April Digest #4

World of Warships

Continued to grind my Flint captain and earn the daily Coal crates. 

Avoiding the NEW ship bundles like the plague. Figured it's much safer to simply start prepping for the Christmas/Santa crates. Along the way, pick up the odd NEW ship here and there according to how they're offered - FREE or EARN through play. Which, of course, applies to Event Pass, Dockyard events, and whatever other events WG throws our way. 

Saw someone had paid for one of the NEW ships being offered yesterday. The Turgut Reis appeared in a Co-Op game. Nothing unusually good about it from what I saw. I was in my Flint and it had spawned with me in the centre cap area. Didn't pay too much attention to it as I was dealing to the enemy before me. But it performed well enough. Not too sure about the hoopla over it, or regarding the other two NEW ships. 

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Dismissed more Tier X captains today. Few to remove from Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Pan-Asia however. Expect to complete the dismissals after tomorrow's grind. 

Friesland played to complete the 1,000 main battery hits ribbon task for the Dockyard event. Did it in four games. In the last game was grouped with a Smolensk and Preussen. We spawned on the right flank of the Greece map in the south. While I raced to the cap and duelled with the opposing DD, the Smolensk continued on its due north course. I figured it was trying to set up a crossfire situation as the enemy DD led its companion cruiser and battleship to the cap. The Preussen followed me and providing fire support as we tackled the remaining two enemy to our front. Our crossfire worked brilliantly though and we, as a team, quickly sunk our opponents and secured the cap without any problems. 

I then moved my focus fire on the centre cap where an enemy Kremlin and Preussen were contesting the space. Our Smolensk tried to repeat his crossfire endeavour, but was smacked into oblivion by the Kremlin and Preussen. I wondered if our Smolensk would have survived had he smoke like my Friesland. With our cruiser gone, myself and the Preussen were able to help the others knock out both enemy battleships.

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Finished off the last of the Tier Xs in today's (Monday) grind along with the last requisite Dockyard mission. Now it's just a continuation of captain upskilling. The bulk are at 17 points while the remainder are at higher levels.

I wonder how the Golden Week scam is travelling. Haven't seen any more NEW ships apart from a Shigure a while ago. That makes two so far since the event began. When such an event happens, and the ship is desired, you would usually see a fair few playing. Wondering if their marketing is working out globally?

Interesting discussion from one WOWS YT streamer tonight where someone emailed him asking which class was the least effective. The emailer believed it is battleships, and went to great lengths to explain why. Which initially upset the streamer who is a BB main. I didn't watch the entire video but kind of understood what the claimant was saying: BBs tend to hang back; slow reload makes it so. Unless they're brawling with support or tanked up with support, why would a BB sacrifice itself and die just as quickly as a DD who runs into a cap and is caught out unawares and dies within minutes. Makes sense therefore for a BB to hang back and rely on its ranged firepower to contribute. 

I don't play Randoms so I can't really confirm or refute the claim made as this is where the argument was centred in his email. In Co-Op I try to support whomever is game enough to close to contact whether in a destroyer, submarine, cruiser or battleship. 

There's a big difference playing an Oklahoma as opposed to a Viribus Unitis. 

The former is slow, very slow. In a YOLO race, she is the perpetual tortoise. Her 14" inch guns suffer from a much slower reload than her Austrian counterpart who also beats her by weight of fire - a salvo of twelve 12" can cause serious damage when they connect. 

I do prefer the Viribus to the Oklahoma because of her firepower and because she's more maneouvrable than the Oklahoma. Both ships are Tier V by the way. 

Compared to the effectiveness of say, a Fujin or an Okhotnik - both Tier V premium destroyers - it's obvious who's going to come out of such a close-range fight. The same applies to any Tier V cruisers, and not just premium. The tech tree line Japanese heavy cruiser Furutaka or light cruiser Agano can easily ambush either battleships and sail off on its merry way in search of its next victim.

