World of Warships: New Year Dockyard and Final Review on Repulse and Marlborough

Ladies and Gentlemen, with the update 0.10.11, we will get a whole new dockyard that allows us to acquire the British battleships and battlecruiser Dreadnought, Repulse and Marlborough.

This dockyard will be divided into 32 phases. Among these, you can complete a total of 27 phases through in-game missions. A phase can also be completed by spending 1 500 doubloons on it. This means that if you go through all 27 phases without a booster, you will have to spend 7 500 doubloons to obtain Marlborough.

Of course, like for every dockyard, there will be boosters available:

For 5 500 doubloons, you can skip 5 phases
For 9 900 doubloons, you can skip 11 phases

If you obtain Marlborough by spending doubloons on more than 5 phases, every additional phase you complete through combat missions will be rewarded with 250 steel.

The combat mission groups span two updates, 0.10.11 and 0.11.0. The Dockyard itself will remain in your ports until the end of Update 0.11.1.

Main Rewards

You’ll receive the British tier III premium battleship Dreadnought in the Snow and Stars permanent camouflage, a 6-skill point Commander, and a Port slot as a reward for completing the 6th shipbuilding phase.

IF YOU ALREADY HAVE DREADNOUGHT IN YOUR PORT, YOU WILL RECEIVE 5 250 000 CREDITS AS COMPENSATION.

Completing the 18th shipbuilding phase will reward you with the new British tier VI premium battleship (technically, it’s a battlecruiser) Repulse in the Snow and Stars permanent camouflages, a 6-skill point Commander, and a Port slot.

Upon completing the 32nd shipbuilding phase, you’ll receive the British tier IX premium battleship Marlborough in the War Paint camouflage, a Commander with 10 skill points, a Port slot, and a commemorative flag.

Personal Opinions on Repulse and Marlborough

Since I’m in a bit of a tight schedule between IRL and Clan Battles keeping me busy, I was thinking about sharing my opinion on both ships here.
These won’t be detailed reviews but at least, they will give you a good idea of how are the ships. If you want to see their detailed stats, I invite you to check them with the WoWsShipBuilder application.

British Tier VI Premium Battleship Repulse

The Repulse is overall quite decent. The mobility of the ship is, at this tier, unparalleled. She can reach almost 40 knots with Brisk active and, thanks to her concealment that can go down to 12.6 km by sea, the skill will be active quite often. This allows her to easily get on enemy broadside and punish them.

When it comes to her firepower, it’s nothing crazy but definitely not bad. You have six 381 mm guns with battlecruiser dispersion which makes them quite reliable. The problem is that they don’t quite have the punch to compensate properly for the fact that you only have six of them. It’s the same guns as Queen Elizabeth but the HE is weaker. Even with the slightly shorter reload, on multiple occasions, I just couldn’t help myself and think that with another battleship (except stuff like Ise), it would have been better.

The armor is definitely something you want to keep an eye on. As you can see below, the bow and the stern are only protected with 16 mm of armor although the internal protection will protect the citadel in case of overmatch. Even with this considered, be really careful and don’t go straight bow-in on enemy battleships. Always try to make them hit your side armor instead.

External armor protection:

Front and rear armor protection of the middle section:

Casemate armor protection:

Citadel armor protection:

Turrets armor protection:

Hidden armor protection inside the bow and stern:

For the recommended build, here it is:

I went with Consumable Specialist with the shorter Spotting Aircraft cooldown for the last skill but here, you can take whatever you prefer. Also, I recommend using one of the Dunkirk brothers for the buffed Grease the Gears.

British Tier IX Premium Battleship Marlborough

When it comes to Marlborough, personally, I did not appreciate the ship. It’s basically a Tier IX Conqueror but a budget one with sixteen unreliable low-caliber guns.

The ship has to work with having only 356 mm guns that also end up having far weaker HE than those of the King George V. Since you throw at the enemy a total of 16 shells with a relatively short reload, the damage output ends up being decent-ish but the ship is just very inconsistent.
The AP isn’t any better as, at this tier, you only overmatch a handful of ships. For the rest, on cruisers staying broadside, it will be alright and for battleships, you will have to pray that the shells hit the upper belt. Otherwise, they won’t have enough penetration except at close or medium range to go through the main belt.
Also, unlike Repulse, Marlborough didn’t get her WD40 so her turret traverse is pretty bad.

Now comes the other problem, you really don’t want to fight ships at close range. At medium range, it’s somewhat workable but getting close is just asking to die. The reason is quite simple, the firing angles SUCK! We are talking about 42° at the front and 47° at the rear. This means that you are very likely to get nuked by enemy battleships when trying to fire all guns. It’s especially true since the citadel sits very high above the waterline. Cruisers will also have no issue getting penetrations with AP on your upper side armor.
At long range, it’s already a bit better. You have the time to angle between shots and the large main belt turns into a very effective protection against AP. It is, after all, 381 mm of angled armor that shells need to go through and at long range, even things like Slava and such will struggle to achieve that.

External armor protection: