Real Game Impressions of 9th Ed?

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**Martel732**

The Box-style lists of all melee jump guys flat out don't work in 9th. Since many BA players went out and bought and painted like 40 DC and 25 SG after Box's ITC victories, there is a lot of kicking and screaming over how 9th works.

Also note that all aura in indomitus are by model, not by unit. That's the future, and BA conga lines of doom literally don't function in that future.

**the_scotsman**

Mixzremixzd wrote:
Can you be a bit more specific on what BA players are trying to rebuild? I had a mild interest in them right before the 9th announcement so I'm curious to know why they seem to be kicking and screaming.

I'm guessing basically because of the heavy nerfs to tripointing and multicharges.

9th ed will be a shootier game than 8th ed ITC, unless point changes heavily favor melee units over shooty units.

**Martel732**

And the vehicles shooting in CC. The Box list relied heavily on giving ground vehicles love taps to turn them off.

Old BA players like me remember mech BA and combined arms BA so we were far more reluctant to buy into the late 8th BA meta so heavily. BA are 90% codex compliant, yet many BA players are claiming they will only buy jump pack units and so won't buy the new primaris stuff.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

the_scotsman wrote:
Mixzremixzd wrote:
Can you be a bit more specific on what BA players are trying to rebuild? I had a mild interest in them right before the 9th announcement so I'm curious to know why they seem to be kicking and screaming.

I'm guessing basically because of the heavy nerfs to tripointing and multicharges.

9th ed will be a shootier game than 8th ed ITC, unless point changes heavily favor melee units over shooty units.

I got the opposite impression from the game I played. We both queued up shooting armies, and I at least came to the conclusion that even more so than 8th, close quarters is where it's going to be won.

The terrain changes are a big deal for CQC units, I think, more than vehicles being able to shoot in melee. It's super easy to tag units, and large structures are basically "if I get into the structure, the entire structure is now in melee with me". Forests giving a -1 to hit is another good thing for melee troops.

And vehicles being able to shoot in melee is really like a booby prize that doesn't do anything, since only the vehicle will be able to engage the unit it's in combat with and it can only engage the unit it's in combat with, and can't use blast weapons.... so most vehicle anti-infantry.

**Martel732**

It's actually very powerful against lists like BA. The secondary guns on a russ can kill a lot of DC. On a direct fire variant, it can cripple the squad.

**Galas**

Meele was allready understimated in 8th, when the most competitive armies were all short range shooting ones and meele based ones.

Those shooting castles that gak on the back were not really top-competitive since... nearly all of the edition.

And 9th killed a ton of those "tricks" that made meele work in top tables but also added a ton of more "fair" stuff that benefits them. People will just need to adapt.

I mean, this past sunday I ran a breacher heavy list with stealth suits and crisis farsight bomb tau army agaisnt a 100 guardsmen full artillery list (With double shooting 3 damage basilisk, 2 manticores, pask, 3 tank commanders with relic battle cannon, etc...) on ITC, and when the Imperial Guard player saw that I was CHARGING him he just like, mentally broke, started playing extremely defensive and basically gave me a free win.

**Martel732**

It takes discipline to play normally in the face of charges. The best way to short circuit DC forlorn fury rush is to deploy normally, don't box yourself in, take your losses, wipe the DC, and then move on with the game.

Melee was gak in 8th. Tripoint was godly, as it turned off all shooting with minimal counter play.

**Unusual Suspect**

Martel732 wrote:
The Box-style lists of all melee jump guys flat out don't work in 9th. Since many BA players went out and bought and painted like 40 DC and 25 SG after Box's ITC victories, there is a lot of kicking and screaming over how 9th works.

Also note that all aura in indomitus are by model, not by unit. That's the future, and BA conga lines of doom literally don't function in that future.

They're all "models in [keyword] unit if those units are within X inches of [aurabot]", so they're not actually by model, but by unit.

**Martel732**

Oh, the picture I saw must have had that blurred out. Or, I stopped reading at model. Well, I guess congalines aren't going away. feth.

**yukishiro1**

DarkHound wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you score at the start of the turn, doesn't that then mean that in the final turn of the game the player going second has no chance to recover, as nothing they do will affect the outcome of the objectives that have been scored?
It's sort of a symmetrical effect. The second player can interfere with the first player's objectives on turn 1, which the first player can't reciprocate until turn 2. Then on turn 5, the first player can interfere with the second player's scoring for turn 5, but the second player can't reciprocate. The amount this matters is going to depend a lot on the match-up and strategy. As Yukishiro1 points out, taking the objective first can screen out armies ill-suited to retake them. Some assault oriented armies will have a huge advantage pushing off enemies now in range in the center of the board. Some shooting armies may not have the firepower to dislodge the objective, and will fall behind on tempo.

