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So we've had the full rules on the street for about a month with the chance to have some real games as well as more battle reports coming out on various sites. I've been lucky enough to have about a dozen real games under matched play conditions, including a one-day local tournament yesterday. I've enjoyed the 9th Edition experience so far - its got much of the stuff I liked about 8th Edition while fixing some of the weird things.

The big impactful changes for me are terrain rules, the missions and list/CP construction. More subtle but still significant are vehicles not having a penalty to moving and shooting heavy weapons, Look Out Sir (whatever it is this week) and the change to the Reroll stratagem. My experience thus far is that manoeuvre is important, durability is vital, and there is more than one path to victory in Matched Play.

Manoeuvre. It only takes four or five decent pieces of Obscuring Terrain to make a static gunline somewhat irrelevant. Vehicles being able to move and shoot freely encourages them to, well, move and shoot. The missions pretty much demand that you come out and dominate the midfield. Castling up might get some kills, but it pretty much gives away the game to the opponent if he is willing to take it.

Durability. It has always been good to have units that are durable/resilient, but being able to dominate the midfield is much more achievable if you have durable units, especially ones with Obsec. Nurglings can be game winners.

Missions/Paths to Victory. The missions in 8th Edition got better along the way, but they were still wonky and often only two ways to victory - rack up the primaries or table your opponent. The 9th Ed Secondary Objectives, though, and the overall scoring mechanism means that you can find other paths to victory when considering your list, your opponent's list and the mission. I like that even if winning the game looks unlikely, I can still find ways to claw some Victory Points and salvage some honour through Secondary Objectives. The way the Primary is scored to a max of 45 also means that you can either try to rack up early points or absorb an offensive and punch back. I think its better to try and rack up early VPs, but sometimes that not viable based on what the enemy has brought compared to you. The CA19 missions meant that you had to start scoring early or you couldn't catch up. At our 1500 point tourney all my games went to 5 rounds in under 2 hours. I felt "in the game" even for the match that I knew I was losing by the end of Turn 1 because I could use my choice of Secondaries to get a "respectable" score.

The tourney was kept at 14 players due to social distancing rules, but it was still a great way to see how 9th behaves. Slaneesh Demons took 1st and 2nd place with Dark Angels in 3rd. The top lists each had three Keepers of Secrets and Shalaxi Helbane. Those big monsters could get onto the midfield and cause havoc right away while big blobs of demons could hold objectives. The tourney restricted Lords of War, so take all this with a grain of salt.

So those are my amateur player impressions. What are yours?

I've just played a couple games, but I overall like it better than 8th. As you say, secondaries make the games really fun and different to each other... while the change in movement and board size make it more exciting and action based.

The main problem I have is that I don't have rules for my army inside this new context and I'll probably won't have them for a while.
It's a little frustrating for me not being able to make lists with updated rules while there's people that can, so I'll probably play casually with some friends until I can have fun with the full game.

None yet. Haven't gotten any 40k 9e games in yet.

for me its been much better than 8th so far. The missions barely having a "kill" element means that you get to play the game and have a good shot at it even if youre getting decimated.

The new listbuilding offers much more freedom than the one in 8th, im still sad for losing the supreme command detachment tho.

Durable units actually being worth their points does feel awesome

I am loving 9th ed so far. I have played a good amount of games so far and played in two small local events. The mission packet in CA2020 really encourages the game to end up being a brawl in the center which makes many of the local players happy.

I'm 10 games in.

1) The movement phase is the most important phase.
2) It is dead easy to overspend your CP early and with units lasting longer due to other changes you want CP late game.
3) Secondaries need some tweaking, but the concepts are good.
4) Having bodies and a good number of drops is important
5) It's fun


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Denegaar wrote:

It's a little frustrating for me not being able to make lists with updated rules while there's people that can, so I'll probably play casually with some friends until I can have fun with the full game.

Nobody can really do that right now. And the dynamic isn't much different than when people waited for point tweaks. You just make use of what works.

