World of Warships Final Review: British Supercruiser Edgar

Ladies and Gentlemen, alongside the French superbattleship Patrie, the British tech tree is also getting its second supership.

Just like Patrie, Edgar is only available in Auction for now. The Auction will last until the 25th and the minimum bid is 100 000 000 credits. The ship will then be available in October with the release of Update 0.11.9.

Is Edgar worth it? Is it a proper improvement over Minotaur? Here is my opinion.

Historical background

Edgar is a fictional follow-on design to the Design Z, also known as the never-built Minotaur-class. The ship is a larger version of Minotaur with an additional turret for a broadside of twelve guns. She also presents a much stronger anti-air as she carries 76.2 mm OTO-Melara Compact AA mounts, an Italian AA weapon from the 1960s.
As a cherry on top, the ship even carries a Limbo ASW rocket launcher on the stern and also has a helicopter landing pad.

Wargaming labeled Edgar as a design from 1975 which officially makes her the most modern ship in the game.

Special Ability

Alternative firing mode settings:

• Reload time: 35 s
• Interval between shots: 1,5 s
• Number of salvos in a firing sequence: 3
• Penetrations of AP shells: +100%
• Max damage of AP shells: +50%

Ship’s preview

The camouflage

The permanent camouflage of the Edgar comes with the standard permanent supership economy bonuses:

• +200% XP
• +200% Commander XP
• +100% Free XP

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• Amazing rate of fire
• AP shells with improved penetration angles and short fuse time
• Alternative firing mode that doubles the penetration of the AP shells and increases by 50% the damage they deal
• Turrets turning at 360°
• Good firing angles at the front
• Good maximum firing range for a British light cruiser
• Eight 12 km torpedoes per side
• Capacity to launch torpedoes one by one
• Amazing anti-air
• British improved acceleration
• Large main belt to bounce AP shells
• Great concealment
• Choice between 10 km Surveillance radar or a Smoke generator
• Access to the Specialized Repair Teams consumable

The Bad

• 25 mm arming threshold on the AP shells compared to 12 mm on all the other British light cruisers
• Only able to shoot AP
• Relatively poor ballistics at long range
• Loses a lot of speed when turning
• Mostly protected with 16 mm plating
• Low HP pool
• Citadel sitting high above the waterline

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery	Torpedoes
Edgar	Propulsion: 130 000 HP	Mk XI mod. 1	152 mm/50 QF Mk.V on a Mk.XXVI mount	‎533 mm Mk IXM

General Characteristics and Playstyle

Consumables
Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 60 s	Specialized Repair Teams Number of charges: 3 Work time: 20 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration: 2.0%/s Casemate damage regeneration: 50% Citadel damage regeneration: 50%	Hydroacoustic Search Number of charges: 3 Work time: 100 s Cooldown: 120 s Torpedo spotting range: 3.5 km Ship spotting range: 5.0 km	Smoke Generator Number of charges: 3 Work time: 20 s Cooldown: 160 s Smoke radius: 600 m Smoke duration: 120 s
			Surveillance Radar Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 120 s Ship spotting range: 10.0 km

Let’s get straight to the point, Edgar is a fantastic ship. She takes ALMOST all the strengths of Minotaur and massively improves them.

Tired of getting deleted in Minotaur because of the lack of armor and vulnerable citadel? BAM! Spaced armor, a lower citadel, and even a partially armored weather deck.
Tired of waiting for your turrets to get back on target when they have to switch to the other side of the ship? BAM! 360° rotating turrets.
You don’t like the penetration of the 152 mm of Minotaur? BAM! The alternative firing mode doubles the penetration.

At this point, if think that you get the idea.

In terms of playstyle, it really is the same as Minotaur with either the smoke camping approach and easy damage farming or you can be a true chad and run the Surveillance Radar consumable. Now… I will be honest, it was the first time ever that I was using radar on a British light cruiser, and… well let’s say that I had some unfortunate experiences due to poor planning and overconfidence in the early game. Also didn’t help that I was getting focused hard because of the “New ship syndrome”.
The thing is that compared to Minotaur, Edgar can tank enemy shots so well that you can easily fight in open water as you are less likely to get nuked because of the poor armor protection. The Surveillance Radar also works perfectly when hunting destroyers as your concealment goes down to 9.47 km and you have a 10.0 km radar. Other than that, as I previously said, don’t be overzealous in the early game like I was because that is a good way to be sent back to port quickly if you aren’t sure of what you will be facing.

If you want to see the ship in action, here is a commented replay of one of my games:

Main Armament

6 x 2 152 mm/50 QF Mk.V on a Mk.XXVI mount All turrets can rotate at 360°
Maximum Firing Range	16.530 km
Reloading Time	3.2 s
180 Degree Turn Time	4.7 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	30°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	36°
Sigma	2.05 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	147 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	AP – 152 mm AP Mk V
Alpha Damage	3 200
Projectile Speed	768 m/s
Air Drag	0.347
Projectile Mass	58.85 kg
Projectile Krupp	2 672
Projectile Detonator	0.005 s
Detonator threshold	25 mm
Ricochet Angles	60° – 75°

Edgar’s main battery somewhat breaks with the gun behavior you got used to while playing British light cruisers. It all comes down to one specific change that limits her capacity to deal with destroyers.
Unlike all the previous ships, she gets a standard AP arming threshold. Instead of being down to 12 mm which means that the shells would arm on everything, it is up to 25 mm. Because of this, where you would expect to get a lot of penetration hits on destroyers giving you broadside, you instead get a fair amount of overpenetrations. The reason for this change was that “Edgar would have been too toxic” with the reduced arming threshold but honestly if that would have made her too toxic, I’m genuinely wondering what the developers are thinking about Annapolis or Condé…
Now, to be honest, it really will be a problem only on destroyers staying flat broadside. 25 mm of effective armor is relatively easy to reach the moment they angle a bit.

For anything that isn’t a destroyer, it’s basically a Minotaur+1 and God knows how dirty it feels at times. The damage output is absolutely crazy and even against angled targets, with the volume of shells, you will still get a fair amount of damage. One thing that is also nice to have is that all turrets can rotate at 360°. This is amazing for kiting as you will always get the guns on target at the snap of a finger.
The alternative firing mode on Edgar will also come in handy for 3 different situations. As a last burst before disengaging, to finish off a target quickly or alternatively, to go ham at the citadel of an enemy ship. The best is that you can even get citadels on battleships as the penetration in alternative firing mode is doubled and at 5km, you have around 390 mm of penetration. Just keep in mind though, that because of the short AP fuse timer, the citadel has to be exposed. On anything else, it will only be penetrations or, in the case of spaced armor, the shells will deal no damage at all.

Torpedo Armament

The torpedoes of Edgar are a great secondary armament. Compared to Minotaur, you get a range of 12 km instead of 10. This makes them incredibly comfortable to use due to the 2.5 km buffer zone with your concealment range and the capacity to reach targets sitting further away. You also get great firing angles on these torpedoes, allowing you to take fewer risks when trying to launch them.

As a British light cruiser, Edgar gets the option to launch torpedoes one at a time which is perfect when rushing anchored ships, or to nail targets sitting heavily angled and not moving much.

Anti-air Armament

The anti-air of Edgar is simply bonkers. She gets a 6.9 km firing range on the long-range aura, has very strong flaks AND the mid-range starts at 5.0 km with a particularly high DPS. I had a few CVs who tried focusing on me during testing. They tried. The DPS is just so high that even without a Defensive AA fire, planes still get shredded.

The Armor

Edgar is surprisingly tanky for a British light cruiser. Firstly, under the turrets, the citadel is internal and in a spaced armor configuration. This already makes the ship a lot trickier to punish than Minotaur. Secondly, while it isn’t large, she has a 38 mm weather deck right above the engines, leading to convenient bounces from any AP shells. BUT WAIT, there is more! Unlike Minotaur or Neptune, the citadel doesn’t raise around the engines so you will not randomly take citadels from there. Obviously, she remains a light cruiser, she will not tank everything but still, she is a lot more forgiving that the previous ships.

External armor protection:

Front and rear armor protection of the middle section:

Citadel armor protection:

Turrets armor protection:

Final Opinion

In random battles, the ship is honestly scary. In the case of Edgar played with Smoke Generator, the damage she can pump out is disgusting and as long as you are careful with radars and blind fires from enemy ships, you will be fine. If you are a true chad (and have a decent situational awareness) you will bully destroyers like no tomorrow with the Surveillance radar and the rain of shells that will follow. However, as I said before, you will also be able to fight in open water without too much fear of getting deleted thanks to the ship’s great survivability.

Overall, while I would still tell you to wait for 0.11.9 instead of burning resources in Auction, I warmly recommend Edgar.

Recommended Build

For Edgar, I recommend the following commander build and upgrades:

Andrew Cunningham isn’t particularly a must-have but the Lightning Fast and Equipment Spoils talents can be nice to have at times.

This concludes my review of Edgar. Thank you for reading this article!

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Yuzorah

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