World of Warships: Axis vs Allies
3 min readRecently, Wargaming announced that they were working on a special game mode that would oppose Axis nations to Allied nations at tier VIII.
While on paper it looks interesting… in action I really pity the Axis side…
The New Battle Mode
In this battle mode, only the tier VIII ships that were completed will be able to take part. It doesn’t matter about “when” they were completed and as such, you will see things like Massachusetts vs Bismarck, Vanguard, Kutuzov, Saipan, etc.
Rules
Depending on the ship picked a player gets into one of two teams:
- Axis: Italian, German, and Japanese ships
- Allies: American, British, French, Soviet, European, and Pan-Asian ships.
The battles will be conducted in a “12 vs 12” format on Tier VIII ships. Only ships that were built in reality, as well as their in-game counterparts (such as Black, ARP, Azur Lane ships and etc.) are allowed to enter battle. If you dislike the appearance of camouflages of counterpart-ships, you can switch their display off using a special filter in the Port.
List of allowed ships:
Axis
Allies
You can participate in “Axis vs Allies” battles in a division, but if ships corresponding to both historical teams are picked, you won’t be able to go into battle.
Teams won’t necessarily mirror each other in all ship types, with the exception of aircraft carriers: their number in each team will be equal and strictly fixed – no more than one per team. The difference in the number of other ship types will be no more than one.
If the waiting time spent by the first player in the queue exceeds 3 minutes, teams might be filled with bots with improved AI, mastered commander’s skills, and mounted camouflages and signals.
Have Mercy on the Axis
So… let’s look at how things are standing right now.
On the Allied side, we have:
- Battleships such as North Carolina or Massachusetts able to overmatch 27 mm with their powerful 406 mm guns
- Heavy cruisers with 27 mm bow and stern able to bounce 380/381 mm AP shells
- Radars that will not be appreciated by the Axis destroyers
- Le Fantasque and Le Terrible, which are very effective against tier VIII cruisers
- Lo Yang with her hydro and Orkan with her radar
- Enterprise, of course, with her AP bombs that are so stupidly effective against Bismarck and Tirpitz
- Actual anti-air with the U.S. ships
On the Axis side, we have:
- Only battleships with 380 or 381 mm guns (poor Amagi…)
- Two heavy cruisers with 27 mm bow and stern to bounce shells from Vanguard and Richelieu but known for being some of the worst ships at this tier
- Akizuki, which is basically the only really strong destroyer on this side
- Atago and her variations, which definitely are strong cruisers with their firepower, agility, concealment and Repair Party but you want to pray that a carrier won’t target you
- The very strong Shokaku… except that she will mostly face the U.S. battleships against which she struggles to get citadels with her AP bombs
- Hum….. huuuum…. fascism?
I think that you understand the issue by now, this whole match-up is quite heavily one-sided. If it happened a few years ago when the Surveillance Radar consumable wasn’t a thing, when we didn’t have AP bombs, etc. it would have been fine but these days… I really feel sorry for the Axis side.
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If they really wanted to make things fair, they could have gone with tier 6.
Saipan is going to wreck Axis ships with impunity
A few years ago I would have liked this game mode, but as WG bring it, the end result is already certain. Interesting is what I was told in the EU forum about radar:
“We conducted in in-depth analysis about whether the lack of radar one one side will present an issue and don’t think it will, but that is also why we test :)”
In other words: “We don’t care about your feedback, we’ll get it out anyway”. Just like with the unnecessary captain’s skill rework …
If paper ships are excluded to make this “more historical” then post-war ships should also get the boot. That means Saipan, Vangaurd, Chapayev, Kutuzov and all of the Pan-Asia ships. Oland should also be excluded since Sweden wasn’t part of the Allies.
This wouldn’t do anything about the radar disparity but at least it would mean no radar DDs and no postwar aircraft.
So stupid that postwar ships will be allowed for this. Those should be excluded just like the paper ships are.
If we’re sticking to only really made, historically accurate ships – shouldn’t the soviet ships, which entered service pre-1941 be also counted as “axis ships”…?