Reuben Parker

Double post but I was at a tournament over the weekend chatting with another KO player and it got me thinking. Please excuse this long post as I have been exploring a few things in my mind that I wanted to get down. There has been a lot of talk about how KO are bad but not really anything on the good so I wanted to deconstruct that first (the bad we know). Also as always these are just opinions from me so feel free to disagree. Good Low drop army (quite easy for one drop if wanted) Best ranged firepower in the game Best army wide rend in the game with a lot of access to -2 Good speed and ability for board control Flexibility (the army isn't really tied to one unit or build) ---------------------- Best units by role Skirmish screen - 5 man carbine thunderer unit (very underrated unit, average 4 -1 saves per volley, do mortal wounds against chargers and can potentially flee before even swung at. Also can charge them forward in your turn then activate and retreat and run to get onto objectives deep on your opponents side.) Fire base - 30/40 man arkanaut unit with skyhooks, boosted by Khemist. Size is by taste 40 obviously gives more shots but is more of a eggs in one basket type unit, most people seem to feel 30 is a good balance. Melee - 12 man Endrinriggers boosted by Khemist. Between shooting and melee with boosted saws with average over 30 wounds past a 4+ save. Airship - Ironclad. Best carry capacity, save, weapons and rules. Hero - Khemist. Weapon boost is just too good to pass up. Now an admiral can be good for objective holding as you can give him Doughty champion and a defensive artifact if wanted when your playing a hero or wizard / artifact scoring mission (which is a KO weakness). --------------------------------------------- Personally when building for a tournament in AoS2 irrespective of the army I feel the need for at least two artifacts / wizards. This is due to TO's loving to insert those missions and nearly every tournament I go to has a round playing one of them. This means the list either has to have a battalion, be Barak-Urbaz or ally in a Incantor for SCE. On the subject of battalions I don't feel any of them are that good. The best being Iron Sky Squadron mainly to allow a one drop force. This means the two best styles I perceive are either Barak-Urbaz playing zero battalion. Or Barak-Mhornar Squadron for the first turn run and re roll bubble. ------------------------------------------ Putting it together I came up with the following builds. Barak-Urbaz Khemist - General Doughty Champion, Earburster Khemist - Thermalrider Cloak Khemist 30/10/10 Arkanauts 12 Endrinriggers Ironclad - Breath of Morgrim 1980 Barak-Mhornar Khemsit - General Opportunistic Privateers, Ignax Scales Khemist - Earburster 30/10/10 Arkanauts 9 Endrinriggers 5 Thunderers Frigate - The last word Frigate - Malefic skymines 1990 Personally I prefer the look of the Barak-Urbaz as can boost 6 weapons with Khemist and has the Ironclad and able to squeeze in the 12 man Endrinriggers squad. Something I also feel is overlooked is just boosting normal pistols and cutters especially on large arkanaut squads. With both boosted each model averages 1.5 wounds and can really help vs ethereal type units.

I think any battalion can’t be below 100 as they give you CP and artifact plus lower drops. Cats I would go to 30 per two as at 10 ppw they are too fragile. Agree on hunter, I think some of your other drops in points are a bit too large though. I think with your changes Eurlbad would be a really strong army build.

So has anyone had any joy with a Mhornar escort wing? thinking about picking up a start collecting as that will get me to 4 gun haulers. In theory I see it being a board control type army kill their couple of biggest threats then spread out on objectives. Interested to hear if it worked for people as saw it discussed earlier. My main concern is damage output as it seems on the low end for a KO list.

KO I think are an army that are very hard to point correctly. As the tipping point where too cheap and the fire power just deletes isn’t that far off. Obviously overall a bit cheaper but maybe just shaving a few points here and there rather than anything drastic. Enough to allow a normal list to run one or two extra of the cheap units.

I would definitely put earburster into the list. KO General need help vs mass low value wounds (although your list is actually quite good there) and it really helps in those matchups. I think your list has all the tools to easily handle the 200 plague monk list. Maybe just need to work on the screening tactics and being in depth of lines as Arkanaut between pistol and cutters shred them and your bringing 60. Add in once per game free pile in the hero phase as well. Your skyhooks pick off their characters so they can’t IP then pistols and cutters shred the big blobs.

