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9th Age Playtest feedback goes here

Pinktaco
Scar-Veteran

Pinktaco

Vessel of the Old Ones
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Please follow the below when giving feedback on actual games played
  • Size of Game (ppints)
  • Length of Game (time).
  • Player Experience Level
  • Opponent Experience Level
  • # of Game With Current Draft
  • # of Game with Current Draft
  • If you felt game was 'generally balanced' (y/n) If opponent felt game was 'generally balanced' (y/n)
Your full army list including weapon choice (sword or spears on saurus warriors etc) and Path of Magic.

Player/opponent Experience Level:
  • Casual <2 years Experience. Does not participate in tournaments.
  • Intermediate 2-5 years Experience. Sometimes participates in tournaments.
  • Expert 5+ years Experience. Familiar with ETC/Swedish comps. Regularly participates in tournaments.
  • Tournament 5+ years Experience. Places at local tournaments. Experience in ETC or Master's-level tournaments.
Do not post battle reports - use our Battle Report subforum for that.
Give summary of how the game went, who won and why it went the way it went.
Please try and give some feedback on the units you played and why you liked/disliked them.

Thank you for your time :)
 
1000 pts Saurus Ancients vs Sylvian elves (sp?)
About 2.5 hours
Both intermediate
Both our first 1v1 on 9th (we did some team stuff originally)
Both were happy with balance

The elf player was very happy to see his beloved war dancers were buffed. He ended up ruNing a combat list with no magic. I strangely had the more shooty list. The match was interesting, but he got pushed into a corner pretty fast. His main combat block 20x of (wild wood rangers) actually faired pretty well against vanilla saurus, so point for point they were about equal. I don't have many specifics, and we did not try to bring the filth, but for a casual game it was excellent.

New lore of light plays much like the original. Though my ability to roll average values on powe dice still needs a buff.
 
Hehe the powerdice issue :). I must say, and I know it is pretty unbelievable, but I roll better then averedge on 8/10 dice rolls. I can't describe any reason for it but I'm dead serious. Somehow when that magic phase comes, I roll like crap xD.
 
  • Size of Game (ppints) 2400 Saurian ancients 9.2 Vs Dread Elves 9.2
  • Length of Game (time). about 3h
  • Player Experience Level Intermediate
  • Opponent Experience Level Expert
  • If you felt game was 'generally balanced' Yes and Yes.

Saurian ancients get a Major win over the elves!

The game was my first " lets try new things" one, and for the first turns I thought that it would be a massacre over the lizards, very bad luck on the magic fase with my skink priest lvl4, my spinosaur dead by a hunting chariot in one side and in the other a salamander was the needle case for the crossbows, then Mr.T(Rex) charged a unit of warriors kill some, the BSB made them stay, then, not one but two hydras charged over the flank of the dinosaur and I thought that this would be the end for me, but did you know what? decided just to attack the hydras and not the unit and I killed one and let the other with one wound and they made me just two wounds, the next turn was for me and I finished the other one an make flee the unit, in the other hand, my skink priest with the Saurus of the Triceratops god was facing the tower ward with the altar of lust with no luck, but winning time for the Mr.T (Rex) to come back and revenge his death in a challenge with Medusa and the altar, leaving him with just two wound remaining but crushing the altar in return making the game for me.

In summary:

-the T-Rex was Amazing!
-the Spino with champion was cool but killed to fast to see it in action.
-the skink lvl4 was nice, but with my broken fingers chaneling magic, did not had a real impact, aside to heal the wounds on the t rex.
.- the snake plaque was cool.
.- the black cube was not XD.
-the maceosaur spell did not work to much, but the Ws bonus is something that i could not live witout now.
-the saurus with the triceratops mark were better but not op.
- Scrox unit, auto include for me.

In the other hand:

-Hunter Chariots were awersome as hell destroying my skink hunters and shotting STR7 d3W spears at my monsters.
-I felt that her soceress on dark pegassus was controling the magic fase by herselve, dealing a lot of damage.
-In combat that the dreat elves don`t repeat everything in combat as i was used, make them look not so nasty as i remember.
 
  • Size of Game: 2000 pints
  • Length of Game: 6 turns and about 3 hours.
  • Player Experience Level: I don't know, neither one of us have been to tournaments, but have +6 years of experience.

    I would like to start with pointing out that we both found the game balanced, it was probably just some better play and luck from my part, that gave me the win.
Your full army list including weapon choice (sword or spears on saurus warriors etc) and Path of Magic.

