Warhammer-Empire.com
The Empire at War ... The Gamers Guild => Other Fantasy Games ... => Topic started by: Warlord on March 08, 2018, 05:01:42 AM
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So I read on and off various threads on the T9A forum, and it just feels like the creators resent their players?
I have seen plenty of topics where people are asking for simple considerations, to which the creators often just shout down or say too bad because of xyz.
I also find it weird they insist that the game is different from Warhammer, and that you cant even mention it, but they insist on applying the same tropes. One example was that one of the creators said Vampires shouldn’t have missile weapons and Dwarves can’t have cavalry. Why? The reason for that is Warhammer. If you are free from its influence, be free?
I don’t know, it just feels pretty toxic to be honest. Any thoughts from those who partake in T9A?
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My feelings exactly.
It all changed in October-November 2016 with the badly communicated change of approach & goals of the 1.2 edition. They had to endure a real shitstorm, but it didn't make them wiser, more open, listening to the public. Instead they became protective and stubborn of their vision, and covered their policy with IP legal talk which I personally do not believe is relevant. They're like still reeling from the shock that not everyone likes their game.
I think the creators really have become better in game design and writing, but not in management or communication. And it's still blatantly Warhammer with a twist rather than its own independent product. Still, their version of Warhammer has its merits, especially compared to the balance problems of the 8th edition. And it's THE tournament fantasy battle game played in the more competitive scene, so a highly successful legacy game.
-Z
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Hmmm.
That has been a while ago now... they need to refresh that attitude instead of becoming more bitter. It certainly doesn’t make me interested to invest time in the game. I was playing wait and see to determine if it would be worthwhile and interesting, but from what I see of their ‘ASAW’ approach it looks like they are removing the interesting.
I feel like the way they are going though, its only going to be a tournament game, and that doesn’t seem to me to be the way to attract and keep players. Though time will tell I guess.
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The reason for that is Warhammer. If you are free from its influence, be free?
This has always been my biggest qualm about the 9th age, particularly when the names went from a wink nudge safety net to totally serious. One of the biggest flaws I thought of late Warhammer games design was an over reliance on making armies tick certain boxes. The feel became more like how many classic RTS games went about it, say the Command and Conquer series, which long insisted that one faction would be good at one thing and the other another, though some tactical overlap would exist. I does feel very 'organic' if you are going to bother with a bunch of background fluff nor does it help gameplay. Dwarfs not having anything really meaningful to do in the magic phase or Vampires and Chaos Warriors nothing in the shooting was not really something that needed to be further hardened into the system, by my mind, but something that needed to be remedied.
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What Zygmund talks about is when they made a game design decision for T9A to be its own thing, rather than a fixed Warhammer 8th edition in all but name. The stated reason for it? Warhammer Total War. The Old World no longer was an abandoned franchise by GW, and the possibility of legal action being taken by GW against T9A became a far more likely prospect than it had previously been. I wasn't yet playing T9A at the time, so Zygmund knows better than me what happened. Far as I can tell though, the decision was made at the top without asking the wider community, on the basis of internal discussions with the T9A legal team, discussions that were kept secret to retain attorney-client privilege. Or so they said. I can see how a shitstorm could have erupted out of all that.
As far as being or not being Warhammer, it de facto largely is so at the moment, but being its own thing is indeed in the long-term pipeline. Mainly through the release of the full, completely reworked army books. So far, only Warriors of the Dark Gods (aka Chaos Mortals) have gotten theirs. I'd say it largely manages to do so, though the similarity will always be there because of the design goal to enable people to keep playing with their existing model collections.
I've used to say that T9A is community-driven in the same way the Soviet Union was: There is a vanguard party that ultimately answers to the community, but does its own thing day-to-day as it sees fit and considers itself to know best. A vanguard party that pretty much everyone can get into and involved with, but one in which you ultimately need the favour of those already on the top to really rise high.
I would say, though, that they are genuinely listening to feedback and considering it, even going to greater lengths than most to collect it. The issue is just the broad scope and objective of the entire project. To create a game that will be the new common standard in rank and file fantasy wargaming, like Warhammer once was. A universal fantasy rank and file wargame, or as close as one can be to such a thing. Which means having to please the broadest possible player population with the most diverse wants and preferences, which forces them to balance all kinds of conflicting objectives and priorities. Most of the time it's not a conflict between the wants of the wider community and the vision of a clique of insiders, but rather, between different factions within the community. That's before even considering differences in opinion among the insiders. I swear, for every prominent team member who has quit because of disagreement over the direction the project is going, there's another who has quit for exactly the opposite reason. The end result is a jack-of-all-trades game that probably has a good shot at becoming said universal fantasy rank and file wargame, but one that might not appeal to those with strong, precise and extreme preferences regarding game design philosophy.
As far as it comes to interaction between the team and the wider community, I think the recent mid-February hotfix to the 2.0 beta originally released in December shows both the best and the worst of that, of what the process can be at its best and what it can turn into at its worst.
For Empire, the hotfix was a case of everything going right. Empire ACS (Army Community Survey, the team members who process army subforum feedback into digestible pieces for the rules team) did a well-organized effort to collect feedback, arrange discussions and conduct polls, and presented their findings to the rules team, along with ready suggestions. The rules team delivered. All kinds of unused, overcosted things got points discounts, and the most controversial and ill-advised change (removal of great weapon knights) was undone. Everyone acted reasonably and in good faith, and gave the other entities involved in the process the benefit of the doubt. The result was well received and most people on all sides of the process were satisfied.
For Highborn Elves, the hotfix was a hot mess. In the original 2.0, they got some quite overpowered things, things that were received with rejoicing in the army community due to opening up new playstyles that weren't competitive before. Came hotfix time, the HbE ACS started off acting essentially as lawyers on behalf of their community, for why their new overpowered toys should be nerfed as little as possible, wasting both time and opportunity to advance proposals on nerfs that would have made them not OP but still retained their usefulness at enabling new playstyles. When they eventually came around to do just that, it was too late, they had wasted time that had been scarce to begin with. Miscommunications happened between the different involved teams and people who worked without much coordination, an ever-present potential problem when the project runs on lots of irregular part-time volunteer work and needs to be highly parallellized to make effective use of all that manpower. The resulting HbE hotfix wiped out much of the gains made by the 2.0 HbE betabook, was a mess not really liked by any of the involved parties, and caused a shitstorm on the HbE forum, made worse by the resignation in protest by one of their ACS guys.
Make of all that what you will. Me, I'm firmly in the T9A camp. Its imperfections aside, what it has achieved is truly remarkable. In view of what it has achieved, its issues are to me really first world problems of fantasy wargaming. We abided far worse for far longer from GW.
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That justification based on legal issues seems like complete nonsense to me. They changed the names, they changed the fiction, and one of the big reasons GW supposedly did Age of Sigmar was that the "historical" elements of the aesthetic in the art & model design weren't legally protectable. Game mechanics certainly aren't protectable, only any trademarked names for rules.
The fact almost certainly is that the people at the top of the project decided they wanted it to make them money in the medium to long term, and that the best way to do that was for it to become fully its own IP rather than "just" a way for Warhammer players to keep playing an actively supported version of Warhammer.
Personally, they lost me the moment they took that direction, because that's literally all I wanted. There are already other fantasy IPs out there in tabletop gaming, there are already other rank & flank rulesets - I wasn't interested in them before, and I'm still mostly not interested in them now, what I was interested in was a community-managed continuation of WHF in the same way that the community took over the Specialist Games(with the bare minimum of changes required to avoid legal issues since unlike with the SGs GW hadn't released WHF for free at any point).
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Excellent analysis from Zygmund and spot on from Konrad von Richtmark. :::cheers:::
From a privileged insider position, I can testify that the fear expressed by Yodhrin that anyone in the projects wishes to make money from it is the exact opposite of reality. I have no idea how possibly anyone could come up with this feeling.
The inner discussions nowadays are focused on:
- finishing 2nd edition, to make the rulebook a very stable edition that people can print hard copies of.
- making progress on updates of the army books, which takes a painful long time.
- delivering more background, which is also much slower than anyone would hope.
- providing add-ons for non-tournament players, who have too often the feeling that T9A is focused on tournaments only.
- finding ways to make T9A more community friendly, with more outside-the-team initiatives.
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What has really triggered me was their resistance to do any sort of meaningful work regarding Dogs of War.
In all honestly, any sort of pastiche mercenary armies featuring individuals from various races would suit me so very much. I was very excited by 9th Age once they started discuss it back in 2015, annoucing that a 'Dogs of War' book would be released around december 2016. Since then, however... no word on that side of the project, most if any responses from their design team claiming that they wanted for the system to be as 'stable' and 'finished' as possible before introducing Dogs of War as an army [which makes no sense, it's deliberately 'forgetting' one army despite giving rules to all others including their version of Chaos Dwarfs], as well as cutting down on any forum talk that mentioned the very name 'Dogs of War'.
They even coined a name for the faction as 'merchant city-states' as the Iron Crowns [which, I admit, is an awesome name and I am fully into it], but neglect has pushed me away from even learning their system. I much prefer to stick to 8th ed. these days while adapting its ample gamma of gaming material. I mean, my local club didn't ever touch Storm of Magic after the whole pact debacle that allowed out most... competitive friends to keep bringing and spawning Bloodletters in every army.
Oh, well. To me the project seemed interesting enough but their community [which to me looks rather like their design team rather than the community itself at large] has shown such disregard to what I aimed to play with their system that it pushed me away and I currently have no interest in taking a second glance at it.
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What has really triggered me was their resistance to do any sort of meaningful work regarding Dogs of War.
This has also been one of my secondary concerns being that 9th Age stuff has not changed on 'humans been a very populace species' bit but continued the ideas seen among the more 'Tournie' oriented types which I felt often stated that Chaos Warriors counted as a 'human' army. Their work with the faux Bretonnians has also left me underwhelmed.
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Something of a personal story here.
I think this thread already starts to hint why many aren't very happy on the T9A forum. We all have different hopes, different priorities, different goals. When hundreds and thousands of Warhammer-players are brought together, and when everyone thinks they will finally get theirs, tensions will arise. Then add a balance-seeking gamer faction at the very core of the project, who suddenly launch in a completely unexpected direction... Then add the obvious problem of keeping volunteers delivering, or even keeping them inside the project for long.
I also have the impression that although the T9A forum has got a staggering 13.000 members in less than three years, the fat years are past and a smaller and smaller percentage of that number actually participates in the discussion. Yes, many write a message or three, perhaps making a statement what they would like to see or what they don't like, but they then grow quiet. (And some may be quited.) This means that there's a small and very loud group of people who fill the forum - some 'insiders', some 'alumni' and some outsiders - and they already have a history of liking and disliking this or that, and even each other. Then some people get warnings and get banned, and their friends feel they're under attack. Ever steeper spiral of hardening feelings. When we cannot blame a company for failing us, we will blame each other. In this respect, the forum has grown old, petrified and cracking, faster than usually.
Personally, I really liked the T9A some two years back. I wanted to play the game, and I think I voluntarily promoted the project here and on some other forums. I even tried to work for the project for some time, but being a volunteer (like everyone) I would have liked to see my work come to fruitition and get published. The only thing you get from volunteering. When I saw how slow and badly managed the whole project was, I saved myself the trouble and resigned, and stopped visiting the forum.
My impression was, though, that you could get to talk to the more important (really, more devoted) members in the project, and that most were quite open on how they saw the project and where they thought improvement was needed and possible. The same was especially true of the army support guys. Problem was, nobody but the hard gamers seemed to have control, and priorities were changing a lot. So even if you got to talk to people and even if you agreed on many issues, it didn't seem to lead anywhere. You sort of didn't meet the boss who would have explained your role and put you to actual work that would bring some needed results. Everyone was an intermediate, and unless they held some secrets, they didn't seem to be in the know.
Remember, this was some time ago. I surely hope things have improved from that. But, personally, I got too exhausted and disillusioned to want to try again.
But if you want to try, here's how you could do it.
If you want to engage with the game creators, you need to make yourself known and useful first. Play the game, write reports that show different units and combos in action, discuss the game on the forums, get to know the existing arguments and how differently different people see them. Then, if you still have the energy and think your ideas are worthy, start to promote them more openly, and perhaps try to volunteer for a team where you think you will be most useful and most influential to bring some of your vision into fruitition.
Another way to engage with the game creators could be meeting them at their club or their local tournament, if you live nearby. Many project members have openly given their whereabouts, and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where they play their games. If you're ready to travel some, you could actually get to talk to them live. For example, I could very easily get to contact with some locals who are project members, should I feel the need. We've met, seen each other play, traded figures. These are normal (or rather hc) Warhammer gamers, and they actually want to talk about the T9A with people they meet.
-Z
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I think the opinions of those that that enjoy the 9th age very helpful but in the end I feel is that was Warhammer the lingua franca of Fantasy gaming whilst 9th age is Eperanto. One is the natural outcome of organic circumstances and the other a contrived a created thing.
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What Zygmund says makes sense.
Indeed, when thousands of Warhammer players get together and all think they will finally get what they want, tensions are bound to arise. Part because they don't realize how hard making the game that gives them what they want really is. Part because they don't realize how widely varied the preferences of different players are. Overestimating the extent to which our own feelings and preferences are representative of the silent majority seems to be a common human cognitive flaw.
If it seemed like everyone was an intermediate and few really knew what was going on, I suspect that's because of the extremely parallelized organization and assignment of tasks. Which I suppose the project has to do, since it's running on loads and loads of volunteer labour, i.e. you can have a lot of guys simultaneously working slowly on different parts or subdivisions of the same task, but have none or at most a few guys working fast and focused. Which causes a large load of organizational overhead, and more often than not leads to the left handing not knowing what the right hand does.
All that said, I think they've delivered remarkably, all things considered. Empire in the T9A 2.0 beta feels more "right" to me than it has done in any version of the game since WFB 6th edition when I started. Fluffy army compositions with state troops and detachment goodness actually work, even if you aren't a prodigy like TVI.
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My issue with the T9A people is the top five guys are using their playerbase to create a saleable product and then they plan to do exactly that. It’s a “deep dark secret” that only a little googling will reveal.
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Dear Cannonofdoom & Yodhrin,
please consider your words about the intentions of the top T9A creators for a moment.
I don't know what the top five or top fifty guys in the T9A think or plan, but I think your scenario is very unlikely. The top guys of the project are ordinary gamers in the ETC circles and their local clubs. If they started to steal from their friends, they would likely lose much more than they can ever gain for grabbing T9A and selling it as their own.
If you blame someone for "deep dark secrets", it's your job to prove you're right, not their job to prove your accusations are wrong. So, prove it to us! What did your "little googling" bring up? :-)
-Z
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I too find the notion of such a hidden agenda of profit to be unlikely to the point of being preposterous.
T9A is an unincorporated association. That makes the exact nature of ownership of the work produced rather ambiguous and subject to no end of lawyering should the association be dissolved, but what's entirely clear is that a few top guys can't just seize legal private ownership of the work. Particularly if it's the result of volunteer labour that has been solicited on the notion that everything that the project produces is going to be free and freely available in perpetuity. That's before considering the fact that everything that T9A has released up to date has been put under the Creative Commons licence.
