TL-7-120

The TL-7-120 is a USA tier 9 heavy tank. It features decent armour, great mobility, and a very comfortable 120mm gun with great all-round statistics.

Click the table of contents below to access the section you want:

1. Armour
2. Playing against a TL-7-120
3. Gun
4. Mobility
5. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
6. Gameplay advice
7. Overall
8. Is it worth getting?
9. Most recently sold for:
10. Camo cost:

Armour

(The TL-7-120 in the images is using Improved Assembly)

vs 258mm AP (left image), 340mm HEAT (right image)
When flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 340-350mm
Shoulders 270-320mm
Lower plate 110mm
Turret mostly 285-385mm+ (weakest point 255mm)
Cupola 55-200mm

VS all tier 9-10 tanks:
The TL-7’s armour is on its upper plate and turret, these are the strongest areas. The tank has typically weak lower plate and commander’s cupola, both are easy to hit and penetrate. The turret is also covered in a 3mm spaced armour plate, however this isn’t helpful for anything other than blocking HESH.

Note that the cupola gets hit very easily and often, it essentially negates your tank’s armour completely. With that cupola on the tank, the TL-7’s armour rating goes from being quite strong to being not-so-great.

Hull:
All enemies you face against in this tank (other than TDs with premium ammo) will bounce off the upper plate. The tank shouldn’t be angled in any situation, as the upper plate will already bounce premium ammo from all tanks other than TDs using premium ammo.

Turret:
Frontally its very strong, especially on flat ground, even 340mm HEAT cannot reliably penetrate the turret cheeks. However, there are still some weakpoints around the gun which can be penetrated if shots are aimed well.
When using gun depression though, the turret cheeks are weaker, and 340mm HEAT can cut through quite easily. 330mm HEAT will still struggle to penetrate, so the turret remains fairly strong.

Angling/sidescraping:
This tank cannot angle or sidescrape at all. Its sides are a weak 70mm, with an angled 50mm part on the bottom of the hull. Its also covered in 5mm spaced armour.
5mm is very thin spaced armour, this is not helpful to the tank, in fact it makes its armour weaker. See here for why that is the case.

Playing against a TL-7-120

In a facehug:
In the images above, the tank shooting the TL-7 is a WZ-114, a fairly average size and height heavy tank.

-With lower profile tanks, the upper plate is easily penetrated, as shown above, even 254mm AP can easily go through it with the good -9 gun depression that the 114 has. A tank with a lower slung hull would easily be able to penetrate the upper plate, if not with AP, then HEAT can go through very easily.

-The cupola also cannot be hidden. Due to the low height of the TL-7, and the hatch’s large profile, its basically at eye-level to most heavy tanks, and facehugging just puts the hatch at a perfect position for enemies to shoot.

Gun blocking:
-If the enemy TL-7 uses their gun to try blocking you from shooting the hatch or any other area of the tank, just ignore it.

-The TL-7’s gun is 0mm in module armour, so if you shoot it, the gun won’t block your shot at all. You also have a chance to damage the gun of the TL-7 if you shoot it; and if they are covering the hatch, and you penetrate both, there’s a chance to damage both the gun and the commander simultaneously.

Sidescraping:
-The TL-7 cannot sidescrape at all. If you see a TL-7 doing this, just try to shoot the front track wheel. Due to the thin side armour the front track wheel is quite weak.

-Alternatively you can shoot the hatch, which can be hit very easily due to its size. It even crosses the middle of the turret, so part of it can still be seen even when sidescraping with the hatch “behind cover”.

-Switching to HEAT will guarantee a penetration on a sidescraping TL-7. Its side armour is too thin to stand  up to HEAT, no matter how well it is angled. If doing this though, you have to be careful to not hit the spaced armour.

-If using AP and the enemy TL-7 is at a fairly normal sidescraping angle (around 70 degrees), you can try to just shoot the spaced armour. Try to hit as far forward on this spaced armour as possible, if you hit closer to the rear, your chance of penetration is lower
This spaced armour will be highlighted red, so it will seem like your tank cannot penetrate; however, its quite likely to go through due to the spaced armour being extremely thin, and the base armour behind it also being thin. This is shown in an image below in the gameplay advice section.

Gun

The TL-7-120 mounts a 120mm gun

-Alpha damage is 400 on AP, 340 on HEAT, and 515 on HE
-It has a 9.4s reload, giving it 2545 DPM
-Penetration on AP is 249mm, HEAT is 330mm, and HE is 60mm.
–Estimated aim time is 3.8/4.1s
-Dispersion is 0.326/0.293
–Gun handling is 0.2/0.2/0.11, or 0.17/0.17/0.09 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -7 degrees

Overall this is a great gun, it feels very comfortable to use, and its accuracy is noticeable. The DPM is great, penetration is high, accuracy is very good, and gun handling is decent. 

