The Ninth Age (T9A)

Hi all. Hope you are all keeping safe and well. Another "not a 40K post" today but it is wargaming and it might be something that could interest some of you.

I could never get into the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) for a variety of reasons. Primarily it was just how awkward and complex the rules were. I lost many games because my opponent wasn't necessarily better than me or had a better army list, but because they could get their head around certain manoeuvres  and actions in the game. I lost many games because certain characters, options and spells were way overpowered (Purple Sun anyone?). On top of that I never got the love of the Old World setting that so many people did. I just found the whole thing rather bland. I like my fantasy fairly generic so I can decide what everything is.

WFB went the way of all things and Age of Sigmar replaced it. At first I liked AoS as it was different, a skirmish game (and back then I was sick of movement trays) and was open to a lot of interpretation. I even liked how the setting was more prog-rock album cover. But even that wasn't enough. In the end it was far far from being generic.

I let me interest in fantasy wargaming die somewhat because of that. That was until I stumbled upon Kings of War by Mantic. A simple wargaming system that although it had a setting, was nice and generic. You had a run down of the world but nothing was forced on you and you could use it as you wanted. I tried to entice some of the old WFB guys to try it but the general vibe I got back was that it wasn't "Warhammer enough" for their tastes. I did get some games in but no one was interested. It seems at my club that if it isn't Age of Sigmar, you may as well forget it.

This last week however, I have stumbled upon something new. I'm not sure how I even found it. The game is called The Ninth Age- and is basically an attempt at Warhammer Fantasy 9th edition. The design team are all long time WFB players and they have taken what made WFB good and made their own very similar (but obviously different) fantasy war game. They have their own setting and it isn't fleshed out so you can have whatever you want, or even just play it as the Old World if you wanted.

A Vampire Covenant army marches to war!

So what drew me to this if I was not all that much of a fan of the original Warhammer?

Firstly, the rules which by this time are in their well tested 2nd edition. Everything is a free download from their website. The main rule book, the spell book and the army books. The rules are simpler and better worded that WFB ever was. Even I can understand it so it must be. If you liked how WFB played, you won't be disappointed by this game and how it works. Best of all you'll find the game balanced unlike how it used to be. The design team of done a grand job of ensuring that points costs work out and no unit in the game should be considered not worth the effort.

Secondly, all your old WFB armies are here and ready to be played. The army books cover all the original armies, plus the Infernal Dwarfs (Chaos Dwarfs) and there is the addition of three new armies - Asklanders (Vikings), Makhar (Mongols) and Cultists (human cultists with demon allies all wrapped up in one). There is even a supplemental army book that adds giants to the majority of armies.

Names are obviously different so as not to infringe on GW's original IP but that isn't a problem. There are no named characters as yet but I believe that is in the works for a later date, and the Chaos Gods are not included. Instead Warriors of the Dark Gods and the Demon Legions serve seven evil deities each representing one of the seven deadly sins.

Thirdly, you can all use all your old Warhammer models. You can use any models providing they are the same scale and will fit on a suitable movement tray. If I remember right, there is an example of a giant's round base and how it works in combat, so whether you are using old WFB units, AoS models, KoW models... third party... it's your army and you can have it look how you want. I can certainly imagine an Asklander army made up of models from GW's Blades of Khorne army.

Looks like an awesome barbarian raider to me.

The magic system is much more balanced. Warhammer suffered, I think, from the magic spells being massively overpowered. T9A changes that by making magic worthwhile but it won't win you battles. Magic is much more of a support for your army than the means to decimate your foe. This is a big selling point for me.

So far, reading their forums and chatting to a few of the people on there, has reinvigorated me somewhat. Because of this find I am going to kick myself up the backside and get my Lichemaster army started. With what I have I will only be able to field 1000 points (4500 points is the usual default for an evenings play) but if I can get this game a look in at my local club then I'll be focusing a bit more on it.

In the mean time if you are a fan of the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle or you are looking for a good fantasy war game, I suggest taking a look and see what you think.

The Ninth Age main page.

The Downloads. - You only really need the slim volumes as they stick to the rules and are quicker to download.

If you check them out, let me know what you think.

Lockdown Update: Gaslands

Finally starting to get my head back in gear and with an Easter Sunday off I decided to sit down and do some modelling. While I set some AoS skeletons to glue I decided to start work (finally) on some of my Gaslands cars. I know it isn't 40K related but I figured someone might be interested and it gives me something to post about for the moment while I'm stuck in here between work hours.

I've not really tried painting toy cars before let alone make them post apocalyptic so this was a new experience. I figured that I would start with a couple intro teams so that I have something to play but I can also use to introduce new players to the game at some point.

So to start with I decided to go with a wasteland raiders team, sponsored by Slime (basically they are the typical Mad Max wasteland types). I worked out a basic fun two car team and picked two cars from the collection to work on

I wanted two cars that looked like they may have been scavenged from somewhere out there and patched up quick.  Raided my 40K bitz box for a couple bolters and some armour pieces. I wanted to start simple and learn as I go along, so I didn't try to overdo it. Some players like to strip the cars apart and get rid of the original paint jobs, but I like the look of some of the Hot Wheels cars schemes so I decided to keep them and just paint over them. Try to make them down and dirty while keeping a semi-real look.

Car 1 - "Pinball".
Somewhere out there, the raiders have located a racing car from before Mars bombed us to Heck, and put it new use. I picked this one because although racing cars are more an Idris team, I could see this being put to good use out on the highways.

From my bitz box I pulled a space marine bolter as use for a machine gun, a couple Orky plates and some points of an old tank ram for starters. The car already had a front spoiler that looked good as a makeshift ram so I figured since Slime teams benefit from bouncing off of opposing cars, that side mounted rams (no build point cost for Slime teams) would be nice and brutal.

The car design was a bit awkward for trying to apply rust. Not something I normally need to apply on my models. I may have overdone it a little bit. Oops. The idea being to use a lighter brown (some websites suggested start with yellow oddly) and then apply a darker brown. It looks alright but I'm not overly keen as it appears like poor camouflage rather than rust.

Car 2 - "Fat Man".
For my second car I wanted something that didn't look out of place among the cars you see in a Mad Max movie and with this little thing I found it. I figure the raiders found this abandoned on the highway somewhere with a little gas left in the tank.

Where "Pinball" is meant to score the hazards tokens, audience votes and demolish the opposition, "Fat Man" is there to streak ahead and win the race while everyone else is kept busy. As a smaller car than "Pinball" I didn't want to add too much to this one. So I with another space marine bolter and a couple of the old weird gold coloured metal additions from Forge World, the windows on this one got protected at least.

This car was much easier to paint. She got a quick dry brush with silver and then a dark wash before I did anything else. Then I started to apply the rust and having learnt from my first attempt I think this time I came away happier with the style. Less is more and all that.


That is my first starter team.Over the next few days I hope to have some time to pick a couple more teams and work on them. Maybe even get some solo practice games in as I haven't had a chance to try out the new rules since Refuelled was released.

Update

I don't know about you all but I was hoping that with reduced hours at work, no club for the foreseeable future and spare time on my hands that I'd be able to focus on some hobby time. Mainly building and painting my space marines, AoS undead army and painting up some cars for Gaslands. Instead I'm just finding that I can't focus on that. Been that way for a couple weeks now and I can't get motivated to do anything.

I'm guessing from what I'm seeing on other blogs that everyone else is having a whale of a time focusing on the game. So, I'm throwing this out as a cry of help. Give me some suggestions for getting motivated back into the hobby side of things right now. How are you managing it?

Hope you are all safe and well though in this difficult time. Stay safe all.