Kharadron Overlords sail forth for war and profit through the skies of the Mortal Realms. Rather than magic or the will of the gods, these Duardin skyfarers rely on advanced technology to run their trade routes and arm their sky fleets.

Today the brand new Kharadron Overlords Battletome is up for pre order for the 4th edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and with it comes a collection of brand new units to reinforce your fleet with! In this review we’ll be checking out the new Battletome, taking a look at what has changed and building and painting the new models!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending over the new releases for us to check out on the site! If you would like to support the site then why not order your Kharadron goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the new Kharadron releases which you can see down below or over on YouTube

We’ve also got a full review of the Blades of Khorne Battletome and model release up today too, so be sure to check that out if you’re a follower of the Blood God!

So without further ado let’s ready our Endrinsuit and check out the new Kharadron Overlords Battletome!

Kharadron Overlords Battletome Review – 4th Edition

Games Workshop have been rattling through the Battletome releases for the 4th Edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and this weekend we have two new books up for pre order – the Blades of Khorne and the Kharadrons!

Dave has checked out the Khorne book over in his review, while I’ll be stepping foot onto my Skyvessel and taking a look down at the Kharadron Overlords book. So what’s new?

Well first things first, as ever, the first half of the book is dedicated to lore – and as with the other 4th edition books we get a nice mix of background, narrative and in-universe writings and accounts that bring the faction to life. There’s also a nice fold out map of Chamon in the gatefold area of the book – I really like the content of the lore sections in the new Age of Sigmar books, and after 10 years there’s a lot of background and world building here. Anyone who says AOS has no background probably hasn’t read a battletome since the early days, as there’s lots to get your teeth into here and both flavour and gorgeous art work that goes a long way to fueling your imagination when it comes to creating a new army!

As with other 4th edition books, the “in-universe” parts are my favourite bits, from Captains logs to a full prototype schematic and engineer notes about the new Nullsuit, there’s some really fun stuff here!

Just like the other Battletomes, the Bestiary section now includes the photographs of the models, something which helps give the lore some identity in model form – The new units also get some decent covereage here with detailed write ups and background about them. The Null-Khemist in particular is cool in that he has been drafted into action to deal with Be’lakor’s magic during the events of the Broken Realms series, and now with the Skaven making heavy use of Warpstone the Kharadron Overlords needed some way of combating magic, or at least holding it at bay.

As ever the team have done a great job at putting something together which is both visually exciting and dripping with lore and interesting background to read.

So what of the rules themselves? What’s changed for the Kharadrons? Let’s check out the Faction Rules

Kharadron Overlords – Faction Rules

We’ve seen a mix of books this edition, with some making vary minimal changes to the Faction Packs and other making sweeping changes. The Kharadron battletome sites somewhere in the middle with some tweaks to some profiles, but quite a few updates within their core rules.

From the Battle Traits very little has changed, but we do see a couple of tweaks. This is mostly in the addition of a new Deployment Phase ability “The Flagship” which designates one Skyvessel as the Flagship of your fleet and allows it to be given a Great Endrinwork even if it already has one (this can be picked at Depolyment)

So what is a Great Endrinwork? Well this is inspired by the Endrinworks that the Ironclad used to have – but instead of being something that can be picked on their Warscroll they are now a new Enhancement available for Kharadron Overlords. This means that when writing your army list you get to pick one (And then a second can be picked for your Flagship at deployment, even if it already has one). One thing to note here is that they can go on any of your ships, not just your Ironclad. This means that if you go ship light with only one of the smaller vessels then you can totally tool it out as your flagship with a couple of Endrinworks on it. Likewise if you have a couple of bigger ships you can use this to give two of them upgrades (Though it is worth pointing out that if you had 3 or more Ironclads in your army then they can no longer all have Endrinworks)

There’s a lot more choice than we had previously, and most of them have changed:

You can still choose to give the ship +2 movement, but now there’s options for a 5+ ward against shooting attacks, the ability to give bombs extra attacks, to do D6 damage to every nearby manifestation at the end of every turn, increased Control or even the ability to ignore negative hit modifiers when shooting. These are cool and give you lots of options for kitting out your ships!