Besides, what would the actual product be that they sell? Rulebooks? Those are so piratable that paying for them is effectively voluntary and dependent on goodwill and convenience. Miniatures? There's no feasible way they could make people have to buy their specific miniatures without rebuilding the entire game from scratch, not when the current army books are specifically made to enable play with existing Warhammer collections and currently commercially available miniature ranges out there, and when there's an ever-growing body of miniatures specifically made for T9A players out there for sale. Heck, if they wanted to make private profit from miniature sales, their best bet would probably be to keep T9A going as it is, and sell the miniatures as a little side business.
That's before considering that the ability of the project to get shit done in the first place is dependent on their ability to solicit and make use of large amounts of volunteer manpower. An ability that would vanish if the top guys stole the project for their own profit. Tiny, one of those top guys, estimated that just getting from 1.3 to the first beta version of 2.0 took some 136,000 workhours in total, conservatively estimated. Try estimating what a commercial entity would have to pay to get that kind of work done.
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My issue with the T9A people is the top five guys are using their playerbase to create a saleable product and then they plan to do exactly that. It’s a “deep dark secret” that only a little googling will reveal.
If you blame someone for "deep dark secrets", it's your job to prove you're right, not their job to prove your accusations are wrong. So, prove it to us! What did your "little googling" bring up? :-)
Right, I only get a vague bit of the turn to for profit inkling because my intense cynicism but even then I always think it more of put it in a place where it could be maneuvered to profit not profit out right. I'd be curious at the deep dark secret bits but have not the interest to sift through google to find them.
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What has really triggered me was their resistance to do any sort of meaningful work regarding Dogs of War.
This has also been one of my secondary concerns
Fans of Mercenaries, rejoice!
The Official Unofficial Mercenary Army Brainstorming Thread (https://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?thread/36471-the-official-unofficial-mercenary-army-brainstorming-thread/&pageNo=1)
Bscially, the team is in no hurry to deliver Iron Crowns, but now, they no longer object the community to do the work.
And the community imediately started!
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First, anyone who complains about the copyright legal problems and how T9A doesn't consult the community about it - is simply out to lunch. lol, its not even up for debate unless you are a copyright lawyer who will represent T9A pro Bono, or you make a considerable donation to cover legal fees.
Now, T9A forum is pretty good now. The "toxic" elements came from a few sub forums such as High Elves, Lizardmen, Dwarfs where tge player base just complained and whined to no end. A large portion of these players in those armies are the Timmies - they think they can game design but they really can't.
Gt so bad that they had to warn loads of players. ...myself included got a warning for calling certain whiners a bunch of kids in a candy store with a buff bat shouting "i want i want i want". Lol
The other sub forums are pretty fun and very constructive. ....and when players don't whine, and instead give constructive feedback - good things get implemented.
If anything I think they listen to the community a little too much.
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The dwarves are grumbling and the High Elves whining about not being the best? How very in character.
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Dwarfs grumbling and High Elfs whining, that never happens. :icon_wink:
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You should see the T9A High(born) Elven subforum. That towering High Elven superiority complex has rubbed off on a significant fraction of their player base.
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Some of my earliest gaming friends were all high elf players, and they embodied that aspect to a T.
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I think the bad 6th edition book for both High and Dark Elves played a big part.
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There's a reason they call them High Elfs.
(GP ... becareful, you got a few HE in your collection.)
Only a few.
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All this talk of high elves is going to make me pull out my army and place it in the new section. This was my favorite looking army and battlwise it got pummelled the most. There was always a look of satisfaction when they were completely obliterated which took me awhile to understand the animosity. I actually felt the same way towards Dark elf and vampire counts. Couldn’t kill them enough and tboutoughly enjoyed the extremely odd time I won. I remember one game where the first shot with a canon killed the main wizard/ necromancer of the VP army. He looked like I murdered his child. I only had that one experience of victory and indeed it felt great. The rest was painful. I don’t think I ever one against the DE.
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Hello there,
As Head of PR and an AvB memeber, I can help clear up a few things here:
1) We had to move away from Warhammer due to copyright issues. TBH though the game plays just like warhammer but is now more balanced in every aspect. The new Warriors of The Dark Gods book has gone a storm and we are currently working hard on Daemon Legions
2) We are a charity, we have no plans to sell the game, you will always be able to download the rules for free and print the, off or use your phone or tablet to store them on. Note this isn’t just a slim book, it includes the full colour rulebooks too. In the future some other companies will be able to print the rules and sell the rulebooks but T9A will not see a penny of this, and even then you will still be able to download the full set of rules for free. It’s free now and always will be. Anything else is just BS
3) Yes the developers listen to the community. It doesn’t mean that you will get what you ask for but we do listen.
Please give the game a try. Last weekend I attended a 80 strong T9A tournament and what surprised me was th huge amount of people that where not part of the forums, so please don’t let a few bad apples ruin it for you
Lastly EoS (Empire of Sonstahl) is a great balanced army, very much embodies the Warhammmer Empire age gone by
Any problems give us a shout
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its been a while what do people say about the 9th age?
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Definitely worth of trying out for yourself!
My personal opinion is that T9A, as of now, is a game of its own. It has moved further away from WHFB8thed than any WHFB edition from the previous. So you cannot trust your memories of how a previous WHFB edition played, you have to read & learn T9A. Ofcourse, it's still a WHFB legacy game with all the game elements there. Markedly less spectacular & individual than WHFB, but that much more balanced. The army building procedure is much more complicated, but on the other hand, it can be that much more rewarding, and there are very very few units or indeed unit sizes that would feel rubbish or overkill on the game table (unlike in 8th).
Because of the balance, T9A also rewards learning the nuances of the game, which on one hand means you have lots to find out, but on the other hand results in more experienced players with trimmed armies really winning consistently. My personal problem with the game comes from this: if I join the local T9A players, I will also join a very competitive scene with an analytical attitude towards the game. As my hobby is more about telling stories, painting figures and having good time with friends, the local T9A scene is not tempting. But that's not a fault of the game, it's part of how we gamers go after the different things that we find fun in the hobby.
My 2d..
-Z
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After Gold 2.0 release (hopefully end of 2018) T9A intends to develop background, in order to attract more fluff lovers.
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Personally, I feel fluff is needed to justify unit choices and themes of armies. Without it, they have been relying on GW fluff for a long time. Which is fine I guess.
I know they released the Dark Gods book, but lots of people from what I understood consider the 7 deadly sins a bit meh?
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I must say that I've lost almost all enthusiasm for 9th.
Back when it all started rolling I was the one who introduced 9th to my gaming buddies, organising mini-tournaments, campagins etc. I was really into it, up untill 1.2 dropped. Then I slowly started to back away from it and now it's my friends who are bugging me to start playing again.
It's a mix of things that's putting me off from 9th. It was supposed to be a "Legacy" version of warhammer, with stuff tweaked, balanced out and everything made playable. And that's what it was up untill 1.1. Then they decided that they want to make their own game and that's when things started to go downhill imho. It's a far greater task to write your own rules, than to tweak someone elese's work, esp. in the comittee style organisation that 9th Age is. And I don't think they are doing a very good job honestly.
The rules are becoming impossible to read with all the little caveats, all the fun stuff is getting cut, and keeping up with the changes seems to be an impossible task. Unless you are a tournament regular that is, and that is effectively where the game is at. I get it, misfire tables, templates, a large amount of lores of magic and all that jazz slows you down in torunament play. Well, what if you are not a tournament player? The game currently offers very little for non-competetive tourney players and that's why I've been gravitating back towards 8th ed, or maybe even eralier editions. Are the rules balanced? No. Are they full of fun, quirky stuff, that give you an immersive experience with wacky things happening? Sure do. I never really understood people playing WFB as a tournament game, I think there are FAR better systems out there for this type of experience. But then again, I was one of those people who actually LIKED the O&G animosity rules :icon_mrgreen: . I liked my army going out of control and the challenge of trying to win against the odds. I was sad to see that being cut from 9th (again - the sole reason for the game existing seems to be organised tournament play).
