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Ok, let me start by saying this is not a rant. My attempt is to state my thoughts on 9th Age Fantasy Battles and hopefully start persuading others to give it a try. In doing so, I hope to address some of the arguments I’ve heard from people as to why they haven’t tried it and maybe shed some light from a different perspective.

Most of the arguments I’ve heard are from former Warhammer Fantasy Battle players, many of which are good friends of mine that are fairly skeptic of how long 9th Age Fantasy will be around. I’ve heard (and seen in different forums) that some people are interested in the game, but since 9th Age isn’t tied to a specific company (Games Workshop) that it has no future. Apparently some feel that without being licensed by a specific game company that can market and sell products for it, that the game will fail. If you’re one of those folks, you’re not alone. I was also skeptical for a while after the End Times final book had not only ended the Warhammer Fantasy world, but also a game I’ve enjoyed and vested countless hours over the last 20 years in. To this day, I still don’t know how a company like Games Workshop can kill not only its original flagship game, but also alienate a fan base that has supported their product for over 20 years. Imagine an owner of your favorite football team for the last 20 years suddenly deciding to disband the franchise and decided to introduce freeze-tag as a new professional sport. For all the anger and resentment at GW, I get it and I felt burned as well.

For the reason I just mentioned, I’m proud to say that 9th Age Fantasy Battles is completely independent of Games Workshop. They have no control over the game, nor does any other company. 9th Age has been independently developed by a team of folks who care deeply about the hobby and the community in general. These are the same folks who introduced a comp system to the last edition of Warhammer that became the staple for many of the tournaments people played in throughout the world. What this means is that their first priority in development of the game is balance. Now, let that sink in for a minute. The folks developing the game are not out to sell you. Instead, they just want to develop a product simply for our enjoyment.

Now, for those that think it would still be better if 9th Age was tied to a particular company, I generally ask them why? Gaming companies are businesses and businesses need to generate revenue to stay solvent. Games Workshop is a large, publically traded company meaning that they need to turn a profit or risk losing shareholders. This is why we the players ended up seeing a new edition every 4-5 years. If all you ever need to play the game is your army and the rules, then the company has to create new rules in order to keep generating sales. After a few editions the game isn’t about refinement or improvement, it’s about changes for the company to remain solvent. Now think about the board games you have in your hall closet at home. Chances are every house has at least one copy of Monopoly, Risk, and Clue. However, just about every house also has a board and pieces to play Chess and Checkers. When your family sits down to play a game of Monopoly or Clue, do they need to re-read the rules every time? No, because they’ve been playing those games for their whole life growing up. If you’re like me, you may even have the same set of Monopoly for the last 20 years or maybe it was an even older set that was passed down in your family. Either way, once you have your game and some friends to play with you’re all set. Isn’t that how table top gaming should be? My point is, you should expect your table top game to last, and provide entertainment for decades to come without having to keep up with the latest rules changes every 4-5 years.

Let’s not forget what it costs you to buy a new edition when it comes out. Games Workshop charged $75 for the rulebook and possibly another $50 for your army rules. That’s $125 about every 4 years to continue to play the current edition of Warhammer Fantasy with just one army. Now, if you’re me and you’ve been playing since 5th edition that’s $500 you’ve spent on rules alone. Granted that might not sound like much, but if you’re like me you’ve probably bought 1 or 2 limited edition rule books or army books so that cost has increased significantly. However, what if you could instead use all that money you spent on rules towards your army and all the rules were free? That’s how 9th Age works. All the rules, magic spells, and army books are completely free to download and play with. So, what about the miniatures? Heck, even Games Workshop has made great strides to eliminate any of the old Warhammer Fantasy models from their shelves to make way for their new stuff, so what do you do? Well, fortunately we live in the 21st century and have multiple miniature buying options at our disposal. Remember 9th Age isn’t tied to any particular company you may use whatever miniatures you wish. In fact, 9th Age even gives you the exact base size the model should be on. So, even if you felt inclined to use Legos, bottle caps, or soda can tabs they may not be very aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but if you stick them on the right size base have at it! Now, those who already have existing Warhammer Fantasy armies, then you’re in luck as you don’t need anything. To those interested in starting to play the game I would check with your friendly, local game store and chances are they can show you a wide range of miniatures you can use. Still for anyone looking on the internet, the 9th Age webpage has links to multiple miniature companies online where you can purchase models to build, paint, and use.
Now, let’s take a small look at the rules. For those former WFB players the rules will look and feel very familiar, because the game still plays like Warhammer Fantasy. Again, all the rules for all the 9th Age armies are available to download and play. The differences between 8th edition WFB and 9th Age are well documented on various forums and YouTube videos so I won’t spend time on them, but keep in mind that the game was written with balance in mind. This means that you won’t see stupid-huge death star units or broken magic spells. Every unit has a minimum and max size you can field in your army.
Add all this up and what does this mean? Well, in my humble opinion it means that 9th Age Fantasy Battles has the potential to be around forever. No company can ever pull the plug on it due to poor sales. The initial cost to play the game is extremely low considering how, when, and where you purchase your models is completely up to you. Last, the game should feel familiar to thousands of players that have ever played Warhammer Fantasy before. In time I see 9th Age as being like the CounterStrike of table top gaming. (For those not familiar, CounterStrike is a 1st person shooter on the PC that started as a free download of a mod using the Half Life engine and 2 decades later it’s still one of the most popular FPS’s on the web.)

After GW pulled the plug on hosting and supporting tournaments in the US, many tournament organizers and game communities rallied and created their own, some of which have grown bigger and better than the tournaments GW hosted. Now that GW’s pulled the plug on the game, I see this as the perfect opportunity for the community to rally behind a completely independent game. In particular a game written with balance in mind that is the perfect for tournament play.

Some food for thought… Buckeye Battles is an independent fantasy tournament near Columbus, Ohio that’s been running for the last 10 years. This year the tournament switched to 9th Age Fantasy Battles due to the demise of Warhammer Fantasy. Bear in mind that 9th Age has just come out of beta in April and is right now in their very first edition. Shortly after the edition was released registration for Buckeye Battles opened. The tournament organizer said that due to the recent release of 9th Age and the loss of WFB that he was hopeful to at least get 40 players. As of early May with registration less than a month old, the tournament sold out at 111.

Great post.

111 players? That's some great achievement for a non-company supported (or multi-company sort-of-supported ) event in the US.

Hopefully more and more events will get on board.

Me and some mates plan to test the 9th soon. We've heard many good things, and a quick read of the rules got us pumped.

9th age is just WHFB with the rules rewritten and all the units renamed for legal reasons.

I am up for that, and dont consider it converting over, just moving to the next edition. I am happy tom port over to the new rules, but will keep the faction names and iconography what it was thank you.

The biggest issue I have with 9th age is it is explicitly designed as a tournament game. I did love competitive play for WHFB but what it needed was level army books. The main rules, IMO, were fine. Maybe a few changes here and there but some of the biggest gripes people had with the core rules I had no issue whatsoever with. Steadfast, the "6" spells. I played ogres which were victims of those 2 things as much as anyone.

What 9th age did when they rewrote 8th ed, which is basically all 9th age is, is they removed the randomness and risk from a lot of things. The game is too predictable to me. Again this is my opinion.

But on a side note KOW is WAY WAY worse. That game is just dull as all hell

9th age is not 8th edition...stop selling it like it is...

But it is undeniably very similar. Same armies, many of the same options, same core mechanics and a good 80% of units have made the crossover. Ninth is undeniably a game either in 8ths shadow or rising from its corpse, because if it wasn't they would have based the rules on the universally agreed more balanced 6th Ed instead of the 8th ed more people are familiar with.

I dunno, I didn't really play 8th (I think I managed to get a 2nd game in at some point...), but from the games of 9th I've played (admittedly, all two of them) and those games, it really does come across similar. A bit toned down on the magic side, and with much tighter unit sizes, but a lot closer to 8th than 6th.

Ejay wrote:
9th age is not 8th edition...stop selling it like it is...

It's a heavily converted 8th edition, with all the nonsense (or most of it at least) removed from it. I must say, it's looking very, very good.

I struggle to consider 9th an option when people talk about it being like 8th, given I didn't like 8th to begin with and it's mostly what killed my WHFB group.

It's definitely a finely polished 8th, but still 8th.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I struggle to consider 9th an option when people talk about it being like 8th, given I didn't like 8th to begin with and it's mostly what killed my WHFB group.

It depends on what's the thing about 8th edition your group didn't like.

9th age has unit caps and flank and rear charges disrupting steadfast which puts deathstars in check.

It also has a toned-down magic system (less powerful spells, cap on PD generation and miscasts depending on power dice use) which stops 6-dicing unit-deleting spells (but gateway, 13th and PD spam generation were a thing in 7th edition, so it might not be the case).

Of course if the deal breaker was random charge distance then 9th will still not be for you (though champions now guarantee a certain charge roll).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I struggle to consider 9th an option when people talk about it being like 8th, given I didn't like 8th to begin with and it's mostly what killed my WHFB group.

8th edition was abyssmal. However 9th is better and it's still being improved upon. Normally, me and my mates play 6th, but we're going to give 9th a chance. I think it might be worth it.

My main issue is i heard they nerfed skaven. If anybody needed a good hard nerf it was vampires or any flavor variety of elves or even nurgle daemons (though improve the other daemons).

I mean i talked to a guy today that made Skaven in 8th out to be broken. Yes they had an 8 page FAQ but he failed to understand (as always) that only the ETC restrictions made skaven OP. According to him every skaven unit was good even the special choices like rat ogres. You know the unit that cost 40 pts and basically were a crappier version than vargheists for 5 points less but 5 leadership instead of 7 (not including the packmasters which without your rat ogres would become stupid with leadership 5). According to him having skweel made that choice good or something.

Ugh. That snobby Fantasy elitist player reminds me why i didn't like being around those guys in Fantasy.

Don't get me wrong i like fantasy and hate AoS but the constant complaints that skaven were OP even though they were outdated, had an 8 page FAQ and never had much that could fight a combat pre-End Times outside of the abomination was just something that made me want to find the more casual Fantasy players to play against.

I think the competitive and snobby crowd did help to ruin Fantasy for many people.

Don't get me wrong i don't mind some Skaven things getting nerfed as long as they increased power of other things. I mean there was a good deal of stuff people just wouldn't use (most of the special choices). It was even a massive thing to only take core, lords/heroes and rares and leave out specials with skaven because they were usually bad.

Well, the problem with any community-ran ruleset is that most people will, consciously or not, lobby for their own armies at the expense of others, regardless of the health of the overall game, as your post demonstrates.

I've played Warhammer since late 6th edition and really enjoy Ninth Age. Just have two games under my belt and a third scheduled for next week but look forward to playing for as long as I can!

Agree with lord_blackfang - people seem to take this as an opportunity to swoop in and OP their own army. Just need to step back and enjoy the game

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
My main issue is i heard they nerfed skaven. If anybody needed a good hard nerf it was vampires or any flavor variety of elves or even nurgle daemons (though improve the other daemons).

So you've heard, but have you actually checked? http://pdf.the-ninth-age.com/pdf/the-ninth-age_The_Vermin_Swarm_1-0-0.pdf

Skaven wasn't an OP book in 8th, but they were hugely unbalanced. They relied hugely on certain units which were very effective and largely ignored a good 70% of their book. 15pt Rat darts were ridiculous, the Doom Rocket was an auto include in any army ever and despite being intended to have a weakness in leadership extremely cheap ranks and Warlords made this a non-issue. So while yes, some of the more stronger (and therefore more commonly used) models have been nerfed the weaker models (therefore the models you aren't likely to own) got brought up to par.

Examples of buffs include being able to shoot into combat with non-template shooting with any of your units instead of just slaves. You have access to a hero level grey seer, along with changes in the core mechanics making running a list without a level 4 an option now. Heck, even the Vermin Lord is viable now, being seen regularly competitively. So sure, maybe your friend is upset because he used to pander to the Skaven meta and now the 'meta' units have been toned down. But you should take a more holistic view to balance rather then just ''they nerfed my units''.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
My main issue is i heard they nerfed skaven. If anybody needed a good hard nerf it was vampires or any flavor variety of elves or even nurgle daemons (though improve the other daemons).

So you've heard, but have you actually checked? http://pdf.the-ninth-age.com/pdf/the-ninth-age_The_Vermin_Swarm_1-0-0.pdf

Skaven wasn't an OP book in 8th, but they were hugely unbalanced. They relied hugely on certain units which were very effective and largely ignored a good 70% of their book. 15pt Rat darts were ridiculous, the Doom Rocket was an auto include in any army ever and despite being intended to have a weakness in leadership extremely cheap ranks and Warlords made this a non-issue. So while yes, some of the more stronger (and therefore more commonly used) models have been nerfed the weaker models (therefore the models you aren't likely to own) got brought up to par.

Examples of buffs include being able to shoot into combat with non-template shooting with any of your units instead of just slaves. You have access to a hero level grey seer, along with changes in the core mechanics making running a list without a level 4 an option now. Heck, even the Vermin Lord is viable now, being seen regularly competitively. So sure, maybe your friend is upset because he used to pander to the Skaven meta and now the 'meta' units have been toned down. But you should take a more holistic view to balance rather then just ''they nerfed my units''.

I realize that for Skaven and it was true in 8th that stuff was either auto-include or don't bother taking. I realize that wasn't interesting but i loved skaven. The dude was saying weapons teams were amazing even though if you fought anybody with the smallest amount of long ranged fire with Line of Sight they'd peg it to death instantly. Seriously it was toughness 3, 1 wound and 5+ armor with a 4+ ward if you were super close to the parent unit. You have got to be kidding me if you think that was super hard to take out. Seriously i'm pretty sure terradon riders could peg one to death easily if they got to you. It's just insulting to hear this sort of crap. Sorry the competitive players at the store had a major skaven hate thing going on so much that at least one refused to play skaven if he could help it and this was in friendly games.

I suppose i'm ok for skaven stuff getting more balanced in that the crap stuff is now good. Back then all our hard hitters were frenzied, low leadership and low initiative or the fact most of the army was painfully strength 3 but people didn't seem to talk about that. Also all the plague spells were super short ranged with no range increases or boosted spells of any kind. Skaven needed an update so bad. It was just crap they never got one before the game died. If i do 8th i gotta grab a stupid 8 page FAQ and if i do 9th i just don't know. It could be good maybe.

I don't understand why you reservations with 8th put a bad light on giving Ninth ago. In fact, you are FAR more likely to get to play games now that the Skaven army has been re-balanced. For me at least the main reason I didn't like fighting Skaven was because it was the same game every single time, the only question was''Is it 2 Abomb 1 cannon, 2 cannon 1 abomb, 2 doomwheels 1 cannon'' and ''how many times will he misfire''. It didn't make for varied games when the core of his army was exactly the same in 80% of the games we played.

Now it's different. The Skaven player has used a block of 12 Rat Ogres and a Bonebreaker. He has used a Vermin Lord. He tried to Plague Monks (however my feral Orc Big un's soon put a stop to that). I entreat you to at least look at the book I've linked you so you can see if they have fixed the issues you had. And then introduce your friends to 9th as well so you can play like the good old days.

Alright i'll give it a shot at some point.

We're just used to 8th is all.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
My main issue is i heard they nerfed skaven. If anybody needed a good hard nerf it was vampires or any flavor variety of elves or even nurgle daemons (though improve the other daemons).

So you've heard, but have you actually checked? http://pdf.the-ninth-age.com/pdf/the-ninth-age_The_Vermin_Swarm_1-0-0.pdf

Skaven wasn't an OP book in 8th, but they were hugely unbalanced.

The thing with Skaven in 8th is how imbalanced their magic was compared to proper 8th edition armybooks.

Casting values especially were laughable (except for 13th).

I found the biggest problem with Skaven magic is since it wasn't updated it didn't have it's spells classified, such as magic missiles and hexes. And that meant, at least to our Skaven player, that he could do things like cast magic missiles when in combat and with a 360 line of sight because the spells weren't classified nothing said he couldn't. That was...grating. He'd run the Grey Seer on a Screaming Bell, and since i played Wood Elves I had no cannons to deal with it, then he'd just chaff me up with extremely cheap 50 man slave blobs that exploded taking my fragile Elves with them.

I also wasn't a fan of the Doomrocket, the guy had the amount of dice down to a science and when I played Orcs he'd hit the middle of my Savage Orc blob without fail. for 25(?) pts it was ridiculous. Not to mention random movement was just obnoxious in 8th, no charge reaction, no possibility break line of sight, basically impossible to chaff up. random movement was just stupid imho.

We also had next to no fast moving units, no cavalry, a toughness 3 model with 1 wound that cost 55-70 pts in the weapons teams (light missile units could kill it) and a good chunk of the army just wasn't that great. Seriously in many ways compare the skaven book to lizardmen. They do just about everything better. They could take any lore, had cold-blooded (strength in numbers was not as good esp. in all situations), had cavalry, had monsters, had flyers, had tougher weapons teams that could move and fire, had better fighting units and lots of options for poisoned and flaming shooting. The only thing skaven have on that is higher initiative, a few war machines and maybe numbers.

Almost all our hard hitters were fragile and low leadership and often frenzied with no benefit from strength in numbers. Also all the hard hitters had crap initiative (4 generally being the highest on the fighters). Our army was painfully strength 3 most of the time so poisoned slings on gutter runners rock until somebody has a flying daemon prince or steam tank and you forgot your cannons or jezzails at home (and given all the negative shooting modifiers those jezzails were only BS 3). Keep in mind if you fought somebody else with cannons they'd just cannon snipe your cannons which could always do it better than the skaven cannons and given it only took a turn or two to do it was massive to us esp. given each cannon was only one per choice instead of 1-2 or 1-3 per choice. You say magic for us is good. I have a question for you. How good is 13th against a heavy cavalry army with high initiative as often happened with wood elves and similar or vs ogres (which it can't even effect)? In the case of ogres we only really had maybe one good spell to use against them and that was initiative test or die type spells like cracks call (and if you had one a brass orb for items). Our rat ogres were also frenzied and if all the packmasters died they'd be stupid as well with low leadership. Not to mention when you do the math these things end up being about as expensive as vargheists which are the same except they fly and have leadership 7 and no packmasters so no stupidity. I mean trolls were stupid but if you kept them close to you they were cheap and had a 4+ regeneration.

Sure your friend or playing buddy may have cheated the rules but unlike him i didn't do everything to the nth level and if a rule was unclear i'd usually not put myself into a situation where that issue would come up. In other words i was as fair with the rules as i could be and played most of the spells as they would normally be with restrictions added. So i never shot warp lightning while in combat and eventually stopped with stuff like plague too or 13th.

Yet i always got crap from everybody for playing skaven or at least the people that played tournaments. Does that sound fair to you? Sides far as i'm concerned most of the game for skaven turned from fighting to let's play 'keep away' and shoot or use spells until one of us dies.

Also i never used the screaming bell much. When like half the armies have cannons it's just idiotic to use a bell. The character on it will die and that's another reason not to put your general on a large target. Funny thing is End Times sort of fixed that with tough big models and combined profiles like with Thanquol on Boneripper. Sadly GW went way out to left field with that crap.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

I also wasn't a fan of the Doomrocket, the guy had the amount of dice down to a science and when I played Orcs he'd hit the middle of my Savage Orc blob without fail. for 25(?) pts it was ridiculous. Not to mention random movement was just obnoxious in 8th, no charge reaction, no possibility break line of sight, basically impossible to chaff up. random movement was just stupid imho.

You're right. I hated how Skaven builds started with a doomrocket and a brass orb engineer you could skitterleap wherever needed.

Skaven......................when an army book has a 9 page FAQ required, its clearly a shoddy product.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Skaven......................when an army book has a 9 page FAQ required, its clearly a shoddy product.

Well it was a 7th edition army book made for an 8th edition game :(. Sides shoddy is how skaven gear is. I'm sure some will say the cheating and blaming faults on others thing makes me a true skaven i guess. Though i never cheated but i'm sure some may claim otherwise (i didn't know the specifics of some rules though). We really needed an 8th edition book. Sadly it's either 7th ed army book in 8th edition with an 8 page FAQ for life or 9th Age. Dunno if 9th is that appealing.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


Dunno if 9th is that appealing.

It is, seriously.

Like 8th edition, but without the OP combos, ambiguous rules and far more balanced.

@Flamingkillamajig

How Skaven were able to compete, for better or for worse, is not the topic of this thread. Your reservations about looking into ninth where because you heard they were nerfed. I tried to alleviate that problem by providing a link to the new rules so you can look yourself and also by giving my limited experience of the army, as one of my friends regularly plays Ninth Vermin Swarms. He is a very competitive player and he is having no problem with how they play in Ninth (apart from his complaint about not having stubborn infantry). He has run a variety of lists, including Verminous Brute horde, duel Vermin Daemon and Plague Brotherhood themed lists.

A plagued brotherhood is a core unit and for 7pts each you get 3 hatred attacks each at I4 T4 and enemy units at -1 Ws. Weapons teams have 2 wounds now. Vermin Hulks are 37pts each and hit like a truck. I4 Str 5 3 attacks each and can choose any 2 of the following traits for *free*; innate Defense (5+), Thunderous Charge, Frenzy & Hatred, Swiftstride, Stomp (2). That means you can have 4 Hatred Str 6 attacks on the charge is you so desire.

I question if you even looked at the link I sent.

Avatars of War announced its support for T9A: Announcement
Everyone registered at the T9A forum can take advantage of a nice deal for Warriors of the Dark Gods.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
@Flamingkillamajig

I question if you even looked at the link I sent.

I'll admit i didn't and i apologize. I just don't know if i want to memorize a new ruleset. When fantasy died i just stopped caring and went to 40k and the only people that play 9th nearby were a lot of the competitive players that constantly whined skaven in 8th were OP. They're the snobby or elitist competitive players so i'm just not sure. I liked the game a lot but i played more casually. I didn't really have the money to go competitively anyway. I heard 9th is competitive and i'm not sure that's my thing either.

Sorry if i ranted. The snobby guy last week really got under my skin.