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My club has floated the possibility of a 9th campaign. Given that it is based on 8th I presume that it will share many of its flaws, specifically the removal of the interesting maneuver elements of prior editions?

What does it play like?

I suppose that would depend on your definition of "interesting" really. Overall there are some similarities to certain game but it is now definitely something entirely new. The 0.99 beta came out yesterday (the last version before the official first edition release) and I really like what they've done to the ruleset. The best way would be to see for yourself http://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?simple-page/ and play a game or two. The major thing that has changed is a push towards generally smaller units, a wider variety of viable unit choices and a more tactical playstyle with secondary objectives and scoring units.

So all in all I would say I like it and definitely prefer it to 8th, despite the very short development time and non existent budget the 9th age team have made do with they have come up with something very enjoyable.

9th plays to me a lot like 7th only with some of 8th's features added to it.

I don't know what interesting maneuver was taken out of the game when 8th hit though. Other than flanking usually meant auto-busting the target in 7th if thats what you are referring to.

auticus wrote:
Other than flanking usually meant auto-busting the target in 7th if thats what you are referring to.

An element of it. I used to run an Empire army with a lot of light troops to screen, march block and get flank charges. 8th made that obsolete for various reasons. I used to play Warhammer for the movement phase.

I may see if I can knock out a small Necromantic Undead army and see how it goes.

Well certainly the changes to flankers breaking steadfast help to make getting into that position worthwhile.

There appear to be 2 9th editions. The 9th Age and the Warhammer Armies Project. They both seem similar but also different.

What is the standard (if any)?

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
There appear to be 2 9th editions. The 9th Age and the Warhammer Armies Project. They both seem similar but also different.

What is the standard (if any)?

Last time I counted there are like a dozen or so 8.1, 8.5 or 9th editions

The one with the biggest (and more international) following is 9th age at www.the-ninth-age.com

If you're in the UK, they're pretty much the only ones with meaningful events (if that's your thing). Bristol GT is sold out 2 months before the event, an event in Colchester (by the former Bunkerbrawl organisers) next month also is, Call to war in July has twice as many paid entrants as the AoS event (also call to war), and at WPS it will be the only ranked regiment event (besides 40k, malifaux, x-wing, warhahordes and blood bowl). Also lots of smaller events in other places.

We revived 7th recently but I've only just started browsing 9th age books. Unfortunately I'm away from a source to DL the larger core rules doc. If the core rules are close to 7th I'm definitely interested since the army books look promising.

Can anyone with experience in 7th elaborate on the similarities?

I believe it still has the things in it that made everyone that loves 7th edition angry.

I did get the rules finally. From a readers only perspective it's excellently done with many improvements and some innovativions over 8th. Props.

That said its nothing at all like 7th.

I see they dropped the Fear rules from Undead and Demons.

Because Fear is a much more powerful rule now, providing a minus 1 leadership modifier to all enemy units in base contact with you.

On the other hand they've made up for the fact by making the cores more viable by themselves. For example

Skeletons can get Helberds
new interaction between BSB and undead
Vamps get access to Distracting though a magic item
TK get Ws 7 from their pharoh
Ghouls at I4 with more synergy with Ghoul King
Barrow and Terracotta legions helping TK Skeletons and Chariots and Cav
Lesser Daemons with the same mark as general have access to lesser aspects without having to take a herald
Blood letters can buy a 5+ sv, Plaguebearers can buy parry.
Cheaper initial points costs, similar or same for large units.

It's worth looking through everything that affects them before looking at what they've lost.


**EDIT**

Ninth is going exceptionally strong where I am, as the manager of my local GW lets us play there and actively encourages us to play Ninth in store allowing us to recruit a lot of people who otherwise would not of seen 9th. His only reserve is that 95% of the models are GW, but that is perfectly fair. We've got a strong group of 5 regulars but last weekend we arranged a round robin game and 9 of us turned up. I'm playing Orcs currently and Ninth is really fun for them, they've toned down the total randomness that made us uncompetitive (while keeping the thematic) and forced us into playing Gunline while increasing our combat abilities. And added an actually useful WAAAGGHH! rule which is a win of it's own.

Plays like 8th written by people who actually know what they're doing unlike GW. Very competitive and balanced, but still extremely complex.

Well there are things I love and things I hate about 9th. It's moved quite far away from 8th now.

Pros:

- Internal and external balance, almost everything in every book is usable at the tournament level, in 8th it was maybe 5 units in each book. This is a huge pro.
- Victory points are a lot more nuanced and make more sense.
- Magic - no more game ending spells, miscasts are proportionate to power dice used.
- Armour saves heavily nerfed and spears heavily buffed, makes BS based shooting much better, so core troops are much less of a tax and actually feel useful.
- Cannons nerfed.
- Tournament scene has really taken off in the UK, I think US too to an extent. Makes the 15 man AoS tournaments (where half the entrants got their models for free...) look like a joke.
- Flanking can break steadfast, so in theory at least it rewards good maneuvering more.

Cons:

- Heavily promotes MSU, hordes are rare. Imo it looks worse on the the tabletop than 8th did. Apart from those joke warriors lists of like 9 models are gone.
- List building feels quite restrictive
- It feels more complex than 8th, even if you were very fluent with 8th you'll be looking up rules a lot.
- While you can build lists that are more fluff oriented and not get smashed, many things seem to be moving away from what they were in traditional warhammer fluff, this for me is a big problem.
- No special characters yet.
- The guys in charge venerate 6th edition and want the game to move back to that power level, I played 6th a lot. 8th was better. It was more fun.

Your cons are why i won't touch 9th. It moves the game back to an era that I couldn't stand. Its obvious that the writers of 9th want the game to go back to 6th/7th edition, and I really just got very tired of those editions very quickly.

Kings of War to me is the same thing. Moving the game back to 6th/7th edition.

I wasn't around for 6/7th. What was the big difference?

6th edition was a big reset of warhammer, all of the books from 5th were rendered obsolete in one fell swoop as they released a free supplement called ravening hordes with bare bones army lists for every faction. The reason they did this was 5th had completely devolved into hero hammer, I'm talking high elf armies that consisted of 1000+pt guy on a dragon who would fly high (an old rule where flyers would essentially leave the game then next turn come down wherever they wanted, it was horrible) and then crush whatever he wanted, and some bolt throwers and some chaff.

6th was written by Tuomas Pirinen (writer of mordheim) and his primary aim was to make the game more realistic, and to make troops relevant again. In game play this meant monsters were a bit rubbish (this was before stomp was a thing) and combat was all about static combat resolution as nothing was really that killy. There was no steadfast, magic was much, much less powerful (apart from comet, which was like the only uber spell). Fear was incredibly op as a rule (if you caused fear and won a combat while outnumbering the enemy you auto broke them). It was really good for fluff games tbh, and during 6th gw reached their peak in terms of game support, artwork and campaigns.

7th was sort a bridge to 8th I guess. There were some crazy movement tricks going on which at the tournament level got ridiculous. The ETC crowd loved that gak, kind of split the community a little. Tbh 7th was going fine...until the 7th ed daemons book (cheers Matt Ward...) came out. It was insane. Like in terms of power there was nothing that could come close to matching it. Eventually the dark elf book came out and they could compete with the right list but otherwise daemons completely dominated. Like if you went to uncomped tournament, you'd get over 50% daemon lists, and even with daemon players playing mostly other daemon players, the level to which they'd destroy the opposition in their other games meant they still had the highest win % by miles. Anyway magic got a bit more powerful, but still there weren't quite the game ending spells of 8th. Tbh I didn't play 7th as much as other editions, a combination of time, life circumstances, and that daemons book pushed me away from the hobby for a while.

Imo 6th while it was great for fluff, was a little dull on the table. Shooting was really good, units were much smaller. Imo what they should be aiming for is something between 7th and 8th, witht he movement of 7th, but the look of 8th. There isn't really any going back to 6th. People have too many models that become surplus (what am I going to do with 50 white lions now?) and they're used to the much higher power level of 8th.

All that said 9th isn't bad at all. It's also free, will evolve fast and continuously, and is a million times better than the gak gw is selling now. Like me if you've had stuff you always wanted to use but didn't because it was rubbish this is the game for you. It's perfect if you want to write narrative campaigns with your own characters etc as balance isn't really an issue. In terms of long term warhammer, it's also clearly the best supported option. My group has been playing 9th and been having fun with it, but also still some 8th, and 8th with warhammer armies project lists. Now there are loads of options for how you play the game, enjoy!

Well that was helpful. Thank you. I'm trying to get some people in my area to play 9th but it's not that easy.

Stupid question time:

9th is a fan project?

Yes, though of a greater undertaking than most fan projects can boast.

Their site has about 7,000 members for example.

When I looked at it, what jumped out at me was how fiddly and rules heavy it is. I preferred 6th because it was a simple core system with a sprinkling of special rules on top. 9th seems somewhat like D'n'D Pathfinder in having a lot of rules bloat because everything is a labour of love and no one wants to kill their darlings.

That said, maybe I will give it a go at some point in the future.

 Da Boss wrote:
When I looked at it, what jumped out at me was how fiddly and rules heavy it is.

At its core it's still a re-write of 8th edition, so that kind of language is necessary to prevent the kind of ambiguous rules and interactions that are GW's trademark. Every situation is covered.

That said a 9th age-lite is on the works to be released just after version 1.0 rolls in April. Supposedly plays in 1h, and will serve both as an intro to the "big" 9th age and as a game on its own.

 Da Boss wrote:
When I looked at it, what jumped out at me was how fiddly and rules heavy it is. I preferred 6th because it was a simple core system with a sprinkling of special rules on top. 9th seems somewhat like D'n'D Pathfinder in having a lot of rules bloat because everything is a labour of love and no one wants to kill their darlings.

That said, maybe I will give it a go at some point in the future.

That sounds about right. Its a worthy project, but not one that I can get onto.