As for them making their own fluff - yeah sure, why not. I've read some, it was ok. Not great and not better than the Old World stuff, to which I am deffinietly more attached. So I don't think this will pull me in, but who knows.
One more thing. I've recently stumbled upon this article:
https://napoleoninelba.blogspot.com/2018/07/9th-age-warhammer-fantasy-sadly-slowly.html?m=1 (https://napoleoninelba.blogspot.com/2018/07/9th-age-warhammer-fantasy-sadly-slowly.html?m=1)
While I don't agree with everything this guy wrote, I think he is mostly right. He deffinietly makes some solid points, which I think need addressing. Turns out that the 9th age community went crazy over this, immediately banning the dude from the forums and starting a multi-page flamewar, riddiculing what he wrote and claming he is a GW payed troll (lol). The 9th age staff were pretty active in that thread from what I've seen. That didn't really leave a good impression on me either.
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Good article. Mostly how I feel about T9A. The strive for balance in my mind takes the fun away.
Its a strange thought really, because playing Warhammer I always wanted balance, but looking at T9A I want something fun, interesting and inspiring. Taking a weak army and winning is a actually fun. Its weird how I didn’t properly appreciate that until I saw the alternative.
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I read that blog post, then went and read his second one (The update), then went and read the 9th age forum threads in question, and I really have to say I'm disappointed by the reaction. There was indeed a lot of hate just for questioning how good it is. Heck on his own forum there are comments saying "Why be negative? If your negative that must mean it's personal".
I think he has some valid points to consider. Especially if they want to make it a long lasting game. I've dabbled in 9th age but it never really caught me in the first place. Now that I stop and think about it, I don't think I've seen or heard of a 9th age game around my part since it first came out.
I also really agree with his comments about toning down the hate for Age of Sigmar. It's one of the reason's I'm glad we split our section off. Even if you dislike it, the constant bad mouthing for other games just turns people off.
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That article by Napoleon in Elba. If I had an Imperial copper pfennig for every article like that, I'd... you know how it goes. They all, invariably, say the following:
-T9A is dying
-The reasons for that are the following things that are wrong about the game and/or the Project. This is an unbiased account of the opinions of the silent majority and in no way my personal bill of grievances.
-To save T9A, they should do what I suggest here, which is an actual rational plan for accomplishing the goal, not just redress of my own grievances. And even if it just hypothetically were the latter, it's still what they should do, because I'm a representative sample of the silent majority that's slowly but inexorably abandoning the game.
After a while, you notice a pattern and stop giving these people much thought. This guy's response blogpost is particularly precious too. When people started citing him numbers of increasing tournament attendance to show that the game isn't dying, he dismissed it as irrelevant. Ignoring or forgetting that his assertion of T9A being dying was to begin with based on such very numbers. :roll:
With time, I've come to regard such proclamations that "T9A is dying!" as part wishful thinking by the embittered hoping for vindication, and part as attempts to blackmail the Project into becoming what they want it to be. I learned to recognize this phenomenon previously in online discussions about EVE Online, where "EVE is dying!" was proclaimed in much the same way.
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See I read the blog posts and didn't really feel he's saying "It's dying abandon ship!" Even though that was the meme he posted right at the beginning. I read it more as "There are problems, and growth isn't great, we should look at some things."
Honestly looking at the response thread on the 9th age forum was pretty sad to. The vast majority of people (Who I don't know, so I assume their all fine people normally) just jumped to troll or shill. I was interested to see them quoting tournament attendance, but even in the 9th age thread other people were pointing out it was mostly at ETC and the comparison was that ETC had more 9th age teams then other games there, while ignoring that other games have a much larger tournament scene of their own that doesn't involve ETC.
I thought the blog guy did put too much focus on essentially commercializing it and trying to raise money. I really, REALLY don't see the 9th age forum suddenly putting up a paywall to raise money.
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I must say that I've lost almost all enthusiasm for 9th. ...<reasons>
Thanks for your testimony.
I will copy/paste that in the relevant T9A thread, unless you object.
If I may enlight you with the following information:
- T9A aimed to be initially like a 9th edition of WH, just more balanced and better written.
Then a specialized lawyer told us that the appearance was too close to WH8th, so GW could stop the project at any time with a cease and desist.
The alternative: either T9A was successful and it would be killed, or it was not successful and it would die.
We had no other choice than to change a lot of stuff, and quickly. This left many players bitter, and many team members as well.
We understand them, but T9A cannot be WH9th, so if this is what they want, they will not find it with T9A.
- As you rightfully mention, current beta rules are written in a legalese wording which is perfect for tournament play, but repelling for casual play.
We have a team reviewing that, based on community's feedback, to help reaching a healthier compromise, to be published in the Gold version, end of 2018.
- Contrary to what you object, keeping up with the changes is not an impossible task, that's the opposite.
People may play 1.3, it has not changed a single comma in 18 months. For those who play the beta, there have been big changes from 1.3 to beta .201, but since, changes from beta .201 to beta .205 are really few and easy to keep up with. When gold will be released, the new changes will be for the great majority cosmetic changes, i.e. wording. That is not hard to adapt to, except for those looking for a reason to reject change.
But if you are allergic to changes, just wait for the Gold 2nd edition, to be relased at the end of 2018: the base rules won't change anymore for the next 5 years or more. And basically besides a yearly update of points, only the army books will change, one at a time, like GW did for WH.
- Tournament focused.
WH rules were allegedly not made for tournament. It did not prevent GW to sponsor tournaments in the early editions, nor to sponsor tournament currently with AoS, despite being badly adapted.
T9A rules were to be adapted to tournament since the very first days. No surprise there.
What people don't realize, for good reasons, is that T9A is NOT intended for tournament players only (otherwise I would not participate).
Unfortunately, the most urgent was tournaments, and that was the initial focus.
For those who are not interested in tournaments, the good news is that we're reaching a state when we can afford to shift focus, and while preserving the tournament quality (balance), we are going to create army books which will cater better the needs of casual players (who like the very crazy rules that tournament players hate), and storytellers, who call for more fluff release.
- Fluff:
to me, it will be the most appealling part of T9A. We're not yet there, having released little. But I have access to the preparatory work, and that is just stunning.
But the most interesting part, is that the community may influence it.
In no other game may anyone discuss with background team, and get replies, and sometimes influence them.
That is also the guarantee that no "End Times" will ever happen to T9A setting.
- Reaction to "doom blogs".
See post by Konrad who express very neatly the dominent sentiment at T9A.
Where I don't agree is about AoS bashing.
This was common two or three years ago.
Fortunately, most people have moved on, and nowadays you can praise AoS withouth getting angry replies.
-=-=-
tl;dr:
Part or your resentment is fact of life.
Part is old story, no longer valid.
Part is still valid, but soon to get dealt with.
Thanks for reading, and keep discussing! :icon_smile:
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If I may enlight you with the following information:
- T9A aimed to be initially like a 9th edition of WH, just more balanced and better written.
Then a specialized lawyer told us that the appearance was too close to WH8th, so GW could stop the project at any time with a cease and desist.
The alternative: either T9A was successful and it would be killed, or it was not successful and it would die.
We had no other choice than to change a lot of stuff, and quickly. This left many players bitter, and many team members as well.
We understand them, but T9A cannot be WH9th, so if this is what they want, they will not find it with T9A.
