It truly is the most wonderful time of the year! Get a sneak peek at everything coming your way in this magical event, starting December 10th.

Long, long ago, the Ice Queen arrived in the world ….

And now the Ice Queen is reaching out and expanding her realm. The chill is so deep, it's throwing winter off balance and threatening Santa's village, workshop ... the entire north.

It’s up to you to help Santa Claus save the holidays in Winter Fest!

Winter Fest is a month-long series of activities and events designed to celebrate the season. In fact, it’s the biggest holiday extravaganza we’ve put together. Just take a look what’s on the horizon!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Because there’s so much going on in Winter Fest, and so much of it is new, we want to give you an introduction to the whole event and an idea of what to expect. So read on or click below to learn more and get your wintertime merriment going!

• The Winter Fest Storefront
• New Event-Only Currency: Snowballs
• New Item Highlights
• War Chests (Two Kinds!)
• Special Event Battles
• …And Even More Going On!

The Winter Fest Storefront

Let’s start with the first new item for Winter Fest that you’ll see: the Winter Fest Storefront. This is a brand-new tab in the game that’s designed to be your one-stop shop for all things Winter Fest.

Because it’s a Storefront, it’s full of themed items that you can get by navigating to the appropriate button.

But that’s not all. Here in the Storefront, you can also press the “Story” button to read the tale of the Ice Queen (or even have it read to you, in classic holiday story fashion), or press the “Play” button to jump straight into the queue for the Winter Fest Event Battle that’s live at the time!

New Event-Only Currency: Snowballs

Now here’s something special: For the four buttons below in the Winter Fest Storefront, you don’t use Gold to purchase items—you use Snowballs:

Snowballs are an all-new, limited-time currency that can be used only in the Winter Fest Storefront. You don’t need to spend Gold to get them; in fact, starting December 10th, you can get Snowballs just by doing what you already do—logging in and playing the game!

Here are the specific ways you can get Snowballs:

• As rewards for in-game Challenges while Winter Fest is live
• As daily gifts inside the Winter Calendar
• As special rewards for the Winter Fest Event Battles
• As bonus drops inside Winter Fest War Chests (more on those below!)

And that’s not all. As a thank-you to anyone who has bought or will buy a Frostbite Season Pass or Ultimate Season Pass before January 7th, on December 10th (or the date you buy your pass) you’ll be credited with a gift of 4,000 Snowballs!

You can see your current Snowball balance in the upper-right corner of the Winter Fest Storefront.

But be on your toes, Commander. Snowballs truly are a limited-time currency, and they’ll melt away when Winter Fest Ends.

So be sure to spend all your Snowballs before they disappear with the server restart on Tuesday, January 7th!

New Item Highlights

You probably noticed a few new items in that infographic up there.

That’s because, just like an icy snowball, Winter Fest is absolutely packed—but with a ton of content and rewards:

• Four new 3D Commanders, including two that have custom voiceover
• Four new Toy Tanks that you can play in the Winter Fest Event Battles (and they come with Garage Gear replicas that you can keep all year ‘round)
• Four new Premium tanks to play in regular battles all year
• New tank Skins, Camos, and other Cosmetics

Some of these new items will be available for Snowballs in the Winter Fest Storefront. Others will be available for Gold in our regular in-game Store. A few will be available in both places.

And then there are a couple of special items that will be found only inside of our seasonal War Chests.

To get you started with the new items, we’ll have two articles going live on our News page after the World of Tanks Modern Armor stream on Friday, December 6th:

• An article sharing stats and details for the new Winter Fest Premium tanks, Toy Tanks, and 3D Commanders
• An article showing bundle prices for all the items for Snowballs in the Winter Fest Storefront and all the items for Gold in the in-game Store

War Chests (Two Kinds!)

There’s one button in the Winter Fest Storefront that works differently: the War Chests button.

This will take you to our regular War Chests tab, where, this year, you’ll find two kinds of seasonal War Chests:

• Ice Queen War Chests: DLC chests, available for real-world currency
• Winter Fest War Chests: In-game chests, available for Gold

For the Winter Fest War Chests, three tiers are available. Yule War Chests and Silver War Chests both can award chests from a higher tier—and Mystic War Chests are found only inside the other two!

As for the Ice Queen War Chests, let’s just say that this season’s icy majesty has an exclusive surprise waiting inside of those.

Articles and drop lists for both the Ice Queen War Chests and Winter Fest War Chests will be available on the News page on Tuesday, December 10th.

Special Event Battles

We love special event modes. So, this winter, we’re bringing you not one, not two, but three of them!

You can join these Event Battles using either the “Play” button in the Winter Fest Storefront or the game’s mode select screen.

For all three event modes, you’ll be fighting in Toy Tanks. If you don’t have one of this year’s four new Toy Tanks from the Storefront, don’t worry: every tanker will be able to play The Original Toy Tank!™ and Glitter Bomb (a.k.a. our toy artillery) for free during these battles!

An article covering Happy Holidays (Toy Tank Mode) will be live on our News page on Monday, December 9th. Articles covering The Ice Queen’s Curse and The Siege of Frostbite Castle will be available closer to the start of each event.

… And Even More Going On!

Hey, we don’t go easy on the milk and cookies for Santa, and we’re not going light on specials during Winter Fest, either:

• Build a Tank Challenge: Earn Premium Account time, Garage Gear, Snowballs, and more while you collect Tank Pieces to build the T28 Concept!
• Winter Map Rotation: All winter maps will be set to a slightly higher map rotation until the server restart on January 7th. Keep your eyes on the sky, as someone special might be flying by!
• Special First Win Gift: You’ll have to check the December 10th WoT’s Happening This Week! to find out what your first win each day during Winter Fest gets you!

We hope that Winter Fest brings you joy and helps get you in the holiday spirit. We’ll see you on the battlefield, Commander, where you’ll have one key mission from December 10th through January 6th: