Aotearas

Not last christmas, the one before that when the Emden was introduced first. Was a mission set to unlock the Emden. And the obvious difference between a Dresden and an Emden is ... high level captain for tier II club- err ... advanced beginners lessons. Also, you're never ever again going to complain about bad shell arcs once you got used to playing the Emden with AFT on the captain. Funnily enough I didn't actually detonate in my Khaba today ... guess someone at WG noticed the mistake and rectified it just in time for me playing my last game of the day. They must be having some sort of weekly "Screw the Scrubs" quota to fulfill or something like that.

I already have it from the original christmas event and I actually quite enjoy that little bugger ... if I don't detonate by the first shell that hits me though (cuz fun and engaging game mechanics).

You were just playing too good so the game escalated the n00b protection to the next stage (it goes something like this): No Citadels on broadside ships -> Firechance increased antiproportional to hit rate -> Dispersion bracketing the ship without hits -> No aiming allowed -> No gun firing allowed Not to be confused with the n00b assist: Citadel chance antiproportional to target angling -> Firechance increased antiproportional to hit rate -> Dispersion wide enough to hit target despite poor aim -> Fun and engaging detonation on target

When some lowly BB pleb dares to take a lick on royalty and you take it personally: So my little Prinz is minding her own damn business when some uppity peasant takes a shot at her lovely flanks and dirts her frilly hull with an overpen. Well, two can play at that game you filthy mongrel! Time for an example on how to use AP. Also taught an upstart Bismarck what it means to go brawling! A truly german experience with no superfluous waste. Precisely 2k base XP, perfect! Also finally retrained my captain for the Roon (now waiting for a discount to kit it out and continueing my Baltimore grind in the meantime) and only a measly ~10K captain XP keft until the 19th point for my KM CA captains!

Mostly just a matter of knowing your rough target and having a bit fun with tag search. Case in point, Google image search for Kantai Collection+Prinz Eugen+food: Or simple fanart for prominent characters like say Black Lagoon+Roberta+fan art:

Yo guys, I know y'all concerned about HAGS package compatibility and stuff, but could you keep your clone agents off our clan chat plz? Edited for extra Scrub charm and mad paint skillz.

Or perhaps WG can do a simple MM tweak and hardlimit BBs to a maximum of 3 per team so we no longer get absurd MM that constantly sees 5 BBs per team when WGs admitted desired ratio would put them at 25-30% (so two or three BBs per side ... NOT five!). And who would've thought, you can do that without having to nerf ANYTHING. The BB heavy meta is one of the biggest problems this game faces right now. And we hear WG saying lots of placative platitudes, admitted that stuff is wrong, saying they're going to adress the issue ... and then you get balancing tweaks that de facto at best turn out as zero-sum nerfs to BBs (only recent BB nerf I remember was the Bismarck hydro nerf and that was not to discourage playing BBs, that was because the Bismarck was overperforming and needed an adjustment anyway!) or other changes that indirectly benefit BBs more than other classes which is decidedly NOT helping with reducing the BB population to more appreciable levels. MM hardlimit, 3 BBs maximum per team. Longer waiting time you might say? Play something other than BBs and you instantly get a game, I say. And if some random bloke wants to play nothing but BBs, then let him wait three minutes to find a match for all I care, I just don't want to see ridiculous MM like 1 CV, 5 BBs, 1 CA and 5 DDs anymore!

The little Grim Reaper gets her due: Silly Königsberg, giving broadside to glorious Stalinium AP. Was a rather uneventful game, but eh, Kraken and nearly 2k base XP! And then there was this cockblock of the century ... The first really decent game I ever had in the Marblehead. Am on four kills, have the Bogue dead to rights after bringing her down to less than 4k HP ... and then that bloody Kaiser, rather than shooting at the enemy Kongou basically right next to it, where he could've done more damage, earn more XP and credits, just takes out the Bogue from right under my shells. Kraken denied! I did 32k~ damage to that Bogue. 90% of its total HP, no one else ever bothered to take a shot (and they were well in range!), but as soon as the Bogue is an easy kill that bloke just decided to go ignore everything else. I'm not one to complain much about killstealing, but I see a guy on four kills and about to get his fifth for the Kraken, I let him have it, chances are he worked hard to get it. I most decidedly do NOT ignore any immediate threats just to snatch a frag. This got me pissed, really pissed! The only saving grace is that I already had a Kraken in my Gremy game earlier (thus the reward flags) or I swear I would've utterly lost my sh*t right then and erupted like Mount Tambora!!!

Get two Clear Skies in hightier (VIII - X) ships with the current requirements for that achievement is going to be a luck lottery more than anything else. Easily looking to be the hardest mission out of them all.

Funny thing, I grabbed a mate of our clan that had stopped playing WoWs a while ago because it got too frustrating to deal with (both offgame with WGs decisions and ingame with potatoes everywhere) yesterday and we went on to have a fairly good time, with only the last game having been one of those facepalm landslides where the whole team just went and stupidly died somehow. My tip in general would be to division up with a friend or two. Even a losing game can still be a bit of fun if you can make a glorious last stand with two guys that have your back and vice versa and more often than not, a division playing well and coordinated can turn even disadvantagous games around if they play it smart and adapt to the changes. Playing alone is something I rarely do these days if I can avoid it (I blame my friends, playing together with good people has spoiled me rotten!).

