Lycan

Page last updated October 25, 2026.

Lycan is a tier 7 hybrid nation heavy tank. It features high alpha damage, great armour, and is very flexible with good mobility and very good gun depression.
It was the 2019 Halloween event tank.

Armour

(The Lycan in the images is using Enhanced Armour)
Image slider may take a few seconds to load

Drag slider Right –> to view 180mm AP
Drag slider <– Left to view 220mm APCR

vs 180mm AP
Armour when hull is head-on:
Upper plate 280-295mm
Angled area above upper plate 220mm
Lower plate 140mm
Gun mantlet 212mm
Turret roof weakpoints 160mm

Armour when hull is turned (at angle shown above):
-Closest upper plate 214mm
-Furthest upper plate 670mm+
-Lower plate 155mm
-Front track wheel 245mm

(Note that though the upper plate when angled is 214mm thick, the image showing 220mm APCR still sees red, due to this Lycan using enhanced armour, which increases the upper plate at that angle from 214mm up to around 223mm.)

Side armour:
Side armour is 80mm, with 10mm spaced armour between the tracks.

Armour performance:

Strong areas:
-The turret is strong on flat ground to tier 6-7 enemies.
-The upper plates are extremely strong both when facing head on and when angled (angling it makes it weaker to tier 8 tanks).

Main weakpoints:
-The two “cupolas” on the turret roof are weak to tier 7-8 enemies.
-When using gun depression, the under side of the turret is weak to any enemy.
-The lower plate is very weak, even when angling.

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Gun

Lycan mounts a 120mm gun.

Firepower:
-Ammo: AP/APCR/HE.
-Penetration: 175/217/62mm.
-Alpha damage: 400/340/500.
-Reload time: 12.9s
-DPM: 1860

Handling:
–Estimated aim time: 5.2/5.6s
–Base aim time: 2.9s
-Dispersion: 0.407/0.371
–Gun handling: 0.22/0.22/0.12

Usability:
-Shell velocities: 800/900/800 m/s.
-Gun depression is -10 degrees around the entire tank.

Overall this gun is decent for its tier and its type. The penetration, DPM, and reload are completely average; the base aim time and dispersion are slightly worse than similar guns; and the gun handling is slightly better than similar guns.

This gun really isn’t anything special, the main unique feature of it is the -10 gun depression, which is much more than the similar IS tanks, and makes the tank very flexible with positioning.

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Mobility

Raw stats:
-Forward speed is 35km/h.
-Reverse speed is -15km/h.
-Raw acceleration rate is 16.8 hp/t.
-Engine power is 777hp for its 46 ton weight.
–Terrain resistances are 1.2/1.5/1.9

Hard terrain mobility:
-Actual acceleration is 14.0 hp/t.
-Traverse speed is 39.8 deg/s.

Medium terrain mobility:
-Actual acceleration is 11.2 hp/t.
-Traverse speed is 31.1 deg/s.

This is good mobility for a heavy tank, especially considering the solid armour of the Lycan. The top speeds are fairly average, but traverse speed and effective acceleration rates are both good, which make the Lycan quite a mobile tank up to its top speed.

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Equipment Loadout

Gun Rammer:
The Lycan has quite standard penetration for a tier 7 heavy tank, and doesn’t usually struggle to penetrate most enemies. It also uses only AP and APCR as its primary shell types, so doesn’t gain any big benefit (unlike tanks that use HEAT).

Gun rammer is useful on the Lycan as it helps the tank to keep a decent reload rate, as this tank very often has to compete against tier 8 tanks with 400 alpha, and other tier 7 tanks with 400 alpha. If using calibrated shells, the Lycan will really struggle with reloading quick enough, and most enemies may be able to put in 2 shots for every time you shoot once.

Use gun rammer, it will reduce the Lycan’s reload from 13.6s down to 12.6s, and increase its DPM from 1767 up to 1900.

Enhanced Armour:
Both enhanced armour and improved assembly can work well on this tank, but enhanced armour especially benefits the Lycan due to its strong overall armour, and helps it to stand up better against tier 8 enemies.

The Lycan does rely on its armour in its gameplay, so improving it will benefit the playstyle of the tank. Enhanced armour will add between 9 to 12mm of effective armour to the Lycan’s frontal armour:

Upper plate (un-angled) from 295mm up to 307mm
Upper plate (angled) from 214mm to 223mm
Gun mantlet from 212mm to 221mm

Enhanced armour also improves the hull side armour and lower plate slightly.

Vertical Stabilizer:
Like with all inaccurate heavy tanks with poor aim time, accuracy, and gun handling, the Lycan should be using vertical stabilizer. It doesn’t benefit from refined gun, as in order for that to help the tank, you have to sit still and let the gun fully aim in with every shot.

