Kharadron Overlords AOS 2.0 Army Build Help.

[DeathBringer]

Hey guys!  I'm new on this forum (I've been on Lustria Online alot) and I'm looking for some help with making a KO list.  I need more models but I want to try and see what models I need before I start buying some.  I'm looking for a 1k, 1.5k and 2k list if possible.  Preferably one that uses more gunships.  Please post any builds you guys think might help me out.  Ty for time!

[readercolin]

I would recommend reading through the KO thread here (ignore the first 100 pages or so though because they were for the previous battletome) and you will see a number of different lists that people have been posting (as well as a good bit of arguing).

[DeathBringer]

Hmmm didn't see any 1k lists.  Probably gonna end up buying the Aether Wars box soon.  Hopefully by then I could find some builds.

[novembermike]

If you grab Aether War then you basically just need some foot guys (thunderers or arkanauts) for durability and maybe a frigate or or something. There's no real traps anymore so you can basically take whatever.

[zilberfrid]

11 minutes ago, novembermike said:

If you grab Aether War then you basically just need some foot guys (thunderers or arkanauts) for durability and maybe a frigate or or something. There's no real traps anymore so you can basically take whatever.

Brokk could be considered one, as he locks you out of options.

[GoddammitGary]

On 1/17/2020 at 9:32 PM, novembermike said:

If you grab Aether War then you basically just need some foot guys (thunderers or arkanauts) for durability and maybe a frigate or or something. There's no real traps anymore so you can basically take whatever.

Sorry. The new books riddled with traps .

 

I suggest more than ever that with KO you do your homework and even proxy a bit to try things . It is not a beginner friendly book. It's barely intermediate friendly.

 

I've got a few fun lists and one good one but the process of making these lists was not a fast or intuative process like say for eg the cities book

[FatherTurin]

I still haven’t “cracked the code” for KO list building (no pun intended).  I’m starting to think that there are two main questions to answer first:

1: What do you want your battleline to be?  The options are Arkanaut Company, Thunderers, Gunhaulers, Frigates, or Endrinriggers & Skywardens.

If you want anything besides Arkanaut Company to be your battleline, either your sky-port or your General have been decided for you.

2: Which battalion do you want?  A lot of the interesting tricks that KO can do come from artifacts, so you need a battalion for multiple artifacts.  Even when playing at 1000 points, you want to be building towards the 2000 army you have planned, since KO tend to be among the more expensive armies.  FYI, getting 2 battalions is possible, but very difficult. 

To be honest, at 1000 points I’d be inclined to take the endrinmaster with dirigible suit, 2 min units of endrinriggers, and an Ironclad.  You will use all of those units in almost any full size army you build, and competitive or not, a giant boat flying around shooting people while hauling around its own repair crew/charge screen seems fun.  You won’t win most objectives, though.

[Kramig]

On 1/14/2020 at 4:59 PM, readercolin said:

I would recommend reading through the KO thread here (ignore the first 100 pages or so though because they were for the previous battletome) and you will see a number of different lists that people have been posting (as well as a good bit of arguing).

I also am looking for some tips or lists, but I am reading only pages and pages of complaining in that thread 

[Kramer]

21 minutes ago, Kramig said:

I also am looking for some tips or lists, but I am reading only pages and pages of complaining in that thread 

@Kramig & @DeathBringer 
Yeah take the complaints with a mountain of salt if you're either a beginner, not aiming to win the next big tournament, want to include certain models because you think they are cool. There are people who only aim to be top dog and choices that steer away from that 'subpar'. Luckily that happens with every book and calms down after a month if the army isn't winning the big things by that time. The facebook groups are weirdly more constructive currently 😂

For what it's worth, there are plenty of builds out there that do fine. Plenty of community members who tried lists without an Ironclad that did fine, find Arkanauts really valuable in their lists, etc etc. Basically plenty of differences. 
So my advice is, go for about 1K of models you think are the coolest and build around that.  

So what are the must have models and what do you want from the army? Narrative, Beer and Pretzels, Local Club, WAAC, Masters?

 

[readercolin]

22 minutes ago, Kramig said:

I also am looking for some tips or lists, but I am reading only pages and pages of complaining in that thread 

Sadly, the last 20 or so pages got lost in people complaining about how KO is a terrible book and totally underpowered.  At the time that I posted that response, the thread was a lot more useful as people were still posting actual lists.  However, just recently I was looking for ways to build out from the starting point of an Aether Wars box.  Here were some of the ideas that I came up with:

Option 1: Escort Wing
This option is pretty good with the Aether Wars box, because you have the balloon hero, 6 balloons, and a gunhauler. An easy way to go to 2k points is to grab 2 start collectings, a frigate, and 2 more boxes of skywardens. This gives you this list:

Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit
Endrinmaster with Endrinharness (alternatively, navigator or khemist, but those would require another purchase)
10 Thunderers
3x 6 Skywardens
3x Gunhaulers
Frigate
Grundstock Escort Wing

With the balloon hero as your general, your skywardens are all battleline and you can run whatever port you want. This is a 3 drop list, with everything but the hero's being in your battalion. Keep in mind, if you want your foot hero in a boat, he doesn't drop with the boat, you put your battalion down and then you garrison him in your boat of choice afterwards.

