The 9th Age 9th Age: The Rules Team wants our feedback

[Mad 'At]

Thought I'd put this out here.

The shift from v1.1 to v1.2 has cause a lot of stir in the community, and a lot of people are upset about the state of their armies. The 1.2 version was mainly intented to set the foundation of coming releases, and it was never imagined to be perfectly balanced and to fully enrapture the flavour of each individual army. Attempts were made to get it as good as possible but it was simply not realistic to make a perfect change at once. Now the he Rules Team are collection opinions about what people see as the biggest most glaring issues in each army, both with regards to internal balance and to the flavour.

To collect these opinions they have created thread were anyone can reply and describe a single problem as they see it. Other members then vote by liking those posts. The 1-5 most liked post will get evaluated by the RT.

You can check out the VC thread here.

If you see any suggestions you like, then just hit like

 

[MedMos]

Disclaimer: I haven't played 1.2 as of yet, and haven't gone over everything in the rules and armybook.

However, one thing sprang in my eyes with our new armybook: the must-take of stubborn on the Dark Coach when playing as Von Karnstein. This seems wholly unnecessary to me, and might discourage the use of one of the iconic vampire-pieces in our list. I don't think it was an autoinclude before, and do not understand the need to limit the use even further. Stubborn might be very good, but the 'must' is a limiting factor when choosing the army.
A minor thing, admittedly, and there seems to be much more to deal with concerning magic and characters, but there you have it.

 

[MedMos]

Honestly, I get the vibe from t9a that the problem comes from their starting point: ETC. I don't have hard proof that this is so, but designing a game for team-style tournaments is very different from designing it for single games. Stuff that is too strong in the ETC gets nerfed, even if it wasn't a problem for generic all-comers lists, which leads to discontent from the (I imagine very large!) playerbase that does not attend ETC-style tournaments.
People that I can get games in with on a regular basis are playing t9a, so I'll probably play it from time to time. But my (quite limited) gaming time will be spent on Necromunda, a horribly unbalanced, random and highly entertaining game.

 

[Aranei]

Honestly, I get the vibe from t9a that the problem comes from their starting point: ETC. I don't have hard proof that this is so, but designing a game for team-style tournaments is very different from designing it for single games. Stuff that is too strong in the ETC gets nerfed, even if it wasn't a problem for generic all-comers lists, which leads to discontent from the (I imagine very large!) playerbase that does not attend ETC-style tournaments.
People that I can get games in with on a regular basis are playing t9a, so I'll probably play it from time to time. But my (quite limited) gaming time will be spent on Necromunda, a horribly unbalanced, random and highly entertaining game.

I agree with you on this. I even wrote something like it in an another thread:
...

Do note that 9th age is being written by the folk who organize tournaments, or are team captains, at least in the majority.
Which means that their main concern is balance. They oppose ruthlessly power creep and unit spam (and other forms of spam as well), which is not bad. However, I fear that they bacame too involved in forming their big tournament metagame and forgot that the game must be fun to start with, or it will turn into an another Warmachine (which is a good game being turned into a crappy one by the way the tournaments are played, and by being overall tournament-orientired).

...

https://www.vampirecounts.net/threads/the-9th-scroll-and-the-preview-within.30600/

 

[TMS]

Despite a promising start into 9th I've found myself without any opponents to regularly play against, so I won't be contributing much feedback. I'll be observing it from a distance instead, and I hope they'll do it good.

 

[MedMos]

Good point @Aranei, while striving for balance is admirable, it can get in the way of the fun parts. As I mentioned, I enjoy Necromunda a great deal, and always enjoyed the more quirky parts of WHFB. It was fun! Although you sometimes had run-ins with WAAC players, and I guess this is the reason the tournament crowd wants balance. Because it certainly takes the fun out of the game, meeting 4-5 power-net-lists during a tournament. So I understand the desire for balanced armies.
Maybe I can find others to play 7th or 8th ed. with...

 

[QuothTheRaven]

I had such high hopes for T9A but it has become apparent that it is wholly aiming for tournament play and the fluff and fun is getting stripped out along the way.
At the moment it just seems... joyless.

As for VC in 1.2, they're so drastically nerfed (terrible ethereal rule, weak vampire counts, overly diluted magic phase) that it doesn't feel like a terrifying army of the undead.