Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Not the speedy game they promised, and the point hikes (as predicted) did nothing to increase that speed, but I honestly didn't expect them to deliver on that point.

Terrain rules probably need another pass to clean them up a bit but are a vast improvement.


Movement - Even more emphasis on having units w/fly (the cynical part of me wants to say they new this when making the Primaris stuff and that's the reason marine tanks suddenly fly ...). Movement does matter a lot more than in 8th, but it can have a tendency to degenerate to rushing straight to an objective and sitting, so it's still not where I'd like to see it. Sort of reminds me of the old days when you scored a "take and hold" objective at the end of the game so there was a rush on the last turn to run a land speeder or some other fast unit on to it. Only now that happens at the start of the game. Big improvement, but still a long way to go - there's a lot of mosh pitting. Hoping the actual 9th ed codexes are able to help sort that.

The edit to Overwatch definitely helped cc armies and also creates some interesting decision points, but over all CC (IMO) feels like it's hurting more than ever.

Some armies are going to be terminally fethed until they get their codex. GSC and Tau have some significant issues, and mono-Tsons, although they faired decently in the points hike, are hurt badly by almost everything else in the edition.

Strategic reserves will be interesting once we see more game results. Our group ended up finding that, most of the time, it just wasn't worth the CP, but that could be down to the play styles/units. I'm really curious to see how that pans out on a wider scale.

Every time I say this, someone throws a fit so let me just say that this is based on several 3-4 man groups each playing about 30 games (our rough estimate is that we've played a total of around 130 games), so a not insignificant number, but also not trying to claim we've solved it or anything - BUT going first still has too much of an advantage imo. This has also started to be borne out in the tourney results. The fixes for this are easy enough I think - just a slight adjustment to WHEN the objectives are scored coupled with tweaking the secondaries (many of which are just not ... very good), but I do think the missions need a little more polish in that regard. Like a lot of the things we've seen so far in 9th, it just feels like they stopped just short of where they needed to stop before releasing. It's ALMOST ready ...

We came to the conclusion that we really aren't playing "9th" as long as we're still using the 8th ed books as they really don't feel compatible with the edition. Add in the disaster of a points update that is CA 2020, and we're also fed up with the near daily need for additional FAQs to the "MOST PLAY TESTED EDITION EVAR!! REALLY GUYS!! 100% MOAR PLAYTEST!" , so we're sacking 9th for now and will reserve judgement for when we have a few of the codexes out and the rules have had some time to settle. It has the makings of a great edition, but it's not quite ready for prime time (at least for our group at this point). We'll come back to it when it's had some time to mature and see how things shake out.

EDIT:
Forgot to add that we found 1000 points to be a sweet spot so far for 9th. Too much bigger and it starts to feel unwieldy, too much smaller and you start to have absolutely massive balance problems, but 1000-1200 really felt pretty decent. Curious if anyone else has experienced this?

it's still incredible to me how little GW still seems to understand about making a workable terrain ruleset.

As an example, in my last game we played with an absolute TON of terrain, these big chonky MDF bunkers, totally solid, can't be seen through, and about 2 sets worth of Aegis Defense Lines.

We used Breachable, Defensible, Unstable, Heavy and Light for the ADLs, meaning infantry would move thru unhindered and vehicles would lose 2" moving over, and we used Dense, Scaleable, Exposed for the bunkers meaning that non-infantry would have to move over them and FLY units perching on top of them would not get cover.

And it was still just laughable how little the terrain mattered. I was playing IK and Admech, a fairly balanced list between melee and shooting. I had a Castigator, a pair of Helverins, a neutron Onager, 3 punchy kastelans, 2 shooty kastelans, 3 Ironstriders, and a large unit of the new flamer pterodactyls, and my opponent had an eldar wraith host with a big 10 man of shining spears.

I got first turn, and despite basically army-wide -1 to hit, I had zero problems wiping the huge Spears unit out and using the Neutron laser to bracket a wraithlord. Gunbots wiped out a squad of Rangers just laughably easy, again -1 to hit, but thanks to 8th ed buckets of dice+rerolls, it didn't matter.

His turn, Quickened a huge unit of WBs up into midboard, they're now in every single kind of cover possible, plus Protect, so they have -1 to hit and a 0+ armor save. Basically no shooting mattered at all because the shooty wraiths hadn't deep struck/got out of transports yet.

My turn, wiped a wave serpent and the wraiths inside, sent all my Helverins into the big blob of wraiths and, surprise surprise, he rolled 2 1s despite allllllllllllll the cover and gak. Rangers get blown up hilariously easy again, superduper definitely 15ppm models.

