TheIdesOfMarch93

Definitely get Iowa. She has better shell velocity which translates to more power, a higher HP pool which means longer survival, and her AA suite is ungodly powerful if you go down the AA-spec route for your captain. Having said so, keep your NC too and put a high-level captain in her too. She'll be useful in earning credits for maintaining and upgrading Iowa with.

What you say is true with one important caveat: you won't eat citadels, but you'll eat a shockingly high amount of alpha damage that would be comparable to a citadel hit. Not to mention that German BBs are the most fire-prone ingame too, which makes them huge targets for cruisers to light up. That's coming from someone here who owns a Bismarck and all the US battleships from T8 onwards. Even with a secondary build on Bismarck I wouldn't feel too confident of going into an extended battle against a North Carolina because her 16-inch shells will wreck me, angling or no angling whilst I have to hope my secondaries will be able to burn her to death before she kills me with normal penetration hits.

Cruisers are still useful even in heavy BB-meta games. I absolutely adore my Dmitri Donskoi, and I get the "Witherer" badge on a daily basis whenever I take her out for a spin; her fire chances are godly off the scale with Demo Expert + flags. At high tiers you never ever ever get caught out alone in a cruiser, you stick with your fleet battleships and irritate the hell out of your enemies who cannot decide to deal with the guy who would burn them to death first or the guy that could potentially citadel him to death if he gets lucky.

Bayern has personally surpassed New Mexico in my book as the best T6 battleship ingame, on par with Warspite even I might say. I haven't experienced the bad dispersion people moan about with eight guns, and she reliably does solid damage against other battleships. Only thing I don't like is her troll armor which is as capable for taking ridiculous citadel damage as much as deflecting shells on impact. But if you're a YOLO kind of BB captain Bayern will be a favourite of yours, just kit her out with BFT AFT Superintendent and Manual Secondaries and you'll be untouchable within 7.3km. And even if you do die chances are you've brought down at least one enemy ship with you too. Definitely a keeper!

Fully agree with Gneisenau being unduly weak as a battleship due to her having the least guns in mid-tier lineups compared to Colorado or Nagato. I can make Tirpitz work and her RNG isn't so bad with 8 guns, but hell I can duke it out with a Gneisenau in my Bayern and get away with it easily enough; that's how weak Gneisenau is. Definitely gonna free-xp past her straight to Bismarck. No self respecting battleship should ever have as little as six guns to shoot anyway. Hell, the only BB that has less guns than Gneisenau is the Mikasa, and she's not even technically a BB, she's a pre-dreadnought!

Yeah... HE really gives them a beating, and once you lose them torps suddenly you don't quite want to brawl in your Tirpitz anymore because she loses speed so fast in close combat that you'd just die from multiple normal penetrations from everyone shooting at you.

Scharnhorst is a godsend for us battleship players for two reasons. Firstly, it has battleship armor and is only what, 5 seconds slower in reload than Moskva at T10. She makes a perfect battleship escort, and cruiser captains who play her are finally unafraid of escorting battleships and being aggressive instead of hiding behind battleships all the time. Secondly, finally a battlecruiser "cruiser" that I can reliably penetrate and citadel with battleship guns without too many pesky overpens! Overall, I welcomed the addition of Scharnhorst. She's one of the few premium ships in recent memory that actually added a welcome dimension to the game.

Formed a triple Tirpitz division with DepletedUraniumFart and HMS_Thunderchild earlier on. Was an epic four games together before we called it a night. Pulled off a "Jingles" in our final match with me and HMS_Thunderchild rushing through the middle channel of Two Brothers to intercept half the enemy fleet on Domination mode. Survived the crossing, rushed right into the teeth of upwards of six ships, and took every single one of them down at the cost of sinking ourselves too. If it sounds stupid but it works... hahaha! p.s. shoutout to Maistereder as well, MM placed him in the same team as my division for two matches and he provided stellar support service for our Tirpitz Train.

Bayern feels like a proto-Bismarck in my opinion. Her secondaries are mad strong (boosted them to 6km so far which is OP for a T6 battleship) and her guns rotate mad fast too. Haven't even gotten AFT on her or Manual AA but I can foresee that she will have pretty decent AA by that stage indeed. Good speed, good agility. She's a lovely battleship to fight in.

Biggest achievement today (in fact in my Montana actually)? RNGesus blesses me in this match. Great teamwork with my team's Udaloi smoking up for me to hide in and take potshots. Pretty much nuking a Montana singlehandedly. Racking up an insane amount of shell hits and citadels that would look more at home on a cruiser's stats screen. Running a profit in a standard account with non income flag boost mounted with a T10 battleship. AND MY TEAM STILL LOST ON POINTS. Granted, it was all down to the heroics of the enemy DDs playing cap denial and dragging the time out just long enough for them to limp to a victory. Scored the highest in the entire match. But it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth!

