Thoughts on WAP 9th Edition?

Personally, I think Ward Saves should be seen much, much less, and Magic Resistance should work against all magical attacks as well as magic weapons. Make you choose what you're defending against.

"Oh? You have a good defense against my magic phase? We'll, let's see how well you handle my shooting then."

With Ward Saves, its just, "Okay, I'm covered any which way. It's all dependant on me rolling well."

I can only really think of Chaos lords/heroes sporting regular better than 4+, for others it's situational like the dragonhelm or the wardancer skill woven mist.

I like these discussions about the different editions because I looked at them all in some detail a year ago when deciding which edition to play, having only played 4th/5th before. The main things I noticed were: 1) 8th was the most popular. 2) those that play 6th are very passionate about it and less open to new editions. 3) those that play WAP couldn’t understand why more people didn’t want to join them! Now that could mean that WAP is actually very good and just lacks the GW stamp of approval to get more acceptance... Or simply that most people are just happy with their game and don’t want a fan made edition with continual updates and PDF books etc. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

There are a few different 9th editions and WAP certainly looks the most appealing as he’s done a great job in continuing the style of the army books and compiling all the lore etc. In many ways I wish he had added the new books to 8th and then stopped there, because then it could have got more widespread acceptance. Creating a whole new edition just creates a splinter group, or an offshoot if you will, as many don’t want to go that far. Everyone will like some of the changes and dislike others. I’m sure there has been lots of play testing and opinion gathering but like any fan-made edition, it’s the experiences and biases of the creators that ultimately feed in to those changes. And there are a lot of changes..

I haven’t played it so don’t want to judge it yet, but at first take, looking at the types of armies that people use and listening to the creator talk about it seems to me like he has prioritised ‘balance’ (between different factions and troop types etc), ‘realism’ (realistic within the fantasy setting of course) and lore (more armies and units).

The lore is what I like the most. Just download some of the army books and take a look - they’re very good. The books for new factions look great too, like Kislev etc. If TOW releases a good model range for them then game on. However a lot of the new units taken from AoS or other editions are just a shoulder shrug for me. To take Dwarfs as an example- I like a ‘traditional’ dwarf army with axes, crossbows and cannons etc. I don’t want any sci-fi steampunk karadron cyber blimps with heavy bolters and lascannons anywhere near my good old grumpy dwarfs with their grandfathers’ axe and a smoking pipe.. Obviously just because the units exist doesn’t mean I have to take them, I’m just saying most of the new units don’t appeal to me anyway so it’s not a reason for me to play 9th.

Balance is something that it looks like he’s going for too, with a lot of nerfs and points changes etc. I like to play competitively just as much as I like to play fun narrative games so don’t think balance needs to be top priority. It’s nice to have but not at the expense of playability, creativity, general aesthetic, etc etc (I’m sure you can think of others). For example, no hordes, no deep units, stacking combat res for multiple units in combat and disruption breaking steadfast all makes it more about medium sized units and discourages large units (at least that’s my initial assumption) because it seems getting a flank in combat is so much more valuable. I think big units of infantry just look really stunning so I don’t like to see rules that discourage that! Using medium sized units is still a viable strategy in 8th, it’s just the big hordes and deep steadfast units add more tactics to unit formation and hence overall game strategy.
Cannons is another example, they now use scatter dice and only d3 wounds on the bounce. At 100pts would you even bother taking one? (Sorry to reopen the cannon debate ha)
I believe any army can be played in a competitive or unsportsmanlike way if all you care about is winning, so balance isn’t the most important thing. I think GW themselves care mostly about 1) the hobby - selling models, paints, cases etc. 2) the lore and creativity - getting a balance between a ready made game and customisable options 3) game playability and having fun, rules that are complex enough but easy to understand etc. Being balanced for competitions is probably their 4th or 5th priority - what do you think?

As for realism, it sounds like he’s a genuine history buff who is really into old warfare and historical European battles etc. You can see he’s thought about the rules by trying to imagine it happening.. adding rules for pikes and shooting into combat etc. Individually they’re mostly good changes- For example, cavalry now disrupt with 5 models instead of 10. I think that’s a great change on its own because I’ve always thought it silly that 9 knights couldn’t disrupt a block of troops. However what’s the consequence of all these changes for playability? As I understand (please correct me if I’m wrong) multiple units in combat all calculate their individual combat res and the bonuses stack (therefore if your unit is fighting two units with 3 ranks each they would get +6 rank bonus against you) and only the units who lose combat against the units in base to base with them take break tests (whereas in 8th there is just a total score and all losing units take a break test). This means that you’re not just counting total casualties you’re recording how many casualties are caused by each unit and calculating individual combat scores for each unit and the total score for your side. It may be more realistic but doing multiple units in combat is already the most bogged down complicated part of the game and adding another layer of complexity worries me a bit. Again, I haven’t played it yet but seems a bit much..?

TLDR: WAP has great army books and lore but a lot of the rules changes seem like fixes for things that aren’t really broken..

Then again, I may be wrong and the rules changes may all fit together nicely when you play it. Let’s watch some of these squarehammer videos and see how they get on!

you cant exactly enact historically accurate things into a game of fantasy, or try and balance things around it. its just not logical, balance in warfare has never existed, and never will. every faction has something that will counter pretty much anything in another faction, thats where the balance is, not as the army as a whole. My opinion on the WAP is just this, if your going too use someone else made up rules, just make and use your own and be happier!

I haven't seen anything in WAP that makes me want to play it. I've watched the SquareHammer videos and I'm not a fan of it. I see a lot of people calling WAP more balanced but from what I see it's just exchanging one set of problems for another. It seems more like a wishlist than a balance rules set. I'll stick with 8th edition. If I wanted a more "balanced" game I'd play Kings of War but I find that a rather dull rules set.

Honestly I think some people get obsessed with having something new, which absolutely boggles my mind. Just because it isn't new doesn't mean it's bad. I call it the "GW syndrome", people are so used to having a new edition shoved down their face every few years by GW they flock to some new creation just because it's new. We saw the same thing with the 9th Age people and a few years ago there was a big push for a fan made update to Mordheim.

People use the excuse that the game gets stale after a while and needs a new edition to shake things up. However I would consider that more of a lack of imagination. There are so many armies and so many different ways to play that you could play for decades with the same edition and still not cover them all.

The guys at Miniwargaming do a fun job of keeping it fresh and sticking with 8th. Sometimes they play without level 4s, sometimes they play without hordes, others no lords. The possibilities are endless. To me that and the occasional house rule are better than throwing out the entire rules set just for the sake of something new.