Verblonde

No rush at all, in my case - an almost entirely made-up line, designed to make the Russians feel good, isn't terribly interesting to me. I wouldn't mind Lazo, due to having an incorrigible premium ship habit, even if she is meh - not to the extent of buying all those doubloons though! I can wait to earn the tokens, although that might mean handing back my 'whale' card...

If one gets the 25 pack, isn't that an instant Lazo (plus change)? That mitigates the doubloons a bit (to the tune of whatever a T7 premium is worth)... No idea if Lazo is any good, of course, but still.

Ah! Splendid - this is what I get for being at work (ghastly state of affairs, you'll agree)...!

Depends a bit on my frame of mind, and the proximity (or not) of CVs; the answer will almost certainly be different tomorrow too, but today it might be (in no particular order): Haida Groz Sims Gearing Oddly, Bismarck (with emphasis towards secondaries) since I started making an effort to play her... There's a good chance Molotov might supplant something by the end of the weekend though: having been encouraged to play something other than DDs recently, I've been giving cruisers and BBs a pit of an experimental prod; I've had Molotov for ages but never really played her much - finally got round to trying her in randoms the other day, and she was great fun (ask me again when I've actually played more than a handful of battles in her though)...

So, Team P*ssy Galore it is?

Apart from being a bit on the pricey side, it looks a fine choice to me (says he, who's stuck waiting for snowflakes, or similar, due to a serious Git Gud deficit...)!

I would be slightly surprised if they did: 1) Lots of people would be cross, and fill the forums etc. with bile for longer than might be comfortable for WG. 2) Most SCs seem to contain flags, so it's not like WG lose that much giving them away. 3) It's one of the reasons it's worthwhile pushing on to T10, and may well generate an uptick in spend as the relevant time approaches (free xp etc.). Still, I wouldn't put it past WG to do the silly thing...

Doubloons: wait for a sale; extra port slots when they're cheap; perma-camo for T10 ships (turns them into excellent credit earners); premium account; another premium ship; keep a bit back for de-mounting equipment perhaps. Don't spend it until you find something you definitely want, and make sure you don't accidentally spend it on flags etc. Free xp: use it to research essential modules on new ships, but don't use it to research new ships themselves. If you don't have any 19-point captains yet, perhaps use some to push to the next point (opinion divided on this). Keep saving for a free xp ship e.g. Nelson etc.

Looks like the news story's up now (https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/history/armada-neustrashimy/). Oh well, being rubbish at Clans and Ranked, I guess I'll have to wait until the next snowflakes event (assuming WG can't resist a little shameless whaling)...

It's a Canadian, when perceived by a geographically discombobulated Brit... (It's a bit like red/blue shifts on light, only dealing with nationalities; probably involves maple syrup in the process somewhere)

Now we're getting a bit metaphysical, but the answer probably involves hockey...

I'm currently doing Good Work on that subject, one Canadadian at a time... ("It's a lift, dammit!" etc.)

BTW I wasn't being mean about your post, but rather WG using bloody American English. (Yes, I know there is no such thing as American English - just English, and mistakes)

Sadly, the blighters appear to be using the 'English (Simplified)' setting on their spell-check...

I wouldn't want to come over all Mother Theresa....etc.

I have to admit, that was precisely my thought process... Presumably, it'll be obvious fairly quickly which team is the 'winner', and if it's the one we haven't picked, we can switch. Mind you, didn't the article claim that whichever side loses each day gets a bonus such that it'll be easier to not lose the day after? Edit: for those of us who get upset by illiteracy in words such as 'Honor', we could always pretend they meant Honor, as in Blackman - noted thespian, most famous for her role in James Bond (that would probably get me in trouble to name specifically, but seemed to someone impressionable like me to be keen on cats)...