When do actually need to aim properly, the aim time isn’t the best, though its also not terrible by any means. The gun depression of -7 degrees is decent, especially with the tank’s small size and fairly low profile.

Mobility

-Top speed is 36km/h forwards, and -10km/h in reverse
-Traverse speed is 38.7 deg/s on hard terrain, and 29.8 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 17 hp/t, it has a very strong 732 horsepower engine for its 43 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 17 hp/t on hard terrain, and 13.1 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are, with 1/1.3/1.8

This is good mobility for a heavy tank, it has a decent top speed, good traverse speed, and a very strong engine and acceleration rate. The TL-7 is able to very quickly and easily able to maneuver around the battlefield due to this strong engine.

Its biggest downside is the reverse speed, with -10km/h, it feels very limited, and this really stops the tank from pulling back into cover. If you accidentally over-extend your tank, this reverse speed is very problematic.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The TL-7-120 has access to the improved engine power boost consumable.

Improved engine power boost:
This consumable is mandatory on the TL-7, due to its terrible reverse speed of 10km/h. This consumable can save you in some situations, since it will double your reverse speed, from 10km/h to 20km/h.

When activated, the consumable provides:
Top speeds: +41/-20 km/h
Effective acceleration: 22.8 hp/t on hard terrain, 17.5 hp/t on medium terrain
Traverse speeds also increase significantly (harder to calculate due to both a 5% traverse increase, and also a 40% engine power increase).

Gun Rammer:
Due to having great penetration on both AP and HEAT rounds, the TL-7-120 has no reason to take calibrated shells. Its completely unnecessary and won’t give the tank an advantage in battle, the penetration it has is already very good.

Improving the reload time and DPM is far more beneficial to the TL-7, using a gun rammer will give the tank a 9.4s reload with 400 alpha, giving it 2545 DPM.

Improved Assembly:
The TL-7-120 has a black and white armour profile. Cupola & lower plate are far too weak to enhance; while the turret & upper plate are strong enough to not need enhancing.

The cupola basically negates the turret armour entirely, and when not hulldown, the lower plate negates the hull armour.

Due to this, there is no point using enhanced armour, enemies easily penetrate this tank due to its weakpoints, so its better to increase the HP so that you can withstand more of these hits.
Use improved assembly, it will increase the TL-7’s decent 2050 HP up to 2173 HP.

Improved Control:
The TL-7 already has an amazing acceleration rate, its able to very easily reach its top speed due to its strong engine. The TL-7 can afford to lose some of this engine power to gain traverse speed, which will help it to manuever better.

As the tank doesn’t struggle reaching its top speed, you don’t lose anything by using improved control.

Using improved control will give the TL-7 40 deg/s traverse speed on hard terrain, and 30.8 deg/s on medium terrain.
Its acceleration will still be very good, with 16.3 hp/t on hard terrain, and 12.5 hp/t on medium terrain.

Vertical Stabilizer:
As the TL-7 plays the role of an active frontline brawler, and it already has superb accuracy at 0.326, the TL-7 really doesn’t benefit from using refined gun.

Its far better to improve the gun handling of this tank by using vertical stabilizer. The tank will constantly be moving around the battle and repositioning, using vertical stabilizer will improve the tank’s accuracy while it is moving and after its stopped moving.

Gameplay advice

The TL-7 needs to be played as a support heavy tank. It should use its allies as its armour, because the tank itself cannot bounce shots easily. While its DPM is good, its not above average, and its mobility isn’t good enough to play as a heavium.

Just go with your allies and be either a 2nd line or frontline support tank. Pull out and shoot after the enemies have already shot and try to avoid taking any hits. Its unlikely your armour will bounce many shots, so let your allies take the hits.

This doesn’t mean it can’t play aggressively or on the frontline, it just means that you have to be more cautious in the gameplay, and not treat the tank like it has “proper heavy armour”, because it doesn’t.

Play the tank like it has no armour:
The TL-7 has so many weakpoints, and these just fully negate what armour the tank does have.

The cupola causes you to be unable to fully rely on turret armour, the lower plate and weak sides mean you can’t fully rely on the hull armour.