His turn, WBs charge the sterylyzor screen and wipe them, WG drop in and blow up the punchy robots, D-cannon half healths a Helverin, but the game is basically over. I'm going to be able to wipe out the remaining small wraiths and then it's a matter of each of his Psykers being worth 12 points thanks to Abhor+Assassinate, and I've got free range of the board for the remaining 3 turns.

Everything everywhere being -1 to hit the entire time meant literally nothing compared to the stupidity of 8th ed 40k's "Range = Board" shooting weapons and super-easy access to reroll 1s, which I got to have basically the whole time with House Vulker, Canticles, and a TPD on the board.

Honestly I don't know how much of that even IS the fault of the terrain ruleset, and how much is just...it's so, so, so deeply stupid how much damage hyper longrange weapons like the Neutron Laser, the Helverin Autocanons, and the Dakkabots can do in 8th/9th.

I just played my first 9th edition game this weekend (2000 point necrons vs my buddy's 1660 point deathguard). I ended up winning due to secondaries but my army was eviscerated (maybe ~900 points remaining) where he still had 90% of his army left. And this was before he remembered to deep strike his 340 point death shroud terminator unit in... Definitely an underwhelming even pyrrhic victory.

My first impressions:
1. Terrain rules need help; a lot of room for error and/or misinterpretation.
2. Most of secondaries seem useless (especially to Necrons, lol). And poor Grey Knights and Thousand Sons; just going to freely hand points to your opponents.
3. Seems like the new focus on movement is going to win games. Feels like extremely mobile armies are going to dominate.
4. WTF is up with this "Look Out Sir" nonsense. It really needs to be revised for a 4th time. I had a squad of Skorpek Destroyers protecting my Skorpek Lord and a Transcendant C'tan. Combi-bolter on a Rhino kills one of the Skorpeks, then the rest of his army tears apart those two characters (the lord being my warlord). Freaking dumb.

Honestly I don't know how much of that even IS the fault of the terrain ruleset, and how much is just...it's so, so, so deeply stupid how much damage hyper longrange weapons like the Neutron Laser, the Helverin Autocanons, and the Dakkabots can do in 8th/9th.

I think the problem is with capping the to-hit modifier at +/- 1. Imo it's a completely hamfisted way to fix things like Eldar flyers stacking negs to get -3, -4 to hit etc. Again, classic GW - these handful of units are a problem, but most units are NOT a problem in this regard. So clearly we fix this by kneecapping EVERYONE.

I really think that they should have just said you can never be greater than, say -2 or -3 to hit, but then let some things stack. Terrain would have a much higher value that way.

Also, out of curiosity, for those of you who have played a few games - are you using the minimum recommended sizes for the new edition or are you sticking with the previous "standard" sizes? We haven't done the full 4x6 in 9th, but we did find that we tended to enjoy the games a little more using sizes larger than the recommended minimums.

the_scotsman wrote:
Praetorians got a good update (at least, on the Staff profile, the blade+caster profile got nerfed, hilariously), as did Spyders and Immortals.

Worth noting: Vanvets get Shock Assault, doctrines, chapter tactics, and other assorted marine rules. Praetorians have a special rule that prevents them from getting those. I would expect the unit profile to be better.

Regular destroyers got a heavy nerf (assuming that the new S7 Ap-1 D1 profile is supposed to represent current regular destroyers and GW isn't planning that to be some kind of new option)

Warriors stayed the same, i.e. bad.

Night scythes stayed the same, bad.

Doomsday and Ghost arks stayed the same, bad.

Wraiths, one of the most usable units in the codex, got nerfed.

Lychguard are now laughably terrible next to assault terminators, the unit that is most similar to them, with terminators now having W3 and Damage Flat 4 thunder hammers along with armor saves that effectively ignore 1 point of AP in addition to their invuln.

Deathmarks, a useless unit, got a change to make them generally the same as every other sniper unit in the game. Arguably less useless than they were before, but still pretty much pointless as snipers in 8th/9th take a billion shots to kill even basic marine captains.

Tomb Blades got one weapon profile buffed and another nerfed in super minor ways.

So far, nothing in the necron datasheet changes or the Dynasty Code redesigns indicate that they will budge from their last place participation trophy position, while the marine datasheet changes are having people wonder how they could possibly be adjusting them in other ways to make up for these massive crazy buffs. They can't just be adding 4ppm to give EVERY oldmarine unit another wound, can they? CAN THEY???

You need less caffeine or w/e, we know nothing about the protocols, we don't have full pictures of the dynastic codes, we don't know what marine special rules will be, we don't know what terminators will cost, we don't know what new specials rules of any the cron units will get.