Thanks for the lengthy reply. If you wish you can post my words on the forums, but I have an account there and I think I already did write something like this ages ago. So I don't really think it will be useful or necessary.
Reffering to what you said about GW going after T9A. First of all, there are (were?) plenty of old GW games that had "living rulebooks", with fans tweaking and updating the rules and nothing bad has ever happened to them over years and years (Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Warmaster Revolutins to name a few). GW only seems to go after people who try and make money off of their IP (the whole Chapterhouse thing that happened a couple of years ago). Maybe I am wrong and maybe a C&D would arrive. Why wouldn't it arrive now? The ruleset and army books, despite all the changes, still have "Warhammer" written all over them. If GW really, really wanted to screw this up - they would. T9A is unable to deffend itself in a legal battle as it is right now. You'd have to reeeally shake things up to make this whole idea work, and at this point maybe it would be easier to write a completely new ruleset and fluff althogether. I know that's what they are kinda trying to do, but at the same time they want to make it seem as close to WH as they can, so that people won't jump ship. Seems like an impossible task to me.
- As you rightfully mention, current beta rules are written in a legalese wording which is perfect for tournament play, but repelling for casual play.
We have a team reviewing that, based on community's feedback, to help reaching a healthier compromise, to be published in the Gold version, end of 2018.
- Contrary to what you object, keeping up with the changes is not an impossible task, that's the opposite.
People may play 1.3, it has not changed a single comma in 18 months. For those who play the beta, there have been big changes from 1.3 to beta .201, but since, changes from beta .201 to beta .205 are really few and easy to keep up with. When gold will be released, the new changes will be for the great majority cosmetic changes, i.e. wording. That is not hard to adapt to, except for those looking for a reason to reject change.
But if you are allergic to changes, just wait for the Gold 2nd edition, to be relased at the end of 2018: the base rules won't change anymore for the next 5 years or more. And basically besides a yearly update of points, only the army books will change, one at a time, like GW did for WH.
I am not opposed to change, I am though doubtfull about "change for the sake of change". If 1.1 was a good functioning system, and the sole reason for making the shift to 1.2 and onwards was to limit the chances of getting sued, than that does not sound like great motivation for making decisions or improving the game.
And yes, I am aware of the 1.3 version as a "stable" format of the game. I've tried sticking with an old version (1.1) for a while, but it was really difficult to convince people to keep playing it. They either gravitate towards the latest product, or they drop out of 9th altogether. Might as well keep playing 8th with all the nicely printed books, cards etc.
- Tournament focused.
WH rules were allegedly not made for tournament. It did not prevent GW to sponsor tournaments in the early editions, nor to sponsor tournament currently with AoS, despite being badly adapted.
T9A rules were to be adapted to tournament since the very first days. No surprise there.
What people don't realize, for good reasons, is that T9A is NOT intended for tournament players only (otherwise I would not participate).
Unfortunately, the most urgent was tournaments, and that was the initial focus.
For those who are not interested in tournaments, the good news is that we're reaching a state when we can afford to shift focus, and while preserving the tournament quality (balance), we are going to create army books which will cater better the needs of casual players (who like the very crazy rules that tournament players hate), and storytellers, who call for more fluff release.
That's good to hear. When that happens I will deffinietly give T9A another go.
- Fluff:
to me, it will be the most appealling part of T9A. We're not yet there, having released little. But I have access to the preparatory work, and that is just stunning.
But the most interesting part, is that the community may influence it.
In no other game may anyone discuss with background team, and get replies, and sometimes influence them.
That is also the guarantee that no "End Times" will ever happen to T9A setting.
Well, I hope you are right and we all will become swept away by the new fluff. Thing is - I am really happy with warhammer fluff. I don't feel the need for new fluff! It's a tough thing to win people over with writting. I tried getting into Mantica, but it failled to catch my interest. I am not exactly sure what the T9A are planning, although I did hear in some podcast about them trying to definine everything to the last detail. Including stuff like what elves eat and how their biology works, what magic really is etc. I wonder what will come out of it. The writters have some pretty big shoes to fill at least. People like Rick Priestly or Bryan Ansell have really managed to create something that has captured the immagination of quite a few people over the last 30 years. Can T9A top it? We shall see.
- Reaction to "doom blogs".
See post by Konrad who express very neatly the dominent sentiment at T9A.
Where I don't agree is about AoS bashing.
This was common two or three years ago.
Fortunately, most people have moved on, and nowadays you can praise AoS withouth getting angry replies.
Yeah, thing is that to me this dind't read like a "doom blog" at all. Just a guy stating a well constructed opinion. He's statistics are fishy of course, but in general there's nothing offensive here. The reaction on the 9th age community's end was pretty silly though, and gave him a lot more credit, than if he'd been ignored.
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I'm really looking forward to the new fluff, and it might be what finally gets me deeper into it. Hopefully it's what gives me the chance to get my club in as well. On the other hand, I feel like it's been so long since it was said the fluff is coming that to many have moved on to other games.
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Making new fluff to justify a blander version of warhammer doesn’t interest me all that much.
I am mainly keeping busy making my own fluff now that I don’t feel constrained anymore. Keeps me satisfied. Not as though I have any time to play anymore anyway.
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If you loved the Warhammer fluff so much, what's stopping you from playing Warhammer using the rules of T9A? Pretty much every unit from the last few editions of Warhammer has a corresponding unit that functions fairly similarly in T9A, and that's going to be the case as long as they stay true to their objective to have a game you can play with your old Warhammer collection.
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If you loved the Warhammer fluff so much, what's stopping you from playing Warhammer using the rules of T9A? Pretty much every unit from the last few editions of Warhammer has a corresponding unit that functions fairly similarly in T9A, and that's going to be the case as long as they stay true to their objective to have a game you can play with your old Warhammer collection.
Hi Konrad. Nothing wrong at all, in fact it's what I've been doing all along. It's just that I don't feel that the current 9th ed version corresponds with the old fluff that well. Hence my withdrawal to 8th.
On a sidenote - the dice gods are listening and have rewarded me for praising randomness it seemed xD. I've just had a game with my goblins against my brothers VC using 8th ed. Nothing big, a 1000 point game, both with pretty tame lists (trying to get him playing fantasy). Well, my army pretty much imploded by turn two. Everything that could fail animosity did. I've panicked my own archers off the table, after the NG horde delt 2d6 s3 hits on them, all my warmachines including the bolt thrower misfired, my wolf riders charged through fanatics and then my shaman went double 1's on his miscast, exploding the aformentioned goblin horde with S10 big blast and cascading himself into the realm of chaos. Then the rest of my army pretty much ran away. Good times..... ;)
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This!👆
It was that random craziness that could take hold that was the charm of the O&G.
I have to admit though, that’s a lot to deal with by turn 2 😺
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Do any of you guys know of a T9A gaming scene or even just two friends playing regularly T9A who wouldn't be overly and totally competitive?
Before you ask, I don't have the time to organize things myself. I'm just asking if you know of a T9A group/scene that plays relaxed and story-oriented. Knowing that such existed would highen my spirits and make T9A seem more promising even in my corner of the world. :)
-Z
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If you loved the Warhammer fluff so much, what's stopping you from playing Warhammer using the rules of T9A? Pretty much every unit from the last few editions of Warhammer has a corresponding unit that functions fairly similarly in T9A, and that's going to be the case as long as they stay true to their objective to have a game you can play with your old Warhammer collection.
Thats not what I said at all. I am making my own fluff at the moment and long term goal of making my own game system. Hopefully be fone by the time my son is old enough in 5 or so years... :engel:
I like Warhammer fluff plenty, but it was getting stale. The WotDG (is that the acronym?) fluff looked ok, but also looks like bland warhammer. I am making something else.
