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There are currently many ways to play 9th edition, though it feels like most of them are at least not talked about a lot. GW is almost flooding us with books, so I'm wondering which ones you use in your games and which ones you don't. If you have added homebrew rules, for example a hex-based campaign, pick the game type you based your homebrews on.

Please select all the ways to play you use regularly.

Even though I added an option to vote, third party rulesets and previous editions are explicitly off topic for this thread, please use one of the threads on those topics to discuss them with like-minded dakkanauts.

Well, matched play only in the gaming club.
Players are absolutely positive about the new edition.

Open War cards would have been a good option as well.
They also work well with matched rules.

Matched play twice a week.

Crusade isn't the whole of non-competetive gaming, though. I use the BRB but freely utilize missions from 8th CA's, White Dwarf, homebrews and whatnots.

Narrative as a wider umbrella is the best, y'all.

We have a small gaming group, usually three of us or so per game night. So we like to play FFA games of 40k at 500 points. We are currently experimenting with some homebrew rule mods as our general consensus is that IGOUGO is really no longer a workable system without significant modifications.

One of those is using the apocalypse rule set damage application (at the end of the turn). Funnily enough 40k is now so lethal that the apocalypse rules work pretty good for it!

As much as we like the idea of a 2000 point match, it is just such a belaboured chore moving all the models around and going through the litany of weapons etc etc. Its hard to keep everyone engaged.

Personally I am very much looking forward to the Old World as I don't find "mass war" games very interesting without movement trays to help shift forces around the table.

Crusade and assorted books here.

Everybody should give those crusade missions a try even if you don't want to play with crusade rules.

It adds a lot of variety to the game.

Matched Play (BRB) and GT21 exclusively.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Open War cards would have been a good option as well.
They also work well with matched rules.

I wasn't aware they released another set for 9th, I'm still using the old ones. I didn't add them because they aren't really 9th edition.


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 Sherrypie wrote:
Crusade isn't the whole of non-competetive gaming, though. I use the BRB but freely utilize missions from 8th CA's, White Dwarf, homebrews and whatnots.

Narrative as a wider umbrella is the best, y'all.

Well, you are still using one of the game modes as a base for your gaming, right? Most likely it's either open play with points or matched play with different missions.


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a_typical_hero wrote:
Crusade and assorted books here.

Everybody should give those crusade missions a try even if you don't want to play with crusade rules.

It adds a lot of variety to the game.

Agree. Especially agendas add a lot IMO, since you are often forced to decide between winning the current mission or archiving agendas.

Why would Grand Tournament 2020/2021 be a separate way of playing? Aren't they just updates for the regular rules?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why would Grand Tournament 2020/2021 be a separate way of playing? Aren't they just updates for the regular rules?

The GT mission pack has different rules, secondaries and missions from matched play. GT2021 updates GT2020, but GT2020 doesn't update matched play. Instead it is a stand-alone game mode for competitive gaming.

Open play.

So far I've mostly played the GT missions.
That said I voted that I don't play 9th edition because I have done nothing but struggle with this edition and can't get enough games in frequent enough to get good.
I know other editions like the back of my hand and this has been completely frustrating. I'm really only in it because I enjoy painting models now and enjoy at the very least rolling dice with friends. The rules aren't bad that are some other aspects I am not enjoying and continue to struggle with. I'm still looking for a way to make even these social games more of a competition for my opponents/friends. I know that they still expect me to be able to play at their level but it's just not happening.
My armies are looking amazing, so there's that.

 Jidmah wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why would Grand Tournament 2020/2021 be a separate way of playing? Aren't they just updates for the regular rules?

The GT mission pack has different rules, secondaries and missions from matched play. GT2021 updates GT2020, but GT2020 doesn't update matched play. Instead it is a stand-alone game mode for competitive gaming.

This. Everyone locally plays GT mission packs for matched play, since that is what is used for all the tournaments, and that just trickles down.

Maybe it's just my Blood Angel Crusade rules, but I found Agendas to be completely uninspired. "Kill stuff in melee". K, was gonna do that anyway. "Get a Death Company unit killed". K, that happens anyway. "Visit every objective marker on the map with a Sanguinary Priest". No thanks, huge ball ache, ties up an expensive character, and gives roughly the same payout as getting my Deathcompany killed.

I quite like Open War, nice mission variety and simpler than proper matched play scenarios.

 Sasori wrote:
This. Everyone locally plays GT mission packs for matched play, since that is what is used for all the tournaments, and that just trickles down.

We have actually moved to the GT missions because they feel a lot more fair than the regular matched play ones. Some of the matched play ones really give massive advantages to the person going first and people weren't a big fan of that, and better secondaries also were a reason.


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
Maybe it's just my Blood Angel Crusade rules, but I found Agendas to be completely uninspired. "Kill stuff in melee". K, was gonna do that anyway. "Get a Death Company unit killed". K, that happens anyway. "Visit every objective marker on the map with a Sanguinary Priest". No thanks, huge ball ache, ties up an expensive character, and gives roughly the same payout as getting my Deathcompany killed.

I quite like Open War, nice mission variety and simpler than proper matched play scenarios.