Good luck man. Wouldn’t want to advise changing units as your set on your list and I dig that. However you mention picking your realm based on wanting one with two good artifacts. In that case why still not Ulgu, gives sword of judgment as you mentioned (insane on corrupter) then doppelgänger cloak is fairly much broken level good.

. There’s not a keyword for it nor definition in the rules. Really just go on common sense. Some people try to get a bit rules Laywer esc and claim the turtle isn’t a mount but I 100% disagree. If you notice the warscrolls with mounts list their attacks with the mount name first.

Yes IJ are average in terms of speed but the issue is it’s average speed on a pure Melee army. Look at other Melee armies like DoK, Deepkin, Khorne even nurgle with trees they can zip across the field. In comparison IJ are slower than all of the other Melee armies. Even fyreslayers can use tunneling and a once per game rune.

That’s why I like the cogs goto move 6 possibly with a hero phase move for 12” total and then a charge with +5. chanter can be sniped for sure but 5+ MW save can help a bit hopefully some line of sight blocking terrain or sit in a wood vs non flying shooting. Not sure about going down to just the banner boss as I find most players who know the army kill him first. You could if wanted exchange and take double banner boss. That then means there’s no requirement for extra IJ heroes to boost waagh and can switch in the fungoid.

Interesting to see in the previous page people discussing ardfist, something I too having been toying with for similar reasons. Gives a good out in certain matchups and even if chanter gets sniped it’s a shed load of wounds for dumping on objectives. My idea is also to use it around a 30 man deathstar with double chanter buff and banner boss support. Perfect storm it’s 30 boyz with 2+ to hit 3+ to wound re roll 1s and multiple waagh stacked. Megaboss - prophet of the waagh chanter (battalion) - mirrored cuirass (MW protection) chanter - Brooch 2 weirdnob shamans banner boss allies 30/10/10/10/10 ardboyz ardfist cogs I know most people go MK but I prefer to have additional heroes and cogs, also allows 4 heroes that can score in wizard or artifacts missions which I find Tournament organizers love to throw in as one of the missions.

I’m not, sorry may not be clear as I was writing in a short format but it’s 1 artifact (crown) and 3 spells. There are two medusa with 1 spell each. There are also 3 prayers amongst the hags but didn’t write them out. Healing / 6 double hit / and count table as turn higher. You can use command trait to teleport a hero forward then use mirror dance to swap them with Morathi so she’s on the other side of the table and still allowed to move. Other two spells are just mindrazor and leadership debuff to allow Morathi or the snake star to go upto rediculous damage levels.

I agree cats aren’t cheap enough to be considered as a line holder (10 points per wound on 6+ save is garbage durability) however I think they do have some uses beyond just capping naked objectives. 1) board zoning multiple units each with an 18” gap to stop units teleporting from your enemy (so many factions can teleport now). 2) charge blockers 40 points to block a gap for a turn is often really worth it. 3) wizard , cannon snipers. The other one for chaff is 100 points for 20 gnobblars which can be useful

I have a snake focussed list using Khailebron Morathi - mindrazor 2 Medusa - shroud of despair / Mirror dance (General) 3 Hag (crown of woe) 3 * 10 wyches 20 bloodsisters 10 bloodsisters list can first turn teleport and move Morathi if needed. Can do a snake star that with all buffs kills anything especially due to leadership debuffs and mindrazor. Small witch units can screen and blow through opposition screens. Army wide minus to hit at range rounds it out.

Not tried it yet but do want to in a dual ghoul patrol and royal family build. As you say it either gets right on top of them or forces them to deploy very conservatively. That way if wanted I could go double GK, double Varghulf, ghast summoned ghouls and even maybe one unit from the patrol all on top of them with 6+ re rollable charges. Whilst the rest of the patrol, horrors and GKoZD come up the table. As dual battalion can still have brooch for CP and either garland or mortal wound save on the general as access to 3 items.