While neither player can score primaries from their actions on the 5th turn, it is an important time to finish secondaries. Many secondaries score on end of turn and end of game (and sometimes both), so the player going second also cannot be stopped from scoring them.

But this isn't really symmetrical at all, because when player 2 does it, they still have to worry about how their actions with impact their own score for the whole rest of the game. Meanwhile player 1 gets to mess with player 2's objectives on T5 without having to worry about how that will impact their own scoring, because there is no further scoring at the end of the game.

It's true player 2 gets a minor advantage for stuff that scores the end of turn, but I don't think this is enough to overcome the structural advantage player 1 gets on the primaries.

**TangoTwoBravo**

Something I’ve been catching myself on and have seen YouTube players also note is the change to how the reroll strat works. The Chaplain 3+ Litanies are not such a sure thing, for example, and you can’t roll out of a vehicle explosion. Subtle but meaningful and it will likely take me some time to get out of the 8th edition habit.

**yukishiro1**

Vehicle explosions are going to be a huge deal (for everyone except space marines, lol, but that's pretty much a given isn't it?). If you castle vehicles that to D6 wounds near auras, you are just leaving it to chance whether this ends up being that one game in 12 or 18 or 36 (depending whether your aura characters have 4, 5 or 6 wounds) where that explosion just kills your aura character.

Unless, of course, you have a shield that gives you a 4+++ to mortal wounds.

Funny, that.

**Tyel**

yukishiro1 wrote:
Vehicle explosions are going to be a huge deal (for everyone except space marines, lol, but that's pretty much a given isn't it?). If you castle vehicles that to D6 wounds near auras, you are just leaving it to chance whether this ends up being that one game in 12 or 18 or 36 (depending whether your aura characters have 4, 5 or 6 wounds) where that explosion just kills your aura character.

Unless, of course, you have a shield that gives you a 4+++ to mortal wounds.

Funny, that.

Yes. I think its going to be odd - because its not predictable. So for one off games, you probably just laugh about it when it happens.
But if you are running a 6 game tournament, the odds of a game where three vehicles blowup and kill half your army starts to go up. Venom Spam lists risk throwing mortal wounds all over the place.

Overwatch change is desirable - but was really hoping for something like "flamers can always fire overwatch". Kind of feel like they are deadweight now.
Oh well, roll on points reveals.

**Daedalus81**

mlem

**wuestenfux**

the_scotsman wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
One thing to remember at this stage is most people aren't using the updated points for 9th edition (I think the Tabletop Tactics guys did in their games) and from what I've seen most people haven't really adjusted their armies for the new edition. We'll likely see quite a few tactical errors in the first few weeks as people get their heads around the missions, scoring and what types of armies work best so it will be difficult to draw a full picture at the moment.

TT did not. I think everyone has 8th ed points.

Maybe watching those pre-9th-ed games is a waste of time, isn't it?

**Daedalus81**

err nevermind

**PenitentJake**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I just got my first game of 9th in [SW v. SM [RG] @1500]. Here are my insights:

The 5" vertical engagement range was really awkward to use, especially because it's so much larger than the models themselves. It made it really easy to make charges to targets, and made having the high ground a liability more than a benefit. If you have multiple units vertical in a building, one guy charging the bottom unit engages effectively the entire vertical tower without trying any harder. More on that later. -- Big negative.
Overwatch for a stratagem is a waste of time; if it costs a stratagem, it should hit on natural BS. -- eh. basically amounts to "removed overwatch" which is like fine. Net neutral.
The CP/turn was reasonably nice. I used it to effectively get Transhuman Physiology all game. I'm increasingly of the opinion that maybe the starting allocation should be lowered and the amount per turn increased. -- Net Positive.
The terrain rules in general are a mess. Things being infinitely-high columns of providing their effect is A: awkward and B: makes having high ground and setting up in buildings really just a thing not to do, since you can't actually use the height to see over things and for some reason defending the top of an object or a window or a doorway is an active liability in close quarters. We had a lot of terrain of different types and really put it through it's paces, and weren't really satisfied and just found it to be too abstracted and too much of a mess. -- Net negative.
Reduced fight range. This made stringing out our units to hold objective and fight units actually take models out of the fight, so I'd say it's a net positive. It is a little awkward that engagement range is so long but after that it's so short. -- net positive.
We didn't use the horde/blast rules, we were basically all MSU, so we didn't end up with an issue there. -- unknown
We were both Marines and MSU, so Morale is still essentially meaningless. -- negative or unknown
We didn't wind up with any vehicles in close quarters combat. -- unknown.

