[2022] 3/15/22 - New Player Captain’s Log: Movin' up to Montana

Greetings Captains,

Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Player Captain's Log! For those of you who aren't sure what this is or what it might do, feel free to check out the introductory post here.

Without further ado, let’s proceed with Week 9!

Accomplishments
Here’s a list of personal milestones that I hit during the week:

1.Played a few more Clan Battles with Clan WG
2. Completed my first Tech Tree line, US BBs

Focus Points of the Week
After talking to a number of you in last week’s thread, I made a few changes in focus that I think were beneficial to my learning experience. Here’s a few things I accomplished:
1. Put more thought into how to use my planes effectively when using CVs.

Clan Battles
Similar to last week, we played a couple of Clan Battles as a part of our weekly Community Stream! We got through 2 matches, and got two more victories under our belt. I still only had the Moskva to use here, but I did a small chunk of damage each game with a kill or two. I did unfortunately sink during game one, but made up for it by barely being touched in game 2. I continue to have a really good time playing Clan Battles, but I also know that if I didn’t have Boggzy to tell me exactly where to go and what direction to shoot, I would probably be borderline useless. This does inspire me to study some more competitive WoWs play to see if there are tips and strategies that I can pick up to improve my skill level in both Clan Battles and the game as a whole.

BBs - Tier IX Randoms
I made it a personal goal of grinding my Iowa so I could complete my first ever tech tree line. Well, for better or worse, I finished it! The Montana is mine, baby! I’ll reserve her for some specialty type matches as I move on to grinding another BB line. I think I am leaning either German or UK.

Ship used: Iowa Observations: Tier IX has been very interesting to me. I find that there are games where I am pretty useless or don’t make much of an impact before being destroyed, or I come out of nowhere and come up with 100k damage. Either way, I do notice that I don’t tend to rack up a lot of kids (usually 2 max) and I do find that other players get frustrated with my general strategies, so I think something needs to change. Now that I feel accomplished and completed the tech tree line, I am looking forward to going through some lower tier BBs and get back to fundamentals. Things I need to be more cognizant of:
1. Finishing the Job - As mentioned above, even in my larger damage games I don’t really rack up the destructions. I think this comes off as me trying to farm, which is far from the case. I am trying to finish up the job there while keeping myself as safe as possible. I need to figure out how to set myself up for that destructive success.

CVs - Tier VI Randoms
I continued to touch on some CV play, and found some areas of improvement in how I play! I went from averaging 20k damage to 35k, which I know is not a lot but I take improvements where I see them!

Ship used: Ranger Observations: As mentioned before, my damage output has improved! I find that I am using rocket planes much less and focusing on torp planes and bombers way more, which I think is key to my moderate success. I also focused on being a little more strategic with where to send my planes, focusing on sneaky island Cruisers/DDs and ill-placed BBs. I am excited to see how I can continue to improve!
Things I need to be more cognizant of:
1. Map Placement: I think I have mentioned this before, but I sometimes feel a little lost on where to place my CV on the map. It seems simple enough to hide behind islands and stay away from the action, but I feel as though this sometimes puts me too far away and thus I am wasting time flying towards the action. Sometimes when I try to push up when that happens, I cross a line and get deleted instantly.
2. Locking down the damage/kills: I know how to deal damage, I know where to aim, and I know who to aim for. I just feel like that somehow I’m still not being as effective as I can be. I don’t find that I am rendering ships obsolete or preventing significant pushes like I have seen other skilled CV players do, so I need to go back to the drawing board, study up and come up with some more effective strategies.

I think that about covers it this week! See you next week for some more New Player musings. Fair winds and following seas!

This seems to be the key. I have yet to experiment heavily with specialized builds for ships, and what you describe here sounds ideal for me. I will certainly be looking into this. Thank you!

This and what you described below in regard to autopilot is completely foreign to me, so I am definitely going to have to do some more research and experimenting. I will call upon the power of Ahskance for guidance as well, since clearly I have no clue, lol. Thanks for the tip!

Lol, thank you! I may take her out for a couple spins but I am just satisfied that I completed the grind at all. Now a new grind begins!

MASSIVELY helpful. Thank you so much!!

Whoa I had not even considered taking Brisk (BB problems) but this is a really fascinating way to play her. I will certainly be looking into this build in the future to see how I like it!