Vertical stabilizer is the better equipment choice, as it benefits the Lycan in all situations. The Lycan is a frontline brawling heavy, and does not play passively or sit still to aim for a long time. Its constantly moving around and turning the hull and turret, and vertical stabilizer helps to improve the guns accuracy when the tank is moving and after its stopped moving.

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Special mechanic:

-Lycan cannot receive fuel tank, gun, ammo rack, or engine damage, as it has a section of 400mm spaced armour protecting the internal modules.
-Tracks and observation devices are external modules, so they can still be damaged or destroyed.
-Lycan used to have full invulnerability, meaning no modules or crew could be damaged or injured. WG removed the feature of no crew damage at the end of 2022, when they added an “undead crew” to the Tankenstein, which previously had no special features.

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Gameplay advice

The Lycan features really comfortable and standard gameplay for a heavy tank. It has all the features and stats needed to be able to fit into that “standard” role.

It can go hulldown, use gun depression, play on ridegelines, sidescrape, trade alpha, and its got the mobility needed to use those positions and gameplay tactics.

General gameplay:
Take the Lycan to the heavy tank flank. Though it has good mobility and can keep up on the medium flank, its gun is too inaccurate and slow firing to be effective against smaller and faster targets (which are medium and light tanks).

The Lycan will benefit from facing against slower and larger enemies (heavy tanks), and the slower moving gameplay of the HT side. This will allow its gun longer time to aim, and also face enemies with similar long reloads.

Go hulldown:
Lycan can really use any heavy tank position, but it thrives in hulldown.

The turret is very good against most enemies, its only weakpoint is the gun mantlet, which is still fairly strong for a weakpoint.

Due to the angling above and below the mantlet, no AP or APCR type shell can penetrate these areas (except 150mm+ guns, due to overmatch), which makes it very reliable to face against any enemy.

If enemies shoot HEAT (which can penetrate, as it ignores the 70 degree auto-ricochet), they will only be able to penetrate the area under the gun, and its quite a small weakpoint.

Use gun depression:
The -10 gun depression is a highlight of the Lycan’s capabilities, and should be used as an advantage against enemies. In tier 7 there is no other tank (other than Lupus) with as much alpha and gun depression as the Lycan, which makes it quite a devastating tank to be shot by when its on a ridge.

Try to avoid poking out for too long when you take a shot. The neck (turret armour under the gun mantlet) is a weakpoint when the Lycan uses its full gun depression, and if you let enemies aim at this for too long, they will easily penetrate the turret armour.
(This is not an issue if only using 7 degrees of gun depression or less, as it will still be an auto-ricochet.)

Try to just poke out quickly, take a shot, then pull back. This gives the enemies essentially no time to react, and many won’t realize that there’s a weakpoint under the gun.

Sidescrape:
Sidescrape against tier 6 and 7 enemies. The frontal armour of the Lycan is very strong against these enemies, and even premium ammo will struggle to penetrate (shown below).

Note that there are weakpoints, so if you leave your tank exposed, enemies will realize and shoot them. With the Lycan, you have to bring your whole tank back into cover while you reload, and only sidescrape when you have a shot ready, otherwise enemies will just hit the weakpoints while you reload for 12 seconds.

Avoid sidescraping against tier 8 enemies, most heavies have more penetration on standard ammo than tier 7s do on premium ammo. The armour effectiveness will be greatly reduced while sidescraping against tier 8 tanks.

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The Lycan is just a standard heavy. Its gameplay could be compared to similar tanks, like the IS, IS-2 tanks, T34 but with a few different capabilities (better gun depression than IS tanks, better side armour than Tornvagn). It works in the usual heavy tank positions, using the usual heavy tank gameplay tactics.

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Overall

	Rating 1-10	Reason
Armour	8	Easy to use and strong.
HP	4	Low HP for tier 7 HT.
Firepower	5	Average DPM, high alpha.
Gun Consistency	3	Terrible accuracy & aim time.
Mobility	5	Average mobility
Top speed	5	35km/h

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Is it worth getting?

The Lycan is not really worth getting.
While it has a few unique traits, such as the gun depression and pike nose armour, its overall playstyle still feels quite standard, similar to tanks you can get for free (KV-3, IS, IS-2).

The Lycan is worth 4,500 gold. Its a good tank that can do well, but doesn’t offer any gameplay or stats which are really worth paying much for.

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Price Guide

Prices you can expect the tank to be sold for, based on previous sales in store.
Lycan is a Halloween event tank, so is never sold for gold.
The best way to obtain the tank is via draws or auctions.

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Legendary Camos:

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