9th Age 1.1 Hotfix

[smashthedean]

Not sure if everyone has seen it yet, but the 9th Age books all got a slight hotfix update today, mostly an across-the-board nerf on some of the clearest auto-picks in each book along with some clarification in the BRB. They have their next big update for each book due in November so this is our working edition until then. Here it is:

 

Welcome everyone to the hotfix notes for 02-09-2016 for the 9th Age.

 

During the previous design cyclus of the 9th Age, we decided to release a hotfix in the period after the ETC to resolve any lingering problems before we would start up the next design cyclus.
Before we discuss the hotfix itself in these notes, lets first explain what this hotfix exactly is:

 

• This is not the result of a new design cycle.The members of the RT have combined the results from the Data Team, the ETC, the ABC members, playtesters , comments from the forum and their own experiences to pinpoint the worst offenders of balance in the version 1.0 release, and tried to correct them without massive changes to the core game. We are aware that not all the problem cases are handled by this hotfix, but changing those would need to include changes to the core rules of the main rulebook or massive changes to certain units. We have chosen to keep this hotfix as short and simple as possible, so people can continue playing their games until the next design cyclus without changing their lists to much.
   
• We are currently not buffing units, only nerfing the worst offenders. While we have enough data and feedback to indicate certain armies and units are under performing, we wanted to focus first on bringing a better external balance by removing the worst offenders. We don’t have enough time to have an in-depth look at what buffing certain armies would do to the overall meta, and therefore those changes need to be carefully considered before implementing. Therefore we decided to wait with this until the next design cycle where we will have the fully reorganized team behind the project to get the best result. 
  While we understand this is frustrating for certain armies and their fans, we hope you realise that by weakening certain key units all armies become more balanced against each other, and the weaker books will go up in strenght as a result.
   
• In November all the books will get a significant update, and the RT is currently focusing their time and efforts for that update.

Onward to the changes themselves, but please keep in mind that we are mostly focusing on the auto includes of the top armies:

 

EOS
- The altar of battle goes up to 200 points
The Altar of battle has shown to be to much of an auto include in this army. Therefor we added a small price increase to balance this out.

 

HBE
-The skysloop mount will loose its shooting weapon and becomes 20 points cheaper.
The skysloop spam seen in the last few months is seen as detrimental to the game. To balance this we removed the shooting weapon from the mount, and gave it a 20 point point reduction to compensate.

 

ID
- The Kadim titan will go up with 25 points, and the Titan loses its 4plus wardsave.
The Kadim Titan is seen as too strong on the table. Therefore it looses its 4plus wardsave (still retaining its 5+ wardsave) and going up with 25 points.

 

OK
- Tribesmen will lose their Heavy Armour
With the buffs to Tribesmen in the past we felt we went overboard, and we want to bring a bit more balance to the Ogre core selection, and make the choice between Tribesmen and Bruisers a bit more challenging.

 

SE
- Entwined roots will have a maximum unit size of 6
The use of this enhancement will be capped to a maximum unit size of 6 to prevent certain Deathstar builds in the SE book.

 

VC
- We will change ethereal to 3+ / 5+ and also make the green knight from KOE a bit cheaper)
The consensus is that ethereals enable the creation of very one-sided lists. While on avarage the list might still score an avarage of 10 points we don’t believe this is balanced (having a few extreem good matchups and a few very bad matchups does not make for a very interesting game).

 

VS
- Plague Pendulum will go up to 215 points
It is properly no surprise to anyone that the Pendulum has shown to be very effective for its points cost. To balance this out a bit we have increased its pointcost, instead of nerfing the option.

 

Rulebook

-There will be a lot of clarifications in the rules themselves (think FAQs etc).
-Rule changes to prevent “character teleportation”.

 

 

[Andrewgeddon]

Glad the VC list I'm running gets to stay the same, heh. Most of the changes make sense to me though, curious how much November is going to shake things up.

[smashthedean]

It sounds like November will be a fairly good sized shake up, but we'll see. The only change I made in my VC list was dropping an 85 point unit of 5 Wraiths with flaming attacks for a 90 point unit of 5 Barrow Knights.

[JMGraham]

The tree kin deathstar needed that nerf. It's still good, but ALL SE builds seemed to be based around 9 tree kin.

[Swan-of-War]

We all new the Empire War Altar nerf was coming, so no surprise. 

[Prophecy]

Naptha Thrower did not make this list which is an obvious fail.

[valourunbound]

Naptha Thrower did not make this list which is an obvious fail.

Only if your name is Tremendous.

[Prophecy]

Right now vs is the most broken book period. The book needs some serious adjustments. People are complaining that a kislev book should not exist because it is hard to balance. I could go all out on a kislev book and it still wouldn't be as mean as the vs book. Skaven in AZ comes to play at our shop and I have to say he is good but that book is total crap.