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I thought the fun won't extend for a few days... But then these happened. First, a 30-second video clip of something I don't get to do often up close—search and destroy an aircraft carrier! And this one, a Kraken and a Dreadnought on a very squishy Tier VIII battleship. Thoroughly enjoyed Champagne these past few days.

Hello! I was trying to search builds for some premium BBs. My first question is regarding Gascogne (1/1.000.000 players use it). I have a Massachusetts with secondarie build (captain 14 yet) and i am making Tirpitz the same. This one is farily easy, but i dont reduce the fire time neither the chance to ship get fire. I know Gascogne cant do the same as germans and USN. How may i build her? Commander and upgrade slots Usually on BBs like Massa, Tirpitz, i use: 1 - Priority target 2 - Manual Fire control 3- Expert marksman 4- Basic fire training 5- Superintendent 6- Advanced fire triaining I know for Amagi, Ignis, Ragnarok i cant build secondaries... And even further, on French premium line it is like a 3rd branch... I have: Ignis Purgatio/Ragnarok, Gascogne, Alabama, Massa, Tirpitz, Kii, Georgia, Champagne.

CHAMPAGNE REVIEW (Please check out other sources before getting this ship, everything in this review is strictly my opinion) Champagne is a T8 French battleship battlecruiser with spectacular guns, amazing maneuverability, amazing speed but armour that rivals paper mache. This ship is what the player base deserves but not what we needed. It takes the passive play that ships like Nagato, Ashitaka promote and takes it to an absolute extreme, where you are rewarded for staying as far from the action as you can and punished when you push in and help the team win. The guns are incredibly accurate with rediculous penetration and a decent reload and decent damager per shell. Overall her guns are the main selling point of the ship and they're probably the best guns at T8. Survivability Hit Points: 52,600 Torpedo Reduction: 28% Armour: 19mm - 430mm The Champagne's biggest weakest is her survivability, she has the smallest HP of all T8's with some of the worst torpedo reduction and horrible armour. In a 1-on-1 fight with almost any other BB of the same tier at close range, Champagne is dead. Despite being T8 her bow and stern are only 25mm which is even less than that of T7 BB's which now have 26mm which renders them immune to T7 152mm HE rounds that don't have IFHE meaning that in a down tier scenario where you're facing T6 cruisers their HE can still absolutely hurt you. She also only has 9.4" of armour protecting her citadel (240mm) which puts her in line with most battlecruisers, Ashitaka having a 10" armour belt, Alaska having a 9" armour belt and Hood with a 12" armour belt. "Battlecruisers" fall on a scale of more cruiser than battleship to this is a fast battleship but the Royal Navy calls it a battlecruiser therefore it's a battlecruiser. With Graf Spee basically being a cruiser with some big guns strapped to it and Hood being a battleship every way from Sunday except she's faster than 24kts therefore we'll call her a battlecruiser. Champagne feels like a battleship when you're talking strictly about her guns, their ability to pen more than Izumo at ranges of more than 3km definitely feels like battleship calibre firepower. But her armour and HP makes her feel closer to Alaska than something like Hood. Where Hood can bounce the 18.1" shells of Musashi if you're angled well enough at close range Champagne struggles to bounce anything because of how large her bow amour is. Playing Champagne in T10 Random felt like playing a pinate, any shots that hit hurt, and when you only have 52k HP a 3-5k HE volley hurts especially if it's coming from a ship like Worcester, DM with very high rates of fire. In fact, assuming you hit the Champagne for 3k damage every second that would mean Champagne can withstand 17.5 seconds of firepower before dying, now this, in reality, is longer due to things like saturation and heals but overall you could only withstand that level of fire for probably ~30-40s before you died. To add to your pathetic armour and low HP War Gaming decided that you are not worthy of getting 5 heals, instead to balance the ship you are only given 4 heals with superintendent. This further encourages players to play at the back of the map and do nothing for the team. Artillery Main Armament: 2x3 406mm guns Range: 25km Reload: 28.6s Now we get to the bread and butter of Champagne, the guns, oh the guns! There are approximately 171,000 words in the English language and yet I could not string enough of them together to adequately describe just how much I love these guns. Their pen is amazing, they have high damage, and even though there's only six of them I regularly am able to hit targets with 4-6 shell hits. Have you ever citadelled a Vladivostok at a range of 22km? Because it's a cakewalk in this thing. Want to hit that pesky Smolensk in smoke unspotted? Pop the spotter plane and watch as 4 of your shells overpen and two magically ricochet because physics! The guns are just so much fun, yes occasionally you get dispersion which would make the Großer Kurfürst blush. And when that happens you really feel it only having 6 guns but 99% of the time you could trim the beard of the enemy's captain with how accurate these guns are. Overall these guns are fantastic! And I keep coming back to it because of the guns! AA Defenses Continuous Damage: 159 Shell Damage: 1260 AA range: 5.8km Champagne's AA suit can best be described as adequate. For a ship that is designed to sit in the back and snipe the AA can feel lacking when you're all alone. I've had a few games where either by pure luck or enemy