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I genuinely love the aesthetic of these guys and am thinking of collecting a smallish force.
Any advice on the following:

What points level do they operate at (best?)
Are they fun to play? i.e. an interesting playstyle VS one dimensional
Can they be competitive?
I see their flying boat things are on the expensive side cash-wise. Are they definitely needed?

Right now they are mostly trash that need a new book because they exist barring some extreme outlier to get their face rubbed into the table and to make your opponent feel good.

A crushing indictment. Hold of a few months you think?

Someone else may jump on here and say there is some extreme skew list that they have that isn't that bad or to ally them in with free cities or something.

I would say if you want to go pure Kharadron Overlords that you wait for a new book unless you just love the models and don't care about having good games.

That also depends on the competitiveness of your group. If your group rocks tournament power lists, you won't have much fun because you have nothing to return fire with.

If your group is largely casuals that don't play max power, I think that you could have some fun.

My comments come from my own experience with my own area, which is 100% competitive all the time.

I'll back up Auticus' comments. There's a skew list that lets you compete somewhat, but to put it diplomatically, Kharadron are not a competitive army over all. Doesn't mean they can't win games ever, so long as your opponent isn't taking puppy-kicking lists.

Now, keep it in mind that Kharadron have not gotten a new, good book yet. Armies that were similarly in the gutter before their new book were Ironjawz and the unarmored Orks, Cities of Sigmar forces when they were split up and a few other armies I can't recall off the top of my head.

Once those armies I mentioned received their new book, they're now at least strong, if not tournament competitive. If you don't adore the models themselves I would wait off on buying them, or slowly growing your force.

Their playstyle, to do well, is fairly one-dimensional. You take your big guns and point them at the enemy, hope you do enough damage before their competent melee forces just walk over you.

My group is hardly ultracompetitive, but I can confirm the others- KO right now are trash tier. Collect them if you want, the models are very nice, but have a real army to play with till hopefully they get fixed by someone who knows what makes a ranged army work.

Right now, the best thing going for KO is to be included in a Cities of Sigmar list from Tempests Eye. . Once they get the CoS keyword, they are able to get new buffs and such. And even then its not all that much.

Suffice to say, thats not a good look for a faction that supposed to stand on its own merits.

With that said, I feel like KO will be in a good place when they get their next battletome, if any of the recent releases are anything to go by. And GHB19 did kind of help them by reducing some points if memory serves, but their issues run much than deeper than just adjusting points costs to get them up to par. edit: Point being, I think they got some points drops in GHB19 because they are aware of their underperformance.

Hold off until they get a new battletome. As an army they aren't really viable right now.

Thanks for the advice guys.

 Ratius wrote:
I genuinely love the aesthetic of these guys and am thinking of collecting a smallish force.

But don't let anything that we said stop you from painting up a few models if you like the look of them. I bought some Grundstok Thunderers at release with no intention of ever playing them and they were fun to assemble and paint up. I always wanted to add them to my Fyreslayers army as some ranged support, but I could never work them into my armies completely.

Aye mate. I love the boats so much. I might pick up a few anyway and proxy them in casual games of 40k as IG tanks or something

Maybe do a cities of sigmar tempest list, regular dwarves would fill the lack of decent melee units overlords suffers from.

If you want a pure force hold off for a 2nd ed update.