Regarding playing, I haven’t played in probably 3 years. Young kids, work, chores and life are in the way, plus my main gaming buddy lives in snother state, and the other also has life, work and kid blockers.
There is good stuff happening over there on T9A, dont get me wrong. Like I said above though, I am actually not a fan of hyper balance. It doesn’t give me challenging feeling of spending hours optmising a list between theme and competitivity because it is more balanced. If that makes sense? I also think the ASAW approach takes that option even further away from me. On the flip side though, some of the balance choices seem to remove more than they add, while also keeping some of the warhammer ‘mistakes’ to my mind.
I just feel like adhering to warhammer-ish fluff, warhammer-ish unit choices doesn’t appeal to me. The armies dont need to be what they are, other than the heavy use of warhammer legacy reasons. In the past 10 years I found myself more making army lists around a theme - sometimes from sub sections of deep warhammer fluff, and other times something completely different to their fluff, such as A Cartheginean army or Tower army from Heroes of M&M3.
I feel free not using anyone elses fluff or game system, and trying to make my own. But I have time in a way I guess.
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Do any of you guys know of a T9A gaming scene or even just two friends playing regularly T9A who wouldn't be overly and totally competitive?
Before you ask, I don't have the time to organize things myself. I'm just asking if you know of a T9A group/scene that plays relaxed and story-oriented. Knowing that such existed would highen my spirits and make T9A seem more promising even in my corner of the world. :)
-Z
I think our little corner of the Finnish T9A scene is pretty chill. As for story, it tends to come after the fact rather than define how and what we play.
Me and the dwarf player decided that our battles are from the Patent Wars, a conflict over Dwarven patent claims to plate armour and the right to collect licensing fees from Imperial armourers. Imperial armourers consider it preposterous that Dwarven inventions over a millennium ago should give them rights to it forever, and besides, Gothic plate armour > Dwarven plate armour. We came up with this when he tried to think of a reason to put a grudge on my Imperial Guard unit, then we took it from there :-D
If you and I ever end up on the same local scene, we could play the Age of Three Emperors, with my troops being Talabheim-coloured and your Stirlanders.
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Thats an awesome reason to fight. I love it very much!
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As a big dwarf player I 100% think that's a great fight reasons. Silly humans, thinking that agreed upon contracts are suddenly void just because it's been a few generations.
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I think T9A is doing great now. Its picking up in my city of Edmonton.
The legal stuff is what it is and nothing can be done about it except to blame GeeDubs.
I found T9A players to not be overly competitive like some were in 8th edition. Lots of people play casual games. Even competitive guys will take more fluffy/themed lists and have a good time.
Team tournaments are becoming very popular just because its more fun to be on a team.
As for forum whining and stuff - thats the internet for ya.
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I have been reading the Dogs of War (Grand Companies) thread recently and have seen some awesome ideas and some boring ideas. Overall I dont mind the idea and how the whole thing is being approached, but my issue is creating rules before fluff. I have had a go recently at trying to come up with unique or different armies, and the first place to start should always be the fluff. Rules first mean no one has articulated the fluff, and a lot of the fluff is in people’s heads and very similar to GW.
Just my 2 cents... fluff first!
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The DoW army you have seen is homebrew, nothing official.
It is a placeholder, made spontaneously by oW fans out of T9A official framework, so that:
- those who have old DoW armies may play them, until T9A ends up creating Iron Crowns
- hence keeping a tiny living DoW community until then (expect ~2013 if all goes well...)
- meanwhile, testing out a couple of ideas, which T9A wil examine in due time.
Fluff is part of the new ideas to test out.
All official armies will be revised, one after another, in the coming 5 years.
Fluff is currently established broadly for all of them, and for each AB, it will be refined before making actual rules.
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That is a fair point - it is homebrew. I saw some of your posts in that thread.
I would like to see more about the fluff development, just because I really wonder how drastic any changes are going to be, or how static and close to GW things will remain.
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There have been some fluff releases, scattered across the fanzine "The 9th Scroll"
Races and use of magic: Scroll 5
EoS: Scroll 5
KoE: Scroll 5
DE: Scroll 6
VS: Scroll 6
Other Human Nations: Scroll 7
ID: Scroll 7
OK: Scroll 8
SE: Scroll 8
Other human nations (complete): Scroll 8
HE: Scroll 9
BH: Scroll 9
(from the news Issue 12 of the 9th Scroll is released! (https://www.the-ninth-age.com/news/index.php?news/789-issue-12-of-the-9th-scroll-is-released/))
All scrolls are found at the download (https://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?simple-page/)page.
There should be a compendium recollecting all of this, to be published hopefully somewhere early 2019.
Reoccurring intent, deadlines always pushed.
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I would be keen to see that.
Thanks for sharing!
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Been reading feedback on the Demon book. Haven’t been able to read the book myself though, it doesn’t download properly on my phone - likely my issue rather than yours. Mostly positive, most feedback nitpicky and about making it a bit more user friendly. If thats all the feedbqck, great!
I saw a few things complaining about it being more complicated, when previously approach was simplicity. I imagine the only feedback I have for that, is share the vision with your players. Simplified to get to the bare bones, and now you are building it all up with added flavour... make that front and centre rather than just as an elicited response.
Otherwise, nice work!
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Thanks for the kind words.
We are now transforming our internal organization in order to work on several army books at a time.
Hopefully, this will allow us to create more than two army books a year.
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Seems like quite a bit of effort is going into this. :icon_cool:
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In the recent two months, two releases have been made that have greatly pleased the less competitive, more fluffy and casual segment of the player base. A scenario supplement and a battlefield terrain supplement. Both still in beta, but very playable it seems, from how they've been received.
This kind of content has been asked for for a long time. The position of the Project has been "Yes, later, but we first need a well-balanced, meticulously crafted and polished base game, which we then can build on with such content". Would you look at that, "later" has actually turned into "now", the Project is delivering on its promise that patience will be rewarded.
The Project does listen, even if its wheels do turn slowly.
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Thanks for the kind words.
We are now transforming our internal organization in order to work on several army books at a time.
Hopefully, this will allow us to create more than two army books a year.
No problem. I see you are invested over there, and I dont want to be unfair in my opinion on it. I know there are vocal sceptics and zealots for both sides. Thanks for keeping on coming over here Calisson, it helps keep us in touch.
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Thanks for keeping on coming over here Calisson, it helps keep us in touch.
I wanted to second Warlord here. I to appreciate see what the 9th crowd is up to, even if I'm not super interested enough to go to a separate forum. But seeing it here and how its going is not only enough to keep it in my mind (And led to me playing a few games), but also means I have an idea where the game is at when I pass the info on to other more interested players. I've pointed a lrge number of my friends towards it based on what I end up seeing here.
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I will say this in favour of T9A when contrasted with Games Workshop: For all its flaws, it is easier by an order of magnitude to launch ideas and get them implemented in the official setting as an outsider in T9A, than it is with GW. It's much easier to get concepts through to the team. So as a creative workshop where concepts brew, T9A have an edge in this regard.
As to army book output, it is crucially dependent on volunteer artists. These cannot be taken for granted. It's a lot of work to create artworks, and you cannot expect all of the unpaid enthusiasts to always show up for every new project. Good art is what makes or break a good army book. I hope we will see more army books released quicker moving forward, but please do not be surprised if art becomes a bottleneck.
Be grateful for what we have. :smile2:
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The art is fantastic / top quality.
No doubt.
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The fluff is okay, but the problem for me is that the rules are quite, quite dull. I play Skaven. Exclusively. They are the reason I play this game. And they have no fluff and something like half their content was stripped from the book. I leaf through it and it's jsut... we have some generic infantry and some shooting that apparently is quite reliable now and that's it? Why would I want to play that?
