Page 1 of 1

Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:03 pm
by Teowulff
I haven't played for a while nor have I really attended this forum ..
Lasty I played some 8th edition and although it had some imbalances, it wasn't so bad (especially not for DE armies).
Then Sigmar came, making the game into something it shouldn't be.
Now we have 9th age .. which (from what I've read) seems to greatly simplify the rules and puts DE quite a bit down the pecking order.

As a result Dark/Dread Elves don't seem to be getting any more popular if I count the forum posts.
What are your thoughts about it? Is 9th age really the way to go, in your opinions?

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 2:49 pm
by Calisson
Hi, Teowulff, welcome back! :)

No, 9th Age does not simplify the rules much, with 114 + 15 pages base rules, to be complemented with the army books...
What was done was to clarify greatly the rules, which do not have the ambiguity that 8th ed suffered from here and there.
At the moment, all army books have been reduced in power compared to 8th.
Next step is to finalize the base rules with 2.0, bound somewhere before end of 2017.
Then all army books will be redone, with a very slight increas of power.

The result is that 9th is much more balanced than 8th, all armies are playable and all units in each army are playable, however each unit is much less powerful than its 8th equivalent.

-=-=-

About the forum, nearly all faction-specific forums have suffered a lot from the change from WH to AoS.
D.net is maintained alive thanks to a couple of old timers but we still need to move forward to improve the experience for D.net members.

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:01 pm
by Teowulff
Calisson wrote:Hi, Teowulff, welcome back! :)

No, 9th Age does not simplify the rules much, with 114 + 15 pages base rules, to be complemented with the army books...
What was done was to clarify greatly the rules, which do not have the ambiguity that 8th ed suffered from here and there.
At the moment, all army books have been reduced in power compared to 8th.
Next step is to finalize the base rules with 2.0, bound somewhere before end of 2017.
Then all army books will be redone, with a very slight increas of power.

The result is that 9th is much more balanced than 8th, all armies are playable and all units in each army are playable, however each unit is much less powerful than its 8th equivalent.

-=-=-

About the forum, nearly all faction-specific forums have suffered a lot from the change from WH to AoS.
D.net is maintained alive thanks to a couple of old timers but we still need to move forward to improve the experience for D.net members.

Thanks!! 8)

Do you perhaps have one or more useful links to how DE are doing in T9A?
I've read some reviews and battle reports .. but a lot of that is already outdated. Not a great lot of posts on the official website, either.
For example it seems T9A is the end of the pegasus masters - they don't appear in any army list anymore.
Too bad, I loved the concept of a hard hitting tough and agile unit.

COKs seem much stronger than before and dark riders still very good distractors. And so on ..

edit: already found some detailed battle reports. Interesting ..

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:11 pm
by Vulcan
9th is, indeed, somewhat better balanced than 8th.

That balance is achieved by stripping flavor and flexibility out of the armies, DE more than most. (And skip magic, miscasts are MURDER on expensive but fragile units like DE.) At least, that's my take on it.

By all means, check it out and try a few games to determine how you feel about it. But... I'd hate for you to get psyched up about something that might ultimately disappoint you.

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:17 am
by Calisson
Vulcan wrote:That balance is achieved by stripping flavor and flexibility out of the armies, DE more than most. (And skip magic, miscasts are MURDER on expensive but fragile units like DE.) At least, that's my take on it.
True. :cry:
That is why magic will be redone (especially miscasts)for 2.0.
Also, DE should be overhauled not long after 2.0.

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:29 pm
by Teowulff
Calisson wrote:
Vulcan wrote:That balance is achieved by stripping flavor and flexibility out of the armies, DE more than most. (And skip magic, miscasts are MURDER on expensive but fragile units like DE.) At least, that's my take on it.
True. :cry:
That is why magic will be redone (especially miscasts)for 2.0.
Also, DE should be overhauled not long after 2.0.

After looking into the developments of T9A I must say that I'm rather surprised that both the rulebook as the "army book" are still subject to large changes. Even though they're in development for nearly 2 years and there was a WHFB blueprint to build on and finetune. By mistake I first printed the 0.92 version. Only to find that in the last 1.34 version the costs of most magic items have sometimes doubled and magic has become very dangeous and less potent. Clearly things haven't arrived at the finetuning phase at all.

I hope there will be an acceptable balance once the "final" rulebook is released. I don't think T9A will ever get popular if the rules change every 2 months. Because your army list may suddenly be invalid. The miniatures you carefully painted for your big unit may now be extremely underpowered. The tactics you carefully designed may not be possible anymore. If this will go on and on, a lot of people will lose interest.
Good to see that there will be no changes in the current full basic rule book and army books until at the earliest the month of August.
It's my sincere hope that somewhere this year the rulebook will eventually be definite and we will only get some minor adjustments say every 2 years. Like a version 2.1 in 2018 and a version 2.2 in 2020. And every now and then probably a new army and corresponding army book.

Lastly. Yesterday I read an article about the DE in T9A. Although the author was quite happy with the developments and better army balance overall, he was rather sorry that many armies seemed to have lost a part of their character, their unique selling point. Like extreme mobility and strong magic were part of the strengths of the DE. I definitely hope that an acceptable balance will be achieved by other means than making the armies more similar.

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 1:40 am
by Calisson
Every price has doubled compared to WH.
This allows the end of half points for certain options.

The 2.0 BRB is planned to last many years (wel, there will be a 1.9, a 1.99 just bfore, and possibly a 2.1 shortly after but you get the meaning).
2.0 will see a total overhaul of magic.

DE will be among the first 4 redone, in particular because this book lacks appeal indeed.

Re: Been away for a while and some questions ..

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 9:31 am
by Teowulff
Calisson wrote:Every price has doubled compared to WH.
This allows the end of half points for certain options.

The 2.0 BRB is planned to last many years (wel, there will be a 1.9, a 1.99 just bfore, and possibly a 2.1 shortly after but you get the meaning).
2.0 will see a total overhaul of magic.

DE will be among the first 4 redone, in particular because this book lacks appeal indeed.

Thanks for the replies!

I've read into the T9A stuff a bit more and joined their forum. Although it looks promising and armies seems to be balanced a lot better than in 8th Ed., there's still some work to be done. It seems to be quite a challenge to make the majority of units viable. I also read the HBE (High Elves) forum and the general opinion is that 80% of the character mounts are worthless and never taken (except for fluff reasons). What that's concerned it seems DE are slightly better off.

One thing that was a bit disappointing is that the game hasn't become any more simple. Really getting to know the rules and all the armies is more work than your average university exam - and it only seems to expand more and more. What that is concerned it will always be a hardcore game just for those really willing to invest a lot of time in just learning it.