9th Age

[alexwellace]

My friends have been getting rather excited about this 9th edition Fan-Fix. It definitely seems to be on the right track, i especially like it's changes to the Magic System which punishes bigger spells and makes a level 4 non-compulsory. The balance changes also mostly seem fine and they will eventually re-balance every army, starting with the books that need an update most. Highlights being 5+ Ward on Forest Spirits, low-light being 17pts for a Trueflight Guard and i can only have 2 of the same troops in games 1500pts and under.

If you take a quick look, what is your opinion on it? It's still evolving I understand and my friends what to give it a go, but i am skeptical about how much it actually fixes.

http://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?simple-page/

[youngseward]

I think its an improvement in general, but will struggle with some changes for a while. Just oversights and working out issues, like how at the moment Regrowth is remains in play and can be dispelled. The possibilities are good though

[darksaga]

Time will tell, its hard to say what changes army needs before they nail down the basic rules.
Would be nice if we got back our own lore that could manipulate forests (in a miningful way) and maybe even summon them.

[Etheneus]

Personally I like the changes they brought up but don't really see why true flight is five points is beyond me. Four is fine but I think hagbane is better.
My VC (rather undead legion) did not like it at all (he's only checked the balance changes so far).
I like that it is the swecomp team and etc who are doing this but it's still fan based. Without the official titel and new models I don't see this going anywhere. Some players who love WHFB will undoubtedly play it but I don't think it will attract new players and many players will just use 8th or go to something else like KoW.
My group will probably try it but I wouldn't get my hopes up to much.

[Kaese]

I agree on hagbane being better than true flight. Also 2pts for swiftshiver looks really cheap compared to other arrows. Swiftshiver will probably be the best choice for riders and scouts. Full glade rider core will be really nice with the ambush rules beign optional.

Magic is also big improvement in my opinion. No more game ending spells by forcing dispell. Also some other rules are nice, but they changed so much that it will take years to find "balance"

[Polycotton]

I love the look of the magic items and magic changes. You can run a Lev 2 defensive mage like you could back in 5th/6th edition. There will be less game winning spells cast and magic will have less influence on the game.

I love the balance changes as well. Forest Spirits are viable again.

I will still be trying to turn my friends round to playing Kings of War though.

[popisdead]

Fan-Fix.

I always worry when internet-cowboys "fix" a game :S

[Makiwara]

To be fair, they are the ETC and Swedish comp guys; if there is hope for a continual and supported rules pack in the Fantasy scene, chances are it's through them.

[Etheneus]

I tried 9th today against my two main opponent. One playing VC (undead legion mostly but with 9th he since they aren't covered yet he chose VC) and the other one had WoC.


First game was against VC. He had Vampire lord lv4 vampire and was a bit killy, made up half his army points. He also had a horde of 30+ skeletons and a horde of zombies, about 50+ I think and 3 spirit hosts.
I had three list ready and rolled for my fighty one but he wanted to meet my tree list and I wanted to see what they could do so chose that instead. One treeman ancient lv2, 2x12 dryads with nymph, 4 treekin, and one treeman with strangle root.

Basiclly we both castled up in a corner and while I wanted him to come for me in the forest he wanted to fight at the swamp on his side. Since he had magical domination I decided to come to him in turn 2, he met me a around the swamp and while my treekin fought his horde of zombies my treeman smashed his spirit host, slowly I might ad due to poor rolls. My TA fought his general who had failed to get 3 on two dice when charging out of his skeleton bunker into my dryads, he charged with his skeletons into my TA flank and I countered charged with my dryads into his skeletons both in flank and front. A complex battle you might say if it wasn't for our challenge between my TA and his lord. I tried to treewhack him to death and he tried to make firewood of me. He rolls a six for initiative and fail his ward, the wound roll became a 4 and that was game. He had one skeleton left but it still gave me half of that units worth which I felt good about.

This game really highlight some of the changes to the game with 9th. My dryads could hold back a horde of skeletons thanks to 5+ ward making them survivable. My Treekin could smack his zombies to the ground thanks to S5, otherwise I wouldn't have made enough wounds to compensate for his ranks. Magic was still hard with a lv2 vs. lv4. I didn't get a lot through his dispel and could hardly stop anything of his. Miscast didn't do much. I suffered two, one on four dice, rolled 7 for miscast and as we read the rule I could only take one wound (it also failed to wound), the second miscast on three dice and this time I took a wound rolling 7 again on the miscast. I felt I needed that lv4 so that he wouldn't dominate the phase but I also realised that the miscast made us both scared, throwing many dice was scary as hell, even only four.

Next game I randomized my army and got the tree list again, this time against WoC. He had a disc sorc lv2 and a exalted on daemonic mount, he also had 12-14 slaanesh warriors, a nurgle gorebeast chariot, 12 khorne marauder horsemen with flails (khorne now giving +1 strenght first round of combat and flails giving 2+ he had S6 fast cav).
Long story short, he five diced gateway, suffered miscast but erasing my treeman on turn 1, the miscast took one wound of him. On the second turn he four diced gateway killing just one dryad and dying to the miscast. My magic was dwellers and I was afraid to cast it, needing 5 dice to get it, and master of stone. It actually killed two of his horsemen and they failed panic fleeing of the board. Again my dryads and treekin held good thanks to S5 against warriors of chaos with treekin (killing all but one of them) and dryads held against his chariot for like 8-9 rounds of combat. Nurgle now reroll all succeful hits of sixes and that made the fight in the venom thicket a hard one since poison was out of the picture. The two units of dryads got four wounds on the chariot before it killed the first unit of dryads (in the front on combat round 7) he died to DT when turning towards my flanking dryads. His exalted never failed his I test and had other trickster shard and s7. My TA died in the last round.

