Thoughts on WAP 9th Edition?

I picked up the KoW 3 books to give it a spin and it does indeed seem to have shut down or changed some options to be slightly less ‘carbon copy’ of WFB, but its still pretty broad and can utilise WFB armies pretty well. Some of the base sizes might be a bit different for the bigger monsters but if its a casual game it shouldnt matter too much (theres an exceptional base size rule as well).

Agree on the diorama basing in kings of war too, some of it is way over the top, would look awful (to me at least) sliding around the table. But i get the heebie jeebies from all the tactical rocks GW litter their bases with so no way im ever gonna like whole buildings or mountain sides cruising around!

I don't know, I had a dark elf Slaanesh cult in 6th and 7th, before they had ASF, and never had any issues. They were perfectly capable of holding their own against a diverse array of foes. People seem to forget that elves were doing just fine before ASF came along

I felt the same way. When I first heard about the project a couple of years ago I was really excited. The idea of a fan led edition, with full rulebooks, and an emphasis on fun and balance over profit-driven rules really appealed to me. But when I started reading the army books I was rather disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the formatting was excellent and the amount of work that went into them was really impressive, but by and large I found that many of them were riddled with new problems.

The "put every single unit that's ever been mentioned, even briefly" approach to list design means that many of the books have no clear personality or theme. They're just bloated and have no direction (in either fluff, or crunch). Armies whose last official books were weak or heavily flawed, are still heavily flawed, since most of the same mechanical issues are all still present, they just tweak the points and the stats to try and make the unappealing a little less unappealing.

From a fluffy point of view (which I know doesn't matter to a lot of gamers, but does matter to some, like myself), the writing often doesn't make sense. They write the Bretonnians like every knight is basically the sheriff of Nottingham (the way they write the brets, it's impossible to believe the entire peasantry wouldn't just rise up and kill the nobility, or that any knight would ever be worthy of the grail) and they talk about tomb kings units as being "necromantic" despite the fact that TK's wouldn't touch necromancy with a ten foot pole.

Finally, to me, it isn't really a new edition per se, just new rules. The tradition is that every new edition moves the story forwards. That's what made me always look forward to a new edition, finding out "and then what happened?". The WAP books don't move the story forwards, they don't seem to have had the confidence to try and imagine a world where the end times ended differently. It's just a nebulous world set in no particular era. 

One of my main problem with WAP is that it is as I understand a one man show.

The risk behind that is too big and I will not invest my time in it.

I admire his dedication and output though.

-----------Well one man show is not exactly right. While I admire his commitment, he takes work from others. Some of my fluff and rules are in his books, he did credit me though.

This is certainly the case with the Beastman one - I've recently read through it in my research as to how Beastmen can be given the best 8th Edition experience. Simply getting rid of the Beastman Ambush rule and replacing it with Ambushers killed a fan-favourite special rule and one of the main thematic aspects of Beastmen. Also a lot of the army's existing problems still remain - Lore of the Wild is still there and as subpar as ever, Marks are largely nonexistent (Bestigors can take them as per 6th Edition but no other unit can) and lack of actual Beastman units (as opposed to monsters) is still an issue. Some units have even been nerfed, with the chariots losing Primal Fury on the mounts and Minotaurs only being able to gain a maximum of +3 bonus attacks through Bloodgreed (though at least they did get a significant price cut). Furthermore, while giving the option to take Skirmish does harken back to the Raiders rule, it forces Gors to suffer the drawbacks of being Skirmishers (unable to count ranks, disrupt enemies e.t.c), which Raiders did not.

Additionally the new units he's introduced I'm not fond of - Mutants are a half-hearted equivalent of Forsaken that is pointless given they have pretty much the same profile as Ungors and would used for the exact same purpose. Might as well just skip them and take Ungors. The Ramhorn is a new idea, but I can't see Beastmen taking the time to build a howdah and train the beast to carry a load of Gors on its back. Hag Trees, while thematic and relating to the 'Dark things in the woods' theme of the army, are yet another monster in an army that already has loads (especially as he's taken the time to include Cockatrices and Preytons too), and in its lore it says it will eat a Gor just as happily as a human - why would it join a Beastman army specifically then if it would just as willingly eat them as the enemy? That sounds much more the type of lore for a neutral unit in a scenario set in a cursed forest than a unit for one specific army.

All of this is why I'm taking the time to write my own version that is a lot more thematic and significantly more powerful while trying to avoid being OP. Largely I'm basing my version off KevinC's erratum that takes the army back to 6th Edition, but I'm also keeping some of the more thematic (and least bad) bits from 7th and adding in a few more Gor units to flesh out the Beastman side of the army.