I still have my original army box they did that was amazing value 20 ghoul, 9 horror, flappy and varghulf. Shame they don’t make it anymore. I’m not a guy whose good with magnets so will just buy more and have separate horrors and flayers. At least with the monsters you just base the GK separately and put him on the monster base if using it mounted. My problem is that I not only have hobby ADHD amongst multiple armies but also always want to run different builds within an army. Still I’ve found a way to paint FEC super fast so can quickly get everything ready for different builds. ————— On a more tactical note something I want to try is a couple of large horror units (9 each) along with palisade and gravetide using the endless spells to stop people getting good frontage on the horrors so they can regen and grind over several turns.

Yeah I’m thinking of buying a bunch more boxes. FEC must be the cheapest army to collect and seem able to do multiple ok builds. The combined boxes give all the required units (bar varghulf). I want to be able to do 4 flappy, royal family, heavy horrors. The only builds I won’t have models for will be mass ghoul (90+) and deadwatch.

Current tournament win % point to DoK being the best army out there and LoN being the second. However LoN is far more popular in number of players I guess a lot of people don’t want to paint 90 wych elves. However LoN can often be played and be very good without Nagash

On the endless spell a GW employee was saying he doubts its LoA as they’re under FW domain. He was thinking maybe darkoath, my gut feel was it fits LoA perfectly but would seem strange for a specific spell given that LoA are a low player count army. Thinking more into getting into them myself as I know someone who is looking to part with a bunch of fireborn and fireglaives which fits with what I’m thinking of running. Was playing around with a few list ideas in warscroll and think the magmacannons although great may lead down the wrong path, as they seem to make a good horde army. Taur’ruk with grotesque and armour 3 daemonsmith (maybe trade one for standard bearer and or castellan if change endless spell for more buff heroes) 3*30 fireglaives 12 fireborn 20 marauders pendulum 180 wounds and plenty of mortal wound output between spells and shooting. Main negative I foresee is battleshock and lack of battalion making it 9 drop. Flip side it seems on paper to me to have a lot of power and board control.

Ah yes I new I must be missing something.

Very nice list, I like the speed and punch it has. One question though shouldn’t the Taur’ruk be general then you can give him the grotesque trait? Also with access to realm items is there anything better than the chalice for the second item. I love CP farm in most lists and this one has lots of uses for command points.

I’m looking at Legion of Azgorh as used to have some chaos dwarfs back in the days of mono pose plastic axemen. I know this statement may make people laugh but looking at the data sheet fireborn now seem to be one of the best units in the game (bar bravery you need that command point for inspiring). Yet I’ve never heard anyone ever mention them (in real life discussions). Theyre quick great damage output on 3” range weapons. Unit of 12 for 480 averages 40 wounds or over 60 when buffed. Defence is pretty good at 10 points per wound at full unit size, on 5+ ethereal. curious if anyone is playing a big unit of them out there? Seems a good addition to add speed and punch.

Yeah the ghast and varghulf only return slain models and battalion ability can take it above starting numbers. In your example 10 ghoul unit battalion adds 5 then some get killed. The ghast and varghulf abilities could take it back to 15 then you could stack the battalion ability again to take it plus d6 more. The courtiers only stipulation is returning slain models, once ghoul Patrol ups the unit size as far as I read it you can return to that new size. And no there’s no maximum size, 40 is the biggest you can buy but via ghoul Patrol you have a theoretical max size of 70 in a normal 5 turn game (40+5d6 all rolling 6). Of course the more turns a battleplan has the higher theoretical max size.

I just checked the FAQ and RAW this seems to work. I think using RAI and the designers commentary on ghoul Patrol it doesn’t work. The ghoul Patrol one infers it’s special in that it allows units above their starting size unlike the return slain models. Also another aside in terms of what’s good with FEC. Horrors backed by GKoZD and GK spells average 1.5 damage per attack for 6 per model, even without rend that’s pretty insane damage output.

I think they meant a whole new spell list called “hunger” and each of our wizards could pick an additional spell. But yes black hunger is great great especially on ghoul blobs.

Yeah so their own warscroll spell. Mystic shield and bolt (both of which are pretty poor now especially on our low save models). Endless spells if you buy them (I like pendulum and suffocating gravetide). Then the optional spells for the realm your fighting in. GWs stance that they put out is that they believe realms should be used. So if your playing a game with realm spells the mass GK build is suddenly a lot more useful.