Yamato is good for campers, let's just say that. A real ballsy battleship player would take the Montana and basically wreck every cruiser she comes across with 12 16-inch shells, flank a Yamato (provided she's occupied with shooting someone else) and smack some very nice citadels from her. Used to fear Yamatos in my Montana, knowing that frontally I'd get overmatched. Yamato shells still sting from normal penetration damage, but if you angle your bow just a little bit or angle your hull drastically at medium range I've found that it is possible to bounce Yamato shells. Not to mention Yamato has crapfor dispersion anyway. 1v1, it's a toss up between who's the better battleship captain. In a group brawl, a Montana is going to win a Yamato 7 times out of 10.

I'm the proud owner of my Arizona and I've got no complaints about the ship at all. But there is one issue that bugs me badly, and that is how often I get into extremely lopsided battles where I'm nothing but XP pinata for other ships to munch on. Wargaming is no stranger to giving preferential matchmaking for premium stuff, and I find that in the case of the battleships Arizona and Warspite both ships could really do with some MM help to prevent them from getting into impossible battles. Battles like running into North Carolinas and Amagis and generally any ship that is Tier 8. Dealing with Colorado and Nagato is already dangerous enough because Arizona's armor cannot take 16-inch alpha damage hits well when angled and will get absolutely massacred if I show my broadside (as I rightly should be punished for!), the last thing I need is to get into a battle with a North Carolina on the other side with 21+km range compared to mine which is barely 16km without range module upgrades. And don't even get me started on going against CVs, Arizona already has weak AA due to her following historical layouts that never saw her AA systems upgraded, so dealing with T6 CVs is already a pain in the arse. I really don't need to have some Lexington or Shokaku ROFLSTOMP all over me when they see me in their match because they know their planes are too fast for me to dodge, my AA guns can't kill their planes, and even with cruiser support one or two torps/bombs will always get through and deal severe damage to me. I believe the same grievances are faced by Warspite captains too. I mean hey, we could try our best to make things work out, but more often than not we get impossible match situations where we don't have the speed to keep up with the fleet, we can't adequately defend ourselves against other ships who massively outrange us making kiting impossible. And so what if I manage to run towards my teammates, by the time the cavalry arrives to the rescue (assuming they do at all) I'm already dead and the enemy player's already made a profit from killing a battleship. Of course we could do island hopping and hiding moves but that means we don't get to contribute as much to our team's firepower since half the time is spent hiding, and what's the point of that in a battleship with all those guns being useless? Any thoughts?

The anatomy of a high-tier loss. I shame the battleships in this match, all of whom are utter pussies who are a disgrace to battleship captains everywhere. Pushed up supporting my team's destroyers, briefly got a break in C cap and I could have exploited it further if it wasn't just me in the Montana and two DDs working together (smoke concealment, torpedo runs, the works), against the enemy Montana, one DD and two cruisers. Us three ships took B cap on our own, and moved in to force C cap afterwards. Extremely infuriating to see my team's Montana camp at max range, and I reserve a special fury for my team's Yamato who ran away from the enemy team for the better half of 10 minutes at FULL HEALTH. Kudos to my team's CV, he tried his best to carry but what's there to do when you're stuck on a team that is comprised of potatoes and bankrupt [edited]? If you don't have the money nor the guts, please don't get the Montana or worse still the Yamato. If you're going to camp at max range and just let the enemy CV torp you to hell (as happened with my team's Yamato) I hope your game crashes every time you start it up and you go back to playing tetris on your black-and-white gameboy. Wish I saved a copy of my chat log in this game, it was one of my most furious and profanity-laden rants against assholes who always complain that "battleship captains do not dare to push up and shoot". Because when you get one such captain on your team who plays a battleship the way it's supposed to be played, you just throw it all away by running away from the fight. I was second ship to die in this match. Look at the [edited]score. I still made TOP THREE. I curse the battleships on my team (other than the Tirpitz) for all eternity. If you are a member of this forum, I hope you see this rant. ...Because if I catch you on the enemy team you are going to be first to die. *angry rant over*

Edited. Thanks for telling me that, now that I'm more clear-headed I do agree that it was a smidge too far what I did, posting their full unedited names up. It was a difficult match but by no means unwinnable. What was infuriating was that both sides were camping hard. Their Yamato was bow-in for like 70% of the game, and if not for my team's Yamato being even more of a pussy and reversing broadside on by a sheer rookie mistake (think you're behind an island? think again!) our fates might have been delayed for quite a bit longer. As it was both my cruisers on my team were camping hard too, and I don't exactly blame them since it is a BB-heavy match. But bloody hell, the sick feeling of knowing you went on a death ride in your Montana and so nearly made it, then looking at how cowardly your team was after that just leaves a galling taste in the mouth. Yes, my team's Yamato scored higher than me. Only because of his 18-inch shells doing more damage per shell. Hell, he shot less than me in the game and his aim was all over the place. Couldn't find his profile on any warship stats website, but I looked up the Montana driver and my god, he was yet another one of those free-xp idiots. Was a bad day for gaming. I hope to break the spell later in the afternoon when I bring my Tirpitz out again.