The ruleset seems nice but the janky, clearly unplanned points cost changes across the board + completely arbitrary marine super-buffs (imagine taking the faction that is already in the top tier of the game and giving them across the board 100% increases to durability) make me not really interested in playing it. When 9th has matured and every faction is on an equal playing field, I'll have more passion for it.

Currently I have no venues to play at with opponents due to world events, and coupled with the hamfisted points changes and apparent beta state of the rules (with several post-release updates), getting in any 9E games hasn't really been an option or priority. When things turn around, I'll be interested to see how the new missions and LoS rules alter things from 8th, but it may be a while.

The base ruleset seems to be an improvement on 8th overall. That said, the ~58-60% win rate observed so far for both competitive and non-competitive play for going first is much too large, the secondaries are not well balanced, and the points and balance between factions are pretty terrible.

So basically one step forward on the broader picture, two steps back on the details. Though hopefully the steps back will be easier to correct than the step forward is to take away.

I do not and will not play 9th but there are players at my FLGS who do, and from watching how their games go. 2 things that stand out-
.the games are incredibly dragged out by all the phases combined with the stratagems (or maybe because one of the main players is necrons who get back up constantly)
.there is a level of over complexity (not needed) compared to previous editions like when i play 5th.

Got my first game in yesterday.

1Kpts, trukkboy orks with some supporting wagon meganobs vs farsight breacher tau with supporting ghostkeels and commanders.

Mobility is powerful, so ork's ability to move, advance and charge is useful. And positioning and charge order can make massive differences between dying to tau overwatch or making it in. Not new but it feels even more impactful. Tagging units in combat with trukks feels good in the new edition. So transports will likely be fairly worth it for their utility alone.

Secondaries very much feels like ITC, different flavor, same concept. Some are good, some are meh, one or two feel like traps.

But this was Xenos Vs Xenos, so Xenos vs Imperium may not feel as engaging.

Overall vibe is that things are much more close range and intimate.

Can't speak for the missions and secondaries as me and my opponents have more fun making up narrative and scenarios and playing around those.
From the playing side of things, I'm really enjoying it. The biggest plus has been the change to overwatch. Letting it only be a stratagem has given it a more thoughtful place and given my friends daemon army an actual chance at doing what it's meant to do.

I'm still not a fan of the rules.

However the mission design is significantly advanced compared to 8th edition, and makes for a much better game. It's significantly more tactical than 8th's 'Throw dice till people die.'

Assuming you have scenery, of course.

5 games in, terrain still does nothing in my experience. Being limited to infantry beasts and swarms means any terrain which is not dense either blocks LOS or does nothing.

4 of the games were matched play. Turns out my dislike for choosing secondaries wasn't just due to being 3rd party rules.

1 game was essentially matched play using a narrative mission (the relic) this was by far the most fun I've had in 9th to date.

Dreadnoughts are great now.

Its better than 8th, but still same imbalances between armies. Over all i like it more, but damn you need to make sure terrain is on point for castle armies are even more OP.

I've only had one 500 point game, got it in yesterday. It seemed fun. The terrain rules didn't really line up well with the terrain we had. We're going to need to put our stuff on bases I think. Other than that and a couple hiccups about the fight phase changes, it was fine.

I've got a couple of games in, and I would say my initial impressions are pretty much in line with my current impressions.

The missions are good having largely dropped unit destruction from the primaries and focusing on holding positions, but the secondaries are way too MEQ centric, especially with the equivalent of Reaper and Big Game Hunter being on different tracks. It's pretty easy to max secondaries against horde-like armies like Tyranids and Guard, but against Space Marine type armies with a small number of units with a small number of elite models you'll be lucky to take half on many of them. And that's before coming to the whole problem of Guardsmen and Gaunts and Boyz actually not being particularly great at holding the objectives in the first place compared to Space Marine units and the overwhelming power of CQC.

The terrain is really janky, but it's a good start. I really don't like the 5" vertical distance engagement range, even though I've been pretty much the only person abusing it in the games I've played. It's just stupid for infantry sized models to melee up and down floors. I get that it was done for big models like Knights and Carnifexes and Dreadnoughts, but this really should have been solved by making those models specifically able to fight up floors and leaving things like Guardsmen and Wolf Lords and Canonesses only able to fight people on their floor. Somewhat notably, it's really abusable, since it can be used to cut a few inches off the out-of-deep-strike charge if you're clever and they're not.

Then there's the infinite columns of terrain [and terrain less than 5" tall effectively being a nothing]; Obscuring and Dense Cover really should have the height of the actual terrain piece as a limit for how far up their effect extends.

Blast is IMO a big nothing-burger. The effect on units 5-10 is basically a was mathematically, and I'm pretty much unconcerned about it. The effect on major horde units can be severe, but only really in edge cases where a bunch of D6 are being rolled. It's mostly a nerf to the tanks that have it by preventing them from using their guns in CQC, speaking of which... is also a little awkward because it varies from "very good" on some platforms, like asscannon razorbacks, to essentially pointless on others even when it's allowed, like lascannon rasorbacks.

That said, I really do like that tanks can move and fire without penalty, since it makes vehicles a mobile combat element again. Now if they could just actually fix the power of the Vanquisher and the Railcannon.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Then there's the infinite columns of terrain [and terrain less than 5" tall effectively being a nothing]; Obscuring and Dense Cover really should have the height of the actual terrain piece as a limit for how far up their effect extends.

I like the infinite column more. No guessing about if I'm hidden or not from that angle.

The core rules changes are overshadowed for me by the fact that we're running on badly-balanced army books out of 8e.

Greatly enjoying the game.
My local observations are as follows:

- I can't see a trend in the "whoever goes first has a bigger chance to win" yet.
- Being able to move around the table and get onto objectives (in the middle and your opponent's deployment zone) is vital.
- Taking minimal troop choices to stay on your backfield objectives will get them shot / assaulted off by turn 2
- In the same way, not being able to reliably threat minimal backfield objective holders will put you behind in points pretty quick.
- We are still not putting enough terrain on the table.

Played 8 games in 9th. Like it a lot more then 8th. I like the secondaries, even if they give easy points for some armies when playing vs my army, because I can finaly do stuff, unlike in 8th, where it felt I was only rolling dice to save.

Smaller boards and reserves for everyone make the games sometimes end up with a huge melee around 1-2 objectives, depending on the mission.

Going first is a HUGE adventage IMO. You get to swarm objectives first, you get to start claims stuff first, and the person going last practicaly plays with one turn less, because going second means last round of turn 5th doesn't matter much, unless you are trying to kill something like a third titan or the last unit from IWSWF. MSU is good, transports that are cheap are good, Inv on them are even better.

The amount of good rules mean there are a lot of armies that are using different units and different strategies. Eldar don't have their flyer list, which is a very good thing. And people, at least localy, don't play 300 model horde armies, so there are no 40 min rounds just to play time.

9th feels nice and fun to play, and I hope GW is not going to break it with new supplements or codex.

Played three times lost all three was blasted off the table by marine opponent worst most unbalanced edition yet necrons have absolutely no hope. My lychguard strong army is over costed by at least 50% games a joke.

I'm about 12~ games in. 6 of which are matched, rest being crusade games.

The same as you, the biggest changes I've noticed are in how lists are constructed, and how you win.

I really like the change to detachments and to CP as a whole (including that CP reroll change). It makes list building far more interesting than in 8th. Granted it doesn't completely stop cheese, but it does make normal lists have to be far more carefully built- especially with HQ and heavy slots.

Missions are simply fantastic imo- secondaries can be a little one-sided as they often let you gain the advantage if you're already winning- but this then comes down to who's picked and played their objectives better. I had a match yesterday that ended 69 points to 70. Crazy close, was massively enjoyable.

