FatherTurin

I’ve actually never played against slaanesh, and it’s one of the tomes I haven’t picked up, but my understanding is that KO are actually in a decent spot against them. Their defenses are garbage, so shoot them. They are fast (I don’t know how fast), but so are KO. I would go with old school WoW Hunter tactics and kite them. If they get to you they will shred you, but that’s the story for pretty much every army out there. Nighthaunt may be immune to rend, but their saves aren’t great. Also, everything flies, so Zilfin is pretty gross against them.

The list that is getting a lot of attention is a quad stonehorn list. It just went 5-0 to win a big tourney, beating a lot of Tzeentch armies who (I believe) were using the new tome. 2 Frostlords on Stonehorns 1 Huskard on Stonehorn 1 Stonehorn Beastrider 2 units of mournfangs A battalion that makes it a 3-drop and every 6 to hit in melee causes a mortal wound for everything except the frostlords. Sub-faction rules make the monsters faster and can use their top bracket for a CP, and realm artifacts either make a Frostlord immune to rend or makes him move 19” and fly. It’s fast, unsubtle, and brutal, like a brick to the face. Also, just like a brick to the face, it gets the job done and doesn’t care about looking pretty while it’s doing it’s thing. Also, Ogors count as 2 models for taking objectives and monsters count as 10, so it isn’t as weak on objectives as you would think. Ogors are shaping up to be a decent counter to any army that needs a lot of moving parts to do their thing, and when you are facing them target priority is a nightmare. Gutbusters are a little less daunting, but they put mountains of wounds on the table, have a bunch of healing, and a surprising amount of magic.

I really don’t know. On the one hand, your gunline has 60 wounds behind a 4+, so it should have some staying power. On the other, that’s $240 and a lot of points of thunderers, so I’m certainly not all that tempted to give it a whirl 😜. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (what can I say, it’s been a couple slow days at the office), I also play Ogor Mawtribes, so I find myself looking at lists through the lens of “does that scare my Ogors?” From that mindset, I don’t think this list scares me. It is, however, definitely interesting. On the one hand, putting 4 Stonehorns into your gunline is going to ruin your day really fast, on the other, taking second turn to ensure that I make those charges means your gunhaulers and endrinriggers can drop in and mess up my plans. Ultimately I think it is (sorry to keep using this word) interesting, but would suffer due to the lack of a screen. There are a lot of melee threats that have a longer threat range than Thunderers, so having some kind of a speed bump would serve you well. However, I have no idea what that speed bump would look like, unless you dropped a Khemist and tossed in some arkanauts.

Bear in mind, this is my gut feeling with literally no math to back it up, so take that for what it’s worth. If you are putting them in a boat, all rifles, maybe a single fumigator as insurance if you do have to unload them. If they are going on their own, 1 fumigator, 1 deck sweeper and as many mortars and cannons as you can fit in the squad.

Or just get 6 more endrinriggers and save 20 points. Even without special guns you are getting double the saw attacks, 18 rivet gun shots, 12 wounds, and they average the same healing as the endrinmaster, more with the command ability. I’m not going to go on regarding the stuff that is a better points investment (in my opinion) than a second endrinmaster, but suffice it to say, it’s a lot. It also appears that Aether War is sold out on the GW site, so chances are you can get a handsome price for the Endrinmaster. At a minimum enough to buy a unit of something.

Honestly, I was in the amulet camp since the realm artifacts came out, but I’m definitely going to try the Thermal Rider Cloak and see how it works. An 18” flying move on a FLoSH (19” in Boulderhead) strikes me as...well, pretty good to say the least.

I don’t think so. One is definitely almost required in order to have options, but you get diminishing returns on almost all our heroes, especially one that costs 220 points. Getting another heal could be good, but one endrinmaster plus a unit of riggers (especially with the command ability) does plenty of healing. It might be worth it in a boat heavy list, but if you are doing that, think about it this way: for 30 more points you can get a Frigate.

So, negativity aside, I think I have a list I am actually happy with: Barak-Urbaz Endrinmaster w/Dirigible Suit: General, Phosphorite Bomblets, either Grudgebearer or Endrinprofessor Aether-Khemist: Spell in a Bottle (Realmscourge Rupture) Aetheric Navigator 10 Arkanaut Company 6 Endrinriggers: 1 skyhook 6 Endrinriggers: 1 skyhook 10 Thunderers: all rifles 1 Gunhauler: Sky Cannon, Breath of Morgrim 1 Ironclad: Great Sky Cannon, Last Word Iron Sky Command Thunderers and characters go in the Ironclad, Arkanaut Company are there to be either part of a turn one screen or to run for objectives and sit on one. This gives me a three drop army with answers to fast chargers (navigator and spell). Urbaz is there purely to get Aether-Gold for the endrinriggers, plus the artifact and command trait flexibility. The general can either be more support focused or a scary little assassin, depending on the trait I choose. Thunderers are intended to just stay in the boat for almost the entire game, only hopping out if I need to cap an objective. Gunhauler is there to give the Ironclad a wound shrug and to be a speed bump for cabbages or hopefully help zone out teleporting flamers. Using the Arkanaut Company, endrinriggers and gunhauler as a layered screen along with smart deployment also means I don’t think I lose turn one to changehost. If there are points drops in the future that free up 30 points, either warp lightning vortex or a comet go in the bottle instead. I think KO still take a backseat to Ogors for me, but this is a list I can certainly live with, especially thinking about going “weapons free” with an Ironclad packing 22 aethershot rifle shots on top of the normal guns.

The Rod is the strictly superior choice in 40k (iirc), so if you want viability in both games without magnets, I’d go for that.

Folks, with all due respect, I think both of you should maybe take a breath. Arguments over what is, ultimately, semantics, don’t really do anyone any good, and this is getting really heated and personal, so can we all try and bring it down a notch? The KO tome does give us the “Time Crisis” of army design. It seems super wide open and amazing at first, but then you realize you don’t have as many choices as you thought, a lot of the times they are false choices, and ultimately they tend to lead to the same place. Strictly speaking I’m not sure that constitutes bad internal balance. Bad internal balance would be if a fleet of Zilfin frigates with an admiral on an Ironclad was far and away the best and nearly the only viable list. Bad internal balance (disclaimer: as I understand and use the term) is if one option makes all other options bad by comparison. There really isn’t anything like that in KO. What we have in KO is overly restricted design. I’m not going to make a value judgment and say it’s bad design per se, I just know that I don’t like it. Anyway, my point is, it really looks like you two are more or less saying similar things, just using different terms to say it, and this fight is coming from “who is using the term the right way,” and that isn’t productive in the least.

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.

No, I meant that as a general rule, consistent power creep is not a thing, otherwise both books would be equally (or at least comparably) obscene. There are wild fluctuations in power, I am just not sure “creep” is the right term for it. At the same time, I don’t think the gap between Mawtribes and OBR was this pronounced, so maybe “power gap” is the better term?

I don’t disagree. My issue is more of a personal one, and between Ogors just feeling “better” for lack of a better term (not saying Ogors are top tier or anything, just a more fun experience for me right now), and pointy aelves on the horizon, I am just having a very hard time getting excited about KO. I am supremely happy for folks who are excited and I’m not trying to say they are wrong or to cheapen their excitement, just expressing that for me personally, it’s looking like my dwarves stay in storage for a while longer.

Disciples of Tzeentch have an almost trivially easy one-drop army that can teleport 2 units a turn (changehost), and flamers have been buffed substantially, especially in Eternal Conflagration. Flamers can delete units with their shooting and since they retained their range, can even do it from far enough away to make screens irrelevant or sit far enough back to make a counter charge difficult. And if you do get into melee, they can bounce mortal wounds back at you. Horrors have a non-trivial ranged attack as well, to say nothing of the fact that 200 points of horrors gives you 50 wounds to chew through. Also, only one of the covens (their version of sky-ports) alters or replaces a main allegiance ability, unlike all of the KO ones. If you don’t want to drown the enemy in ranged attacks, you can instead go with the coven that lets you summon a 380 point greater daemon after only 9 spells are cast (counting both armies). Speaking of magic, there are 27 warscrolls in the DoT book (not counting endless spells). 16 of those warscrolls are wizards. 4 of those are double casters, and there is one triple caster. So Disciples of Tzeentch have really good shooting, great mobility, phenomenal magic, easy access to one drop lists, powerful allegiance abilities that aren’t overwritten by their sub factions, three battleline choices before even considering the conditional battleline (another 3), no special characters that are set to a sub-faction, and aside from most of the hotness skewing towards the daemon side rather than the mortals, very little need to make anything resembling tough choices. I understand that it isn’t fair to compare the two, but it’s unavoidable, at least to an extent.