Opponents army:

All units had full command

Lords:

Iron orc warboss: plate armor, war boar, shield, bluffer's helmet and Blade os strife

Orc high shaman: lv 4 and Tome of arcane lore
path of the big green god: spell, 0, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Core

20 orc lads: crossbows and heavy armor

30 (possibly 40) Orc brutes

Special

20 Iron orcs : Banner of razors (which he forgot he had bought)

10 boar riders: (guessing a bit here) heavy armor and shields

Giant: 6+ ward save


My army:

All units had full command

Lords:

Sauruan ancient: Flamming aura of the ancients, Triceratops war-spear. riding a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Core:
2X 24 saurian totem warriors
Spawning of the triceratops god

32 skink braves: poisoned attacks
3X Croxisaurs

Special:

Maceosaurus

Rare:

2X Triceratops with giant blowpipes


The game:

I was lucky and shot his Giant in my first shooting fase with only one of the Stegadons giant blowpipes.

His orc brutes massacred my saurus, actually my saurus did horribly all game, my skinks killed more orcs than my saurus, and I am talking close combat here.

I think what won me the game, was my charge against his bora riders, with my tyrannosaurus rx and one of the stegadons. Their impacts hits took out 9 boar riders, so there was only the champion and the warboss left, when the saurian ancient got to attack. That went pretty poorly though and he made two wounds on me, and I two on him, but he lost combat and got run down.

His orc brutes went to town on my saurus and only got beaten because he overran my saurus and ended up 1 inch short of running out of the battlefield, meaning my stegadon could charge him in the rear and beat them in combat and make them flee out of the board.

Overall thoughts:

Nothing seemed broken, or overpowered. We did think taht the Tome of arcane lore is a bit on the pricey side for what it does.
Sure I won and I got a massacre, but that was partly bad luck. The game was balanced, and there were a lot of options in list building.

Saurian ancient on tyrannosaurus rex with the triceratops war-spear. I love that combo, and I have only played him once. Definately something I will try again.
If you look at my list you might notice that I have no magic whatsoever and that worked out fine even though I was up against a lv 4.
The monsters did most of the work (aside from the Bastiladon who died pretty quickly, but how much can you ask with a price of 120?).

The saurus warriors did surprisingly little. As mentioned they were worse than my skinks, the skinks and kroxigors however killed the iron orc unit, with only a handfull of skinks and a single kroxigor dead. the thing to be said here is that e forgot his banner, which would have meant that my kroxigors would have been dead, as he hit them a lot more than the skinks.
 
  • Size of Game: 2000
  • Length of Game: Including setting up the board using the rules provided 3.5 hours.
  • Player Experience Level: Intermediate
  • Opponent Experience Level: Intermediate
  • # of Game With Current Draft: First
  • # of Game with Current Draft: First
  • If you felt game was 'generally balanced' (y) If opponent felt game was 'generally balanced' (y)
LORDS 470
slann 270 FIRE
-master of winds 85
-black cube 50
-Banner of speed 65

HEROES 216
skink preist 60 BEAST
-alpha pterandon 30
skink captain 40
-alpha pterandon 40
-light armor 2
-shield+2 5
-lance 4
-esoteric egg 35

CORE 500
Saurus Warriors 20 210
-HW
-Vanguard 20
-No champ 20
Saurus Warriors 20 210
-HW
-Vanguard 20
-No champ 20

SPECIAL 415
Temple Guard 20 260
-No champ 20
-Relentless Company Banner 15
Chameleons 5 60
Chameleons 5 60

RARE 395
Salamander 70
Salamander 70
Triceratops 175
-Ancient 40
-Engine 40
1996

The Skaven List (summarized)
2x 50 slave blocks
2x 40-50 clanrats
1x 30-40 plague monks
2x rat swarms (min size of 2 models)
2x 5 flail wielding skirmishers (very painful against armor)
1x scout unit
1x ambush unit
1x Warpfire Cannon (The cannons are not that scary anymore)
2x Weapons teams (mortars)
1x Gray Seer
2x Killy rat heroes, 1 in the seer bunker, one with the plague monks.

