. The Caliban is not meant to be “the best”, or have extremely strong tanks to be a super competitive tank. 

Is it worth getting?

Caliban won’t be an easy tank to play, so if you aren’t a good player, avoid this tank. This tank’s “derpy” gameplay can be found in free tech tree tanks, if you really want the Caliban, try some of these tech tree tanks to see what you’re getting yourself into: FV215b 183, KV-2, Conway (with the 5.5 inch gun), or T49.
This being said, if you don’t care about the style of gameplay and just want a premium tank that is purely for fun and to mess around with, Caliban is currently the only tier 8 premium that is super derpy with high alpha.

From a competitive standpoint (or how good the tank is), its a fairly underwhelming tank, it seems like every stat got nerfed in order for it to have high alpha damage.

8,500 gold is a reasonable price, just for the “fun factor” of the tank. Don’t buy the tank if you want a great tank to win you battles, this tank is just for messing around with.

Most recently sold for:

New release crates – November 2022
M60 Lockboxes – February 2023

Camo cost: