9th Age Discussion of OpenHammer (ETC) and Ninth Age (Swedish Comp)

Uh.. Already happened several weeks ago, but nice of you to show up xD

 

I'll find them later =]

 

List as of August 4th 2015.

Predatory Fighter applies to supporting attacks.
Comment: PF is a mess. Allow it not becuase it'll boost our saurus units, but because it's annoying to throw seperate rolls and confusing for our opponents. A Cold Oone Rider unit will at minimum make 4 different rolls (front, second rank, additional PF attacks and mount). If you get off a reroll augment you can do the entire thing twice.
Allow PF in second because we want to streamline our rolls and not make them draw out and confuse out opponent.
New suggestion to completely remove PF. Add sacred spawnings and we won't care at all.

Magic Items
Reduce cost of Horn of Kygor by 10 points.
Reduce the cost of the Jaguar Standard by 15 points
Make it clear that the Sacred Stegadon Helm of Itza and Piranha Blade dont stack.


Characters:
Slann Mage Priests

Add
Focused Ferocity: Predatory Fighter units joined by a Slann may always test to restrain pursuit as if the Slann were a Skink character. This does not apply to other units within six inches of the Slann. If a Slann gains Fear orTerror, the Slanns unit is considered to possess Fear or Terror. (Slann special characters get this too.)

Note this will make Harrowing Scrutiny reasonable

Raise cost of Becalming Cognition by 5 points
Reduce Cost of Transcendent Healing by 5 points

Saurus Oldblood/Saurus Scar Veteran
Reduce cost of Carnosaur by 10 points
(Add the price increase on mounts already in the Alpha)

Skink Chief
Add
Beast Kinship: A Skink Chief mounted on a Terradon may join a unit of Terradon riders. A Skink Chief mounted on a Ripperdactyl may join a unit of Ripperdactyl riders. Mounted Skink Chiefs may not join any other unit.
Allow skink Chiefs to mount the bolt thrower on the (special) stegadon.
Comment: At first glance a BS5 bolt thrower seem overpowered, but once you add penalties and consider the price it's hardly true. It'll instead allow for more usage of both the baby stegadon and skink chief without being a super competitive choice. However both might be viewed negatively amont other players and neither are priority changes.

Skink Priest
Unchanged

Core
Saurus Warriors
one unit of Saurus Warriors per army may take a magic standard worth up to 25 points).

Skink Cohort
Unchanged
Comment: while skink cohort could see some sort of change it's hardly a priority as of now. They still serve a function. One user did, however, comment a point decrease of 1pts.

Skink Skirmishers
Suggestion to make blowpipes more attractive:
# +1 To Hit against large targets.
# BS4 with an appropriate point increase.
# Quick To Fire.
# A seperate unit entry.
Comment: With a 5+ parry for the javelin guys the blowpipe guys need a decent change.

Jungle Swarms
Reduce cost by 5 points per model
Move to Core

Special
Temple Guard
Unchanged

Cold One Riders
Reduce costs of Spear upgrade by 2 points per model
May take a magic banner worth up to 50 points
Allow one unit to be Core
Comment: 2pts lances might be too cheap though, The 2pts price was suggested before the change on spears.
Core CoRs could be a Kroq Gar special rule, like he used to have in the 7th edition army book.

Kroxigor
Add Standard and Musician options

Terradon Riders
Make optional swap to Fireleech bolas free

Stegadon
Chief can use his BS to mount the giant bolt thrower
Price decrease 20-30pts.
Comment The baby steg isn't actually bad-bad, it's just that for the price you might as well pick the ancient stegadon and have S6 impact hits.

Bastiladon
reduce base cost by 15-20 points
Solar Engine costs 15-20 points. Ark of Sotek remains free
Comment: With core swarms along with price reduction it *might* make the ark of sotek more interesting/attractive

Rare
Ancient Stegadon
Unchanged

Salamander Hunting Pack
Unchanged

Razordon
Add armour piercing
Add small price increase (5-10pts)

Troglodon
Reduce cost by 40 points

Special/named Characters
Mazdamundi
Raise Leadership score to 10

Add to rules
Greatest living caster: Mazdamundi is treated as a 5th level caster

Lord Kroak
Add 10 points to the base cost

Kroq-Gar
Reduce base cost by 30 points
As mentioned previously allow for Cold One Riders to be core or just a single unit.

Chakax
Reduce base cost by 15 points

Gor-rok
Unchanged

Tettoeko
Raise Ld by one point
Raise base cost by 30-40 points

Tiktakto
Reduce base cost by 15 points
Change name to something less stupid. Teploq means death from the skies and sounds close enough to the original name
Allow Tiktakto to join units Terradons and possibly Ripperdactyls. He have a special rule that grants his weapon skill (4) to the unit he join - which he currently can't.

Oxyotl
Add Hates Daemons

 

Alright analyzing kroxigors how can we easily deal with these so they will see more action?

At 50pts/model they're actually appropriately costed and yet they have major drawbacks. They each have 50% chance to pop another attack at S7, however their high strenght is also their biggest downfall - they all strike at ASL initiative. This mean that a unit will have to handle incoming ranged shooting and magic and once they reach CC they strike after most opponents. This can be a major deal because there are unit that can just flat out wreck them before they swing or at least make them useless.

Comparably the new minotaur now have the following:

WS4, S5/T4, 3A/3W, I3 and Ld7
Light armour
Frenzy + bloodgreed
Forest strider
Mark of Chaos (4pts)
Impact Hit (1)
Full command + magic banner (50pts)

You can give these guys Mark of Khorne and have them hit at S6 on the charge - I'm going to go ahead and assume the impact hit will hit at S6 as well. At WS4/4A each and 5A on the champ these guys will murder everything they touch, except great weapon elfs.

At that point they're 49pts/model.

So their major issue is the almost complete lack of armour save (6+). They can buy a shield, but not benefit from the parry due to frenzy. In fact you might as well give them a second hand weapon for added giggles because that'll make them cost 53pts with 5 attacks each hitting at S6 with MoK. Just think about that for a second.
I know one shouldn't compare unit type vs unit type, but should a unit of these hit a kroxigor unit they'll pulverize them immediately. And they're barely even more expensive.

A unit of 8 minotaurs with that setup will do 18 wounds against T4 with a 4+ save on the charge. Against 1+ knights you can just halve that amount.
Against 1+ knights kroxigors will do close to the same, counting PF and with same amount of models. Not counting any lost models .________.

I think giving kroxigors full command is a decent "buff", but it won't change sh1t, unfortunately. I think their biggest issue is their lack of flexibility. I mean a minotaur unit with the above can take on almost all targets and with a flaming banner they can wreck chimeras before they swing.. And trolls.

Kroxigors want to either flank charge anything or charge (not take a charge) a unit of knights. Getting off a charge will mean they can usually win because at that point knights have lost a lot of their hitting power. They can also hunt monsters, but they still do it while suffering casualties.

Personally I think that if we want to make kroxigors more viable we have to make them more flexible. I'm not asking to make them able to take on white lions head on, but at least make them decent in all match-ups and not just some, and when I say decent it's as in actually able to take something down something without being some sort of wizard. The reason is that when we look at our strongest units - the cowboys - we take them because they are so extremely effective against a very large amount of units. In fact an oldblood can take on basically all units except those that completley ignore armour for whatever reason or force initiative tests (treemen and hell pit abominations). They can tank a unit, take on powerful melee lords, take on monster, monstrous cavalry, unit of normal cavalry .. anything. They are obviously on the extreme end of flexibility, but we take them because of that. And their ridiculous price.

So how do we solve kroxigors?

We could mimic BM and allow magic banners (M7, flaming?).
We could allow halbards, but at I1 it won't do THAT much.
We could ramp up the attack stat by 1, which (if we keep PF) would allow for 66% chance to pop a new attack.
Maybe do something weird and allow one kroxigor to automatically hit all infantry models B2B contact as S5.
We could drop the points, but to what? 5pts won't do much so we're likely talking what? 10pts?
We could come up with a kroxigor hero at a reasonable price that buffs the entire unit?
Up their Armour Save with +1 for a bit of added protection from ranged fire?
Add all of the above and laugh like maniacs?
Something completely different?

Also I'm not looking to completely overhaul Kroxigors - just look at minotaurs, they got very slight buffs (mark and frenzy from the get go along with a price reduction) so I was hoping we could do the same. I don't want them to become must have, just units you'd be able to pick and actually have fun with without having to suffer through 10-20 games of harsh learning only to not care by then.

 

BTW I think they're redoing always strike last. I believe it's changed so you have initiative 0. So this mean that you can in theory buff them. A Bastiladon would bump them to I1.