9th Age 9th Age - Saurian Ancients Sneak Peak

I don't think AoS is anywhere near as popular as Warhammer Fantasy was in 2013. However, it seems significantly more widespread than 9th Age, KoW or "Oldhammer" at the current moment in time. Just take a look at the majority of activity on this forum (outside of fluff or painting blogs):

1. AoS
2. 8th Edition or 9th Age
3. KoW

Every time I click on "new posts", I am flooded with AoS content. Overall it will be interesting to see how AoS fares. Apparently there was a 6 month GW financial report that seemed to infer that AoS has been under performing so far (I say infer, because the financials are not broken down by game system). Like you mentioned earlier, the community is fragmented and definitely not what it used to be. Sadly, AoS seems to be the largest of those fragments.

 

While I have exactly ZERO interest in it, there are many people on here (as well as within the YouTube community) that absolutely love it. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. There is a part of me that would want nothing more than for AoS to completely crash and burn (though a second part of me would feel bad for many of our great forum members who love the game).

 

Do you know what would make this "easier" to understand, a clear resoning. Ok, I'll give the fluff descriptions a 'cute' level. But, some explaination as to why things needed to be changed would have been nice.

With the skink change. If GW, the masters of the nerf bat, had no reason to change it in three books, why now?

 

Agreed. They were a trademark or our army. Might as well make units Chaos Warriors special choices as well. Changing the historical play style of an army will undoubtedly upset many people.

I think the game is becoming extremely inflexible and rigid.

 

Me too. Not too long now until April.

 

1. 1 BY FAR. Poison skink skirmishers are in the absolute core of any strategy i use with LM, and that has stayed the same in SA, so this will be very hard to adapt to . But i do like a challenge, so we will see what we can do.

 

Really sad to say that i agree to this if all these changes come trough..

 

I still have some hope in T9A, and I still have my little gaming group. If things don't work I'll probably stick with 6th or 7th edition
That being said... I probably should start deciding between 6th and 7th, because while I still have hope I can't see any lights in the night began with The End Times, at least not looking FORWARD. Things might be better looking back

 

I stil wonder why only one guy is responsable for upcoming changes? Is there no group who discusses such things?

 

For me this change alone might be enough to leave 9th Age behind. I could envision everything else working out, but I don't like how they're trying to change and limit the way Lizardmen "should" be played.

I'm surprised to hear this too. I thought there was a team of people working on it and I guessed they would have significant familiarity/expertise with Lizardmen.

 

I just asked this in the SA sneak peek on the 9A forums. I wonder if I will get a reply (they have been avoiding my other question aswell).

 

I'm sure they have quite a few angry/upset Lizardmen players on their hands right now. Hopefully they recognize this as a mistake and make the appropriate changes. We only need a couple of small tweaks to turn this thing back around.

What is the other question that you asked which they are avoiding?

 

@ Pinktaco @ Giladis

I have yet to receive an answer to my question: what happens if a unit or combination of units becomes autoinclude due to lack of options? What happens if (and this is hypothetical) 2x 30 Saurus Warriors, or 3x 20 Skink Braves, or 2x 40 Skink Braves becomes the new meta and is taken by 80% of the players because it is simply the best choice.

Will that unit or combination of units be nerfed?

I have an additional question: why was the book changed by one person? Would it not have been better to have several people working on it. I have to hand it to the guy though, it is a hell of a lot of work to be done by one person. Just curious why it was only by one person and I do not have the intention to bash or criticize anyone.

Wouldn't it have been better to leave the SA sneak peek as last? To give that person more time to talk to other people about the book?

Copy paste of my post.

I just find it strange reasoning that part of the reason that Poisoned Skinks were moved to special is because they are "too good" and an "auto include" to the army. If you follow that same reasoning then you might aswell nerf the next best/viable setup that players will use. Because there might (probably will) be another optimal setup for SA core in the future which in turn will be an "auto include".

 

Hello my valued Lizzardmen brethren!

I have played a view friendly games and 5 league games with 9th Age now. We have running a 20 men League in our town.
Playing all games with Lizardm.. I mean Saurian Ancients against all kind of other armies I have some expierience now.

I am more a tournament player so I like the Idea of a balanced game. But you can balance warhammer only so far, without a total rules overhaul. I don´t mind some balancing issues as long you can win with your army even with a view dificulties and have some fun on the way.

But some of the sneakpeak changes I do not understand at all. I was experimenting with the templeguard a lot. (was experimanting with lots of different units actually leaving me with a lot of unnessesarie losses but that I dont mind experimenting was a lot of fun!) And the guard never did survive any of my games even the ones I won.
I played the guard aggressive as combat block with armor piercing and rerolls to wound on 1 and 2 banner always with a Slan. Just to find out that our elite infantry has no place on the battlefield against other elite infantry. This was nothing new but I like the Guard a lot and was willing to try it again with the new weaponmaster rule, hoping together with some Slan buffs they will rock.

There was this espeacially cruel example with this dark elf unit with great weapons (Sorry not to good with english unit names but I think you know what Unit I mean) They just killed my templeguard with one swing (aktually one did survive giving my Slan one more round to live but still 27 dead) and they are even cheaper then the guard. [they had the plus one attack buff from there bloodcouldron or what it is called and my two sallys who tried to frie them the round before missfired with is bad luck on my part]

Or the even more fun expirience where this Demonprince from the Chaoswarriors killd the templeguard only with help from 3 Chariots on his own in about 6 battlerounds. I had a countercharge ready with an Stegadon I mean Taurosaur with sharp horns but It did nothing expcept to die to to the demonprince. While his General a Warlord on a flying mount stoppt the rest of my possible army support. In this battle I was killed by just two charaktermoddels.

Not that I have a problem with good charakter models. Aktually my most wins with Lizardman I achieved with the help of my fighter heros and Oldbloods. I let them home in my recent games to experiment and because they are very expansive now. Just to find out that with out them my Lizards are just fodder for the elite of many other armies. Like when I confronted this Orkunit with Plate armor that that was shockingly good. (A solution would be to buff my units with Magic but my fellow players know that they have to stop my buffing in crucial rounds now after I jused this trick far to often in the last years - was always a fan of nice buff spells insted of onedicing doom spells)

To make a long story short. I cannot understand at all why the templeguard has to be made weaker. All armies I engaged had a solid or even destroying answer in ther elite segment for my guard. Even as the guard is now I wasnt planing to use it anymore because 35 Saurus do the trick as good while beeing in core.

The unit that was realy good in my testgames was the SkinkKrox Unit as it was to be expected. Its not that easy to counter this unit. Most of my fellow players hat a problem with them, but never with the guard.

But I expect my core Saurus Units to do a shockingly good job in the future. Because my next testing step will include big blocks of Saurus with movment 5 and 6. But when this will be common it will be nerved too. So Im realy a little dishearten with the 9th age at the moment.
I wanted to test the toughnes 5 Kroxigors as well but It seems I will not have the oportiunity to do it. I had already bought 6 more Kroxis ^^ But the will stay in the box sadly


I have no problem with changes even when they are reducing our already small core as long as they make some sence balancing wise. I will definatly try the changes even when I dont understand the templeguard changes at all because they are already week and have to compete now with posion skinks.
I will still try it because the 9th Age has somthing realy going for it.
It is free for all! You have nothing to pay for it!

So you can easily play 9th age today and Sigmar tomorrow and 9th age the day after and whatever you like later on.
In this regard I have nothing to complain. But I want the 9th age to realy be successful and they have to do better than this
But I will try what ever they throw at me because its for free!

PS:
In case you missed the point, this was a "the templegard is to weak" rant ^^

PPS:
Hope my english is not to bad

 

I know I'm late to this party, but I've just caught up on the Spikeback rules. Hot damn. Less than 200 points for 3 models with 6d6 S4 AP1 shots with quick to fire and ignore S&S penalty, plus 9 S5 attacks at I4 (!), plus stomp, plus Skirmish, plus 4+ AS? No wonder these guys got nerfed! They outfight both Saurus and Temple Guard, and outshoot Skinks.

Bingo. Why would anyone pay 13ppm (or more...) for Temple Guard in Special, when they can pay 13ppm for Saurus in Core with Spears? The reduced WS is inconsequential, the Saurus still have -2AS from the AP of the Spears, and for just 2ppm more you can get them to 3+ AS.

Especially now that all the good chaff is moving to Special, I just can't see anyone taking core Skinks without poison plus a Temple Guard combat unit, when they could take a core Saurus combat unit and Skinks with poison in Special.

 

Regarding leaving or joining 9th age:
Please remember it is still beta, and that we havent even been at it half a year.

Also: version 1.00 will not be the last one

 

I completely agree that such a decision should not be based on a beta. That's why I'm holding off making that decision until April. April is judgement time!! Come April I decide which I like more, 8th edition Lizardmen or 9th Age Saurian Ancients. I'll consider my WoC in the same fashion, but so far I like both the 8th edition and 9th Age versions of them.

While this is true, at some point a decision has to be made. I don't want to stick with a game system in the hopes that it will get better, especially when there is a great alternative already available. Personally, I only ever like to focus on one single miniature war game at a time. For me, it is this or that... not both. Others will undoubtedly feel differently, I know several players who partake in multiple game systems. I think I have too many other competing hobbies for that.

 

A highly biased review (IMHO), but worth a listen.

 

Actually I found it sort of offensive, he kept saying "It's totally fair" on almost every nerf. Even ones that I cannot seem to wrap my head around as being necessary to him it was all "Totally fair" except for twice when it directly effected his personal play style. How about the next time they do a review they get a respected player that is not part of the rule making and ask them to review it, I would much rather hear it from a player who is not heavily biased with the given ruleset.

Still looking forward to the changes, I will withhold judgement until after the release and when I can more accurately judge other books as well, we may very well be perfectly balanced because they lowered the power of everyone else as well, seems that way for every sneak peek besides Brets and Rats. Those two armies made out like bandits, which is good for them as I believe most things that needed to be nerfed were but then a lot of additional buffs were handed out across the board.