So, having “lived with” the book for a little over a week, I wanted to throw my two cents in. Kharadron Overlords are the army that got me to give AoS a chance. I love the army, not only because of the lore and the models, but because it got me into what has become a really awesome game. I shelved them for most of 2.0, and I was really looking forward to bringing them out again with the new book. Now let me start by saying that this book is a huge improvement over what we had before. That being said, the one word I would use to describe the army now is frustrating. It’s frustrating to build a list, it’s frustrating to pick a Sky-port, it’s frustrating to find combos, it’s frustrating top to bottom. Battleline: yes, we have options now. However, our “options” are still seemingly the most restrictive ones in the entire game. We have one character that unlocks battleline, everything else is locked to a sky-port. Why an arkanaut admiral couldn’t unlock thunderers is a mystery to me. So many battleline options being tied to a sky-port also limits (in my opinion) the viability of going port-less. Anti-Synergy: ok, I hate to bring too much in from Warhammer Weekly’s super negative review, but in this regard they hit the nail on the head. There are so many things that seem awesome, but then you realize they don’t work. Here’s an example: I loved Barak-Mhornar. Not only did I love the fluff of being straight up pirates, but their rules were pretty fantastic. Now, at first glance, I thought they were garbage. Then I realized that the command trait bypasses the model count limit on fly high. Sweet! I can toss 20 thunderers and some characters in an Ironclad and start nuking people. Sure, that’s half my army, but that’s pretty hilarious! Even the artifact works to prevent a counter charge! Except...the command trait only works if the general can garrison a boat, so no dirigible endrinmaster. So, arkanaut Company is my battleline. So ironclad plus thunderers plus at least a navigator plus 30 company puts me at 1,360. Only 640 points left to come up with some kind of battalion. Even if I can manage that, I’m at a minimum of 4 drops. If I can’t squeeze in a battalion, I’m sitting at 6 drops already, so most likely not getting first turn, so even using the command trait to get in range of the enemy makes it likely I lose half my army turn one. Ok, so no Barak Mhornar. Good thing I haven’t painted my KO yet. This is just one example, and I haven’t even gotten to the insane decision to drop the range on Arkanaut Company pistols. Let me be clear, I recognize that there is some very real strength in this army. Ironclads on their own can absolutely get some work done, to say nothing of how good the endrinmaster with dirigible suit is (also, he’s very nearly necessary to get some flexibility in the army, so I hope folks can get their hands on Aether-War). I’m not trying to get down on KO, I really do love the army, and once I develop some variety of list that I think I will actually enjoy (right now it’s looking like an Urbaz escort wing or a Nar iron sky command), I know I will have a blast. Right now though, it’s hard to reconcile the frustration I’m feeling with how easy it feels to slap together a Mawtribes list (my other main army). KO are more complicated at every stage of the game, and that isn’t a bad thing, it just maybe isn’t what I’m looking for in AoS at the moment. Also, KO has the horrible misfortune of having their book drop at the same time as the new Tzeentch book. Comparisons are unavoidable, and....well....at least it proves that battletome power creep isn’t a thing.

So, I remain optimistic, but I’m test building some lists, and the point costs on the boats are ROUGH. It’s impossible you fit everything you want into a list, which forces some hard choices (which is good design), but the results that I get so far have a very, very small board presence and will have serious problems playing the objective game. I’m withholding judgment until I get the book and play some games, but it is feeling like you have to skew into either objective holding or crazy shooting. If you try and do both, you will be bad at both. My gut reaction is that some moderate point drops (ironclad, thunderers) might end up being necessary. We are pretty clearly being charged a premium on garrisons and fly high, but we only have one unit that really does any work in that setup. I’m also not entirely sure that riggers and wardens are worth their cost without more melee buffs, but then again, time will tell.