The LM List:
I really liked the support of the Engine of the Gods with the army. I only used the "Protective Configuration" for the entire game and was able to keep my force within that bubble for most of the game. The fast movement gambit was great, perhaps game winning. The Chameleons dominated the chaff war. Lore of fire is pretty awesome, again probably game winning.
High Priest I would change the load out. I was overreaching and wanted a strong magic phase and strong dispel phase. I think I would have preferred a more defensive style for this match up (Skaven) as my opponent always has a Grey Seer. I would probably keep the cube, but also pick up the Funnel the winds (dispel) and cognitive reassurance. His spells nearly won him the game, but his build was completely reliant on spells.
Alpha Terra chief did little. He had the esoteric egg, which I fluffed. Skaven toxic attacks made short work of his 2+ armor save. He turned out to be an expensive chaff choice.
Priest on Terra, pretty great, though not that necessary with lore of fire. The priest attracted 3 warpfire shots, finally died on the 3rd shot.

The Skaven List:
After the match we talked about it and my opponent felt that lore of fire may have been the best choice against his list. Although I could hardly put a dent in his big blocks, I was able to blow up all of his useful support and chaff units pretty easily/quickly. Apparently the weapons teams are 2d6 str 5, auto hits, definitely would have been bad news for the saurus.
His magic tactic was to use two spells from Skaven Ruin, one which gives 2x frenzy attacks (so 3 in front rank), then another spell that allows all other models to make a supporting attack. His slave blocks put out something like 40-50 attacks when he was all buffed up.

End points were about 950 pts take for the LM, and 450 taken for the Skaven. Match was VERY close, a long grind got down to just the High priest by himself, all TG evaporated, and the rats lost combat and broke on that round. Pretty pivotal.

Only gripes were the game board setup procedure. It is a good system, but as luck would have it, 80% of the terrain ended up on one side of the board. We could have changed it sure, but we wanted to play by the book :D. Perhaps having 1 piece of terrain scatter from each of the 6 board quadrants, then add in d6 additional pieces that you can scatter. As it is now, you can have quadrants with nothing in them.
 
Saurian Ancients Vs Ogre Khans
  • 2500pts
  • 6 turns
  • Tournament
  • Expert
  • 1st
  • 1st
  • Y / Y (with some reservations)
Saurian Ancient
Alpha Carnosaur
Stampede Lance
-1 to hit Shard
Divine Shard

Saurian Veteran
Carnosaur
Taurosar Helm
+1 S Sword
Shield/Light Armor

Skink Chief
Taurosar (Ancient) (Sharpened Horns) (Blowpipes)
BSB
Egg of Quetzl
3x 5pt magic items

35 Saurus (spears) (jaguar) (+1 M standard) (champion and standard)
30 Temple Guard (weapon masters) (Mexoatl standard) (champion and standard)
2x Spearbacks (razor spikes)
2x Swarms
1x Thyroscutus (sun engine)

Overall it felt balanced and that all units were very useful, I was timid about charging into some of the ogre units especially the aurochs, and he was shy about hitting my big blocks of saurus (scarred from 8th edition battles). We did not have magic outside of bound spells this time but we did have a fair amount of terrain although it did nothing to the game. Shooting was effective for me but his sky cannon blew itself up on his 1st turn, I must say that cannons have been nerfed hardcore compared to 8th, he only had a 1/3 chance of even hitting anything when he shot, which meant he was half as likely to misfire as he was to hit anything. I'm quite pleased with that personally, and I feel that armies with engineers will still wreak havok with artillery, but it certainly was a gaping hole in his battle plan from how ogres played in 8th, even if it didn't blow up it wasn't much of a problem.

My shooting took out some wounds on the auroch before it charged my saurus, it killed a ton even with crappy rolling (Man that thing is powerful) but then I took its remaining wounds with all my spear attacks. My carnosaur took out 2 mournfang right away and my alpha carnosaur took out a whole ogre unit, obviously with d3 wounds these matchups favored me but my opponent and I both agreed the power level felt about right for the point costs. The only issue my opponent had was that it was feeling like the age of monsters was back and without artillery to limit them effectively we would not see much infantry, I disagreed and pointed out that it was my core infantry that took out his monster, and we both came to terms with carnosaurs are just really hard for ogres to handle as an army, but their points are were they need to be.

We will be adding magic in with the next game, he will be playing skaven and I will play VC or O&G, after playing through the armies we will then start trying to break things within the rules. With our level of cutthroat win at all costs playing it shouldn't take long for me to report back with items that may need to be adjusted, and from a little back and forth theory hammer with him these are the first.

Jezzail point costs are ridiculously cheap (16 pts for a S6, no long range penalty, -4 to armor save shot)
Skaven spell that allows all ranks to make support attacks (combined with their massive unit allowance and cheap stormvermin cost this is OP, it is the same as saying one 5+ to cast spell grants double frenzy, double additional attacks and double supporting rank attacks to the unit)
Chosen marks are way overpowered (unless you randomize and provide greater variance)
Spearbacks are too cheap (65 points for move and fire, 2D6, BS4, -3 to armor save shots)
Ogre Characters are too cheap (35 pts over saurian lord for +2M, +2W, and heroes are even more ridiculous)
 
what did the ogre list look like?

and by how far did you win?
 