This change to missions obviously changed how to play to win which I really like. As someone else said here, the movement phase is now the most important phase. As if positioning wasn't already important, holding the midboard and reinforcing ground is now impossible to ignore which really promotes the way I prefer to play.

It does have some major problems, terrain is better but still janky/not enough(although I need more terrain so maybe it's just that), and the hamfisted point changes are .... Disappointing. They aren't thatt bad, in a lot of factions now just have different things that are the best/most efficient. But my dark eldar really really got screwed over, as did a lot of xenos... punishment for being filthy xenos I guess.


It's a lot of fun, excited to see where this edition goes.

I like the new terrain rules, don't mind the missions, and generally dislike everything else that's been changed with 9th. Of the games I've played so far, 7 were good games, and 4 were just lame blowouts where the winner was decided by the first turn roll mostly.

The missions are everything good and everything bad about ITC, because they are, effectively, ITC. As someone who only played those missions willingly when my opponent was too elitist to sully themselves with the horrid rules from the rulebook, I'm not super jazzed about the prospect of playing a carbon copy of that throughout the edition. It's got all the same issues: Rules designed to penalize a particular competitive build setup end up penalizing units that are utterly inoffensive super crazy hard, half the secondaries are trash you'd never take, and the primary is essentially always the exact same, so you can basically tailor your list to score the same set every single time and nothing ever changes.

The terrain rules are overall just...not enough. I really really REALLY wish light and heavy cover were not limited to Infantry Swarms and Beasts, and I wish dense was 1/2 or more models instead of "1 model out you don't get it". At the end of the day it's just another 8th ed terrain ruleset, just slightly improved.

And to make matters worse, from the leaks GW is still on their bs, with every Space Marine datasheet (Currently the single strongest army) getting a delicate massage, artisanally crafted handy and chef's kiss on every feature and every item of wargear while all the necron datasheet (currently the single weakest army) is just like

"EY BOSS U WANT US TO FIX DIS WEPPIN THAT COSTS LIKE 170PTS AND IT CAN ROLL A 1 FOR SHOTS AND A 1 FOR DAMAGE?"

"NAAAAAH DATS FINE IN FACT WHY DONT WE JUST GO HEAD AND MAKE DAT NEW MODEL DE EXACT SAME FING DAT WAY PEOPLE CAN JUST DECIDE WHICH MODEL DEY LIKES DA LOOKS OF MORE."

(doomsday ark/new tripod thingy that is just a doomsday ark but more different)

Marines ~30ppm elite unit: +1W, 4 melee options redesigned, defensive wargear redesigned, 2 ranged weapon options redesigned

Necrons ~30ppm elite unit: Eh, I dunno, +1A? Is that anything?

I miss the tactical depth and requirement to think on your feet demanded by Maelstrom formats.

It clearly has the more dumbed-down ITC-style feel to it, but I guess that makes the game more accessible and less challenging for a broader audience.

For me, I'm not the biggest fan of the secondaries because they tend to really help some armies over others without much in the way of reason for it. But generally, I would say that I'm a bit positive.

 Dolnikan wrote:
For me, I'm not the biggest fan of the secondaries because they tend to really help some armies over others without much in the way of reason for it. But generally, I would say that I'm a bit positive.

Yeah. God help you if you have 3x CHARACTER keyword psyker models in your army...regardless of whether you have any choice (daemons, thousand sons, tyranids) or whether those models are in any way powerful compared to other options (Guard, inquisition, marines) because apparently, 3x character keyword psykers is the OP abusive skew list GW wants to punish more than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE and will make you lose TWENTY SEVEN OUT OF FORTY FIVE SECONDARY POINTS for getting those 3 fething models killed.

Weirdly, we have secondaries for spamming vehicles/monsters, spamming characters, spamming titanic units, and spamming hordes, but I keep running into opponents that spam these 20-30ppm mid-toughness good save elite units and that's like 90% of their army composition is that kind of defensive profile, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of secondary objective for punishing an opponent that spams those....hmmmm....I mean, we've got a secondary objective that makes each 45pt Deffcopta in my list worth 2VPs, and the one that makes each Astropath in my buddy's list worth 5VPs, where's the one where you get 1vp for each MEQ you kill?

the_scotsman wrote:

 Dolnikan wrote:
For me, I'm not the biggest fan of the secondaries because they tend to really help some armies over others without much in the way of reason for it. But generally, I would say that I'm a bit positive.