Maybe I'll give it another look when the full book come out. That seems to be the opinion among the other players in my group. Maybe they'll check back in in a year or five, when the game is finished.
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No fluff for the world of rats, bummer.
Wait, do they even exist over there? :icon_wink:
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In T9A, ratmen are named "Vermins".
Fluff exists although not in their army book.
In the main rulebook, you can read that Vermins gained as much importance as Roman Empire in real world... quite an achievement.
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That's indeed one of the things I definitely like about the 9th Age fluff. It has an actual believable history with different factions and races not only waxing and waning, but being transformed over time by the tides of history. In Warhammer, things stayed largely the same. The Empire was basically the same thing throughout its existence, even though it was split into a few warring pieces at times. Bretonnia was even more static. Dwarfs and High Elves saw their borders contract from their peak and ended up going from friends to enemies, but remained largely the same in terms of society.
T9A though? Not-Empire and Not-Bretonnia are recent arrivals on the world stage, back during the 8th Age the Not-Empire was subjugated by the Not-Skaven Roman Empire, which apparently devolved into something quite different on its fall. Not-Bretonnia was ruled over by a Vampire-King, and perhaps an entire vampiric nobility, which though gave it the strength to resist subjugation by the Not-Skaven Roman Empire. Orcs? They had, it appears, a civilized empire of their own way back during the 2nd Age, one which even elves and dwarfs apparently recognized as civilized and treated with on equal terms. Whereas in the present 9th Age, they are much the savage maniacal menace to civilization they are best known as.
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I mean, that's nice and everything, I'm sure you have a great world planned. But my interest starts at my own army book. And when I open the Vermin Swarm, I see nothing I want to play. I see an enormously stripped down version of the army books I love, where almost every unit has lost most of it s special rules, which is what made them fun to play in the first place. THere's only stuff taken away, nothing new added. And no fluff, beyond a few assorted names that don't fit together. (You call them Roman. Why do they have chieftains, then?) Instead of an army of mad scientists I get... what? Please, enlighten me, I don't see what I get, except some generic infantry blocks and some generic shooty stuff.
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I hated the mad science part of skaven.
But I know a lot of people love it.
If I was making Skaven, personally I would remove it.
But I have plenty of ideas of what I would add.
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Why remove what makes them, them? Stripping down and making a race like Skaven generic fighters doesn't sit well with me. I play my Skaven army when I want to have fun with randomly exploding tech and backfiring magic, and to be at the mercy of the dice instead of pure skill and tactics. If I want a straight up, everything goes as planned army, I'll pull out my Empire or Bretonnians. Skaven are meant to be fun, random, and suicidal.
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Playing against skaven I never ever found them fun, random or suicidal. They were very predictable and dangerous and not much fun to play against. Even the ‘fluff’ builds I found OP.
I dont like them harnessing the mad science. I am all for the breeding and backstabbing and pestilence though.
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There's a difference between "taking a risk" and "randomness". You can balance the first, but not the second. And I'm sure you could write a book around risk-taking that's mostly balanced. The problem is, the Ninth Age doesn't even try to do anything interesting with their Vermin.
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I concur. That's why I can't play O&G in 9th age. They have removed almost everything I liked about them (the silly charts, animosity, squigs going wild etc.). The lack of army specific magic lores is also a downer.
On the other hand, I don't mind playing high elves or empire. These armies nevere had many wacky rules to begin with, so there wasn't much to cut in order to make them "tournament competetive" and "faster to play". Which is what I feel the 9th age is mostly concerned about. But, like I said before I am not a tourney player, so maybe it's just not for me. I am going to give 9th another chance in a couple of months, maybe after they drop a proper O&G book.
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Playing against skaven I never ever found them fun, random or suicidal. They were very predictable and dangerous and not much fun to play against. Even the ‘fluff’ builds I found OP.
I dont like them harnessing the mad science. I am all for the breeding and backstabbing and pestilence though.
I don't see them as predictable. But I haven't played the dumbed down version in 9th age ether, and the more I see, the less I want to. I have a decent army of every race in WFB minus two, I don't see Skaven any more dangerous than Dwarfs or Tomb Kings in 6th. I have a Skyre main army, and it's blowing up left and right some games, or the Warplightning Cannons shooting at Str 2, or 12 inches and hitting nothing.
I've had great luck in some games, but it's far from predictable. One bad roll on a plague, and half my army could die, and has. I don't find much in 6th OP, mainly because I hate the term. Every army has some strengths, and something to weaken them. Any skirmishing unit in a skaven army panics very easily from missile fire or magic thanks to abysmal leadership. T3 and bad armour saves makes it pretty easy to kill many every turn as well. I don't play 8th as I didn't feel I wanted to paint hundreds of each model like I did with my Vampires, so there ymmv, I just felt them decently balanced in 6th.
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7th was the same book as 8th. 6th ed was a more balanced book and slightly less predictability I will grant you. But as soon as the doomwheel and hellpit abomination came along i found them to be totally broken and not pleasant at all to play against.
I have never played them in 9th age. I do agree also that randomness for some armies should be higher than others, because its part of the identity. Perhaps it should be part of the ASAW.
Looking at what they did with Demons, I reckon it will return.
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Doomwheel was that broken? The 6th rules for it had it pretty dangerous to both armies, not sure how 7/8 used it.
The identity I always seen for the Skaven was an army of chemical addicted meth-heads (warpstone) trying to take over the world. I don't know if you've ever been in a room with one for more than a few minutes but, pestilence, mad science (electronic or otherwise), and sneakiness abound. Every clan in skaven in WFB is well represented by that subculture of people, which is where I believe the original inspiration came from for the army.
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As for current Vermin Swarm army book entry names, sheesh, it's a slim army book that was made to give people something to play, with entry names almost certainly decided on before much if any fluff existed. Furthermore, it's not meant to be a fantasy clone of ancient Rome populated by ratmen. There is Avras, a fantasy clone of ancient Rome populated by humans in the T9A timeline, one that was suddenly overrun, usurped and appropriated by ratmen. Whether the Vermin Avrasian Republic actually continued business as usual under new management or mainly just appropriated its identity, symbols and outer trappings isn't quite clear. In the present era though, it's gone way more towards the latter it seems, as their domination over Fantasy Europe has been broken. I'd say the current Vermin Swarm is about as similar to Human Avras as the Carolignian Empire was to the Roman Empire, or something like that is what I hope the background team has in mind.
If the skaven are nothing to you if they aren't mad scientists whose weapons work in wildly random ways, then I suppose T9A isn't for you. T9A cannot simultaneously be everyone's ideal of what they would want Warhammer to have been, because ideals vary between players more than most realize. T9A tries to cater to a broad audience, which comes at the cost of being less perfect for someone with very narrow, specific preferences.
I don't think there's anything bland about Vermin as they are in T9A. Strength in Numbers is still there, which creates a number of interesting dynamics. They are the only army to get massed cheap numbers with independent Ld 8. That means they get cheap numbers for swarming and grinding, *and* the staying power to stick around and do so even when not supported by characters. The downside is that that staying power is conditional on deep ranks, and that if they do flee, they aren't likely to rally anytime soon, both which rule out MSU tactics, requiring them to instead play as relatively inflexible battlelines and be vulnerable to enemy force concentration.
All which supports a playstyle of bringing a mountain of models onto the table, something that is very much consistent with Vermin fluff. A good rule design is one where fluffy armies actually work.
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I'm not saying it has to be wildly random. Or even that they have to have the same identity. But what I see in ninth age is an army list that is about a third shorter than it used to be and where most of the remaining stuff lost one or several rules. What I mean is this:
If you take out that much stuff, and especially if you take all the most fun stuff, you have to replace it with something. What is currently there is an extremely barebones skelleton of an army. Cheap troops alone does not an interesting army make. There has to be something more than that.