In response to 1, not really; if a CV wants to find you they will, although in a few weeks, an initial launch delay is probably being introduced for all CVs, so you'll have a few (or quite a few, depending on tier) seconds at the start of the game before the planes can start hunting. You already know about toggling AA off to delay your being spotted, which is a key thing. My suggestion is to ideally pick ships that are not Doomed the moment a CV finds them; this tends to mean for DDs the lines with better AA (US especially, KM, and some Russians spring to mind), and something similar for cruisers (although I'm not a cruiser meister); crucially though, if a CV is after you, you can't rely on stealth. In terms of gameplay, as others have said, more caution than before the rework is called for - don't charge straight for the caps. Also, be mindful of what usually sinks you; for the bulk of DDs, the planes generally don't kill you themselves (unless you face a good CV driver) - it's usually surface ships who fire at you once the planes spot you. As a general aim, try and keep islands between you and the enemy fleet when planes are about; you can use your AA to fight the planes without having to worry about incoming surface fire (this goes double if you have DefAA). If the planes give up, or go for an easier target, you can then switch to more traditional DD pursuits, such as capping/spotting. My favourite ships for this sort of play are almost anything American (T7+), the Germans (T-61, Z-39, and T10, especially), and higher tier Russians (Groz especially); T8+ PA work reasonably well like this too. If you are trying to play something with poor AA (or you've had your AA shot off with HE - press and hold H to see your ship's stats, including current state of AA), you probably want to stay within the umbrella of things with better AA, although this can get dull for DD drivers. It should be noted that lower tier interactions with CVs can be a bit of a shambles: most ships don't get decent AA (of sorts) until around T5, but you can argue that doesn't matter as T4 CVs are also pretty hopeless. I've been playing T4 CVs a bit - trying to teach myself the basics of the new CV play; you seem to have more or less free rein against same tier, or T3 opponents (especially), and get shredded by T5, at least until they've been pummeled a bit by HE. As to part 2: opinion seems to be divided a bit here, but for what it's worth, my feeling is that CVs still have a fair amount of balance issues, and they may not be entirely fixable. As you know, CVs don't come in odd tier versions, so you get bigger power jumps between the tiers; a T6, say, can do horrifying things to a T5 target, but will get its planes shredded by most T8s. A lot depends on how good the target's AA is though; as you're discovering, DDs with poor AA are largely knackered against a CV - they are probably UP in the teeth of a CV. However, if you weakened the CVs too much, something like a Kidd will have a field day. My feeling is: identify the lines which have acceptable AA, and only play them for the moment (at least in randoms). This sucks for anyone who is heavily invested in the IJN torp line, for example, and reduces the number of available ships that are viable, but (if you're fairly new to the game) it does leave a lot of options still. In my case, it also means I've been playing cruisers a bit more, plus my Bismarck, which I'd been neglecting; even the new CVs are quite fun to play. We just have to hope that WG will eventually devise a way to make the currently non-viable ships useful again...

It'll be inflation, pure and simple - in the same way that the free xp ships have gone from 750K to a million. Steel got easier to get (via snowflakes etc.), so ships get more expensive in the currency as a response.

Steel, as others have said; I vaguely recall you get an 'are you sure?' box before the transaction is final, that tells you exactly what the coal/steel split is, and allows you to bail if you wish.

Of course, but it's far more funny to imagine them using it for some spectacularly debauched bacchanalian excesses... (resisting urge to quote Rob Newman's Jarvis)

I don't generally play Hood in randoms, but I feel it's rather a shame that her AA is now (essentially) 'sensible' - the idiotic rockets gave her a bit of a point of interest pre-rework, even if all half-decent CV drivers knew all about the gimmick and could easily avoid it. Kidd's another one that was made 'sensible' with the rework - she's still a decent AA platform (I think mine is my record-holder for plane kills), but not spectacular, which arguably reduces her personality a bit. It would be a pity if all the interesting 'eccentrics' were removed from the game, in the name of making things easier to understand...

Essential Cultural Reference. It's also partly because I got a warning once from an over-excitable moderator when I put it, erm, less tactfully before...! My Black is also from those missions too; it's not a bad way to run things - the good CW/Ranked players basically get exclusivity on the ships for an initial period, then the whales/great unwashed can get their hands on them later (plus, the good players can get the interesting camo too). *If* it happens again this Christmas, depending on what sorts of amounts of steel are available, I'll probably aim to either get Flint, or Neustrashimy...

This is a very valid point: some of my best, and most consistent, earners are Gearing and Groz (both with perma-camo)...

I guess this means we'll get snowflakes and (more importantly for WG's Beer + Ladies of Negotiable Affection fund) paid-for steel missions at Christmas again...