When we play crusade, we usually chose our agendas based on "what would the character/unit do". IMO crusade really falls apart when you approach it with a competitive mindset.

Is there a big difference between 8th and 9th edition's open war?

Matched Play and GT2021 here (usually the second but not always).

Feel like a Crusade will happen at some point but no one seems motivated to get it off the ground.

 Jidmah wrote:
Is there a big difference between 8th and 9th edition's open war?

From what people told me, there are differences, but not all that many.

Crusade / narrative mainly, with additional mission Packs or our own scenarios. matched when we don't have time for something more interesting. Nobody owns the Grand Tournament rules here because tournament play is irrelevant.

Mostly CA2021 but I would love to try crusade... Its a tricky ask to get it off the ground it seems

90% of my 9th ed play has been Crusade (with stuff from all other sources mixed in + the stuff below).

The other 10%? (Technically) Open - it's just that our "Open" tends to look like matched play with a few house rules.
*We ignore the extra coherency rules for larger units.
*We ignore vehicles not being allowed in buildings - this is determined by the actual terrain piece/vehicle & common sense, not blanket fiat.
*We count the height of terrain based on the actual part of terrain in question atm.
*We allow Legends etc.
*Minis: GW, 3rd party, 3d printed.... This ain't a GW tourney, so what's the difference?
**There is no +10vp for painted armies.

Split in club currently between the tourney players (play 2000 point GT games) and the crusade players (25-50 power, crusade campaign rules).

Exclusively GT. Eventually I'll do some Crusade when the kid is old enough.

Matched play, mainly through GT 2021 rules, though with my Ork codex released and my opponent's SoB being updated, we're considering going towards Crusade.

 Jidmah wrote:


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
Maybe it's just my Blood Angel Crusade rules, but I found Agendas to be completely uninspired. "Kill stuff in melee". K, was gonna do that anyway. "Get a Death Company unit killed". K, that happens anyway. "Visit every objective marker on the map with a Sanguinary Priest". No thanks, huge ball ache, ties up an expensive character, and gives roughly the same payout as getting my Deathcompany killed.

I quite like Open War, nice mission variety and simpler than proper matched play scenarios.

When we play crusade, we usually chose our agendas based on "what would the character/unit do". IMO crusade really falls apart when you approach it with a competitive mindset.

If the campaign uses persistent maps, objective markers visited by Sanguinary Priests could become blessed and gain the Inspiring trait for the remainder of the battle and maintain it throughout the campaign by preventing enemies from defiling the sites.

Also, great in-game story connections with the Relic requisition.

If you don't pick Valor of the angels and yeet your champions at the biggest baddest MF there is on the other side of the battlefield to either come out on top or die a glorious death (yet again), are you even a son of Sanguinis?

I played some Matched Play, some with GT scenarios, and some Crusade games, until I got tired of the game ending with me getting casually tabled and then told "yeah, well, if you bought different models you could do something other than sitting around and getting beaten on," so I quit. I still don't really know if the game is as badly balanced as it seems to me or if the people I was playing with were just donkey-caves lying to me about what a "soft list" was, but I know it's no fun and I find a lot of the excessive abstraction irritating across a wide range of formats.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I played some Matched Play, some with GT scenarios, and some Crusade games, until I got tired of the game ending with me getting casually tabled and then told "yeah, well, if you bought different models you could do something other than sitting around and getting beaten on," so I quit. I still don't really know if the game is as badly balanced as it seems to me or if the people I was playing with were just donkey-caves lying to me about what a "soft list" was, but I know it's no fun and I find a lot of the excessive abstraction irritating across a wide range of formats.

If their actual, literal response to you not having fun was, "You need to buy different models to have fun," they were donkey caves. Full stop.

 Octopoid wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I played some Matched Play, some with GT scenarios, and some Crusade games, until I got tired of the game ending with me getting casually tabled and then told "yeah, well, if you bought different models you could do something other than sitting around and getting beaten on," so I quit. I still don't really know if the game is as badly balanced as it seems to me or if the people I was playing with were just donkey-caves lying to me about what a "soft list" was, but I know it's no fun and I find a lot of the excessive abstraction irritating across a wide range of formats.

If their actual, literal response to you not having fun was, "You need to buy different models to have fun," they were donkey caves. Full stop.

Agreed, but he also has some fringe and abused armies that don't make things easier on him.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I played some Matched Play, some with GT scenarios, and some Crusade games, until I got tired of the game ending with me getting casually tabled and then told "yeah, well, if you bought different models you could do something other than sitting around and getting beaten on," so I quit. I still don't really know if the game is as badly balanced as it seems to me or if the people I was playing with were just donkey-caves lying to me about what a "soft list" was, but I know it's no fun and I find a lot of the excessive abstraction irritating across a wide range of formats.

If their actual, literal response to you not having fun was, "You need to buy different models to have fun," they were donkey caves. Full stop.

Agreed, but he also has some fringe and abused armies that don't make things easier on him.

That's as may be, and I'm not saying he should come back to 40K if he's not enjoying himself. Just, "Screw you, git gud, scrub" should have been replaced by, "Here, let me tailor my army down a little bit and give some pointers to help work with what you've got."