And that probably supports the claim made by the emailer about battleships being ineffective when they switch up from "stay at back sniper" to "upfront brawler". However, in saying that, the usefulness of battleships does vary from tier to tier.

At Tier IX, for instance, the Pan-American battleship Valparaiso plays different to the German battleship Pommern if you should decide to brawl. Both are potent and very good brawlers, and are quite capable of mixing it up close. Valparaiso has her extraordinary heals and her effective secondaries while Pommern own long-range secondaries and torpedoes compliment her gunpower making for a foe to be wary of. Both demand a definite play style in order to get the maximum benefit. But the point made is you can actively support in a brawl - albeit with conditions - which proves they are useful. Certainly more so than their Tier V counterparts.

At the top end, perhaps that usefulness fluctuates and becomes a little less clearer because top tier in any class means just that, and the distinction between the quality and usefulness between classes become quite distinct. The destroyer Marceau, for instance, is a definite threat to any battleship regardless of nation. Likewise, the destroyer Shimakaze. And any decent Tier X cruiser will cause problems for any battleship foolish enough to leave its "at the back" post and decide to "mix it with the big boys". 

Conversely, a battleship at the back, can safely lob shells all day long knowing the enemy will have to close distance if it wants to pose any kind of threat. Then I guess the claimant is justified in stating that battleships are ineffective in the game as a result of this observation. But if a battleship is fulfilling it roles of provide firepower support, then the battleship is being useful in that regard. Which is a weak point to make when outweighed by the negatives against the many positives for the other classes. 

Personally I gravitate to being a battleship mains. My profile lists my top ship played in Co-Op is the Tier IX German battleship Pommern - a huge 1422 battles! Early in my playing days when I played both Randoms and Ranked, my top ship played were battleships, the Japanese Tier VIII battleship Amagi (85 battles) and the Japanese Tier VII battleship Nagato (31 battles) respectively. I always found battleships to be easier to play for some reason, despite their slow speed and slow reloads. Maybe I'm just a tortoise in mind and spirit. 

In saying that, however, I also enjoy playing both cruisers and destroyers. My recent posts harping on the joys of playing the Tier VII premier US cruiser Flint attest how I am becoming more and more familiar and comfortable with the cruiser class, learning their idiosyncracies and other peculiarities. And nonetheless still enjoying the experience despite their major weakness. 

I also had a couple of good sessions the other day playing the premium destroyers Siroco and K. Schonberg as part of my ongoing Commander upskilling program. With the commander upskill program, playing destroyers is, for the most part, fun and quick. You either die quick or you don't. 

Destroyers are fun but fragile. Cruisers are cool but crumple like paper. Battleships tend to be slow, blocky, and torpedo magnets.

In summing up, I just wanted to toss my 2 cents worth in reacting to this enquiry as if my own observations matter (they don't to be honest). The question raised stirred up some thoughts for me personally about the reasons I continue to play this online game. An involvement that's has surprisingly lasted as long as it has given my notoriously short attention span. 

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A short session today (Wednesday) given I wasn't in the mood for full grind from my commander upskill listing which is currently set at fifteen. Managed to upskill one of my 18-pt captains to 19-point level though so that was some sort of achievement. Still loads more captains to upskill to 21 point. Loads more. 

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Thursday is Dockyard-Event-release-next-mission-day. Completed three of the six mission tasks required to complete this chapter. Will finish off the remaining three between now and next Wednesday.

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Seven Years War

Continuing with my paper army project. Doing preliminary test samples of two nations to see if the idea is worth following through and devoting time and energy. 

For the Austrian infantry, I have settled on recreating the Puebla Brigade which was part of the left wing infantry under Colloredo. The units of the brigade include 

• IR 13 Moltke (1 bn)
• IR 8 Hildburghausen (2 bns)
• IR 3 Erzherzog Carl (2 bns)

The formation is a five battalion brigade. I will add artillery and cavalry (again a historical formation) to round out this "small" test sample army list. 