This doesn’t mean the tank has weak or unusable armour, however it means that the tank has exploitable weakpoints on its armour in every situation.
The armour does still work very well due to the tank being so small, the lower plate is very small and can be hard to aim for, and both the upper plate and turret are very strong, even to high penetration premium ammo.

Be a support tank:
Due to the armour of the TL-7, if it sits on the frontline, it will just get shredded by any enemy that can aim. It can’t spearhead a push, because its not really got the durability to do so, and hasn’t really got the DPM to overwhelm enemies.
This tank has to let its allies go before it, and use them as its armour. Don’t ever rely on this tank’s armour, as it will just let you down.

Note: You don’t always have to play as support, such as when you are top tier and there’s very few enemy heavy tanks to oppose you, the TL-7 can be played more aggressively.
Most of the time though, the support role is best, due to the nature of this tank’s armour.

Aim:
The aim time of the TL-7 can sometimes feel significant. Though the tank has good accuracy, its aim time and handling feel just average. Often you will notice shots missing or hitting the ground, and usually this will be down to not giving enough time for the aim circle to shrink.

Use gun depression & go hulldown:
Due to its fairly small size and decent -7 gun depression, the TL-7-120 can easily use many gun depression positions. Note that -7 is not nearly as flexible as -10, so you do have to be careful not to be over-confident against enemies with better depression angles.

Going hulldown or using gun depression will hide the biggest weakpoint of the tank, which is its very weak lower plate. The turret and upper plate armour are both extremely strong, however the hatch is tall and weak.

Try to always pull back after shooting, this will keep the hatch hidden wile your tank is reloading. If you’re on a hill, the incline can actually improve your terrible reverse speed for when you pull back.

Avoid facehugging enemies:
Facehugging technically would work well in the TL-7 if not for the large hatch on top. Due to its slow turret turn rate, low profile, and large hatch profile, facehugging just doesn’t work effectively; rather, it sets up a perfect shot for enemies to easily shoot this hatch.

The low profile means that the TL-7’s hatch is not at a hard position for enemies to aim for when in a facehug, and its large size also makes it very hard to block with the gun, or for enemies to miss. So don’t facehug enemies, generally won’t block more shots.

There are images to display this in the above section.

Avoid sidescraping:
While the TL-7-120 may seem like it can sidescrape due to its rear mounted turret, it actually can’t.

The reasons for this are that the tank’s length is short, so its rear-mounted turret doesn’t actually give it an advantage to sidescrape.
Along with this, the tank has a weak 70mm of hull side armour, with a very thin 5mm of spaced armour covering it.

Note that thin spaced armour is NOT helpful to a tank’s armour profile. It actually weakens it, this is explained with the image below.

Overall

Armour – 6/10
Gun – 6/10
Mobility – 7/10
Speed – 5.5/10

TL-7-120 is overall a good tank.

Armour is very strong on both the upper plate and turret, and the lower plate small and narrow. The sides and cupola are very weak, but HE/HESH protection is good. Armour is hard to use due to cupola and weak sides, but can still be resilient due to the high thickness and very small size for a HT.
Gun is good, it has decent DPM, great accuracy & penetration, and decent gun depression & aim time. Gun handling isn’t so impressive, but decent enough.
Mobility is good, the engine is very strong, and acceleration is high. Traverse speed is good but feels slow due to the tank’s small size. Reverse speed is extremely poor at -10km/h.
Speed is decent, 36km/h.

Is it worth getting?

If you want a fairly standard tier 9 heavy tank to grind credits, then yes this tank is worth it. Out of all the tier 9 premium/collector heavies, the TL-7 is by far the most “standard” type of tank.

However, if you’re just looking for a tank which offers something interesting or unique, then don’t get the TL-7. It just doesn’t offer anything over the M103 which makes it worth paying money for; it may be slightly different, slightly better, but not by enough to make it unique or worth it.

The TL-7-120 is worth 10,000 gold. Its a good tank, with a fairly simple playstyle. The tank is enjoyable, however is not very unique. The tech tree M103 can offer the exact same game play for free; the tech tree T110E5 can offer the same gameplay, but in tier 10, and is a better tank tier-for-tier.
The tank also feels like it doesn’t have much armour, which is an issue, as its meant to be a heavy tank.

The TL-7 is not easy to play either, as it has large weakpoints, can’t expose its sides, and doesn’t have noob-proof gun depression, armour, or reverse speed. Its playstyle as a support heavy tank is also not easy for newer players to get the hang of.

Most recently sold for:

New release crates – April 2023
20,000 gold (full bundle), 17,500 gold (tank only) – October 2023

Camo cost:

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