It's not the torpedoes that sink you when you try to get up close (though many potatoes do use that excuse). It's mostly you putting yourself in a position where you can get easily torpedoed in the first place ... or get shot in the flanks, or simply overwhelmed when everyone else is hiding behind you and the enemy team is focusing you hard. The trick is putting yourself in a position where you are moderately save, hard to ambush and that whatever does make it a fight, you get the advantage of angling and optimally a convenient retreat when things get unexpectedly hot. It's not easy to get into a good position and sometimes kiting the enemy at your maximum range is the only good solution for a specific situation (heavily depends on the class you're playing). In general, the closer you are to the objectives, the better as you can put more pressure on the enemy and push them away. But it's a delicate affair to get the position right. You can watch some Youtube commentaries (Flamu is typically very vocal about positioning and gives good examples) to get a couple headers, but overall it's a trial and error process to find out what works in which situation with what sort of opposition, etc. pp.! Some ships are also better at playing aggressive than others, so you might want to diversify your ship collection and grind up a different line or two to see if it fits your preferred playstyle better. US CAs typically are good at mid range and the later ones formidable at brawling due to their amazing guns. RN CLs have a smoke to use as cover to get up close, but they're tricky to play. Also, gunbot DDs like the RU line are typically VERY fun to play if you just want to go guns blazing and the US DDs are pretty good at that too, though they are more of a hybrid type (and poor ballistics for ranged gunfights).

Hatsuzuki <3

Do read the manga in the meantime. It's bloody gorgeous (and both those words are operative). Just for the amazing art on the panels it's worth reading. Definately one of the more artistic manga out there with its attention to details. In the latest chapters the navy gets a bit of a spotlight and as a WoWs player I'm sure you'll recognize some of those ships. I wouldn't quite compare it to a masterpiece like Berserk ... some of those panels you can put in the Louvre, but it's far off the more minimalistic art styles ... when it wants to. Because the manga very much likes to juggle a more simplistic art style to contrast the detailed one, which works rather well to drive home the difference in perspectives between the protagonist and the rest of the characters.

By all things sacred, don't watch the anime! Read the manga or light novel instead! I know I might sound like a broken record here, but seriously some anime are just plain inferiour and Youjo Senki is again one of them. The artistic differences alone are jarring enough. Just look at this: Left to right: light novel, manga, anime. Look at it, look at it and cringe!

That episode caused a singularity of head trauma puns!

Miia is hnnng, but her mom ... dayum. Though I gotta say, Smith has quite the appeal. Those legs ... though they don't quite compare to Rachnea*, legs for daaayyys!!! *She gets drunk on caffeine too which is just adorable, also biologically correct!

Very much depends how hard the DD is dodging and at what range. The arcs are notorious, but after playing through the Baltimore you should've grown used to them already and with 5,5 seconds reload you can fling a lot of shells in your targets general direction, some of them are going to hit. Don't have the Des Moines yet but I can say that hitting DDs with my Baltimore isn't hard at all unless they start evading like their life depended on it ... Sure it's easier to hit a DD with railguns like on the Moskva/Zao/Hindenburg and the latter two also have three additional shells flying with any given salvo, but first order of business is spotting the DD first and there the Radar coupled with good concealment makes quite a difference. Moskva is seen long before she gets into radar range, plus the Des Moines radar lasts for 40 seconds which when in the recieving end is a bloody eternity (and may well last longer than you). But in the end, you don't play a Des Moines specifically for DD killing, you do it for the FREEDOMS!-erm, the dpm and the amazing superheavy AP that just punches through citadels at angles where the lauded german AP starts bouncing harmlessly.

Havaduck needs less ponies and more waifu, this one should fit quite nicely:

A bit of Atlanta fun: Overall nothing particularily special, but neat damage and a metric arseton of credits due to finishing the fourth stage (which also means that neat damage was good enough for the top 3 damage counts in this game). XP rounding sadly didn't give me the final 13337 ... or a 666 free XP, meh. Man, I really wished we could still rename the spoiler tags! And I also got the final stage done today aswell, surprisingly not in my Sims ... Derped a bit and forgot I had HAS equipped instead of Defensive AA, despite being in a division with a CV ... my non-AFT captain (IFHE instead) certainly didn't help much in the AA department, but at least I still worked as a powerful deterrent as the Shokaku made sure to not get too close to my Kutuzov anyway. On the plus side: IFHE + toptier + lotsa tier VI BBs = Om nom nom Especially that Chapayev that insistent on straightlining broadside to me ... only real threat to me thanks to his radar and he just waltzed along happily with me putting citadel after citadel into his side ...

Meh, I had preordered the bloody leatherbound anniversary novel last year in October right after I found out about it. Didn't get one because Amazon botched the preorders ... still salty AF about that and not going to preorder anything via Amazon again. And naturally those were sold out the moment they hit the market, so I won't ever get one unless they do a second printing (might aswell hope for season #3 ...). That was supposed to be my christmas present, I was genuinely giddy about that ... f***ing Amazon! To cheer us up:

'Black Lagoon' is anything but lighthearted. Fun yes, but not lighthearted.