With the Prussians, I am also going with a historical formation from the Leuthen OOB. I have settled upon the Geist Brigade comprising 

• Forcade (Nr. 23)
• Alt-Braunschweig (Nr. 5) 
• Kleist Grenadiers (3 coys from Nr. 3 and 1 coy from Nr. 6)
• Schenckendorff Grenadiers (2 coys from Nr. 35 and 2 coys from Nr. 36)

Together this group constitutes a total of six battalions. Like the Austrians, there will be cavalry and artillery to round out this small force.

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Figure scaling is next. In my research I came across a prize-winning blogsite. The creator went with 1:10 scaling thus fielding large units. His SYW armies are 30mm scale and therefore they look very impressive on the tabletop. I delighted in staring at his gorgeously displayed units. I suspect he must be a fanboy of the late great Charles Grant - master of the large gloriously painted tabletop games.

I, on the other hand, am putting together a small paper list. Therefore the word "impressive" is not in my present vocabulary of inspiration. Nor should it belong there. I am, after weighing up the differences between 1:50 and 1:35, going with the latter choice. I thought about 1:50 but the units would look piddly to most purists and prudes.

Also there is enough room to show the different quantities between either side. The Prussians were better mobilised (with more than enough reserves) while the Austrians were less prepared and suffered shortages. The Dutch infantry units, for example, fielded less due to a lack of recruits and were therefore smaller in size and composition. 

Orientation might seem a small thing to many but to me it's a bugbear. The paper infantry I am downloading for printing are front-facing whereas the cavalry and artillery are profiled side-on. How to reconcile the two facings becomes a small problem when if fully deployed you are staring at your table from long end to long end (usual mode) then realising you need to move to the side of the table to check out your cavalry deployment. A skinny cavalryman remains a skinny cavalryman until you move yourself (un-Godlike) from your static post to properly identify the skinny-ness. 

One solution would be to base all the infantry side on to match their cavalry and artillery brethren-at-arms. Which means I can therefore only play the game from only one side of the table which is now the proper God position. A novel approach indeed that may not appeal to all other tabletop Gods. 

Reading Christopher Duffy's The Armies of Frederick the Great, 2nd edition, I found the anecdotal evidence that infantrymen sometimes dropped to the ground to evade the cavalry blade (p144) and managed to survive both amusing and intriguing. It occurred to me that this proved the exception rather than the norm. To include this in any rules might mean only if the unit AND commander were high quality was this possible. And still they had to pass a die roll test to succeed. 

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The cavalry formations I have selected for my sample armies are as follows:

Prussians

Going with Driesen's Left Wing cavalry, more precisely just two brigades from the entire wing. Driesen played a crucial part in the battle when his force intercepted and helped break up Luchessi's counter-attack on the exposed Prussian left flank.

Schmettau brigade (1st Line)

• Seydlitz Cuirassiers (5 sqn)
• Margraf Friedrich Cuirassiers (5 sqn)

Czettritz brigade (2nd Line)

• Normann Dragoons (5 sqn)
• Czettritz Dragoons (5 sqn)

Austrians

Given I've selected units from Driesen's Left Wing, it only makes sense to have them confront units from Luchessi's Right Wing who rode all the way over to confront Frederick's echelon attack and got destroyed by Driesen's counter-attack. Picking the entirety of Esterhazy Division (2nd line) for this task:

Daun brigade

• Graf Daun Dragoons (5 sqn)
• Herzog Wurttemburg Dragoons (5 sqn)

Trauttmansdorf brigade

• Serbelloni Cuirassiers (5 sqn)
• Anhalt-Zerbst Cuirassiers (5 sqn)

Artillery. I am going to include the battalion 3-pdr guns because they were an integral part of infantry organisation, for both sides, right up to the Napoleonic Wars. I haven't yet worked out rules for their inclusion and actions but their contribution might probably be as simple and convenient as a +1 to the battalion firing? Or something similar. 

Hope to WIP photos within the next few days, fingers crossed. 

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