Tyrant with Hellfist
Bruiser BSB
two units of 8 Ogres w/ironfist
unit of 4 mournfang fully kitted out
thundertusk
rock auroch
sky cannon
6 leadbelchers

Almost the whole army had the mark of wrath

I won by a very wide margin, it was certainly a massacre and he conceded before the 6th turn. Basically both flanks were protected by D3 wound causing killing machines and the middle was two full blocks of saurus and guards with a steg and basti between them for support. My only concern was the mournfang and the spearbacks took out two before they even saw combat (At 100pts a piece that made a huge difference). He played well but I definitely out deployed him and got all the match ups I wanted, things could have been different but overall I felt my army was the rock to his scissors, of course magic could change all of this.

Sorry for switching between 8th and 9th names, I don't remember them all yet.
 
Orcs & Goblins VS Vermin Horde
  • 2500pts
  • 6 turns
  • Tournament
  • Expert
  • 1st
  • 1st
  • N / N
Iron Orc Warlord on Wyvern
Seed of Rebirth
Flaming Lance
Dragon Helm
Divine Shard

Iron Orc Chief BSB
Axe of Aporcalypse

Feral Orc Chief
Crystal Ball
AHW of fear

Great Goblin Shaman on Gargantula

40x Feral Eadbashers ch/st/mu with AHW
20x Cave Goblins 3x mad gits
2x Gnasher Wrecker Teams
3x Goblin Chariots
6x Cave Trolls
4x Skewerers
------------------------------------------------------
Vermin Daemon lvl2 wizard with grinding attacks
lvl4
Vermin caster with extra spell
Tyrant on rat ogre with double strength bound spell
Vermin BSB

57x Vermin Guard
50x Vermin Guard
50x Vermin Guard
10x Jezzails
2x Ratling guns
1x Hellpit

I brought a fairly standard build, he wanted to try out magic in a bigger way. It was again a massacre in my favor, my wyvern danced with his hellpit all game until I could charge an engaged big unit, my trolls with feral chief demolished a vermin guard unit, and my gargantula actually killed his lord and most of another vermin guard unit. Jezzails destroyed all 3 chariots in two turns of shooting, skewerers fired all game at his vermin daemon and never wounded, eventually they were all dead, and cave goblins tried to flee but a boxcars roll from his unit caught them. Overall it was a good game, I certainly out deployed him but in the end he didn't have enough high S attacks to do jack crap to my trolls or gargantula which were the main units fighting in the center. We really liked the change in overpowered rules with it not being an auto success, although we felt like the miscast table needed to be more centered around MDU, we suggest two seperate tables, one for 1-3 dice and another for 4+. Magic turned once again into a through all the dice I can at one spell to get it through and hope for the best, dice didn't favor him and there were no tactics he could employ to counter this playstyle, especially with the lack of power dice available to him. Maybe roll 3 dice to determine winds of magic, highest and lowest are power dice and middle is dispel, if left alone magic will continue to underwhelm or hinge on a single spell each phase.

Cave trolls were awesome, hard to kill with S4 attacks, felt about right for points (Cheaper than they should be but balanced in this army). Jezzails were absolutely broken just like we thought, he only brought 10 because we needed to see real world evidence but he didn't want to win with just them, if he had two additional units he would have destroyed me. Gnasher teams were fun as always and I agree with their points, very dangerous if you can't limit them which they should be.

I enjoyed that flying units are no longer 10" movement on the charge across the board, my wyvern failed by 1" because of that and it was superb. The only other thing to note is that unit sizes for orcs are also broken, there is no way I should be able to field 40 eadbashers with all the unit size caps going around, that left my opponent with almost no way to deal with that unit, especially as the change to rules allows me to keep my +1 S attacks past the 1st round of combat.

Items that need to be buffed:
Amount of spells that can be cast reliably each phase

Items that need a nerf bat:
Jezzails (S lowered to 5 and take range penalty)
Feral Eadbashers (unit size reduced to 30)
 
protector said:
We really liked the change in overpowered rules with it not being an auto success, although we felt like the miscast table needed to be more centered around MDU, we suggest two seperate tables, one for 1-3 dice and another for 4+.
Click to expand...

What does MDU mean?
 
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