Report from world's first 9th Age tournament

[Mad 'At]

Hi everybody!

Last weekend I co-hosted a tournament, that was the first in the world to use the 9th Age beta (v0.6) as the rule set, and I must say it was quite the success.

We had a total of 48 players on scene, each player having 5 games. Army size was 2200 pts. The scenarios used were table specific and some would say quite wacky. A lot of them demanded the inclusion of scoring units to be able to contest objectives. These are the results.

So congratulations all, VC is currently the strongest army in 9th Age!

These are the lists of the top 3 players:

Vampire count of Nosferatu, Lvl 3, Alchemy, general
Necromancer Lord, Lvl 4, Necromancy,
2x20 Zombies, FC
35 Ghouls, champ
5 Direwolves
9 Ghoul monstrosities
2x Vargbeast
Corpse cart, unholy pyre
3 Great bats
4 Angels of Death, halberds

Elvish Archmage of life, Ancient dragon, Lvl 4, Dispel Scroll, Dusk stone, Charm of curesed iron, general
High captain, BSB, Heavy armor, Shield, Lance, Elvish horse with natural armor, The world banner
15 Elvish heavy cavalry, FC, War standard
2x5 elvish light cavalry
6 Knights of the dragon realm, FC
5 Knights of the dragon realm, Std+ champion
24 Protectors of the flame, FC, Banner of razors

High Enchantress lvl 4 Alchemy, horse, Dispel, Obsidian Rock, general
Forest Captain, BsB, Glade Bow, Heavy armour, shield, spear
3x10 Scouts, Trueflight arrows
10 Scouts, Trueflight arrows, standard, Holy Icon
7 Savage Riders, Shields, standard, Gleaming Pendant
6 Savage Riders, Shields, standard
6 Sisterhood order, standard, Banner of discipline
2x Eagle
2x10 Pathfinders

If people want it I can update with all the lists later, but they won't all be formatted as neatly as those above.

If you really want to did into it here are all the match-ups for all the players:

Spoiler: Match-ups

I was the rule judge at the tournament, and I have been the rule judge at two previous tournaments as well. With a complete new rule-set for everyone, there was a lot of questions and I was always busy. That said, the job was actually easier than it was in 8th edition. Since all the rules are gathered in one place, instead of a paperback rulebook and a bazillion FAQs, both official and unofficial, it was a lot faster to find what you needed. Many of the more complex issues from 8th were also solved right away, like pursuit, strange challenges, attack allocation and combat reforms. Here the 9th Age rules really proved their worth with a lot more simplicity. There were a few odd situations though, but the good thing is that these can be solved in the next update (probably out tomorrow) so I won't have to worry about them again.

Currently I am letting the participants fill out a google form with some questions about their thoughts on 9th Age (among other things). When the results are in I will share them with you.

I'm sure I can say a lot more about the 9th Age, but that is all I can think of now. Please feel free to comment and ask questions.

 

[Mad 'At]

Btw, here are some pictures from the event:

Spoiler: Pictures

 

[Emicrania]

Great job! And congrats on being in the VC army book committee, I tried to be in the BG department but my English is not "fluent" enough.
Go figure ^.-

 

[Mad 'At]

@Emicrania: Thanks, I hope I can do our army justice =)

In other news, my co-host recently finished putting all the lists up on the internet, and I put together a table with all the match-ups for each player, with the lists they used linked in their names. Check it out if you are interested in seeing how the different lists performed.

 

[Seneschal]

Hey mate, Grats on the event!
Why was 2200 points the chosen value?
My friends and I are going to give ninth age a whirl. One if them plays Dwarves and is jumping up and down after reading their increased movement rule.

 

[Eternal flitter]

Awesome job. Some great pictures in there as well! I'm really excited about this and it's efforts like the one you went to for this event that will make the difference in the game staying around.

 

[Mad 'At]

@Seneschal: Thanks =)
We went for a bit lower scale to make it easier for people to finish the games in time. With a brand new game we were worried that the games would take longer than usual. We also had a few quite complex scenarios that could also drain the time (and we went for wacky scenarios because that is our thing and because the participants didn't vote it down beforehand).
Dwarves sure got some interesting boosts. I think Dathseekers (Slayers) are looking really cool with Vanguard and Swiftstride.

@Eternal flitter: Thanks. It makes me very glad to hear you say that =)
One of our goals was definitely to give 9th Age a good start.

 

[Mad 'At]

These are the results of the survey I made after the tournament, got 21 replies in total.

Scale and multiple choice questions (sadly I fogott to add Beast Herds to the options...):

And answers to the 4 text based questions in the link bellow. The rows are in no particular order and do not correspond with any one person.
Link

I'm also moving this to Contest of Arms.

 

[logan054]

So erm, what's happened to all the WoC players.....That seemed like a very low turn out for warriors which seem to rely on chariot armies to actually compete.

 

[Mad 'At]

I believe a lot of them switched to Beast Herds. Many saw the chance to finally be able to play them without giving up the chance of victory. Of the Warriors of the Wastes armies that did turn up their average score is pretty average. One did good and one not so good, neither is ranked very high in the Swedish elo ranking though, so overall they did better than expected. Any how can that be considered chariot armies? One had two, the other three, and the one with three had a unit of 26 warriors.