Again the trees held good except for against his magic that hurt him as well but due to lucky rolls the first turn nothing much happened. He won slightly but I felt good and confident about the treelist and we found it fluffy that nurgle didn't care for poison.

Last game was uneventful, once again against VC. It ended with a 50pts difference to him. Again,he had a lv4 and I couldn't get anything through and only dispel one spell if I was lucky.

Trees are good now, and many, low value spells is what you want to cast, not the big ones. For dispel mostly I wanted a lv4 but to be fair, had I brought another wizard or two I can acording to the rules pool them and basically dispel as a lv4. I really enjoyed it but both my competitors felt that although the new magic was good, they didn't like the balance changes, granting me that my trees was as good as they deserved and that the chaos marks was good/fluffy.

[silashand]

I always worry when internet-cowboys "fix" a game :S

I worry more when companies motivated only by greed "fix" their game to sell more models rather than make it more balanced and enjoyable...

[Joolz]

The Swe-comp guys have created a well known and widespread system with swecomp. I agree on that if anyone will do this right it's them

After reading up on this new ruleset I'll be happy to give it a go! Thanks for the battle report Etheneus !

[Aemir_II]

It's already been played in our clubs.

[SmithF]

Greetings!

I have posted a battle report of my Wood Elves (with NO shooting) against High Elves, using the 9th age Alpha ruleset.
Here's a link for it over at TWF, I think it might help with the debate.

I hope to be able to make more reports and give more feedback to the 9th age team, but it looks as if they're on the right direction.

[ForsetisMuse]

Hi everyone,

The 9th age will release the beta within short and has started a countdown in form of daily sneak peaks! You can check them out at http://www.the-ninth-age.com/news/ . They have also gotten twitter going at The_9th_Age !

[Etheneus]

It's here! The ninth age has come (beta). If you are interested check out the rules. Let's see if it can compare to what ones was the fantasy game we played.
Just remember that they have for legal reasons changed a lot of the names and so on which might upset some.
Here's the link:
http://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?simple-page/

[Disco]

Thanks for the battlereports! Im going to play 9th age this weekend and Im really looking forward to it!
Time to bring back the dryads!

[darksaga]

New fluff will have to be written, so if anybody is good at writing that would be most helpful to people there I am guessing.

[Billthesurly]

New fluff will have to be written, so if anybody is good at writing that would be most helpful to people there I am guessing.

Heck, I'm just going to paste the new rules over the 8th ed fluff and go from there. I don't really view "9th ed" as a new edition but as a major fix of 8th.

So I guess that would be like a 9th edition....

[Ramesesis]

I looked at the rules and find they are very interesting. And I have confidence in the people behind the 9th since I know a few from other forums.

[Makiwara]

Don't know if anyone's looked at the Hordes compendium, but we got kicked in the sprouts rather hard.

[Solution9]

Its just a bandaid for now so I wouldn't be swallowing the bad mushrooms just yet.

[frogboy]

http://www.asrai.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=28915

Help required...

[Yuri]

Tomorrow is the last day to hand over suggestions for Army changes. As Wood Elves are in need of attention to be more competitive. Meaning: trying to push forward tactics other than just maneuverability and shooting lists (like Forest Spirits and CC units). I'm tasked to kindly ask you guys, who are interested in 9th age, to take part on 9th Age Forum, more exactly on Elves of Nature subsection. And yes, there will be name change as well!

I know this is xy post about this, but I'd like to see more of wood elves there. Community is very healthy, and people are polite, as we wood elves are. Too bad other people can't see that because they get arrow to the knee before they even think about venturing into the forest.

Here's the link: http://www.the-ninth-age.com

[Meraell]

Hi Yuri,

I'm an ETC player from Spain, read this morning the 9th EoN forum and tbh with you, first impressions: like the 9th rules, don't like the EoN book. I haven't play any games yet because I'm attending last 8th team event in 2 weeks, but on paper, rules doesn't look correct to me. I was going to post some of my thoughts there, but with no games, I prefered to just wait...

I understand shooting is now nerfed, I'm ok with that, but what I don't like is them, trying to change the WE style, the guerilla warfare, if they take the manouverability of the army, I think I may play another army.

A unique magic lore would have been cool, don't mind changing dark/high for that, with some combat buff, maybe a movement spell, throw a healing spell in there or keep counters from 8th High and something against larget targets that can fly.

I'm defo not sticking with infantry Guard, or Treekin+Treants, these are still bad IMO and I don't like playing slow static combat WE, still asking myself whats the reason for Hawks to be in that position @.@, and some other things which I still want to wait and play, before considering conclusions.

[Yuri]

I understand, and 99% of people including me have same thoughts as you do. We are trying to get our playstyle back, or at least what it used to be. I can just hope, as you do, that something is going to change.