15.9 - 4 New Black Friday Ships - Halloween Brawls - Kill Counter Perm Camos - and Much More!! - Closed Test

Update 15.9 brings many features and events, including our annual Black Friday event and the new Pacific Front strategic activity—an evolution of last year's Dunkirk 1940. It also reworks the Ocean map with weather effects, adjusts matchmaking during quieter hours, and adds three Halloween-themed Brawls.

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Work In Progress

Black Friday

Black Friday is back! The last week of Update 15.9 kicks off our annual Black Friday event, and we're adding four new ships to the Black Friday fleet. Each one is a special "Black Friday" version of an existing ship:

• Tier X Pan-Asian Cruiser Incheon B — Uncommon
• Tier IX Spanish Battleship Victoria B — Ship Details - Rare
• Tier VIII American Aircraft Carrier Hornet B — Uncommon
• Tier VIII French Battleship Flandre B — Uncommon

Four new ships will also introduce the Enemy Destruction Counter feature, which you'll find more details about below.

Incheon B, Victoria B, and Hornet B will be available across multiple offerings: a single bundle unifying all three ships, additional separate bundles that contain just the ship and a port slot, and the reworked Black Friday and Black Friday Premium containers. Flandre B will be available exclusively at the end of the sequential bundle for Doubloons, which also contains Black Friday containers, The Monochrome Enemy Destruction Effect, supercontainers, and more.

You'll also find many returning Black Friday ships from previous years across various bundles and containers, including Jean Bart B, Alaska B, Asashio B, and Massachusetts B. These four will also be available in their own bundles containing just the ship and a port slot.

Progress Bar

A Progress Bar will be available during the Black Friday event. It fills automatically with Black Friday Tokens, which you get by purchasing Black Friday Premium containers and some Doubloon bundles with real money. Rewards along the track are:

#	Reward
1	3 days of Warships Premium Account
2	3x Black Friday 2026 containers
3	5,000 Coal
4	1x Shadow Lurker permanent camouflage
5	5x Black Friday 2026 containers
6	500 Doubloons
7	3x Economic Bonus, Credits +160%
8	3x Economic Bonus, Commander XP +800%
9	3x Economic Bonus, Ship XP +800%
10	3x Economic Bonus, Free XP +2,400%
11	1x Black Friday 2026 Premium container
12	2x Black Friday 2026 Premium containers
13	3x Black Friday 2026 Premium containers
14	4x Black Friday 2026 Premium containers
15	5x Black Friday 2026 Premium containers

We have also overhauled containers from the last year:

Click to see Black Friday 2026 container contents

• 360,000 Credits - 15%
• 6,000 Free XP - 18.6%
• 18,000 Elite Commander XP - 32%
• 20x Common economic bonuses of each type - 8.5% for each type
• One of the following ships: Incheon B, Rhode Island B, Yoshino B, Napoli B, Brisbane B, Victoria B, Karl XIV Johan B, Neustrashimy B, Jean Bart B, Alaska B, Pommern B, Black B, Kearsarge B, Iwami B, Azuma B, Hornet B, Schill B, Massachusetts B, Tirpitz B, Asashio B, Mainz B, Cossack B, Kaga B, Atago B, Brandenburg B, Graf Zeppelin B, Chkalov B, Loyang B, Alabama B, Saipan B, Atlanta B, Scharnhorst B, München B, Sims B, or Lazo B - 0.4%

If you get a reward drop from the ships category but already own all ships from the list, you will instead receive 2,500 Doubloons.

Click to see Black Friday 2026 Premium container contents

• 2,000,000 Credits - 5%
• 35,000 Free XP - 10%
• 100,000 Elite Commander XP - 13%
• 14x Rare economic bonuses of each type - 15% for each type
• One of the following ships: Incheon B, Rhode Island B, Yoshino B, Napoli B, Brisbane B, Victoria B, Karl XIV Johan B, Neustrashimy B, Jean Bart B, Alaska B, Pommern B, Black B, Kearsarge B, Iwami B, Azuma B, Hornet B, Schill B, Massachusetts B, Tirpitz B, Asashio B, Mainz B, Cossack B, Kaga B, Atago B, Brandenburg B, Graf Zeppelin B, Chkalov B, Loyang B, Alabama B, Saipan B, Atlanta B, Scharnhorst B, München B, Sims B or Lazo B - 12%

If you get a reward drop from the ships category but already own all ships from the list, you will instead receive 2,500 Doubloons.

With the start of the Black Friday event, the daily free bundles will return in a refreshed form and contain Black Friday containers.