Battle Formations have also been massivly overhauled – We still get the Expeditionary Fleet (which gives you an extra artefact of power at deployment) but the other three have been completely replaced (No more extra movement or extra range!)

Pioneers and Scavengers favours your Harpoon Crews and Salvagers, giving them a 6+ ward if you’re contesting an objective. This is a nice one, as I feel I’m probably going to build an army around these more characterful models.

Veteran Ground Troops lets you pick three Arkanaut Companies and subtract 1 rend from incoming attacks, essentially giving them an extra pip of armour that can also be combined with all out defence

And finally the Rapid Redeployment Squadron allows our Gunhaulers to carry 2 units and have a capacity of 6, essentially allowing you to take 5 man squads along with a character.

I know some people wont be happy about the movement of skyvessels one being gone – but movement is more important than ever in the latest Generals Handbook, so feel this could have gotten a little silly otherwise.

All three Heroic Traits have also been replaced in the new book – One allows the hero and two friendly infantry units to make a pre game move, one adds 5 to control scores and the last allows the hero to fight twice one per battle with the usual restrictions. You’ll notice again that anything that effects the range or speed of ships has been removed here.

On to Artefacts of Power and on the whole they are pretty similar, however the Mag-Bolas has been replaced for the Bamboozling Flakgun – this works on a similar way, but can be used on any unit – you now roll a dice and if that dice exceeds one in the charge roll then you get to remove that dice. A little more unreliable, but has some more usability options now that it isnt locked to Monsters.

So what about the Warscrolls? lets take a look!

Warscrolls

There are some small changes on a lot of Warscrolls – so we’ll cover the main ones here, if i don’t mention a unit then nothing has changed with it. We also have a few new units that have been added in this book, so we’ll go into more detail for those, along with taking a look at the new kits and models too! Majority of units are still the same prices as they are currently, except for some small bumps on Endrinmasters and Admirals, and a small discount on Drekki

Brokk Grugsson gets a small but important tweak with this Saw now having Crit 2 hits! other than that no changes here!

Arkanaut Admirals are a lot better now, they have lost the ability to increase a target unit’s control score, however their Admiral’s Flagship ability has changed as just gives the Flagship +1 to hit rather than making All Out Attack free, which does of course mean it can be combined with All Out Attack too! He also gets more attacks, but is worse at wounding.

Drekki Flynt gets some nice upgrades – his “She can Handle it” rule now has a 12″ range rather than combat range, which always felt a little silly with him running directly behind the ship all the time. His Skyhook is also a lot better now, it still does mortal damage, but also gives a monster -1 to wound too! Oh and his Axe is now damage 3!

Null-Khemists are one of the new units introduced in the book, and they are pretty cool – they give nearby units a 5+ ward against magic, prayers and manifestations – though sadly this only affects your Skyfarers and not your ships. He does double damage when fighting Priests, Wizards or Manifestations, which is handy with his very swingy range weapon with 3D6 shots!

The kit is really cool too, fully encloased like the older Kharadron models, but a little chunkier and deffo has a vibe that this is special armour put together for fighting against spells!

He went together pretty easily and I’m looking forward to finishing him off!

Endrinmasters with Dirigible Suits get a small update with now being able to give themselves and a friendly unit of Endrinrigers Crit 2 hits, and Aetheric Navigators now work differently, allowing you to remove a Skyvessel from the battlefield and set it up outside of 9 of enemy units. Codewrights have the same abilities, but now increase control by 5 rather than 2

Aether-Khemists have a bit of a boost now that they just have a passive -1 to charge rolls for enemy units rather than having to roll for it, though the range has dropped to 9 inches.

Next up we get the two new units the Vongrim Harpoon Crew and the Vongrim Salvagers – The Harpoon Crew are an anti monster unit with a 12″ range and the ability to bounce 2D6 inches when they are in combat, as long as they finish the move in combat – so these can be used to charge something and then move into combat with a more fragile unit, or as a way of getting behind screens. I can see these being really useful for those battle tactics where you need to hunt certain units down. The Salvagers on the other hand have a lot more attacks and damage potential in combat, plus they can light flares to give +1 to hit for other Skyfarers and increase the rend of other Harpoon Crews and Salvagers.