You are wasting the potential of your Tirpitz! Sure HE spamming might work if you come up against a Yamato (particularly one that only knows how to camp bow on) but with the Tirpitz's speed it's not hard at all to get into a flanking position and use AP to smack some citadels.

North Carolina is my Queen of the fleet, and I love her to bits even more than I love my Iowa. Iowa has longer 16-inch guns which help with range and accuracy but her hull is HUGE compared to the North Carolina. Which means you're a juicy citadel fest for any battleships you come up against, or a big floating ship made out of bonfire material for enemy cruisers to burn. AA wise there's really not much difference between the two ships. And yes, both battleships can benefit a lot from getting Concealment Expert and generally lowering their visibility range as much as possible. Nothing makes a cruiser craphimself more than suddenly seeing you pop up under 14km from him and nine 16-inch guns pointing at him! As for Montana, all I can tell you is that as long as you are not a wuss who is too cheap to pay repair bills at T10, she's worth it. Ultimate cruiser killer, very good US battleship and Tirpitz killer, and if a Yamato is ever unfortunate enough to show her side to you you can smack her harder than she could retaliate against you ever. Don't camp at high-tier games. To the daring goes the spoils!

Don't get why people here are slagging me off for proposing preferential MM for Warspite/Arizona. I've got no complaints about both ships (though I only own Arizona) and I'm not asking for a buff here. Even in the case of New Mex you only really get to put your worth into the team's effort if you either a) have lots of cover to hide in, b) there's no CV in play, or c) you actually are in a position to support your team who don't just run off with their higher speeds ahead of you whilst you play catch up. I'm borderline accepting of seeing my New Mex get into T8 matches because if CVs are in play at least I know my AA suite still stands a decent chance. But in matches where no CVs are present it becomes a nightmare to play my New Mex or Arizona because you're so team-dependent. If you end up with a potato team you don't have the speed to relocate and/or kite to try and even the odds out. And when CVs are present when I bring my Arizona out I have to keep praying the enemy CV goes for someone else instead of me, because I know if I'm focused I'm going to go down hard and fast. But then, this is just my opinion. Meanwhile if I get roflsmacked in my T6 battleships one match too many I'll just bring my Tirpitz out and rip a new hole in every enemy ship I get to see and shoot at. Just as revenge on all the T8s!

Not calling for a buff. Keep her the way she is, just don't let her get into T8 matches.

Thank you WG for this event! Was a total surprise to be honest for me to see my name in the top 20 Arizona players on the EU server for this competition. Guess I have a real affinity for the old girl. Once again great engagement with us WG, keep these events coming!

I ran up against a Supertester sailing the T10 Großer Kurfürst battleship in a random match when I was in my Montana. I can say for a fact that she's going to be a pile of trouble because her armor is insanely strong. Even at barely over 15km ranges plunging fire does nothing to her (considering the fact that I can citadel Montanas at 20+km with my Montana) and anything less than 15km you only end up doing normal penetration alpha damage without citadels. She's the new Tirpitz of the game and I expect a lot of frustration from battleship players when it comes to fighting against her. As usual with any battleship you can kill them most reliably with fire and flooding, and that is where the size of the Großer Kurfürst puts her at a severe disadvantage because she can't avoid incoming fire nor torpedoes easily with her bulk. In short, Großer Kurfürst feels like someone combined a Yamato's armor with a Montana's guns. Very nasty combination, but also very attractive for players to work up to!

Manual secondaries are worth it only for IJN battleships and Tirpitz because they have AP secondaries instead of just HE secondaries. Highly dissuade you from taking that!

I just rage sold my Essex because it was simply disgusting how bad the imbalance between US carriers and IJN ones were at high tiers, before I even get to the fact that high-tier AA is simply OP. Bought my Bogue back, probably going to bring her out for a spin only once in a while when I feel like it. Totally given up on CV gameplay now, I thought my patience had run thin with Lexington and getting placed into T10 matches with her but Essex takes the cake for me.

YEP. I was that other player who knew all of you from the forum here hahah. That was a very good game played. Shame most of the fighting that you lot did was on the other side of the map whilst I was hammering down the other end. Pleasure to be on the same team with you lot, remind me to stay the hell away from you Syrchalis if I see you on the opposite side!

Even in a match full of T8 Tirpitzes, I can still come out top scorer and smell of roses. :p

Nope. Until you get proper turreted secondaries on the North Carolina your casemate secondaries aren't going to do much to a DD. Good for that extra brawling power but not much else.