Ship review: Emerald class British light cruiser

Hi folks!

I've been working my way up the new British cruiser line these past weeks, so today, we'll take a look at the tier five "Emerald" class light cruiser, and her direct competitor, the German "Königsberg".

First, the Emerald. She's got the same 152mm main guns like her predecessors, and the two triple torpedo launchers on each side. The guns are single-mounted, and she's got seven of them (over the tier four "Danae"'s six guns).

There's a catch, though - the centre turrets can't rotate all the way around, so you can effectively only ever bring six guns to bear at the time.

The biggest advantage the Emerald has is her smoke generator (again a hint that these things really are just oversized destroyers). You can do some fun things with these, like do a straight run at a battleship, launch your first torpedo salvo, kick the engines into reverse, pop smoke, and peacefully turn around to fire the torpedoes from the other side, without being seen.

So, how does she hold up against the tier five German cruiser? In my opinion, not very favourably.

Let's take a look. The Königsberg's guns are vastly superior - for starters, she's got three triple turrets for a total of nine 150mm guns, they do 100 points more of base damage with the AP shells, and they can switch to HE for blistering fire against heavily armoured opponents. The Emerald can only do up to six guns in a broadside, does less damage, and can't fire HE shells.

This means she's struggling against destroyers, because she just doesn't have the damage output to deal with them at range effectively, and her shells mostly bounce off battleships. She doesn't have the manoeuvrability for close-range torpedo duels, and virtually no armour and low health, making destroyer dogfights quite hard. The Königsberg, on the other hand, can do severe damage to destroyers quickly, and with her precision consumable, do so comfortably out of torpedo range.

So, in summary, when playing the Emerald, you have to rely heavily on your torpedoes, concealment and smoke screens. Play her like a US destroyer, not like a cruiser. Personally, I'd still take the Königsberg any day. Things might get more interesting after tier six, when the German cruiser line switches over to fast heavy cruisers, and the British cruisers will have to compete with the Soviet light cruisers in the anti-destroyer role, where their torpedoes are going to be vastly superior.  

British Cruisers

Hi folks!

With the update to version 1.4, World of Warships Blitz now has a British cruiser line in the tech tree. Time to take a look.

I spent some free XP to skip the first tiers, this is the Danae class tier four light cruiser.

She's got a good turn time, is fast, has six 152mm main guns, and four torpedo launchers with a 5.7km range. That is some serious offensive firepower for a tier 4 ship - basically, she's an oversized destroyer with bigger guns.

There's something unique about the torpedo launchers - you can either fire in the usual wide patterns, or you can switch to the narrow launch pattern and fire the torpedoes individually. Consider the implications of this - you have not one, but six torpedoes you can spread in any pattern you desire across the launcher arc. You could fire them all at on the same path, or create a broad spread at short range.

As expected, the 152mm guns do well against enemy destroyers, but they have one serious handicap - they can only fire armour piercing ammunition. And this is where it gets interesting when you go up the tech tree - even the tier 10 "Minotaur" has 152mm main batteries, and can only fire armour-piercing (albeit at a blistering reload rate of 3.5s).

This means two things. First, finally we got another light cruiser beyond tier six, aside from the Soviet line (US, Japanese and German cruisers all switch to 200mm guns). I'm often struggling in my tier eight "Hipper" when dealing with destroyers, since her 200mm guns on armour piercing are prone to overpenetration (doing only about 20% damage), and her HE shells are pretty poor.

On the other hand, though, my tier six Nürnberg is struggling to do damage with her 150mm guns against battleships when using AP, since the shells mostly bounce off the armour, especially against US battleships. If I can't get the torpedoes to bear, I can switch to high explosive, keep the distance to dodge return fire, and whittle them down with fires and constant HE barrage.

You can't do that on a British light cruiser, though, since they only fire AP. In addition, they have relatively low health and paper-thin armour. So my prediction here is that you're going to have to play her more like a destroyer - use the guns to obliterate enemy destroyers and maybe do some damage against cruisers, but rely on the torpedoes as your main weapon against bigger ships.

I understand the move - can you imagine the carnage of fires these things could unleash with their reload rate. But be aware that you can't take return fire even from heavy cruisers, and use those unique torpedo launchers to your advantage.