Yeah. God help you if you have 3x CHARACTER keyword psyker models in your army...regardless of whether you have any choice (daemons, thousand sons, tyranids) or whether those models are in any way powerful compared to other options (Guard, inquisition, marines) because apparently, 3x character keyword psykers is the OP abusive skew list GW wants to punish more than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE and will make you lose TWENTY SEVEN OUT OF FORTY FIVE SECONDARY POINTS for getting those 3 fething models killed.

Weirdly, we have secondaries for spamming vehicles/monsters, spamming characters, spamming titanic units, and spamming hordes, but I keep running into opponents that spam these 20-30ppm mid-toughness good save elite units and that's like 90% of their army composition is that kind of defensive profile, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of secondary objective for punishing an opponent that spams those....hmmmm....I mean, we've got a secondary objective that makes each 45pt Deffcopta in my list worth 2VPs, and the one that makes each Astropath in my buddy's list worth 5VPs, where's the one where you get 1vp for each MEQ you kill?

Absolutely. And don't even begin about nonsense like Attrition, which some armies almost automatically give up. Or, of course, Thin Their Ranks against some armies that are practically incapable of not building in such a way that they easily give that up to enemies.

But, there is this category of armies that indeed seems completely safe from secondaries. And it's always hilarious when characters that are worth less than some of the unit members in those armies give up way more in the way of points.

the_scotsman wrote:
I like the new terrain rules, don't mind the missions, and generally dislike everything else that's been changed with 9th. Of the games I've played so far, 7 were good games, and 4 were just lame blowouts where the winner was decided by the first turn roll mostly.

The missions are everything good and everything bad about ITC, because they are, effectively, ITC. As someone who only played those missions willingly when my opponent was too elitist to sully themselves with the horrid rules from the rulebook, I'm not super jazzed about the prospect of playing a carbon copy of that throughout the edition. It's got all the same issues: Rules designed to penalize a particular competitive build setup end up penalizing units that are utterly inoffensive super crazy hard, half the secondaries are trash you'd never take, and the primary is essentially always the exact same, so you can basically tailor your list to score the same set every single time and nothing ever changes.

The terrain rules are overall just...not enough. I really really REALLY wish light and heavy cover were not limited to Infantry Swarms and Beasts, and I wish dense was 1/2 or more models instead of "1 model out you don't get it". At the end of the day it's just another 8th ed terrain ruleset, just slightly improved.

And to make matters worse, from the leaks GW is still on their bs, with every Space Marine datasheet (Currently the single strongest army) getting a delicate massage, artisanally crafted handy and chef's kiss on every feature and every item of wargear while all the necron datasheet (currently the single weakest army) is just like

"EY BOSS U WANT US TO FIX DIS WEPPIN THAT COSTS LIKE 170PTS AND IT CAN ROLL A 1 FOR SHOTS AND A 1 FOR DAMAGE?"

"NAAAAAH DATS FINE IN FACT WHY DONT WE JUST GO HEAD AND MAKE DAT NEW MODEL DE EXACT SAME FING DAT WAY PEOPLE CAN JUST DECIDE WHICH MODEL DEY LIKES DA LOOKS OF MORE."

(doomsday ark/new tripod thingy that is just a doomsday ark but more different)

Marines ~30ppm elite unit: +1W, 4 melee options redesigned, defensive wargear redesigned, 2 ranged weapon options redesigned

Necrons ~30ppm elite unit: Eh, I dunno, +1A? Is that anything?

Well, the praetorians already had as many attacks and more wounds than a vanguard vet and also gained damage on their melee and ranged weapons. Seems fair?

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???