But of course even without all that clearly trivial information, necrons will be unable to beat any army and marines will mop up everyone.

Tycho wrote:

Honestly I don't know how much of that even IS the fault of the terrain ruleset, and how much is just...it's so, so, so deeply stupid how much damage hyper longrange weapons like the Neutron Laser, the Helverin Autocanons, and the Dakkabots can do in 8th/9th.

I think the problem is with capping the to-hit modifier at +/- 1. Imo it's a completely hamfisted way to fix things like Eldar flyers stacking negs to get -3, -4 to hit etc. Again, classic GW - these handful of units are a problem, but most units are NOT a problem in this regard. So clearly we fix this by kneecapping EVERYONE.

I really think that they should have just said you can never be greater than, say -2 or -3 to hit, but then let some things stack. Terrain would have a much higher value that way.

Also, out of curiosity, for those of you who have played a few games - are you using the minimum recommended sizes for the new edition or are you sticking with the previous "standard" sizes? We haven't done the full 4x6 in 9th, but we did find that we tended to enjoy the games a little more using sizes larger than the recommended minimums.

They already fixed the -3 to hit cap. It was the rule saying everyone hits on 6s. Only Marines get hurt by that. As of current, Custodes laugh at any modifiers.

the_scotsman wrote:
So far, nothing in the necron datasheet changes or the Dynasty Code redesigns indicate that they will budge from their last place participation trophy position, while the marine datasheet changes are having people wonder how they could possibly be adjusting them in other ways to make up for these massive crazy buffs. They can't just be adding 4ppm to give EVERY oldmarine unit another wound, can they? CAN THEY???

Dudeface wrote:
You need less caffeine or w/e, we know nothing about the protocols, we don't have full pictures of the dynastic codes, we don't know what marine special rules will be, we don't know what terminators will cost, we don't know what new specials rules of any the cron units will get.

But of course even without all that clearly trivial information, necrons will be unable to beat any army and marines will mop up everyone.

One of these posts reads like a pretty accurate assessment of the reveals to date- that Necrons will need some substantial buffs and Marines will need some substantial nerfs to put them on even playing field, and there's no evidence so far that that's happening.

And the other reads like 'Stop complaining, we don't know exactly how Iron Hands will actually work'.

Dudeface wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Praetorians got a good update (at least, on the Staff profile, the blade+caster profile got nerfed, hilariously), as did Spyders and Immortals.

Worth noting: Vanvets get Shock Assault, doctrines, chapter tactics, and other assorted marine rules. Praetorians have a special rule that prevents them from getting those. I would expect the unit profile to be better.

Regular destroyers got a heavy nerf (assuming that the new S7 Ap-1 D1 profile is supposed to represent current regular destroyers and GW isn't planning that to be some kind of new option)

Warriors stayed the same, i.e. bad.

Night scythes stayed the same, bad.

Doomsday and Ghost arks stayed the same, bad.

Wraiths, one of the most usable units in the codex, got nerfed.

Lychguard are now laughably terrible next to assault terminators, the unit that is most similar to them, with terminators now having W3 and Damage Flat 4 thunder hammers along with armor saves that effectively ignore 1 point of AP in addition to their invuln.

Deathmarks, a useless unit, got a change to make them generally the same as every other sniper unit in the game. Arguably less useless than they were before, but still pretty much pointless as snipers in 8th/9th take a billion shots to kill even basic marine captains.

Tomb Blades got one weapon profile buffed and another nerfed in super minor ways.

So far, nothing in the necron datasheet changes or the Dynasty Code redesigns indicate that they will budge from their last place participation trophy position, while the marine datasheet changes are having people wonder how they could possibly be adjusting them in other ways to make up for these massive crazy buffs. They can't just be adding 4ppm to give EVERY oldmarine unit another wound, can they? CAN THEY???

You need less caffeine or w/e, we know nothing about the protocols, we don't have full pictures of the dynastic codes, we don't know what marine special rules will be, we don't know what terminators will cost, we don't know what new specials rules of any the cron units will get.

But of course even without all that clearly trivial information, necrons will be unable to beat any army and marines will mop up everyone.

I never said we knew 100% of what the rules are. What I did say was, based on the leaks we currently have, two things are true:

1) Marines are getting FAR MORE and FAR MORE IMPACTFUL positive changes to their datasheets and weapon rules compared to Necrons

2) The new redesigned necron dynastic codes are not very good. I'm not sure what you mean by "getting the full picture" of what they are. We know they are

Sautekh: Reroll morale, Rapid Fire at 18". Combine a rule that only works on a handful of weapons with a morale rule that will rarely ever matter on a LD10 army.