Since the warscrolls aren't updated yet, I’m going off assumptions here, but isn’t an Ironclad with 10 rifle armed thunderers, an admiral, and some endringger/Skywardens hitching along for a screen an abjectly terrifying prospect that can delete almost anything? It can sit on the back table edge to avoid a first turn charge, then fly high and just straight up murder things. It’s a LOT of points, to be sure, but my other army is Ogors, and it seems like everything from a full block of Gluttons to a FLoSH (without the ethereal amulet) dies to that HARD. Sure, basic Arkanauts are looking pretty meh right now, but they are a 90 point unit of objective grabbers now, not a giant blob protecting a chemist and some skyhooks. Also, a Gunhauler yanking some balloon troops backfield to mess around with casters, support, or artillery seems awesome. What I’m seeing so far is that KO are now pretty much the undisputed kings of movement in a game where movement is king. We can apply pressure from unpredictable threat vectors and do it without spending any kind of resource or needing any kind of terrain or spell. At the same time we have the tools to gimp some truly terrifying first turn or otherwise early game chargers (navigator vs FEC or Maw Krushas), drop a comet on someone’s head with a Khemist, shoot the enemy in the face, and all while the Arkanaut company are sitting on objectives with 4+ sometimes rerollable save. In short, we are an army of distraction carnifexes, and so far I’m more than ok with that.

The one trick pony that was developed by people as the only way to make the army semi-competitive has been removed. A lot of other stuff has changed to compensate and improve the army as a whole.

In the “coming next week” article, you can see tokens for 2 aethergold shares in the spread of the warscroll cards. Seems like a good indicator that there will be a way to get more shares, including giving shares to smaller units (possible a sub-allegiance ability for the super rich sky-port whose name I can’t remember at the time).

Also, I don’t see any reason why units on boats can’t count for holding objectives. The garrison rules allow them to be targeted and attacked, and doesn’t say anything about them not being able to contest objectives. In any event, Kharadron Overlords just became the undisputed kings of mobility. I think it’s a fair bet that overburdening the boat will prevent flying high, but frigates loaded with 10 thunderers just became SUPER scary and mobile.

Yeah, but ironblasters (and other cannon analogs that wound on 2 with -2 rend and d6 damage) have been left to hit on 4’s. Since this guy has the same cannon as thunderers, I have hope for them and cautious hope that our boats go to a 3 to hit on their cannons as well. At least then I won’t regret not using magnets quite so much.

Also, the weapon stats for the floating endrinmaster are not only great on their own, but they give us insight into what I hope holds true for the whole army: Cannons Hitting On 3’s.

Yep. Job’s a good ‘un.

I understand the frustration people feel in apparently only getting one new model. At the same time, I am personally happy that KO didn’t get endless spell equivalents or a terrain piece. Some of the terrain pieces that have been released are frankly ridiculous to exist during a battle. Sylvaneth and Fyreslayers are fine, they summon their terrain. Skaven as well (although less summoning and more creating them). Then you have the pieces that make you raise an eyebrow, like the Mawpot, but you can let it slide because it isn’t out of character for some Ogors to lug around a giant cauldron. Then you have the truly bizarre ones. Do Ossiarch Bonereapers literally only ever fight in proximity to a tithe-gathering site? Just how many entrances to grot infested caves are there? How many ghouls does it take to lug around the broken bits of castle and the throne that is literally the center of a Ghoul King’s power? Kharadron Overlords get to battles in their ships. They are also smart enough to not subject a refinery or foundry to the risks of open warfare. I had hoped they would change the navigator to be a quasi-wizard, manipulating aether-gold for “magic” effects. That doesn’t appear to be the case (unless it’s tucked away in the allegiance abilities), but there is still room for something similar to be given to Khemists or Endrinmasters. As it is, dispelling endless spells is a huge help, and halving movement on stuff like Terrorgheists and Maw-Crushas with such a large range is fantastic. I remain hopeful, and while I LOVE the KO models and wish we got more than one character for new models, we really aren’t that far off from other “new for AoS” armies. With the initial release we got 4 heroes, a named character, 3 boats, and three unit boxes (one of which was a dual build). Other new armies have gotten pretty close to the same treatment. I just hope we get more Battleline and some 3+ to hit and a way to give more shots to cannons on boats. Edit: there are also those tokens for pieces of aether-gold, whatever they are...

Honestly, I think that if they don’t just go for a combined profile, most of the special guns could be represented as abilities rather than weapon profiles: Decksweeper: grant an overwatch ability Fumigator: at start of combat phase, deal mortal wounds to an enemy within 3” on a 4+ or 3+ Morter: I don’t know, maybe make it like a signal flare and other KO units get +1 to hit whatever you shot Cannon: either a separate weapon profile or unmodified 6’s to hit deal MWs (to represent the cannon shots hitting amid all the rifle shots).