Its been awhile since we have talked the 9th Age, but they are still going strong. In fact, they have a new version of their ruleset out and in a newsletter have the latest information and answers to questions fans of the 9th Age may be asking.
Lets take a look, and if you are new to the 9th Age, here is a brief run down of what it is.
What is the 9th Age?
Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age is an independent table top miniature wargame set in a fantasy world, in which players take control of armies and set them upon one another in conflicts ranging from minor skirmishes to mighty battles with hundreds of models.
The game and all of its rules are completely free to download and use, and consist of a main rulebook and over fifteen army documents, ranging from stoic men and noble elves to the feral orcs and dread worshipers of the dark gods. You can easily assemble your own army using appropriate 28mm miniatures from any manufacturer.
Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age has been created by a group of experienced wargamers, a large supportive staff and continuous input from the wargaming community. We aim to provide a competitive, balanced and fun game, with updates and new rules to be released regularly.
We’ve created 16 unique armies from the Dread Elves in the west to the Ogre Khans in the east. Each army has different units and playstyles and can be represented by models from any 28mm model company. People said it was impossible, but we have created a game that is both balanced and fun. Don’t believe us? Try it for yourselves.
Hello T9A Community!,
Its finally here, our v204 beta release just in time for the summer ahead where we hope the sound of battles rings out far and wide. Before we go much further, let us explain how we plan to reach "gold" this year:
"What is 'Gold' and when will T9A be stable?"
Excellent question, and sooner than you think! v204 is our beta release that will become our stable beta over the summer period. This will give us time to iron out any last kinks we are seeing in the rulebook. Then come autumn one last BETA release, v205 will be released. At this point in time, we are seeing this as a purely balance release only. The belief shared by many is that there should be nothing major to fix, however if something has slipped by unseen until this point, this release will be the one it is fixed in, but otherwise we are hoping for a small balance fix. This then leaves the door wide open to go gold sometime before Xmas this year. When we say"Gold" this means that we lock down the rulebook, no further changes will be made and it becomes the stable edition for the foreseeable future. This then allows us to turn our attention to cranking up the release of our armybooks. Warriors of the Dark Gods has received amazing feedback and we are very proud of this and I hoped you have downloaded and readthe latest scroll release where we delve into the new Daemons book.
Lets Talk about Army Tiers
In the past, T9A team has often been asked, what are the aim is for "power wise". The RT teamtook a long hard look at this and, in conjunction with the BLT team and various external sources, blind ranked all 16 army books to create an average tier list. Now its worth pointing out at this point:
Now we can almost gurantee that this list is not the listyou would have written, but we will all value the armies differently, hence the blind tiering process that occurred.
So, what is the RT aiming for? The defined target power level in this case is "Tier 2". Armies abovethis was planned to be pushed down a little, and armies below were planned tobe brought up. Note that we didn't expect all armies to perfect hit the target power level (that's pretty much impossible given all the redesigns and thelittle data we have). We only expect that armies, as a whole, moves towards the target, and this is an important understanding, "move towards thetarget". This was the plan for external balance (power level between armies). In addition to this, BLT are also expects to improve internal balance (balance between choices within a book). Its important toremember that these two are different, yet connected. One cannot improve internal balance without this affecting external balance. And vice versa..
In practice, both above goals (improve internal balance and move army towards target power level) are reached through a combination of points increases and decreases. Overused stuff becomes more expensive, and underused stuff becomes cheaper. This helps tweak internal balance. The amount of changes, the size of changes, and what to change are dependent on an army's tier placement. Lower tier armies should have gotten more buffs, bigger buffs and/or buffs to more relevant units.
It doesnt mean though that if you say OK, that things will all have got cheaper and nothing would have got more expensive, internal and external balance as noted above, doesnt work like that so there will be some increases as well as decreases in points for units. Remember the aim is to move towards the target.
So we hope that peeking behind this veil has opened a few eyes. Its worth remembering that we are all human, mistakes will be made and things will be under and over shot, but at least you can see what is being aimed for target wise
What does v204 update change in the rulebook?
You'll be glad to know and as expected, very little. All of these changes can be found here XXX where DanT has taken the time to explain the major changes in the games.
What does v204 update change in my army book?
Yesterday, each of the army factions ACS teams released the changes made to your army. Head over there now to see what has changed!
I have questions about certain units and points values in my army book, whom do i ask?
Learning from our mistakes is something T9A tries its hardest to do and in previous releases getting the right amount of informationto the right army’s factions has not always been done in the best manner, so this time we have come up with a new approach we can be tailored to each faction. What we would like you to do is pose your questions to your Army Community Support team. They will compile a list of questions and take the six most commonly asked ones to the RT and BLT teams whom will then in a few weeks’ time (They will have 16 groups coming tothem at once, that’s a lot of questions to go though!) come back to us with the answers, so get those questions into your ACS!
Any comments or questions please leave us in the main thread!
See you on the battlefield!
T9A Team
Its finally here, our v204 beta release just in time for the summer ahead where we hope the sound of battles rings out far and wide. Before we go much further, let us explain how we plan to reach "gold" this year:
"What is 'Gold' and when will T9A be stable?"
Excellent question, and sooner than you think! v204 is our beta release that will become our stable beta over the summer period. This will give us time to iron out any last kinks we are seeing in the rulebook. Then come autumn one last BETA release, v205 will be released. At this point in time, we are seeing this as a purely balance release only. The belief shared by many is that there should be nothing major to fix, however if something has slipped by unseen until this point, this release will be the one it is fixed in, but otherwise we are hoping for a small balance fix. This then leaves the door wide open to go gold sometime before Xmas this year. When we say"Gold" this means that we lock down the rulebook, no further changes will be made and it becomes the stable edition for the foreseeable future. This then allows us to turn our attention to cranking up the release of our armybooks. Warriors of the Dark Gods has received amazing feedback and we are very proud of this and I hoped you have downloaded and readthe latest scroll release where we delve into the new Daemons book.
Lets Talk about Army Tiers
In the past, T9A team has often been asked, what are the aim is for "power wise". The RT teamtook a long hard look at this and, in conjunction with the BLT team and various external sources, blind ranked all 16 army books to create an average tier list. Now its worth pointing out at this point:
- This is an average of those thoughts
- Differences between armies from top to bottom is considered to be quite small anyway
- This may not represent your meta. In fact its impossible to do this, but it was felt that in asking the various external sources that enough variance would have been encompassed
"Tier 1"
1: VC
1: VC
"Tier 6"
6: OK
6: OK
Now we can almost gurantee that this list is not the listyou would have written, but we will all value the armies differently, hence the blind tiering process that occurred.
So, what is the RT aiming for? The defined target power level in this case is "Tier 2". Armies abovethis was planned to be pushed down a little, and armies below were planned tobe brought up. Note that we didn't expect all armies to perfect hit the target power level (that's pretty much impossible given all the redesigns and thelittle data we have). We only expect that armies, as a whole, moves towards the target, and this is an important understanding, "move towards thetarget". This was the plan for external balance (power level between armies). In addition to this, BLT are also expects to improve internal balance (balance between choices within a book). Its important toremember that these two are different, yet connected. One cannot improve internal balance without this affecting external balance. And vice versa..
In practice, both above goals (improve internal balance and move army towards target power level) are reached through a combination of points increases and decreases. Overused stuff becomes more expensive, and underused stuff becomes cheaper. This helps tweak internal balance. The amount of changes, the size of changes, and what to change are dependent on an army's tier placement. Lower tier armies should have gotten more buffs, bigger buffs and/or buffs to more relevant units.
It doesnt mean though that if you say OK, that things will all have got cheaper and nothing would have got more expensive, internal and external balance as noted above, doesnt work like that so there will be some increases as well as decreases in points for units. Remember the aim is to move towards the target.
So we hope that peeking behind this veil has opened a few eyes. Its worth remembering that we are all human, mistakes will be made and things will be under and over shot, but at least you can see what is being aimed for target wise
What does v204 update change in the rulebook?
You'll be glad to know and as expected, very little. All of these changes can be found here XXX where DanT has taken the time to explain the major changes in the games.
What does v204 update change in my army book?
Yesterday, each of the army factions ACS teams released the changes made to your army. Head over there now to see what has changed!
I have questions about certain units and points values in my army book, whom do i ask?
Learning from our mistakes is something T9A tries its hardest to do and in previous releases getting the right amount of informationto the right army’s factions has not always been done in the best manner, so this time we have come up with a new approach we can be tailored to each faction. What we would like you to do is pose your questions to your Army Community Support team. They will compile a list of questions and take the six most commonly asked ones to the RT and BLT teams whom will then in a few weeks’ time (They will have 16 groups coming tothem at once, that’s a lot of questions to go though!) come back to us with the answers, so get those questions into your ACS!
Any comments or questions please leave us in the main thread!
See you on the battlefield!
T9A Team