Szarekhan: 5+ Mortal Wound FNP, reroll 1 wound roll. So you get the useless half of the worst main codex marine chapter tactic (BT) and 1/2 of 1/2 of the Salamanders chapter tactic.

Nihilakh: Obsec on everything, units that already have obsec count as 2. Ap-1 becomes AP-. Decent for a durability chapter tactic, but absolutely nothing compared to currently meta traits like Deffskullz, Iron Hands, or Valorous Heart.

Novokh: Extra -1AP on the charge in melee, +1 to Charge Rolls. A pretty decent melee trait in a vacuum, made worse by considering that many of the necrons' melee units already have enough AP for it to not really matter (Lychguard, Skorpekhs) or don't get traits (Praetorians) or are getting nerfed (Wraiths). eh, maybe Flayed ones will be good with it.

Nephrekh: Auto-6" Advance with pseudo-fly, Pseudo-fly on fall back moves, 6++ invuln. If you're a marine player I dont' think I need to explain to you how bad a 6++ is on base 3+ units, since you've had tactical terminators since the start of 8th. The other stuff tends to be bad just because of how few Assault weapons are actually in the necron codex, meaning using your trait means turning your units off most of the time.

Mephrit: Extra 3" range for non-pistols, AP-1 for being within 1/2 range. The current best trait gets the best second half addition, shocker.

If you tasked me with coming up with the most useless possible traits for the Necron army, I would be giving you stuff like "Give everything a 6++!" or "Let them all auto-advance 6", or "Reroll morale" These indicate to me that the person redesigning the traits had absolutely zero idea how necrons actually operate on the tabletop, and was just told "here's the new list of standard traits we're doing, slap one of these on each of the dynasties and call it a day" - which is, almost certainly, EXACTLY how the current set of dynastic codes got slapped on them, because they were one of the early-8th codexes, just like marines, CSM, and Admech.


This is what I'm saying. The information that we have now, things don't look great. Endlessly, endlessly stating that at any given time, we don't have 100% of the information on a given release, is just getting very very old after the whole song and dance of the 9th ed rules previews, then the 9th ed point costs, and now the first few codexes of 9th ed. It presumes that people are incapable of looking at past data and incomplete future information and drawing a conclusion based on that.

Tycho wrote:


I really think that they should have just said you can never be greater than, say -2 or -3 to hit, but then let some things stack. Terrain would have a much higher value that way.

The problem there is that even a -2 to hit is enough to kneecep many armies in the game, -3 (without an "auto hit on 6's" rule) is enough to completely prevent several armies from literally doing anything to such a target, and that's always caused problems.

GW's use of modifiers is really not well managed given the small range D6's allow for and the fact that most things in the game operate in the middle of that range to start with, and there are no positive modifiers to attempt to help balance things out to take advantage of (such as say, dedicated spotters, elevation or close range bonuses, etc), while weapons that in theory shouldn't really be impacted by many modifiers (e.g. blast weapons should just be looking to hit in an approximate fixed area that'll affect anything nearby regardless of how stealthy or fast it is) are translated awkwardly in that respect.

The -1 to hit cap is something I feel is necessary, but only as a result of problems with other mechanics (or lack thereof) as a band-aid.

Nihilakh will probably be the competitive one because obsec wins games. Kind of boring but there you go.

On actually playing - hard to say really. I think I'm probably in agreement that the terrain rules try to satisfy people who clearly want complex terrain rules - but in truth they don't do that much. At a strategic level it still feels like LOS block or nothing. -1 to hit is nice, but it often won't save you.

My games have been with friends who are very much to the casual end of the player base, so its all kind of soft. I think the missions are good, and the secondaries could be good, but they are not really balanced at the moment. I'm sort of moving to thinking they should take out the kill-X missions.

9th is the edition of a binary "can't shoot at that" or "dead." Modifiers have been nerfed into irrelevancy and the cover save bonus doesn't work on most of the stuff it would significantly impact. Aside from obscuring, and the -2 to charge, terrain feels pretty irrelevant.

There's the odd exception - terminators in cover, for example - but for the vast majority of stuff if you can shoot it, it's probably dead in a single round of shooting.

The problem there is that even a -2 to hit is enough to kneecep many armies in the game, -3 (without an "auto hit on 6's" rule) is enough to completely prevent several armies from literally doing anything to such a target, and that's always caused problems.

But we have auto-hit on 6. I can agree maybe -3 is a bit much, but really, would it be too much to even say you can be -1 from terrain effects, and that this is the ONLY stackable buff (so you could combine terrain with a spell to get -2 to hit)?

