Dear readers, first up, an apology, I flat out forgot to let all of you know that I’d be taking a bit of a break over summer (I may have even forgotten to tell our dear Overlord Woehammer Peter). Well, I decided to take a break from AoS for 4 weeks for myself, trying to give myself a bit of a break… I got through 3 weeks until the leaks really started to get going for the new KO book and the previews for Chaos Dwarves. Now I’m deep back into it organising new games, waiting for the Nighthaunt leaks to start too, and trying to not buy my dream army from when I was a kid!
As always I’ve got a lot of topics on the back burner with a few from the Woehammer readership added to my list too. For now though, I’m going to go over a first pass on the new battletome. Now that people have had a bit of a read. There’s plenty of stuff going over what’s good or not at the moment… so I’ll have a bit of a focus on some of the combos
Now before we get into… here’s flight of the Valkyries in case you haven’t listened to it in a while.
P.S. Soggy means that they’re part of this SoG (Scourge of Ghyran) Season… that’s going to come up a bit in this article!
What’s changed
The big loss: Bringing Skyfarers along for a redeploy and power through is completely gone with the changes to how Transport Skyfarers works
But we’ve gained 3 new units and some pretty nifty terrain
Better saves pretty much across the board, this coupled with the -1 to hit near boats is definitely going to up durability. The ships going to a 2+ feels even feels like a bigger impact.
Except for “Take two artefacts”, the Battle Formations are totally different and lean a bit too much towards specific units for my liking.
We get to add an Endrinwork to the ships during List writing and a second one during deployment! Plus the Soggy version, “Skyvessel Upgrades”, which theoretically you get to take on top of the other Endrinworks currently (although I’d guess this gets FAQ’d out soon).
2 new AoR, both of which are tickling my fancy a little, I won’t cover them here or the article would be way tooooo long
Battle Formations
These are in summary:
“Take two artefacts”
“Make Arkanauts even tougher to kill (but conditionally)”
“Make the new balloon units harder to kill (but conditionally but it’s not too hard to achieve)”
“Make Gunhaulers transport slightly better” (but who isn’t taking Soggy Gunhaulers anyway)
If you lean into Arks, obvious choice, same goes for the new Balloon Fellas, if not, you’re probably taking a second artefact and that might impact your lists to try and get a 2nd hero in. The Arkanaut one here looks pretty strong at first glance if you want to put 60 Arkanuats on the table but the buff requiring them not to move and not to be set up is really restrictive on a unit with a move of 4. If you’re keen on throwing 30 of the new balloon troops (whichever flavour you prefer), then they’re ward on objectives makes them even more cost effective than they already are.
Artefacts
With effectively 6 to choose from including the soggy artefacts there end up with quite a few good options.
The big winner here is Celestium Burst Grenade which went to “once per turn, your shooting phase”. For me, this is a must take… or take as the 2nd artefact after deployment if the opponent has wards.
We’ve got a really interesting new one in something something Flakgun which can remove a dice from an opponent’s charge (if you roll equal or higher and they’re within 12”). This one is a nice combo with the Khemist who take -1 off the opponent’s charge too.
Combat Rig – 5+ ward can make the difference if you’ve got one of those key heroes you want to keep alive.
Spell in a bottle is back! KO with manifestations sounds awesome but somehow less exciting because of how many cool artefacts there are to choose from and needing to pay for the good manifestations.
There is also the Emberstone Flare which means that you can teleport a ship to the unit… it has to not be in combat though which makes it much more awkward to use.
Heroic Traits
Combat Grafter – fight twice with a strike last? Nice. Charge with a Frigate to negate that strike Last and now we’re talking! This would also pair awesomely with Combat Rig. I am finding in list writing though that I can’t afford two heroes who are going into fights and then Celestium Burst Grenade is winning out. This one is good on the Admiral or the Endrinmaster with Balloon (if you have the points to spare).
Bold as Brass – +5 control score on a teleporting Navigator or a wandering Codewright who can get shot out of a duardin sized cannon onto an objective, this one might win you games sometimes but is less fun than fighting twice
Shrewd Opportunist – this is probably the sensible choice if you’ve got balloon boys to bring forward with it. Pairs nicely with a hero with a balloon. It let’s you move the hero and two units forward in the deployment phase to sneakily pop onto an objective or push up aggressively if you can outdrop your opponent.
Ship Artefacts (Endrinworks)
Technically called “Great Endrinworks”… because these are pretty great 😉. Also, you can stack these on the same boat(s) when you use the deployment phase additional endrinwork. I’ll try to go through these descriptively
5+ ward against shooting – situational but may be a good choice for the flagship upgrade
+2” move – probably the take it if nothing else is really important one for the flagship
+1 to each bombing racks roll – solid on an ironclad, especially if you’ve got the Endrinmaster on foot to help it retreat each turn
Ignore negative modifiers to hit – the boats shooting got a bit worse but this turns the Ironclad into hero sniper or just helps against those armies with -1 to hit
+5 to control characteristic – this is quite good for bullying people off objectives with boat charges… on a reinforced Soggy Gunhauler +10 to control, rude!
D6 mortals to manifestations at end of turn – meh… the others are just better
Soggy flavoured Endrinworks:
Shoot a hero 18” away OPB – funny, and could win a game from time to time. Especially if you add the +5 control score heroic trait
4+ spell ignore reaction for KO units within 12” and inflict d3 mortals – this will be great going into certain armies and on an ironclad a really big aura. Not an auto include but a fantastic one for the flagship if you’re going into a magic heavy army.
Battle Ram! Roll dice equal to the charge roll, every 4 is a mortal – more mortals more fun… this is a great pick for a gunhauler or two 😉 but also good on Frigates. You’ll want to keep those CP spare to Power Through at the end of each turn!
Standout units
I’ll try to keep this one brief because… apart from a couple of heroes being a bit meh, practically everything is useable and a lot of it looks like good values at points as of today (13/08/2025). Prepare yourselves for points increases KO players!
Brokk
Was good before, is still good but now there are more hero options so don’t worry if you’re leaning in a different direction. The ships are more durable so fair chance you’ll want to charge them more often.
Navigator
Gives us fly high without bringing units with the ships… so a bit less awesome but adding a teleport to the army is pretty neat.
In general, my feeling is that most of the heroes are useable… even the ones which don’t look that exciting at first glance because their pointed low enough for now.
Vongrim Salvagers
Wow! These should not be as good as they are at the points they are. This is a dream unit for most armies. You can also happily spam these fellas to your hearts content… if you’re willing to pay for all those boxes of 5.
Vongrim Harpoon Crew
If the points are right, these are a phenomenal screen! Again, incredible value for 10 wounds on a 4+ with a 12” move!
Skywardens
Oh, my poor Endrinriggers. I can see what they tried to do with shifting their identities a bit but this has left the Skywardens looking much more interesting especially paired with Brokk. Not being able to Power Through with the ships and take the Riggers with them makes the Skywarden ability look pretty good all of a sudden!
Soggy Gunhaulers
Oh my! Gunhauler stocks went way up. With their ability to move d6 after shooting… you can use these in all sorts of ways. See below for my favourite combo. Again, this is about efficiency, for 140 pts, we get 14” move, 2+ save 10 wounds, and they can do a bit of damage over time.
Ironclads and Frigates
These feel costed about right at the moment… now they’re not doing as much damage as before but they slot in nicely in lists and enable good army compositions. 2+ save is doing a lot of the work now. You can throw these into combat and really bog things down.
Thunderers
I almost forgot them because they changed so much! This is really just for their ability… against some armies they won’t do as much but for their points, reducing a unit to a control score of 1 is massive and can really help enable tactics. Also, they can strip wards but this’ll be harder as you’ll often want to strip wards of heroes with higher control scores and then you’ll need to do some damage to trigger this effect.
Wombo Combos
Admiral + Ironclad + Endrinmaster on foot
Add 1 attack to each profile, reroll 1s to hit, why not ignore negatives to hit with the Endrinwork while we’re at it. Keep that Endrinmaster safely at the back though to keep pulling the Ironclad out of combat!
Navigator + Soggy Gunhauler with a ram + probably Grandiose Fuselage (for +10 control)
This is probably my favourite combo… doesn’t mean it’s good but it feels good. You can teleport the Navigator and Gunhaulers, then shoot, then move d6, then charge, do the mortals from the ram, a couple of extra wounds in melee and power through back to protect the navigator and block an objective… then do it all again. However, might not really be needed with being able to deploy the Gunhaulers in the sky in the first place and with a 14” move…
Khemist + Flakgun + 20 Arks
Want to make it look really shit to charge at anything… then this isn’t bad
5 Thunderers in a Gunhauler
Who wants to make the enemy unit control 1… I do… but this means I can’t have Soggy Gunhaulers so it’s out for now
Brokk + 12 Skywarden + Frigate
This was there before and it was good. Now, it’s still good and the Skywardens and the frigate got a bit tougher.
What can we do with the army now
Lean into lots of Arks
But their shooting back at the enemy is only once per turn and the other combos such as Khemists really means
Lean into lots of balloons (Vongrim flavoured)
This is viable both in vanilla KO and with the Magnates AoR
Slam boats into the enemy
This looks like fun. Throw some damage around, box your opponent up. All whilst opening up primary and secondary scoring with the mobility.
Play clever and steal objectives off the opponent while racking up points
This certainly looks viable and plays into tactics too. I’m sure we’ll see some lists lean into these shenanigans with the Vongrim Harpoon Crew and the Navigator
Couple of Example Lists
My list to start out for now… stuck a bit between wanting to take an Ironclad vs the Navigator / Gunhaulers combo so it’ll either be this list:
Or this one (which is pretty much what Tom Guan was running at OTTD):
Or you could just spam Gunhaulers 10 wounds on a 2+ with a 14” move at 140 pts is goooood value! Legitimately though… 4 Gunhaulers and 30 Salvagers looks like a really points efficient list, topped up with a Frigate and Brokk to really juice some Salvagers on a charge.
Now it’s time to get those KO back off the shelves and fly like an eagle:
