The 9th Age: We Played a Game!

As many of you know I have been fully supportive of the progression to the Ninth Age for Warhammer Fantasy. Well with the rules out in Beta, it was time to give it a go. It took a lil for my mate and I to be able to juggle the time to get the game in, especially as we knew it would take longer to play then normal, but tonight we finally managed to do so.

And it was interesting.

Firstly, we both took the list writing part in a different direction, and this yielded some interesting results for us both. We wrote 2100pt lists, which was a weird number, but worked for this playtest.
My mate (who played Ogres 'Khan') took the style list that he was used to playing in 8th edition, ad re-worked it into Ninth, making changes here and there. The biggest of these changes was he took the Mark of Rage (Khorne) all across the board on his Ogres (this was awesome!). He was really happy with what he was still able to fit in at that points level and with the change of armybook.
I wanted to try out a wide range of new and different things (I was played my Dwarven 'Holds'). Keeping my units smaller to be able to fit in more of this and that, I was able to learn the new units and some of the new army rules. And although the list was not competitive, I was not disappointed with the result (even though I lost the game in the long run).

The game took us longer then expected/planned. Now this was to be expected, being the fact that we were learning as we went and there were all these new rules and changes. For me personally, I think I got quite frustrated with the pace of the game. I realised that although my mindset was that this is a game I know, I have to look at it as learning a completely different game, because in a way it is. Its something new and something fresh.

Overall, the game was a bloodbath with very little left on the table (this is what happens when you put an almost full combat built dwarf list against an ogre list), and it was glorious (the Dark Gods would have been gleeful). Although it took a while to play, we both really enjoyed it, and most importantly, the rule set felt natural in its progression.

It is still in Beta, and I do believe there is still room for improvement, in both the rules and points cost, and a few areas of balancing that needs to still happen, but all in all I am quite impressed and more than ready to give it another round.

Later in the week I will do a section purely on my beloved Dwarfs, and on their rulebook for the Ninth Age. I do not know yet if this will be in written or video format, but we will find out!

Thanks again for reading!