Battle of the Titans: 9th Age Tournament

    A few weeks ago I took the time to participate in a 9th age tournament.  It was a great group of guys, most of which I have played with before.  The tournament was held in the studio for Titan Terrain Studio (which as I understand it, does more than terrain now).  Click here for Titan Terrain Studio's Facebook page. Website is here.

    The tournament was fun, and it helped me get a better grasp of some of the rules changes, especially for my High Elv...errr....Highborn Elves (still not sure why they changed this, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves all cannot be trademarked or copyrighted. That's why GW did away with them in Age of Sigmar, But oh well). Like the the fact that you have to pay for the upgrade to have a Repeating Bolt Thrower (now called the Sea Guard Reaper).  In my 2nd game I was informed that I could not shoot 6 shots with my Reaper because I didn't buy the upgrade.  Totally didn't see that I had to upgrade to something that had been standard for my army since at least 5th edition (when I started playing).

     Tournament was 1600 points, 5 games with 6 players.  A true Round Robin.  I din't fare very well in two of my first three games, getting destroyed in round one and three by Ogre Khans and Kingdom of Equitaine.  I did pull off a good win against Saurian Ancients in round 2 though.  Round four was a fun game for me, though maybe a little frustrating for my opponent.  My good Friend KingG did a battle report on this game and I'll post it here.

   KingG does a lot of great battle reports on his YouTube Channel.  You can find that here. You should check it out.

     Too bad I had to give up the objective in that game, but I didn't think that I could take out those Knights without getting the charge, so I played it safe.  But that Bolt Thrower shot was probably the best single bolt shot I've ever had in my 18 years of gaming.  And as KingG points out in the comments on his video, the imagery is awesome as well.

     Game 5 I won in convincing fashion against a Daemon army.  I knew the game was going to go my way when a Soulgrinder ( I don't know the new name for this) charged my citizen spears in the flank round 2, fluffed all of it's attacks, didn't do a single wound, lost combat and poofed because of the Daemonic Instability rule.  Yup, skillz.

     I ended up in 3rd place, which isn't too shabby for how I started out.  I had a lot of fun, got to play a bunch of 9th Age (5 games is a lot for one day, but it was fun) and hang out with some great guys.  All-in-all a great time.

The 9th Age

I don't love 9th Age. I mean, I like it ok, but I don't love it. I would rather just play 8th edition. I will keep playing 9th Age, mainly because I like the guys I play with and playing 9th Age is better than letting my models sit in a box. but I have serious problems with 9th Age, and they aren't what you think they are.

My biggest problem is with the simplification of the rules. What I LOVED about Fantasy is that it was complex, it was meaty, it wasn't perfect but the rules had FLAVOR! that is the biggest problem with 9th is the lack of flavor and character in the rules because they decided to "simplify it."

For instance. "Mounts Protectiion 6+/5+" and "barding." Now, Highborn elves just don't have the option for "Ithilmar barding", but they can take "mounts protection 5+" which, yeah, it's the same thing as "Ithilmar barding", but dammit "Ithilmar Barding" has a lot more character to it that "Mounts Protection 5+" High Elf Phoenix's now don't have the chart for what you rolled on the winds of magic. It's just gone. Why? It wasn't broken, but we are now "simplifying." but in the process we are losing fun and flavor from the game in my opinion.

They are trying to make a game that is perfectly balanced and streamlined for tournaments.  That is impossible without removing all character from the rules set.  Having the Martial Prowess rule for High Elves was awesome and fluffy.  It put in rule form the fluff that every High Elf was well trained to fight because of need.  Now, maybe the rule it's self was a little over powered, giving it to every unit.  I like how 9th Age has only given it to a few units in the book, but they just call it "Fight in an Extra Rank."  Now that is boring.  I'm not saying they should call it "Martial Prowess"  but they should be able to think of something.  They won't though,  because that would add complexity?  Really?

Also, balance. Frankly it is impossible to completely balance the game out. The game is unbalanced, and it always will be. That's another thing that I loved about it. The armies weren't the same and some, yeah, were disadvantaged.  Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to bring the extremes back to the middle a bit, but I would rather sacrifice balance in the name of story and fluff any day. I played a long time with Elves that sucked, Tomb Kings that sucked worse and Dwarfs that weren't much better, but it was FUN. Getting my wizard blown up in turn one because he happened to roll two 6's on two dice was fun and you know it. Sure, it sucked because you were behind from something random, but you can't tell me you don't have fun telling those stories.

I remember playing a 5th edition game of where 1500 points of my High Elves Teamed with 1500 points of Undead against 2-1500 point Brettonnian armies. On turn one the Brettonnians happened to take out the Vampire General, and he had no other characters in his army, which back then meant that the whole army just died. Poof! Gone! so it was just my 1500 points of High Elves V. 3000 points of Brettonnians. Sure I lost, but I gave them my best and it was one of the best games I've every played. The Undead player just played another game with somebody that showed up later. I remember once in a tournament I lost all 6 of my Silver Helms in one shot because I failed 7 2+ saves. I won a prize for that! Or the time that I blew up both of my Dwarf Cannons in one turn and they both had the Rune of Forging on them.

I love these stories, and now I will not have nearly as many because my wizard will not be sucked into the warp only using 2d6. The Doom Bell can't just blow up, fewer crazy things happen, and to me that is not a good thing. 9th Age is fine, and I enjoy it, but you can't tell me it has the same character.  The problem is that I can't find anyone to play 8th Edition Warhammer with.