Game:

World of Warships (2015)

Duration: 15:09

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Gneisenau — German Tier VII battleship.

A very high-speed battleship that was close to the battle cruiser type. Under the re-armament project, she was equipped with 380 mm guns that enabled her to fight off larger contemporary ships. Among her drawbacks were the small number of main guns and weak horizontal armor.

►Performance
Hailing as the first post-World War I battleship design in the German battleship line at Tier VII, Gneisenau dramatically shifts from the bulky, slow-to-react dreadnoughts that are more dangerous when they get close into a post-dreadnought battleship which can do many of the same things (to a certain degree) while remaining one of the most versatile battleships at her tier.

Playing Gneisenau is decidedly different from playing her counterparts at Tier VII. While Gneisenau may appear slender and lightly armored, don't be fooled: she is deceptively durable in the hands of a captain who knows how to handle her. Her 15-inch guns give her the capability of fighting on the same level as her peers, though she does have fewer barrels than the competition. From a handling perspective, she's the fastest battleship out of the German line, and has no trouble keeping up with cruisers as needed.

Her speed is arguably Gneisenau’s greatest asset. It allows her to close the gap with enemy battleships and force them into close range where her main battery, secondary guns, and torpedoes can deliver the killing blow. While most battleships tend to join a battle line, Gneisenau can instead join up with fast cruisers and blitz the enemy by appearing quickly from an unexpected location. She is capable of operating solo, but extra caution is needed when doing so; her main battery dispersion is frequently frustrating, making long-range combat decidedly not her strong suit. Gneisenau is most comfortable at medium-to-close range — even point-blank range — where she can make every shell and torpedo count.

Gneisenau is unique in the game as the only regular tech tree battleship to have torpedoes available; the only other battleships with torpedo tubes are her premium sister Scharnhorst, the premium version of her successor, Tirpitz, and Japanese premiums Mutsu and Kii. Her rakish looks hide a brutal array of secondary batteries that unload at an impressive rate of fire, and are more than capable of shredding destroyers of equal and lower tiers (higher tier destroyers are likely to have concealment values that make closing with them suicidal).

Gneisenau — like Scharnhorst — is a ship that is equally at ease diving into a melee or holding back from one. Learning when to dive in and put her secondaries and torpedoes to work (and when not to) is half the fun of learning how to play her well.

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