Boar

You cannot take 2 artifacts on one hero

he cannot

Yep, bonus to charge is always nice.

Then maybe putting drills in one unit of 12 skywardens would be better? You got gold and it`s easier to buff one unit. Yeah, played 1250 pts game vs. Gloomspite, when stabbas were going my way it looked bad, but you now what? 20 Arkanauts close to objective with using gold to reroll wounds have better shooting (in close range of course) than old 20 Arkanauts with 6 skyhooks buffed by Aether Khemist.

Why drills? You have those already build? Because skyhook and grapnel have slightly better avg. damage and crucially skyhook gives +1 to charge roll and grapnel stops enemy retreats. Since your list is from Barak-Zon clearly you intend to throw skywardens into melee, where not drill, but those other weapons would be more beneficial.

I was checking with full complement of specials vs all rifles and vs save 4+ rifles get ~2,5 dmg and specials ~3,5 and outside ships 4 dmg. If range doesn`t matter that much go for specials.

I took rend into account, additional reroll for thundererers (1s to hit) changed it slightly (counted it both myself in excel and with stathammer). With both ship and thunderers with reroll ones on hit, and reroll wounds from gold on rifles that`s 13,74 dmg. But at this point it`s gold and 2 command points, Stathammer puts it around 50% of getting 14 or more damage you can only use one gold per phase for entire army

I counted those, frigate f.ex. deals on average 4,44 against 4+ save

I get 9 wounds against 4+ save with no rerolls. If thunderers reroll to wound roll from gold it`s 11,5

Further thinking on this, probably endrinriggers and skywardens will switch their roles. With skywardens - with greater melee range like you mentioned (and with better bombs on retreat) - taking it to enemy directly, and endrinriggers escorting ships and firing with all longer reach guns. Though skyhook, for bonus to charge, and especially grapnel with it blocking enemy retreat can be added for utility value to skywardens (and both those ranged weapons have now flat 3 dmg). So f.ex. 6-12 skywardens with one grapnel and one skyhook could be very useful unit. Maybe even 3 skywardens with grapnel to stop fast/numerous, but lightly hitting enemies from reaching objectives?

Super agree with your vision of it all. I’m already looking to find the old sky pikes I took off to rebuild them to skywardens. I will say though. 6 for battleline and with the new hero to heal a ironclad might be a thing. But that would need some play testing before I’d burn my hands on a judgement on that. Endrinriggers still enjoy advantage in damage and range in shooting, deal slightly more damage in melee (though with less attacks they are more swingy). And when you take into account champions, the difference in damage in melee is more pronounced (with more riggers advantage).

Thunderers with aetherrifles have double the range, so quite often they will either, do more damage with more models in range or will be able to direct they firepower better. But you are mathing correctly. Thunderers with mixed special weapons OTH, have shorter range - but still advantage over arkanauts - and they have better firepower then arkanauts. And if they are NOT boarded on ship, they gain +1 to hit on spec. weapons (not fumigator) if they have full complement of those. This pushes them to about 4 unsaved dmg vs 4+ save compared to 2,5 of arkanauts.

You always can go for Barak Urbaz or custom port with D3 gold to throw around

So, guys grapnel launchers are now normal shooting weapon (4+/3+/-2/flat 3 dmg!) and... enemy units witihin 3" cannot retreat! Considering importance of retreat, as objective grabbing/positioning tactic, is this must have?

@Qaz also bottle is for Aether Khemist only Below is vid with good resolution so you can read almost all rules

Great stuff. I checked a thing or two just now with my old spreadsheets , looks very close. So, how many simulations are you using, 1000? I need to get back to my Python, holiday food slowed me down, heh.

Nice. I wanted to do something similar, kinda got sad for a moment that someone done this already. Still not going to surrender, best way to learn something new is doing something tied to your interests. Doing variance with all those modifiers and steps everywhere, looks horrible. I was thinking of running simulation like 100-1000 times, always something because average is well, only average and example with ballista shows it perfectly Certainly GW is not making things easy (either to analyse or actually play) the way they design certain rules (like additional rend on 6 to hit - just horrible)

Probably that, also if you are in range (ie 18) volley guns have better damage on average than skyhooks. And of course it`s more efficient to put skyhooks in large unit so you only need one alkhemist.

Some flying (skywarden) hero would be nice, besides that I have got no idea. Though what sometimes I need is some cheap filler for my last 70-80 pts, but can`t think of anything that would fit KO. Except maybe some sort of semi-autonomous drone (aether endrins with attached explosives?). Besides that what I hope for are changes to warscrolls to better fit look/lore ie. more resilient ships and skywardens really being sky-commandos that do hit and run raids.

Corsairs (with both blades) deal 4,17 wounds per unit of 10, so if they are lucky (or opponent is unlucky on saves) they can kill one Throggoth. Halberdiers f.ex. gets 4,33 (due to bonus to hit at 10 models), and Endrinriggers deal on average 3,33 wounds per standard 3 model unit (and yes both of them have rend and any luck on side of Riggers with damge rolls will be devastating, but still). And now corsairs get buff to hit starting from 15 models, not 20, have better save against shooting and buff of fleetmaster is also better. And they are pointed the same as before from what I have seen. Could be worse.