One thing to note was how much better the game was with fewer points. We played on a regular table, but the opening up of space to play the game in and for units to maneuver and act and have to cover with fewer units really did make the game feel a lot better. I look forward to the cost of units generally going up.

Terrain is what stopped me from trying to play until I have the book. I can't believe that terrain rules were not "core" rules; they totally should be. The fact that they aren't meant that if I wanted to play, I'd have to either use the leak files (which are a disorganized mess) or try to track down all of the terrain details spread out over dozens of Warcom articles.

I was surprise vertical engagement wasn't 3". Typically, 3"= one story. I also though 5 was too much, but it should stop short of the 3rd story of a structure.

If Obscuring and the other trait being infinitely tall are a super issue, I would suggest assigning those traits sparingly. If I recall the exact wording, the 5" height for one of the traits and 3" for the other do not automatically mean the trait must be applied to terrain of that height, only that the terrain must have that height in order to receive that trait.

I can't wait to have ALL of the terrain rules in front of me, in order.

**Nurglitch**

Wait, 9th edition is out already?

**Sarigar**

Nurglitch wrote:
Wait, 9th edition is out already?

Pretty much the entire book (rules, missions, army construction, terrain) were leaked online.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

PenitentJake wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I just got my first game of 9th in [SW v. SM [RG] @1500]. Here are my insights:

The 5" vertical engagement range was really awkward to use, especially because it's so much larger than the models themselves. It made it really easy to make charges to targets, and made having the high ground a liability more than a benefit. If you have multiple units vertical in a building, one guy charging the bottom unit engages effectively the entire vertical tower without trying any harder. More on that later. -- Big negative.
Overwatch for a stratagem is a waste of time; if it costs a stratagem, it should hit on natural BS. -- eh. basically amounts to "removed overwatch" which is like fine. Net neutral.
The CP/turn was reasonably nice. I used it to effectively get Transhuman Physiology all game. I'm increasingly of the opinion that maybe the starting allocation should be lowered and the amount per turn increased. -- Net Positive.
The terrain rules in general are a mess. Things being infinitely-high columns of providing their effect is A: awkward and B: makes having high ground and setting up in buildings really just a thing not to do, since you can't actually use the height to see over things and for some reason defending the top of an object or a window or a doorway is an active liability in close quarters. We had a lot of terrain of different types and really put it through it's paces, and weren't really satisfied and just found it to be too abstracted and too much of a mess. -- Net negative.
Reduced fight range. This made stringing out our units to hold objective and fight units actually take models out of the fight, so I'd say it's a net positive. It is a little awkward that engagement range is so long but after that it's so short. -- net positive.
We didn't use the horde/blast rules, we were basically all MSU, so we didn't end up with an issue there. -- unknown
We were both Marines and MSU, so Morale is still essentially meaningless. -- negative or unknown
We didn't wind up with any vehicles in close quarters combat. -- unknown.

One thing to note was how much better the game was with fewer points. We played on a regular table, but the opening up of space to play the game in and for units to maneuver and act and have to cover with fewer units really did make the game feel a lot better. I look forward to the cost of units generally going up.

Terrain is what stopped me from trying to play until I have the book. I can't believe that terrain rules were not "core" rules; they totally should be. The fact that they aren't meant that if I wanted to play, I'd have to either use the leak files (which are a disorganized mess) or try to track down all of the terrain details spread out over dozens of Warcom articles.

I was surprise vertical engagement wasn't 3". Typically, 3"= one story. I also though 5 was too much, but it should stop short of the 3rd story of a structure.

If Obscuring and the other trait being infinitely tall are a super issue, I would suggest assigning those traits sparingly. If I recall the exact wording, the 5" height for one of the traits and 3" for the other do not automatically mean the trait must be applied to terrain of that height, only that the terrain must have that height in order to receive that trait.

I can't wait to have ALL of the terrain rules in front of me, in order.

