Call of Duty: Vanguard player tramples opposing team with a micro tank

Run away from Call of Duty: Vanguard's annoyingly durable micro tank, lest you be trampled under its cold steel treads.

Vanguard players are running amok with the Goliath, a remote-controlled explosive tank reminiscent of the famously annoying RCXD killstreak from the Black Ops series. I thought a return to World War 2 would mean an escape from the past year of annoying exploding cars, but Sledgehammer has managed to cook up something even worse.

The Goliath not only produces a way bigger boom than Black Ops' dinky little RC cars, it can run over and kill players instantly. You can see the Goliath's true killing potential in the frightening clip below shared by user ProfessorFatSak on the Vanguard subreddit.

goliath_spawn_trap_on_das_haus from r/CODVanguard

"Why don't they just shoot it?" I asked myself as I watched that clip for the first time. But the truth is, I'm not sure it would've made much of a difference. That little green bastard is built Ford tough, as it turns out. There is one player that shoots nearly two magazines into the Goliath at the end and barely gets it to half health! That's a major upgrade to the old RCXD that could be squashed with a few bullets from anything.

Vanguard's other big change from the RCXD is that it's no longer a 3-kill streak reward. The Goliath is a field upgrade, a bonus gadget that automatically recharges throughout a match. On one hand, the set timer prevents dominant players from calling in six Goliaths in a single match. On the other hand, it also guarantees that anyone with the Goliath equipped will get at least one or two per match, depending on length.

I've been seeing the Goliath pretty frequently in Vanguard's first weekend, usually just a second or two before it blows me up. I'm glad that it's slow enough to run away from, but if you don't hear it coming or get cornered on one of Vanguard's smaller maps like Das Haus, getting pancaked is surprisingly easy.

It's also surprisingly easy, as I learned a few months ago, to run yourself over with the Goliath. Look, it spawned right behind me, OK?!

Does the Goliath need to be nerfed? I wouldn't go that far yet, but in close-quarters scenarios, it's hard to get around the tank and shooting it alone isn't going to kill it fast enough. What I do know for sure is that, like the RCXD before it, the Goliath is a coward's tool that should be discouraged at all costs.

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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.