Enemy Destruction Counter

This year's Black Friday introduces a new feature: an Enemy Destruction Counter that tracks how many enemies each ship has destroyed. It will be available for Hornet B, Flandre B, Victoria B, and Incheon B. The counter is part of the Black Friday camouflage itself.

This is an experimental feature, so it may be refined over time. We'll share our plans on it later, after analyzing how it performs.

Key details:

• The counter is supported in Random, Ranked, and Co-op Battles. Each battle type tracks separately, so ships destroyed in Ranked Battles only count toward the Ranked counter on that ship.
• A ship's Enemy Destruction Counter updates dynamically during battle. If you leave a battle early, either by quitting or by clicking "Battle On," the ship's Enemy Destruction Counter resets to the count it had at the start of that battle. Once the battle finishes, the Enemy Destruction Counter updates again to show the ship's true total once you're back in Port.
• The counter stops updating once a ship reaches 99,999 enemy ships destroyed.
• If you'd rather hide it, you can disable it in the camouflage section of ship customization.

Black Friday Squadron

The Black Friday Squadron returns! Assemble matching pairs (both standard and Black Friday versions of ships) to receive combat missions that reward you with Doubloons and other prizes.

To be eligible for a ship's combat mission, you must meet both of the following conditions:

• Obtain the standard version of the ship—either before the event starts or during the event.
• Obtain the Black Friday version of the same ship during the 2026 event. The only exception is Marlborough B, which will be counted even if you obtain the ship before the event starts.

Note: Black Friday ships obtained in previous years do not count toward this year's missions.

Pacific Front

If you played Dunkirk 1940 in Update 14.4, then Pacific Front will feel familiar. Pacific Front is a revamped strategic event coming in Update 15.9. The core gameplay is similar to Dunkirk 1940, but this time your battles are part of something bigger. Pacific Front will be playable straight from your browser, as well as in the game client.

In Pacific Front, you're put in charge of a fleet being directed across the Pacific Theater. Battles are no longer standalone. They're now organized into Operations and represent a series of battles with a final confrontation. To complete the Operation, you do not need to win every battle that you encounter, but if you decide to go all the way, you will receive additional rewards.

Choose an Operation from several on your desk, deploy your fleet, weigh which fights are worth taking, and push toward victory. Every battle along the way puts your units up against four enemies, and for each head-to-head skirmish that your unit wins, you'll receive rewards, including Fleet Supplies. You will also earn Progress Tokens by completing Operations, climbing a reward track that ends with Monaghan as the final prize.

How battles work

• Defeat enemy units in battle to earn rewards, including Fleet Supplies, which are your main resource for expanding your fleet. You will receive a reward for each head-to-head skirmish that your unit wins.

• You spend Fleet Supplies on new units—choosing one of three randomly offered units to add to your collection—or on Common Modifiers, which are boosts you attach to a unit before a battle. Rare Modifiers pack a stronger punch but can't be bought; you'll need to earn them through battle rewards or the reward track. Each unit can carry one Common and one Rare Modifier, and they expire after a battle is concluded.
• Your unit's actual power in battle depends on its health, applied modifiers, and buffs, plus a small random variation each time you hit Start Battle—so the same unit can perform a little better or worse from one fight to the next. The power of enemy units can be affected by debuffs.
• Battle conditions from the operation can weaken your units, impose certain restrictions, or make enemy units stronger, depending on the specific condition.
• Every unit has a three-segment Health Bar. You lose one segment per battle, and fewer segments mean less Power. Within an Operation, that damage carries with you from battle to battle, and a unit at zero HP can't be used again. You can restore a unit's HP by using a repair modifier before it reaches zero HP. Be advised that if every unit in your fleet hits zero HP mid-run, the Operation ends in a loss. Your fleet is fully restored automatically at the start of every new Operation.
• Some units can buff an ally or debuff an enemy in a specific direction. Debuffs can land if they match a specific vulnerability the enemy unit has or if you have a modifier which applies a debuff anyway. In the UI, green arrows show a buff's direction, and red arrows show a debuff's direction.

What's changed and what's new

• Operations are divided into Stages, and each Stage is divided into several Battles (Key Points) to fight through.

• You don't need to clear every Key Point to advance through a Stage. Clear just enough to move on, or stick around and clear them all to earn the Perfect Completion bonus for extra rewards.
• You'll pick one Operation at a time to play through. If you want to switch, you'll need to complete, abandon, or reset your current run first.
• Not feeling your Operation run? Abandon it and keep everything you've earned so far, or Reset for a clean slate. Reset wipes your progress and any gains from that run.
• No more waiting out a timer to heal up. HP is now tied to the Operation itself.
• In each stage, a unit can be assigned to only one Key Point. However, the same units can be reused in later stages of the Operation as long as they have HP remaining.
• Every Operation ends in a showdown with a Primary Target. Sometimes that Primary Target is a generic enemy, and other times it's one of eight named after historical participants in the Pacific theater.
• Completing Operations earns Progress Tokens that advance your reward track.

Ocean Map Rework

Starting with Update 15.9, the Ocean map is getting a weather makeover. As a map with no islands, Ocean plays differently from most others, especially for ships that rely on terrain and concealment early on. Rather than adding islands, we're introducing weather effects: storms, snow, and cyclones that roll across the map and create temporary pockets of heavy rain or snowfall. Each battle features just one of these weather types, not all three at once. With Update 15.9, only Cyclone weather is available; the other weather types will be added in future updates.

These weather zones reduce visibility and make ships harder to spot and hit while inside them, which gives you safer windows to close the distance in the opening minutes. As the match progresses, the weather clears up and the battle plays out on open water as usual.

Here's a closer look at each weather type:

• Cyclone: A map-wide cyclone active very early in the battle. Reduces visibility and detection range out to 15 km (the usual cyclone reduction is 8–12 km). It lets ships close in more before the action begins, and if needed, gives them somewhere to retreat to on an otherwise wide-open map. The cyclone dissipates after 7–9 minutes, after which time the map plays normally.
• Thunderstorms: Two separate storm zones drift across the map in a circling pattern for about 12 minutes. Inside them, dispersion increases, firing-detection range is reduced, concealment improves, and the spotting timer is significantly reduced, letting ships that reach a zone play more aggressively while they're in it. Since the storm is localized and constantly moving, only ships caught inside benefit, which encourages players to actively maneuver toward the zones.
• Snowstorm: A large snowstorm forms at the center of the map when the battle begins, then spreads to cover the entire map over the next 3 minutes. It stays present on the whole map for some time and then it gradually contracts back down to just the middle of the map. It carries the same visibility and detection effects as the thunderstorms, just with a distinct snowy look. Since the storm blankets the whole map for most of its duration, it acts as a universal buff rather than a zone players need to chase—only in its closing phase, once it has shrunk back to the center, does it become a small area worth repositioning toward.

Finally, we've brought volumetric clouds to the Ocean map—the skies above your battles have never looked better. Clouds now have genuine shape, volume, and they shift to follow more realistic patterns. This change will also affect Ocean Port.

Matchmaking Changes

If you play late at night or early in the morning, you've probably ended up in a 3v3 or 4v4 more than once. We're changing that.

You may know we have a force start timer—a mechanic meant to guarantee that you'll get into a battle within a reasonable time, even during quiet hours. For a while now, it hasn't really been doing its job.

Here's why. Some ships need a strictly balanced counterpart on the enemy team before a battle can start, and finding that counterpart takes priority over the force start timer. So the queue keeps waiting—often well past the point where the timer would normally fire. And the moment that opponent finally shows up, the force start triggers immediately, launching the battle with whoever else happens to be in queue at that second. That's how you end up in a 3v3 or 4v4 at two in the morning: not because the timer was too short, but because it went off the instant the last missing piece fell into place.

So we've made the force start settings more flexible at Tiers VI–X and for superships, giving the queue a chance to actually fill out before the battle begins.

We've already tested this. In our data, battles with fewer than 12 players dropped to 0.04% of all battles per day. At the same time, the average queue time for most ships and tiers barely moved at all. In certain cases, though, like aircraft carriers, it can go up by 10-15 seconds. We're not going to promise you'll never see a short-handed battle again, but it should become a rarity rather than a regular annoyance.

From where we're standing, waiting slightly longer is worth a better match at the end of it. We look forward to you trying it out and letting us know if you agree.

Brawls

Update 15.9 features three Brawls, all played on specially designed maps based on our Halloween event, Transylvania.

Brawl #1

• Ship Tier: VIII
• Format: 5v5
• Allowed ship types: Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers

Brawl #2

• Ship Tier: IX
• Format: 3v3
• Allowed ship types: Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers
• Recalibrations: 25% faster ship speed

Brawl #3

• Ship Tier: X
• Format: 4v4
• Allowed ship types: Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers
• Recalibrations: Chaos reigns

Chaos reigns

We have made few changes since this recalibration was used. Buffs for battleships are now weaker, while cruiser and destroyer buffs are stronger.

• Battleships: a shorter reload time and improved accuracy for main and secondary guns; increased ship HP, maximum speed, and maneuverability
• Cruisers: a shorter reload time for main guns and torpedo tubes; improved HE shell fire chances and torpedo damage; increased ship HP, maximum speed, and maneuverability; shorter consumable cooldown with increased action time.
• Destroyers: a shorter reload time for main guns and torpedo tubes; improved torpedo damage and speed; increased ship HP, maximum speed, and maneuverability; shorter consumables cooldown.