We had on our board:
Containers: Light Cover, Scalable, Exposed
Fuel Relays: Defense Line, Light Cover, Heavy Cover, Defensible, Unstable Position, Difficult Ground
Industrial Structures: Scalable, Breachable, Dense Cover, Defensible
Ruins: Scalable, Breachable, Light Cover, Defensible, Obscuring
Forests: Breachable, Dense Cover, Defensible, Difficult Ground

Obscuring means that it's an infinitely tall column on LOS-blocking if it's more than 5" tall, and nothing if it isn't
Dense Cover means that it's an infinitely tall column of -1 to hit at range if it's more than 3" tall, and nothing if it isn't

5", heck, even 3" vertical engagement range is too much. One unit standing on the ground floor and engaging units on the second floor is really awkward.

Since you can fight up floors and stacking up in a tower is bad since it makes you easy to charge/lock, and terrain effects are now either "in the terrain" or "this thing is an infinitely tall column of X for any LoS passing through it", there's no benefit to elevation, and an active detriment to occupying higher floors.

Playing it, it felt like a total mess.

**Arachnofiend**

How exactly do people define "melee army" here? It does seem like trying to charge straight into the enemy's deployment zone is bad, but camping in your deployment zone with artillery also seems bad. All the batreps and playtester discussions I've seen indicate that midrangey stuff that contests the center of the board is what you want in 9th - fast melee units should be pretty capable of disrupting plays if that's the case.

**Martel732**

I'm not saying armies with melee elements will be bad. In fact, pushing units off objectives is probably more important now.

But armies like Box-BA have to put shooting back in the list, imo.

Fall back is still a major middle finger to assault elements, though. I'm probably going majority shooting in my BA lists in 9th.

**Daedalus81**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

5", heck, even 3" vertical engagement range is too much. One unit standing on the ground floor and engaging units on the second floor is really awkward.

Since you can fight up floors and stacking up in a tower is bad since it makes you easy to charge/lock, and terrain effects are now either "in the terrain" or "this thing is an infinitely tall column of X for any LoS passing through it", there's no benefit to elevation, and an active detriment to occupying higher floors.

Playing it, it felt like a total mess.

If it wasn't 5" we'd be back to where we were previously. Sitting on the second floor gets your protection from being charged *if* you bother to occupy the first floor as well. Height can be an advantage for LOS, but will not always be. You might be IN the terrain, but true LOS doesn't stop being applicable.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Arachnofiend wrote:
How exactly do people define "melee army" here? It does seem like trying to charge straight into the enemy's deployment zone is bad, but camping in your deployment zone with artillery also seems bad. All the batreps and playtester discussions I've seen indicate that midrangey stuff that contests the center of the board is what you want in 9th - fast melee units should be pretty capable of disrupting plays if that's the case.

Yes that's the case. Previously when missions focused more on killing melee's only goal was to get to the other side and do as much damage as possible, which obviously didn't always work. Now with people being forced to the middle you'll see denial armies like Death Guard absolutely trounce gun lines who don't have the power to remove models fast enough.

**ERJAK**

wuestenfux wrote:
the_scotsman wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
One thing to remember at this stage is most people aren't using the updated points for 9th edition (I think the Tabletop Tactics guys did in their games) and from what I've seen most people haven't really adjusted their armies for the new edition. We'll likely see quite a few tactical errors in the first few weeks as people get their heads around the missions, scoring and what types of armies work best so it will be difficult to draw a full picture at the moment.

TT did not. I think everyone has 8th ed points.

Maybe watching those pre-9th-ed games is a waste of time, isn't it?

Tabletop tactics did one game with 9th ed points, GSC vs SoB.

GSC were about 1750 in a 2k game. SoB was 1693.

**Spoletta**

Galas wrote:
Meele was allready understimated in 8th, when the most competitive armies were all short range shooting ones and meele based ones.

Those shooting castles that gak on the back were not really top-competitive since... nearly all of the edition.

And 9th killed a ton of those "tricks" that made meele work in top tables but also added a ton of more "fair" stuff that benefits them. People will just need to adapt.

I mean, this past sunday I ran a breacher heavy list with stealth suits and crisis farsight bomb tau army agaisnt a 100 guardsmen full artillery list (With double shooting 3 damage basilisk, 2 manticores, pask, 3 tank commanders with relic battle cannon, etc...) on ITC, and when the Imperial Guard player saw that I was CHARGING him he just like, mentally broke, started playing extremely defensive and basically gave me a free win.

100% this.

Love tapping, tripointing, multi charges... that is not what melee is. Those were some neat tricks that acted as crutches during 8th to make melee work.

9th blasted those away, but at the same time improved on all those things that make melee good.

If the basic premises of melee are doing well, you don't need those crutches.

Melee will always have the upped hand in an objective based game, simply because you can shoot a target off of a point, but you can't move on it in the same turn. Melee can remove you from a point and take it for you at the same time.

You can't make melee work as well as shooting when the only purpose is to kill the opponent. Shooting will always have the advantage when it comes to killing. If you try to make it so that melee is better than shooting at killing, you have to make it OP. Striking a good balance where melee and shooting are well balanced in a kill only scenario, is almost impossible.

9th gives each of them a different purpose. Shooting is good at taking out priority targets, melee is good at taking the objectives.

It can work.

**lord_blackfang**

I watched the first two battreps on GMG and it looked... definitely like 40k. At first glance the shoot/melee balance seemed good on the new tiny table size but maneuvering is all but gone as there's barely any clear ground left after deployment.

The one really irritating thing is how long attack resolution still takes, sometimes for barely any effect. Ork player makes 40 shots, with two different re-roll mechanics interwoven with exploding 6s for probably near 100 dice rolls in total, just for hits. Repeat for wounds. Final tally after what must be 5 minutes straight of rolling dice for just that one unit's shooting... Marine has to make 7 saves and fails 1, taking one wound off a Primaris. Now repeat this 10-15 times every turn. For each side.

That's godawful game design right there.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

5", heck, even 3" vertical engagement range is too much. One unit standing on the ground floor and engaging units on the second floor is really awkward.

Since you can fight up floors and stacking up in a tower is bad since it makes you easy to charge/lock, and terrain effects are now either "in the terrain" or "this thing is an infinitely tall column of X for any LoS passing through it", there's no benefit to elevation, and an active detriment to occupying higher floors.

Playing it, it felt like a total mess.

If it wasn't 5" we'd be back to where we were previously. Sitting on the second floor gets your protection from being charged *if* you bother to occupy the first floor as well. Height can be an advantage for LOS, but will not always be. You might be IN the terrain, but true LOS doesn't stop being applicable.

Honestly, I think where we were was good. Defending higher floors should be generally easy to outright unassailable, because you try fighting melee through a third story window from the first floor. Even if you have a ladder, you can't really fight melee on a latter or while scaling a wall, you need your hands for that.

The only "issue" was that certain large vehicles that were taller than a rifleman couldn't engage objects at the height of their melee weapons, which is a problem that should have been solved on the model's end.

**Ordana**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Daedalus81 wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

5", heck, even 3" vertical engagement range is too much. One unit standing on the ground floor and engaging units on the second floor is really awkward.

Since you can fight up floors and stacking up in a tower is bad since it makes you easy to charge/lock, and terrain effects are now either "in the terrain" or "this thing is an infinitely tall column of X for any LoS passing through it", there's no benefit to elevation, and an active detriment to occupying higher floors.

Playing it, it felt like a total mess.

If it wasn't 5" we'd be back to where we were previously. Sitting on the second floor gets your protection from being charged *if* you bother to occupy the first floor as well. Height can be an advantage for LOS, but will not always be. You might be IN the terrain, but true LOS doesn't stop being applicable.

Honestly, I think where we were was good. Defending higher floors should be generally easy to outright unassailable, because you try fighting melee through a third story window from the first floor. Even if you have a ladder, you can't really fight melee on a latter or while scaling a wall, you need your hands for that.

The only "issue" was that certain large vehicles that were taller than a rifleman couldn't engage objects at the height of their melee weapons, which is a problem that should have been solved on the model's end.

The issue was covering an entire floor meant you were immune to assault. Which is unfun to many players.
This is a simple solution to that problem.

Realism isn't an argument, this is 40k.

**Kitane**

5" feels a bit generous for regular infantry and about right for the monsters, but at the very least it simplifies fight in the vertical direction which was a pile of gak in the 8th.

Even pilling-in is less of an issue now, the 8th edition could end in weird rule freezes when trying to pile-in around nearest enemy model above or below you. Now he is likely in the engagement range and you can shadow punch your way out of the deadlock.

I am happy with the abstraction.

**Latro_**

SN Battle reports have done a few now in 9th:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0puBaPD2eSSAq87lyv7sYg

really like this channel, they go under the radar a bit.