The kit is amazing, and probably my favourite Kharadron Overlords kit yet because of the variety of characterful faces in it. One of the things that turned me off Kharadrons in the past is that with the sealed helmets they looked too robotic. Now these guys and girls are “proper” dwarfs with suitably impressive beards, pipes and even hook arms! They just ooze fantasy steampunk pirates, and I hope that future Kharadron kits copy this design.

Arkanaut Company get a big rework with all their special weapons consolidated into a “Heavy Weapon” profile. They no longer get to add one to hit when contesting objectives, but instead they get to Overwatch – kinda. In the combat phase on a 3+ they can shoot the unit that charged them, and all their weapons get Shoot in Combat (Something that is normally just on their pistols)

So now onto the ships! All of the three ships (Ironclads, Frigates and Gunhaulers) have had quite big reworks. Firstly, all their guns are now a consolidated profile – so for example rather than having to pick a Sy Cannon, Skyhook or Volley Cannon on an Ironclad these are now a profile of “Great Sky Ordanace” with 6 shots hitting on 4s, wounding on 2s -2 rend and 3 damage. This gives you the best of both worlds between volume of shots and reliability of fixed damage, though you will miss some of the big spikes you got if you were lucky on the old ones it does make them a lot better than the low end of that reliability curve when they rolled badly.

All ships have lost a couple of wounds, and the big ships are a little slower, but they all (even the hauler) now have a 2+ save, and the Gunhauler now is movement 14 too!

I think ship heavy armies will still be fun to run, and the increase in save makes them a little hardier in the long run, even with the trade off for fewer wounds.

Final few tweaks for profiles are the Grundstok Thunderers no longer have Anti-Infantry, and both the Endrinriggers and the Skywardens both have a 3+ save too, making them more reliable.

The final new units added for the Kharadron Overlords are the Zontari Endrin Dock and the Auto-Endrins. This is essentially a portable dock that can heal nearby Skyvessels (something else which makes up for their decrease in wounds) – you have to make a 4+ roll, but nearby Endrinmasters of both types give you a +1 to that roll. You start the game with one of each Auto-Endrin, and the Dock can set up new ones (as many times as you like) each time one is destroyed. The three Auto-Endrins all have different roles – One is used to banish Manifestations, one reduces the control of enemy units (by 10!) and the third drops bombs dealing mortal damage – they are super easy to kill, but can be a real nightmare – especially as the dock can manufacture replacements for the entire game.

This was another really fun kit to work on, and I’m really looking forward to finishing it off! Like most terrain pieces it was really easy to build and didn’t come in that many parts, making it quite a quick job to do. The dock itself comes with some extra parts such as a case and some Bugmans mugs that can be glued to the platform to give it a bit of flavour!

I think most units have got off pretty well in the Battletome and while ships now have fewer wounds, they are now tougher with a couple of ways to heal them up!

Spearhead

As ever, we get a new Spearhead in the box, and this is a fun one containing an Endrinmaster in Dirigible Suit, 5 Thunderers, 3 Endrinriggers and a Gunhauler. I feel this is a nice mix of different unit types that gives you a bit of flavour for what you get in a full Kharadrons Overlords army. We also get a full paint guide to get these guys ready for the table. This guides tend to be a little more on the simplistic side, but I do think they are a brilliant way of getting Spearhead players ready to have a painted force on the table as soon as possible – you can always go back and add more detail later, but getting rid of grey plastic is always a satisfying experience, and it’s a little less scary with the guide in the book.

The Spearhead itself looks really fun to play too – your units are -1 to hit while nearby the Gunhauler, and with Rapid Relocation you’re able to remove units from the table and set them up anywhere outside of 6 of the enemy, making them really good at bouncing around the board trying to score objectives.