Right now, the way we have it, terrain (while admittedly better than 8th) is complicated but without the payoff it really needs and so many other things in the game are just flat out meaningless.

GW's use of modifiers is really not well managed given the small range D6's allow for and the fact that most things in the game operate in the middle of that range to start with, and there are no positive modifiers to attempt to help balance things out to take advantage of (such as say, dedicated spotters, elevation or close range bonuses, etc), while weapons that in theory shouldn't really be impacted by many modifiers (e.g. blast weapons should just be looking to hit in an approximate fixed area that'll affect anything nearby regardless of how stealthy or fast it is) are translated awkwardly in that respect.

The -1 to hit cap is something I feel is necessary, but only as a result of problems with other mechanics (or lack thereof) as a band-aid.

Agreed that it isn't well managed. It's a typical battle of the haves vs the have-nots - at one point you could get an eliminator squad to essentially auto-hit, meanwhile other snipers in the game are still reliably missing targets with no cover. lol

But this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say my group feels 9th isn't quite ready for prime time. We're hoping that a lot of this gets sorted and makes more sense once the actual books get rolled out. I just don't think the 8th ed codexes are truly compatible w/how GW wants 9th to work. Kind of expected this as well, so it's not surprising, but just one more reason to wait a bit longer on it.

The Good:
Missions: Slam dunk in my opinion. The Primary objectives are difficult to get, you always have "home" objectives with most objectives are in no-man's land, different objective/deployment mixes result in different styles of play being the more or less effective, and this all comes together so that the first two turns present the game really well to new players (there should be lots of action going on).

Game Length & Battlefield Size: It was a bold move to change the battlefield size, and it could've easily backfired if it didn't work well, but thankfully this isn't just a "meh" change, but is actually a great change! Combined with the game length going to just 5 turns instead of 6, and battles are more vicious affairs where you cannot wait and sit back. This helps produce fewer "non-games" (games that don't feel like games), because players are pushed into engaging each other up close and personal quickly.

Terrain Density & Rules: My main sparring partner and I have both always enjoyed extremely congested boards packed full of terrain, but we always felt like we were the outliers so rarely played it that way (wasn't good practice). Now that the average board should have 19 pieces of terrain, we get to make stunning boards again, AND these boards present interesting tactical challenges! If you're not using a good smorgasbord of terrain in your battles, you're missing out! Craters and Forests especially are just so much more interesting now.

Fly Shooting Nerf: It brings me great joy that so few units can simply leave combat at shoot at no penalty. Fly is still one of the best keywords in the game, but at least it's not just so vastly superior in these regards. Combined with Blasts not being able to shoot at units you're in combat with, and suddenly there's a whole slew of vehicles/monsters that are terrified of being tagged, and that's a good thing!

-1/+1 Cap To Hit/Wound: Fantastic. If you're hard to hit, you're just hard to hit. If you're shooting better, you're just shooting better. The +1 cap doesn't even matter much to me, but the -1 cap is huge. It's pretty simple, but having this cap means fewer "non-games" where one side just can't win. It's not as big a deal as when they removed Invisibility from the game, but it's the same sort of feeling. There's just more games to be played now where you can actually accomplish something. Never really saw it being an issue with wounding, as there were just so few ways to stack those, but I'd imagine the same would apply here if there was anyone doing those shenanigans.

Defenders Gets First Pick: While charging units get to fight first, the defender gets to pick their units first when eligible to do so. It's a nice buff to charging units that get stuck in a fight, but the real shine of this change is how it has given new life to anything with a "fights first" ability, as they now get to actually fight first almost all the time, and present a real threat to assault armies when used in mass.

Coherency Range: Shrinking units (though not small units) so that they take up smaller footprints is generally a good thing. You can even still abuse it when you need to, but suffer a real penalty for when you do so. This was almost a "Meh" thing though, since it feels like too many knocks against larger units and not smaller ones, plus it's forcing players to play in a certain "visual" way, which isn't appreciated. But the net result is Good, so here's where that is!

The "Meh":
Blasts: Unfortunately, just as with 7th edition and prior, Blasts are a barrier for horde armies - and I love me my horde armies. In 7th and prior, it was a logistical problem; forcing such armies to maximally space out their models to make blasts useless, but also made it a chore to play. Now, Blasts getting max shots vs hordes means people just aren't taking units of 11+ at all. This could all swing around if the meta shifts, but even then it'll just be a meta-choice that makes everyone feel bad. Why is this not in the "bad" category then? Well, outside of hordes, it plays well. Getting min 3 shots is quite the relief for the luck-challenged like myself. Also, not being able to shoot while in combat is a really fun part of the blast rule, making Blast a liability in many situations. As such, I like how blast plays, but don't like its influence on the meta, so this gets the in-between "Meh" rating.

Attrition: I'd like this more if there were more units that wanted high-model counts to be affected by it. When those units are in play, Attrition works wonderfully! It's potent enough that you want to avoid failing an attrition test, but not so potent that you feel forced to spending significant resources to avoid it. This results in far more failed tests in the game, because players aren't scrambling for Fearless-effects or spending CP to auto-pass; it's easy to take this risk. Unfortunately, with the game being so geared to MSU, the number of times that you're up against armies with any chance to fail Leaderhip tests is very low, and with the myriad Maelstrom objectives that had insane "force your opponent to fail a Ld test" now gone, there's just not as many times that you really care if you can force a failed test. Sadly, this is a solid "Meh".

Vehicles/Monsters and Heavy Weapons: Honestly there's just not much to say here. It's good because, with lots of Dense cover on the table, there's almost always a better position to move to where you'll be rewarded for having done so because of these changes. However, with there being so many ways to get -1 to hit right now, it feels like the game would be playing the same with or without this rule. This is closer to "Good" than some other things, but still sits at "Meh" just because of this.

Outflanking: While the idea to do this is great, with the game being shorter it's really quite the steep cost to not start on the table, and then not being able to show up right where you need to like intrinsic deep strikers. This ability makes a lot of promises, but rarely seems to live up to them.

The Bad:
Secondary Objectives: These need some work. While they don't necessarily function identically, too many of them work too similarly, and there are a number of gaping (marine-sized) holes. There needs to be an anti-MSU option and anti-"multiple high-wound models" option. At the same time, despite us coming out of a "Psychic Awakening", you are generally penalized by taking Psykers, with lots of points scored for killing them, and the prevention of taking a specific Secondary Objective if you include even 1 of them. The concept here is good, and a bunch of the real "meat" is good too, but there's certainly problems.

Pregame, Deployment, & Game Speed: Despite being billed as a faster game, it just isn't. Part of that is us as players; give me 2hrs to play a 500 point game, and that's often as long as the game still takes. We use time a resource, and when we have lots of that resource, we just use more of it for each action. Making the game 17% smaller does not make it 17% faster. However, the pre-game of having to note down which units are deploying in what way, secretly choosing stuff, then alternating the deployment... it's very slow. Removing pre-game relic & power selection certainly helps, but everything in the game that was done to make it faster has just been replaced by something else that slows it down.

1/2" of 1/2": This just doesn't feel needed when already so many hits have been made on horde units. Heck, even the "or" statement of this has confused many players that aren't as eagle-eyed on the rules as some other players are. I really feel that this could've just been "Engagement Range, or if you're within 1" of a friendly model from the same unit that is within Engagement Range". Yes, it means more stuff fights, but that hardly seems an issue.

Unknown:
Vehicles/Monsters Shooting Into Combat: Sorry, jury's out on this one. On the one hand, it means these units just never quit and you can't turn them off. On the other hand, forcing a target at a critical moment is as clutch as that unit not shooting at all. Plus, this cements the vehicles & monsters as being the defenders of the Castle of your home objective, just making it even harder to push into it with close combat stuff. Is that good or bad? I can't say. This definitely isn't a "Meh", but I can't tell yet if it's good or bad.



That took longer than I expected, but yeah, I think I covered mostly everything.

 catbarf wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
So far, nothing in the necron datasheet changes or the Dynasty Code redesigns indicate that they will budge from their last place participation trophy position, while the marine datasheet changes are having people wonder how they could possibly be adjusting them in other ways to make up for these massive crazy buffs. They can't just be adding 4ppm to give EVERY oldmarine unit another wound, can they? CAN THEY???

Dudeface wrote:
You need less caffeine or w/e, we know nothing about the protocols, we don't have full pictures of the dynastic codes, we don't know what marine special rules will be, we don't know what terminators will cost, we don't know what new specials rules of any the cron units will get.

But of course even without all that clearly trivial information, necrons will be unable to beat any army and marines will mop up everyone.

One of these posts reads like a pretty accurate assessment of the reveals to date- that Necrons will need some substantial buffs and Marines will need some substantial nerfs to put them on even playing field, and there's no evidence so far that that's happening.

And the other reads like 'Stop complaining, we don't know exactly how Iron Hands will actually work'.

Bit oddly specific that you singled out iron hands, but yeah one post is built off applying what partial information we have to what we currently have, i.e. assuming all the marines stuff stays as is but with more wounds/new weapons. The other is built off the assumltion that anything in existance could be different and that we've not seen special rules in the modified profiles, or points which may balance it all better.

Neither is wrong but one is infinitely more pessimistic than the other and I personally prefer not to spend my time assuming the worst.

Neither is wrong but one is infinitely more pessimistic than the other and I personally prefer not to spend my time assuming the worst.

To be fair, erring on the side of "Marines are going to get something completely stupid" has been the safest bet of 2020, and it does seem an awful lot like the 'crons are not getting the help they need. I wouldn't say the viewpoint is pessimistic so much as it is looking at what has come before, combining it with the evidence we have in front of us, and drawing what appears to be, an unfortunately logical conclusion ...

I've had many negative views of the steps GW has taken in this launch and each time I've said "happy to come back to this thread and apologize to GW if this turns out wrong in a few months" ... so far, I haven't had to do that yet ...

 Yarium wrote:

Defenders Gets First Pick: While charging units get to fight first, the defender gets to pick their units first when eligible to do so. It's a nice buff to charging units that get stuck in a fight, but the real shine of this change is how it has given new life to anything with a "fights first" ability, as they now get to actually fight first almost all the time, and present a real threat to assault armies when used in mass.

That rule belongs in the "ugly", not in the "good, and the reason is in the Rare Rules section. Defenders fight first, but chargers fight first, but if both players have an "I always fight first" ability (including charging) or both players have a "you always fight last" ability, then the player who's turn it is fights first when resolving those groups. It's a confusing counterintuitive mess.

Just to summarize; it's your turn, you've charged:

1) All the units that charged or have a "fight first" ability are resolved, alternating between the players, and you go first.
2) All the units in ongoing melees that don't have any "fight first/last" rules are resolved, alternating, and your opponent goes first.
3) All the units with a "fight last" rule are resolved, alternating, and you go first again.

We had this come up in an Emperor's Children vs Death Guard match, my opponent had to read the rules twice before he would admit I was parsing it correctly.

Edit: I don't necessarily have a problem with melee priority working this way, but I do have a problem with it being this poorly organized. "I always fight first" and "you always fight last" are much too common for the breakdown of how they interact to belong in the Rare Rules section.

Edit: I don't necessarily have a problem with melee priority working this way, but I do have a problem with it being this poorly organized. "I always fight first" and "you always fight last" are much too common for the breakdown of how they interact to belong in the Rare Rules section.

IMO the fact that there's a "Rare Rules" section at all kind of hints at a bit of a problem ....

Like I keep saying - HOPEFULLY it's a problem that goes away w/the codexes ...

Great call! I didn't realize that was the case. I'll double-check it myself when I get home to the rules, because for sure that would change my take on it.

I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

Sounds like two people showed up to play 8th and not 9th.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

Sounds like two people showed up to play 8th and not 9th.

It was his second game of 40k, he started when 9th dropped, and has no experience of 8th. I didn't actually know it was his second until after the game, but eh.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

Sounds like two people showed up to play 8th and not 9th.

This is a curious opinion. So far, my impression of 9th is that tabling an opponent early is very slightly harder than 8th, but not by much, and it's still incredibly easy to build a list designed to rush forward and slaughter the enemy before they've really left their deployment zone. The new mission structure is one thing, but if your opponent can be left with next to no models on the table by turn 3, you can basically auto-win just by running the score up the last two turns.

How would you build a Slaanesh daemon army to "play 9th"?

the_scotsman wrote:


How would you build a Slaanesh daemon army to "play 9th"?

120 daemonnetes with 3 keepers + shalaxi.

Or if we stop splitting the demon codex in 4 for arbitraty reasons :

3 keepers + lord of change + nurglings

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


How would you build a Slaanesh daemon army to "play 9th"?

120 daemonnetes with 3 keepers + shalaxi.

Or if we stop splitting the demon codex in 4 for arbitraty reasons :

3 keepers + lord of change + nurglings

120 daemonettes with 3 keepers and shalaxi is almost exactly what I played (though I ran a few fewer Daemonettes and added a Soul Grinder and Fiend). The four keepers (counting Shalaxi) cleaned house trivially with first turn charges. I almost didnt' need anything else except the Soul Grinder, and only that because its flat 3 damage cannon was hilarious and it carved apart the assault intercessors who had the audacity to try to move out in their impulsor.

As for splitting the daemons codex, I'll stop splitting it in 4 for no reason when GW stops splitting it in 4 for no reason.

I have played somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or 13 games of 9th edition, with my Tyranids, chaos knights, and black legion (and one game with Khorne demons). So far my impressions are:

9th edition is an improvement on 8th edition in almost every way possible. the core game is mechanically better, more rules are fleshed out, made simpler, and the missions are 100% better than their predecessors.

The 9th edition does have some areas of critique that I've noticed. I think the secondaries are really good for the most part, but it feels like some are just too easy to obtain and some are just too difficult or they do not provide enough of a benefit for doing so. I also think the "actions" mechanic for psykers and troops to either raise the flag or perform various secondary abilities needs to be either increased in benefit or made easier to do (like they can shoot with penalty or something, or take a psychic test with penalties if doing an action) to allow some of those models to be a bit more active in the game. If that isn't to be, then an increase in the reward for performing those actions does feel like it would be important.

Game balance right now is probably much better than anyone will ever give it credit. Yes, marines are probably just a touch too good for their cost, but their costs are quite high now. Tyranids and my best friends orks have seen little to no problems with bringing horde armies despite increases to blast rules damaging them, and while there are some points costs that seem either slightly too high or too low, the majority of models and games I've seen players have been close, even with the powerhouse factions playing against the bad factions right.

*context* I host a weekly gaming day at my home on Sundays. On those days, we meet at approximately noon and play until 9 or 10 pm, and break for dinner as a group. Many of the players have the passcode and automation passcodes for my home, so I don't have to be there to play (and am often not since I'm getting back from or at a church event). At that time, I have hosted games of 9th since the rules came out and the munitorum handbook was leaked. We have, as a group of 6 or so players, been playing consistently, and some players have been playing during the day when I'm not home. All of those games and the impressions from my group seem to echo my personal experiences and my expectations.

We all love 9th so far. Its been a very fun game.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

I say this a lot on here, but this just sounds like an issue with Marines rather than an issue with 9th.

Having played a lot of 9th games now and consumed a load of battle reports on youtube the above post is like, the opposite of my 9th experience.

 Bosskelot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

I say this a lot on here, but this just sounds like an issue with Marines rather than an issue with 9th.

Having played a lot of 9th games now and consumed a load of battle reports on youtube the above post is like, the opposite of my 9th experience.

Also notice that they didn't run any obscuring or otherwise LoS blocking terrain which obviously favors shooting in a way that most tables this edition simply won't.

I didn't wipe him out with shooting though. Terrain doesn't really slow me down, still, unless it is ruins I have to walk around.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I just played my first game Sunday and it was just 8th on steroids.
I played Slaanesh Daemons, and here's my battle report:
- I went first, charged across the table (easier than 9th than in 8th), and murdered everything.
- Had I gone second, I would've been shot off the board from across the table (easier in 9th than in 8th, though not because of the core rules) and had everything murdered.

I was playing a Marine player with 1x gigantic tank with the super antitank cannon (executioner or eradicator or exterminator or whatever), 6x Eradicator melta bois, 6x Aggressors, 1x inceptors, 10x assault intercessors in an Impulsor, 10x intercessors, 5x infiltrators, all in a marneus calgar bubble. All the terrain was Dense, but there were no ruins so it was just Dense. They were rocks and hills and trees.

I say this a lot on here, but this just sounds like an issue with Marines rather than an issue with 9th.

Having played a lot of 9th games now and consumed a load of battle reports on youtube the above post is like, the opposite of my 9th experience.

Also notice that they didn't run any obscuring or otherwise LoS blocking terrain which obviously favors shooting in a way that most tables this edition simply won't.

1 I keep seeing people saying things like add terrain, your just not using the right type of terrain.

At a certain point if you need 50% of the table to be obscuring terrain the rules are unbalanced, that much obscuring is just a band aid.

2 Going first against armies that can't infiltrate or scout will give you a massive advanatge. Scouting with the right units is a small counter and infiltrating is the best counter. But going second without those is bad and you esentially need a blow out game to make a comeback.

3 Are people placing terrain too close to objectives as I have seen that in a number of youtube battle reports of terrain touching Objectives which seems wrong.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Tycho wrote:


I really think that they should have just said you can never be greater than, say -2 or -3 to hit, but then let some things stack. Terrain would have a much higher value that way.

The problem there is that even a -2 to hit is enough to kneecep many armies in the game, -3 (without an "auto hit on 6's" rule) is enough to completely prevent several armies from literally doing anything to such a target, and that's always caused problems.

To me it seems like the limit should be -1/+1 per player.

That is to say, if I have a unit with a native -1 to hit, I can't use an ability to give it an additional -1 to hit. However, if my opponent Advances and fires an Assault weapon at that unit then they'll be at -2 to hit.

This way, you can't use an opponent's -1 to hit abilities to get a 'free' Advance with Assault weapons, a free move with Heavy weapons etc..