Content Additions and Changes

• Dark Horse permanent camouflage for San Martín.
• Added a new King of the Sea XIX flag pack:
  • King of the Sea XIX Participant
  • King of the Sea XIX
  • King of the Sea XIX Viewer
• Achievement King of the Sea XIX Finalist
• Patch Chinese Character "Dao"
• Nationless version of Commander Max Strauss
• Two new flags:
  • Pacific Front Fleet
  • Veteran of the Pacific

Additionally, we have refreshed the following containers:

Click to see Jack-o’-Lantern container contents

• 5,000 Free XP - 36%
• 10,000 Elite Commander XP - 36%
• 250,000 Credits - 19.5%
• 1,000 Coal - 6%
• Rust permanent camouflage - 0.5%
• Spectral Eel enemy destruction effect - 0.3%
• One of the following permanent camouflages: Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier VIII ships, Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier IX ships or Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier X ships - 0.3%
• One of the following permanent camouflages: Grove Whisperer for Z-23, Blazing Dread for Mogami, Ice Forged for Kansas, Creature of the Deep for Ohio, Ghoul for Benson, Scarab for Charles Martel, Varg for Bismarck, The Great Gorgon for Shōkaku, Steel Rat for Z-23, Razorworm for Kiev, Octopus for Mogami, Leviathan for N. Carolina, Angler for Shimakaze, Mutantovsk for Khabarovsk, Fossil for Henri IV, Scorpioid for Yamato, Crocosaur for Montana or Master of the Water World for Z-52, Daring, Shimakaze, Yueyang, Gearing, Grozovoi, Harugumo, Khabarovsk - 0.4%
• One of the following commanders: Bjorn Stormbreaker, Amon Sitri, Nierdanel Nadar, Belladonna Nightshade, Queen of the Deep, King of Winter, Lady of the Cold, Dr. van Schubs, Rick H. O'Tep, J.G. Mephisteufel, James D. Breese, Boris Veber, David Jones, Boris Angler, Dr. van Shuboff, Rick Diesel, David "Vortex" Jones, Skull Teufel, Henry J. Hide, Abraham V. Hellsinger, Mina Hurray, Sairus Guerrero or Klaus V. Teslau - 1%

If you get a reward drop from a permanent camouflages category but already own all permanent camouflages from the list, you will instead receive 5,000 Free XP

Click to see Jack-o’-Lantern Premium container contents

• 20,000 Free XP - 15%
• 60,000 Elite Commander XP - 15%
• 8x Rare economic bonuses of each type - 9% for each type
• Rust permanent camouflage - 14.5%
• Spectral Eel enemy destruction effect - 3%
• One of the following permanent camouflages: Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier VIII ships, Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier IX ships or Infernal permanent camouflage for Tier X ships - 3%
• One of the following permanent camouflages: Grove Whisperer for Z-23, Blazing Dread for Mogami, Ice Forged for Kansas, Creature of the Deep for Ohio, Ghoul for Benson, Scarab for Charles Martel, Varg for Bismarck, The Great Gorgon for Shōkaku, Steel Rat for Z-23, Razorworm for Kiev, Octopus for Mogami, Leviathan for N. Carolina, Angler for Shimakaze, Mutantovsk for Khabarovsk, Fossil for Henri IV, Scorpioid for Yamato, Crocosaur for Montana or Master of the Water World for Z-52, Daring, Shimakaze, Yueyang, Gearing, Grozovoi, Harugumo, Khabarovsk - 4%
• One of the following commanders: Bjorn Stormbreaker, Amon Sitri, Nierdanel Nadar, Belladonna Nightshade, Queen of the Deep, King of Winter, Lady of the Cold, Dr. van Schubs, Rick H. O'Tep, J.G. Mephisteufel, James D. Breese, Boris Veber, David Jones, Boris Angler, Dr. van Shuboff, Rick Diesel, David "Vortex" Jones, Skull Teufel, Henry J. Hide, Abraham V. Hellsinger, Mina Hurray, Sairus Guerrero or Klaus V. Teslau - 9.5%

If you get a reward drop from a permanent camouflages category but already own all permanent camouflages from the list, you will instead receive 20,000 Free XP

Important: All information in this post is 'Work in Progress', the announced adjustments and features may undergo multiple changes during testing, all changes will be added to this post immediately after they become available, the final details will be officially published and labelled in the ship info as 'Released' on this post.