Path to Glory

Path to Glory for the Kharadron Overlords is a little bit different this time. While you still get to choose one of three “levels” of hero, and give them various upgrades and abilities, this time you can also buy additional upgrades for your hero’s Flagship – these ones are really fun and differ from the generic ones you can get when building an army. For example you can stop any enemy monsters from doing Rampage abilities due to having stabilisers that let the ship maneuver out of the way at the last moment, or even a Figurehead Battering Ram that can be used to ram targets and deal Mortal Damage when it charges. Custom Aetherburner is probably the best, which allows you to make a full move at the end of your turn, but costs 10DP, which is going to be a large chunk of your available destiny points.

Three new paths exist for Kharadrons, one for heroes, one for non heroes and a third for your boats. The Skyfleet ones in particular are really cool with abilities such as making any cast on a double within 12″ result in a miscast!

Armies of Renown

The Kharadron Overlords book contains two Armies of Renown that allow you to build some slightly different armies.

First up is the Pioneer Outpost, which revolves around a small outpost in the form of an Endrin Dock. Your Auto-Endrins basically get better here, allowing them to move at the end of each turn and explode and deal damage when destroyed. They also have a really cool ability that stops enemy units from being set up in your territory or near 9″ of any objectives you control – which alone makes this a pretty decent AOR. You do have restrictions though, with all of the ships except for the Gunhauler being not allowed here.

The Magnate’s Crew is the second Army of Renown, and this represents Brokk Grungsson’s fleet. You can basically take any model with an Endrin Suit and all of the Skyvessels, and what’s really cool is that if you don’t take Brokk, you can instead give an Ironclad the Hero keyword to represent him commanding it. This does of course mean you can give it Hero Traits too! There’s some really cool stuff here such as giving infantry within combat range of Brokk a 5+ ward, and allowing each infantry unit to make a 3D6 mve once per turn.

Each turn you get to pick a ship and reduce the rend of incoming attacks by D3 too!

I really like this AOR, and the only real shame is the fact that you can’t take the new scenery piece as part of it!

Regiments of Renown

The Kharadron Overlords also get two Regiments of Renown that can be taken in other armies – Interestingly one of them allows Ogors to take them, and the second can be taken by Ogors, Bonereapers and Gravelords (to represent the mercenary nature of the Kharadrons)

The first consists of a Frigate, Drekki Flynt and an Arkanaut Company, and these can all “deep strike” from the Frigate after being set up initially off the board. On top of that, they also get to add 1 to hit and wound then targeting an enemy unit that is within 6 of an enemy unit with an enhancement, which is an interesting twist.

The second one consists of a Codewright and 2 units of Thunders, and they unlock some new command abilities. The first allows all friendly models within 3″ of a target terrain feature to head D3, the second allows a unit to be removed from the board and set up anywhere outside of 9 of the enemy (and this can be a unit from the main army, it doesnt have to be from the regiment) and finally the last one allows you to do Mortal Damage to enemy units on objectives. This seems well worth taking in lots of armies, if only for the teleport move – yes, it might cost a command point but it adds a lot of utility to armies that don’t usually have these abilities.

Summary

So this is a battletome with some minor tweaks to a lot of profiles, and some pretty big changes to enhancements. I feel that this captures the flavour of the Kharadron Overlords while mixing things up just enough to feel fresh. Some will be disappointed that go-to enhancements are removed, but I do feel that things feel better on the whole with these gone, and it feels like there’s now a worthwhile choice between them.

The new units look fun, and I actually think the Armies and Regiments of Renown are some of the better ones we’ve seen so far and will be seen a little more often!

We’ve also been treated to some new units alongside this book, something that I wasn’t expecting – and while we all wanted a bigger ship to take to the skies, the new infantry add some much needed character to the Overlords and there’s now a useful Terrain piece that is always worth taking for annoying the enemy with drones and fixing up your ships

10 years into Age of Sigmar we’re seeing Games Workshop going through the new books at a decent pace, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the game.

The new Kharadron Overlords Battletome and kits are up for pre order today and released Saturday 2nd August.

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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