Option 2: Iron Sky Attack Squadron
Here, you need X frigates and a box of arknaught's per frigate. I would recommend starting off with 2 frigates and 2 boxes of arknaughts, and see how you like it from there. An easy 1000 point army would be this:

2x 100 point or less hero's (khemist/endrinmaster on foot/navigator)
2x frigates
2x 10 Arknaughts
Iron Sky Attack Squadron

From here, to get to 2k I would add in a 3rd frigate + arknaught company, and then your Endrinmaster w/ Dirigible suit + 2x 6 Endriggers. If you have a khemist as one of your hero's, then you can drop the other 100 point hero to add in your gunhauler as well. This would give you the following force:

Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit
Khemist
3x Frigates
3x 10 Arknaughts
Gunhauler
2x 6 Endriggers
Iron Sky Attack Squadron

Option 3: Boat the Balloons
This was more of a silly list to see how funny we could get with balloon boys while still maintaining the fly high mobility advantage.  As you can see, this would require a lot of balloons (I wouldn't recommend this list unless you really, really love the balloon boys)

For 920 points, we can have the following:
Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit
2x Gunhaulers
2x 6 Endriggers

For 1970 points, we can have the following:
Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit
5x Gunhaulers
5x 6 Endriggers

For either list, 1 gunhauler hauls around the general + 6 endriggers (7 can follow it when it flies high), and then you have as many other detachments of gunhauler + 6 endriggers as you want. Is this a good list? Probably not. But it does give you nearly unmatched mobility.

Option 4: The Iron Fortress
Here, we want an ironclad and 20 thunderers. Don't worry, that is only 990 points of our army right there... so we should insure our investment by following around with some endriggers and gunhaulers eh? How about this list:

Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit
Khemist
Ironclad (endrinworks - can fly high with any number of models)
20x Thunderers (garrisoning the boat)
2x Gunhaulers
2x 6 Endriggers

Here, we have endriggers that can heal our ironclad, thunderers to blast anything we want from inside it, and the gunhaulers give it a 6+ FNP. Note, we are going to be required to take a port that makes either the gunhaulers or thunderers battleline, or we have to drop the khemist for 10 arknaughts to sit around and hold back objectives, or we have to break up one or both squads of endriggers to 3 man units.

Lets be clear here - none of these lists is going to let you go 5-0 in a tournament. It is questionable if there is a KO list that will. But all of these lists are ways that you can build on your aether wars box and build out a larger KO force. Additionally, you will note that many of the models are re-usable between these lists, so you wouldn't have to restart from scratch if you wanted to try a new list.

[Kramig]

@readercolin

@Kramer

Sorry double post, I can't delete it

Edited January 21, 2020 by Kramig

[Kramig]

I@readercolin

@Kramer

Thank you very very much for your answer

My level is "local club", I am not looking for the most competitive list, I just want to play this army in the good way

 

I have a further question: how do you equip endriggers and sky wardens? 

I would say endriggers keeping saws for all the models, so that you have close combat unit, while skywardens use special range weapon. Is it right? 

[Azamar]

9 minutes ago, Kramig said:

I@readercolin

@Kramer

Thank you very very much for your answer

My level is "local club", I am not looking for the most competitive list, I just want to play this army in the good way

 

I have a further question: how do you equip endriggers and sky wardens? 

I would say endriggers keeping saws for all the models, so that you have close combat unit, while skywardens use special range weapon. Is it right? 

Might depend on what skyport you’re using. In Barak Nar Skywardens have quite a lot of potential on the charge, so you probably want them to have the combat weapons plus a skyhook in larger units. 
 

endrinriggers might spend a lot of the game near your boats rather than on the offence- if so then taking ranged weapons would be better. 

[readercolin]

1 hour ago, Kramig said:

I@readercolin

@Kramer

Thank you very very much for your answer

My level is "local club", I am not looking for the most competitive list, I just want to play this army in the good way

 

I have a further question: how do you equip endriggers and sky wardens? 

I would say endriggers keeping saws for all the models, so that you have close combat unit, while skywardens use special range weapon. Is it right? 

So, I ran the numbers for the endrinriggers.  If you take a squad of 6 and give them 2 volley guns and 2 skyhooks/grapnel launchers, they do 1 more damage on average compared to running them all with their normal guns.  However, you drastically reduce their melee threat by doing so.  Since I want my endriggers to be flying around my boats to heal them, and to keep their mobility, but not really put them into melee, an argument can be made for giving them the special weapons.  But, having the saws gives them significantly more threat in melee, and help act when they get charged.  So personally, I would probably keep endrinriggers with just saws and pistols, and use the fly-high ability to get me into range.

Looking at skywardens, we have one major issue.  Their pistols only have a 9" range, which means they can't fire after a fly-high.  This means that if you want a similar effect as endriggers where you are using your boats mobility to get you into position to shoot, well, they are just straight worse than endrinriggers.  Additionally, the riggers do more ranged damage with pistols only than the wardens do, so if you want special weapons you might as well just run riggers anyways.  In melee, wardens are worse than endrinriggers as well, except against 6+ saves (and then they barely win as well).  However, this all gets turned on its head if you are running Barak-Zon, because your skyfarers all get +1 to hit, and your wardens get +1 to wound, which then jumps the skywardens melee to acceptable levels.

My conclusion from all of this is that if you want to run balloons, you want to run endrinriggers, and then the special weapons will be to taste.  Except, if you want to run Barak-Zon, in which case you want to run Skywardens and get them charging in and dealing damage, in which case you want all spears except maybe 1 skyhook for the +1 to charge (and you might want to consider running a squad of 12 as fast cav and not worry about the fly-high abilities - and you get an aethergold too).