stupidity I managed to shoot down quite a few aircraft but most of the time it feels like an empty threat especially against the brand new German CVs. In one match the brand new AP rockets could do as much as 15k in two passes and the AP bombs dropped me for 30k "Just dodge" right? The AA doesn't hold up especially against T10 CVs your only option is to try and outrun them or just hope you aren't the target because your AA is about as useful as using firecrackers. Maneuverability Top speed: 34kts Turning circle radius: 850m Ruddershift: 12.4s The Champagne's only means of defence is the stereotypical runaway. With a top speed of 38.5kts using both engine boost and sierra mike signal, you can outrun almost every battleship (Georgia the exception) and run down some destroyers. In the few times that I've been able to push with my team using the engine boost to run down destroyers was really fun. However, most of the time I used engine boost strictly to run away from flanks that have been completely overrun or when I need to reposition myself. The ruddershift felt standard, not like Thunderer or Vanguard where you have an insane 8s ruddershift but still didn't feel as bad as a stock Montana with 20s ruddershift. It's good enough to mitigate damage and move out of the way. Overall the maneuverability was very good it really does feel like playing a cruiser with 16" guns. Concealment Sea detectability: 12.9km Air detectability: 8.9km Smoke firing: 15.8km The concealment of Champagne is nothing special good enough when all you're doing is moving to a middle position on the map and shooting broadsides 15+ km away. The Champagne isn't too stealthy but it doesn't really need to be when you're 15km away from the nearest enemy. Air detectability does feel a little large and I'm often randomly spotted by some fighters that the enemy CV placed nearby but again detectability isn't a big concern if you're sitting at the back of the map. Captain and Upgrades The upgrades and captain skills are your typical battleship upgrades and skills. Slot 1: Main Armaments mod 1 because when you only have two turrets having one of them broken or destroyed really hurts. Slot 2: Damage control mod 1 because there's nothing better in that slot, the engine and rudder don't break often enough for me to justify using Engine Room protection. Slot 3: Aiming Systems because when you only have 6 shells any increase to accuracy helps. Slot 4: Ruddershift mod 1 because you shouldn't be tanking in the first place so equipping modules like fire prevention are of limited use. I'd rather have the extra little maneuverability to try and dodge shells a little easier. Slot 5: Concealment mod 1 because there's nothing better. I found these upgrades to work best on Champagne, you could go for a meme secondary because why not, but you'd see very, very limited use out of that build and would probably regret not speccing into fire prevention and fire mitigation. For my captain, I only have 14 points but you can't go wrong with a tank build especially when you have so little HP and armour any damage mitigation is enormously helpful. T1: Priority Target T2: Adrenaline Rush/Expert Marksman T3: Superintendent, Basics of Survivability T4: Concealment Expert, Fire Prevention I made the recommended skills bolded, basically, if you have a 10 point captain I highly, highly recommend Priority target, then your choice between Adrenaline Rush and Expert Marksman, Superintendent and finish it off with Concealment expert. With your next points get Fire prevention, Basics of Survivability and then whichever 2 point skill you didn't pick up before. Of course, this is entirely my opinion so feel free to experiment with your own builds maybe you do really well with a different build feel free to let me know. Camouflage schemes: (Standard) (Alternative Camo) Final Thoughts: Champagne is a Good bote! Is she OP? No, she's not. Champagne has some major advantages like her main battery but with some big drawbacks like her HP and armour. The ship can absolutely decimate enemy teams if you get broadsides but struggles against bow-tanking opponents. It's very fun to play the Champagne, the guns are addictive you're constantly a threat, no matter the range no matter the opponent, these guns hurt if your enemy isn't careful. However, I'm not sure this is the kind of ship I want to more of in World of Warships, encouraging such a passive playstyle is so counter-intuitive to what we've been trying to get BB's to do for a long time which is push in, support your teammates and get objectives. This ship not only encourages you but demands you play passively because pushing in is met with a hailstorm of bullets, HE spam hurts, AP hurts the only way to not die in this ship is to be the backline, the supporting line. Taking potshots at broadsides and helping whittle down enemies.

^ Champagne is a fantasy battleship that combines a battlecruiser hull (not Gascogne hull) and Alsace Proposal No.2's triple 406mm (16 in) turrets. ^ 34 knots top speed seems consistent with the battlecruiser character. ^ 7km base range secondaries. This makes a secondary build viable, although the small caliber of 100mm would require IFHE. ^ 26 second main gun reload. ^ Center deck armor is the same as Alsace and Gascogne: 32mm. Vulnerable to HE spam. ^ 25mm bow and aft deck armor, vulnerable to overmatch. There is no ice-breaker bow. ^ 240mm citadel armor belt. In comparison, Gascogne's belt is 320mm; Richelieu and Jean Bart's belt is 330mm; Alsace's belt is 350mm; Republique's belt is 400mm. Developer's corner discussion: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/212975-st-french-tier-viii-battleship-champagne-and-american-tier-x-aircraft-carrier-fdroosevelt/