Doesn't have to be random. But this was an extremely fun army, and just putting some large blocks of infantry on the table does not remotely replicate that feeling. Sadly, there's nothing else. Doesn't have to be random, but none of this stuff does anything. It's just piles of numbers that you push against another pile of numbers.
Edit: Also, I don't really want to play an army if it's not even clear if they are modelled after a certain culture or not. That's just too vague, fluffwise.
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The drawbacks you describe are known.
I would expect VS to be addressed sooner than most other factions.
Not in 2019, though.
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Well, that's the answer then.
I may have another look at the Ninth Age. Not in 2019, though.
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Well the new Daemon Legions book is pretty interesting and fun to play.
Its got good fluff that is different from GW. The army feels like a Daemon army too me but not the same as GW's version.
I didn't play Daemons before this new release, nor had many games against them as they weren't very popular in my area. Its good, lots of customization. And its still in beta so will only get better.
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I don't think there's anything bland about Vermin as they are in T9A. Strength in Numbers is still there, which creates a number of interesting dynamics. They are the only army to get massed cheap numbers with independent Ld 8. That means they get cheap numbers for swarming and grinding, *and* the staying power to stick around and do so even when not supported by characters. The downside is that that staying power is conditional on deep ranks, and that if they do flee, they aren't likely to rally anytime soon, both which rule out MSU tactics, requiring them to instead play as relatively inflexible battlelines and be vulnerable to enemy force concentration.
All which supports a playstyle of bringing a mountain of models onto the table, something that is very much consistent with Vermin fluff. A good rule design is one where fluffy armies actually work.
If T9A is trying to take a similar feel but different approach I don't get why this version of Strength in Numbers has remained, being that even by the end of WHFB to me at least it was starting to feel vestigial and not really representative of what the fluff behind it was trying to represent. On the WAB end Strength in Numbers was part of the rules for Warbands, simulating situations where by in large a unit was made up of good warriors but poor soldiers. I would never considered Skaven good warriors or soldiers thus tying what is meant as an expression of numerical advantage to something drawn from formation felt odd. Further this lead to assault column style attacks rather than the aesthetically and background more appropriate sort of more linear masses as the cowardly Skaven look to overwhelm the edges of more disciplined blocks by having more attackers than opponents able to defend themselves. I mean perhaps a system more based on the size of unit (+1 Ld for every 10 models to a max of +3) would be better mechanically at representing a chittering horde.
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Now that T9A Hordes don't get rank bonus at all, the Horde rule itself (with the extra rank attacks) represents the uncontrolled onslaught of barbarian warriors without much discipline. I don't know how that relates to the Vermin rule. Just an observation. In general, I feel the T9A has put more focus on the gameplay of their game, which has thinned the connection to historical tactics, which still were the origin of the various WHFB editions. The connection with WAB and what it represented will get surely thinner.
The last time I checked the guy responsible for writing the Vermin had retired from the project. I don't know if that heralds good or bad for the army. Marrying lab rat psychology to Republican Roman social structures was a very hazardous project anyway, prone to non-intended caricature. But there were surely dozens of interesting ideas there. Maybe the new writers want to clear the table a bit before continuing. Still, the different Vermin factions with their varying emphasis on technology, disease and assassination surely remain there, just as they are present in the army list.
Anyway, the army books are mainly driven by game design, which is driven by the idea of creating a couple of key playstyles for each army. As is visible in every level of the T9A project, the fluff is secondary, and may need to be rewritten at times to allow for an emergent playstyle. I'm sure the designers will have a closer look on how the Vermin play and how to make their intended playstyles fun and rewarding. The writing, on the other hand, will remain as obscure and potentially misinformed as in the "legendary" army books. For me personally, that makes the setting totally uninspiring, but of course it leaves lots of room for interpretation and fanfic.
At one point I remember the T9A team wanted to create a dynamic setting, where the present would not be the like of eternal status quo of the WH Old World (where each chaos incursion was battled to a halt, and the wretched and tainted lands returned to their former nature in a generation or so). In this dynamic setting, some fantasy races could be a little downtoned now, but would then emerge as new dominant factions in the next update. IIRC, the Vermin were such a faction - long in the hiding, but ready to embark on a big campaign to assume a leading role in the world politics. Not that different from the WHFB idea. I don't know if this design principle is still held by the writers. But the idea of a slowly changing world is a good one, I think.
-Z
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Thread on Vermin of 9th Age here ...
http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php?topic=52906.0
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...Anyway, the army books are mainly driven by game design, which is driven by the idea of creating a couple of key playstyles for each army. As is visible in every level of the T9A project, the fluff is secondary, and may need to be rewritten at times to allow for an emergent playstyle.
That was true for the first edition - and most of current AB are carried over from that time. The idea was to focus first on collection legacy and tournament balance.
The focus has changed for the second edition.
Each army will get progressively a detailed T9A background, which will serve, along with playstyle and model legacy, to define the 2nd edition AB.
Warriors were given full background attention. Daemons as well, plus more freedom to the concept team.
A new organization is being implemented, which will provide even more freedom of creativity to the team in charge of Infernal Dwarves, followed closely by Dread Elves. :smile2:
Be sure we're moving from the idea of fluff, accessory to playstyle, into the idea of background, source of the faction's soul. :smile2:
...I'm sure the designers will have a closer look on how the Vermin play and how to make their intended playstyles fun and rewarding. The writing, on the other hand, will remain as obscure and potentially misinformed as in the "legendary" army books. For me personally, that makes the setting totally uninspiring, but of course it leaves lots of room for interpretation and fanfic.
Undying Dynasties and Sylvan Elves will be redone like all others. We have extended since sources of information to be less obscure, albeit still in-world and prone to misinformation from outsiders - especially true for Daemons, for some reason... See the "Scrolls" where many pieces of background have been provided.
...At one point I remember the T9A team wanted to create a dynamic setting, where the present would not be the like of eternal status quo of the WH Old World (where each chaos incursion was battled to a halt, and the wretched and tainted lands returned to their former nature in a generation or so). In this dynamic setting, some fantasy races could be a little downtoned now, but would then emerge as new dominant factions in the next update. IIRC, the Vermin were such a faction - long in the hiding, but ready to embark on a big campaign to assume a leading role in the world politics. Not that different from the WHFB idea. I don't know if this design principle is still held by the writers. But the idea of a slowly changing world is a good one, I think.
This idea is still there.
However, I would not expect a dramatic change which would be the coming of a 10th Age, but rather an evolution of History.
At the moment, High Elves rule the seas (like Victorian UK) and dominate world trade.
The Empire of Sonnstahl is the growing challenger, a land power becoming imperialistic (like Wilhelm 2 Germany).
Other factions regret their former hegemony (like post-Napoleonic France), resist change or anticipate opportunities.
Which big change could occur to alter significantly History has not been thought yet.
I would not expect it to be a Daemon invasion, that would be too close to GW. I would rather anticipate a more modest change, which would be illustrated with a campaign.
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Marrying lab rat psychology to Republican Roman social structures was a very hazardous project anyway, prone to non-intended caricature.
Which is a reason for why it'd be preferable that the Vermin appropriated the identity and the trappings of Avras, rather than its actual substance. Then, any resulting caricature or irony would be entirely intentional. For instance, the Lord-level character of the Vermin should be called Dictator, because it used to be an Avrasian title of unlimited authority. Only that instead of being a time-limited office in a constitutional framework with extreme separation of powers as it as in ancient Avras, a Vermin Dictator would be closer to the contemporary real-world meaning of the term, with the irony being largely lost on the Vermin :icon_lol: