With my last army pretty much dropped out the meta it was time for a new army but to be honest it could have still been the best army around and I would have still switched to the KO!

The models are just amazing love dwarfs, always loved Malakai Makaisson and his airship from the Gotrek and Felix novels and now they release these beauties. 

Ironclad, Frigate and the Gunboat

Lets start with some painting, scheme wise I wanted this to be more "natural" than my other projects in the past keeping it to natural leather colours and the metallics in gold and gunmetal. Problem that arose here was the book talking about painting the in the correct scheme to match the Skyport of your choice and the tournament scene looking like it would lean towards following this. It ended up somewhere in the middle with some of the big events rewarding painting if you followed the correct scheme.

First unit of Arkanaughts

Skywardens

Endrinriggers.

I had my scheme in mind and I had done my test model for the first Arkanaut Company. Happy with the result I started thinking about how I would paint the Airships and thats were I got stuck, brown being my main colour after gold I could not really paint a massive flying turd so decided I would avoid using colour as much as possible besides the stripes along the hull indicating the Skyport. With no bright ideas for what colour scheme I would like I played it safe using the colour of the skyport I would play Zilfin.

Just the Ironclad left to do

I liked lots of the Skyports they have some excellent themes and most of them seem like they could be really powerful I particularly liked Urbaz taking even more advantage of the Khemists even more then normally allowed. Problem they all have besides one how the hell do you get them to were you want them to be.

That all leads you to Zilfin and one list in particular the Clown Car played to huge success already by Gary Percival looking something like this:

Allegiance: Kharadron Overlords

Skyport: Barak-Zilfin
- Additional Footnote: There's No Trading With Some People

Leaders
Aether-Khemist (140)
- General
- Trait: Fleetmaster 
Aether-Khemist (140)
- Artefact: Aethershock Earbuster 
Aether-Khemist (140)

Battleline
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks

Units
9 x Endrinriggers (360)
- 3x Grapnel Launchers
12 x Skywardens (400)
- 4x Aethermatic Volley Guns
- 4x Drill Cannons

War Machines
Arkanaut Ironclad (440)
- Main Gun: Aethermatic Volley Cannon
- Great Endrinworks: Aetherspheric Endrinds (Barak-Zilfin Skyvessel)

Total: 1980 / 2000
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 105

Fantastic list huge amounts of alpha, 2 drops, great targets for the Khemists, love the use of grapnels something I over looked when min maxing my units it does not end there so many other great details also but Gary has covered this many time now on multiple media outlets.

Problem I have with this list is that I love the airships and I have a painted Frigate :) Now people don't kid yourself airships are bad. I had come up with a few lists using two Airships but settled on this as the list I would paint and hopefully take to GT heat one.

Allegiance: Kharadron Overlords

Skyport: Barak-Zilfin
- Additional Footnote: There's No Trading With Some People

Leaders
Aether-Khemist (140)
- General
- Trait: Fleetmaster 
- Artefact: Aethershock Earbuster 

Battleline
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks
10 x Arkanaut Company (120)
- 3x Light Skyhooks

Units
12 x Endrinriggers (480)
- 4x Skyhooks
3 x Skywardens (100)
- 1x Aethermatic Volley Guns
- 1x Drill Cannons

3 x Skywardens (100)
- 1x Aethermatic Volley Guns
- 1x Drill Cannons

3 x Skywardens (100)
- 1x Aethermatic Volley Guns
- 1x Drill Cannons

War Machines
Arkanaut Ironclad (440)
- Main Gun: Aethermatic Volley Cannon
- Great Endrinworks: Aetherspheric Endrinds (Barak-Zilfin Skyvessel)
Arkanaut Frigate (280)
- Main Gun: Heavy Sky Cannon

Total: 2000 / 2000
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 109

The main changes to summarise between the two lists are 

-2 Khemist +1 Frigate

-3 Sky Wardens + 3 Endrinriggers (and MSU the Sky Wardens)

The number of premium weapons after buffs in this list is actually more than the first list 33 compared to 32 but its not as flexible and most of the focus is in the max size unit of Endrinriggers I have taken to squeeze the most out of my one Khemist I also lose the grapnels in this army as I can just not afford to lose a single gun I hope to make up for this by having them in the faster Frigate and the Wardens being split up allowing me to spread around the board for objectives none of this will help me getting to those sneaky character hiding at the back that grapnels are so good at!

Other benefits to this army would be having better deployment options in certain circumstances two ships would also be confusing against players who lacked a detailed knowledge of what the army does, being able to have more threats on the board early will force other deep striking armies to blink first so I can then bring the Ironclad down with my remaining force. 

I also hoped to try to "circle the wagons" against certain lists hiding my main force behind the tough high wound Airships that don't do a lot once they have delivered their troops.

 Well thanks for reading my thoughts on the list heading in to Heat one with this long in the past now my next article will cover how I managed to finish in 21st at my first event.

Ritchie