The World of Warships crossover with High School Fleet launched on the SEA server on June 30th and will be coming to the North American server on July 10th. The initial offering is two premium vessels. The first is HSF Harekaze, a tier VIII Japanese Destroyer of the Kagero-class. The second is the HSF Graf Spee, a tier VI cruiser of the Deutschland-class. I have received a lot of questions regarding these ships and I thought I’d try and address some of them in this article.

You can feel free to add follow up questions on the World of Warships sub-Reddit or reaching out to me via the NA Forums. I’ll add them to the article below.

Will these ships be given out as a reward for accomplishing in-game missions?

My understanding is that these ships are only being sold for the time being. Of course, Wargaming is free to change this with future content, including contests and giveaways and the like. But if you want access to these ships, it looks like you’ll have to open up your wallets. How much will these ships cost? On the SEA server, these ships sold for $41.43 USD for the HSF Harekaze (no bundle, just ship + captain + port slot) and $22.88 USD for a similar package for HSF Graf Spee. What can you tell us about these ships? How well do they perform? HSF Graf Spee is a clone of the existing German Premium, Admiral Graf Spee. The only difference between them that I have been able to find is the economical bonuses provided by one of HSF Graf Spee’s camouflage patterns.

I will have a full review of HSF Harekaze out soon. She’s near-stock Kagero-class destroyer with the option of keeping her normal guns, mounting those from Akizuki or taking a half-set of American destroyer-caliber weapons. This provides a lot of flexibility in potential play styles, but it requires some pretty deep skill investments on the Commander to fully unlock their potential.

She’s near-stock Kagero-class destroyer with the option of keeping her normal guns, mounting those from Akizuki or taking a half-set of American destroyer-caliber weapons. This provides a lot of flexibility in potential play styles, but it requires some pretty deep skill investments on the Commander to fully unlock their potential. These ships count as normal premiums for their respective nation. As such they can be used to train your other commanders without penalty. Is there any historical precedence for HSF Harekaze? There was no such Kagero-class ship. Harekaze herself is a fabrication, however the weapon options she uses do have some ties to history. Tan Yang, formerly the Yukikaze, received similar gun armaments in her service with the Republic of China as a war reparations vessel. She was originally constructed with 127mm/50 Type 3 guns found on most IJN Destroyers in game. She underwent several upgrades over the course of her career, including making use of 100mm/65 guns and, later on, USN dual-purpose 127mm/38 guns. So it’s not quite the analogue from the show, but it’s close. What are your favourite guns to use on HSF Harekaze? I fell in love with using HSF Harekaze’s B-Hull with the six 100mm guns from Akizuki. I will go into more detail on why I liked this build the best in my full review. Be advised, though, it required a very deep investment in skills to make this work well — skills I wouldn’t recommend for anything other than an Akizuki (or maybe a Mogami) build. Do they have any form of special matchmaking? No, HSF Harekaze and HSF Graf Spee have the normal matchmaking for a tier 8 and tier 6 ship respectively. If I already own the tier 6 German Premium Admiral Graf Spee, is there any point to getting the HSF Graf Spee? As far as I can tell, the ships are clones of each other performance wise. The only reason to get HSF Graf Spee in this case is if you really want the special commander (with voice options) and to get a second version of your ship with an improved camouflage pattern. It’s also possible that Wargaming may, in the future, open up a campaign involving these ships. Like with HMS Hood and Admiral Graf Spee before it, if you don’t have the vessel you may not be able to participate fully. However, I have not heard any details regarding if such a campaign is in the works. What can you tell us about the special commanders these ships come with? Each ship comes with their respective Captain from the show, complete with an adorable anime portrait.

On the SEA server, depending on the package purchased, these commanders came with different default skill points (0 base, 3 for the premium package). It’s uncertain if the other servers will follow suite, but it’s likely to be comparable.

These are normal commanders in all respects. HSF Harekaze’s commander can be retrained to captain any Japanese vessel if you so choose. She can also command any Japanese premium without penalty. HSF Graf Spee’s commander can do the same with German ships.

These commanders each have their own respective voice-pack modification. This voice pack overrides all normal voice-settings for the game when they’re taken into battle, ignoring the preferences set in your options menu.

In addition, when these captains are used, all voice commands used by allied and enemy ships are overridden to those of the voice package. This transforms all of the voice traffic in game to those from the High School Fleet series, making the player feel immersed in that setting.

Supposedly, there will be some in game events to unlock other commanders from the show. I’m personally holding out for the cat, Isoroku (named for the Admiral Yamamoto).



What camouflages come with the ships and what bonuses do they provide?