Early experience of playing 9th

[Mandragola]

I played 3 games of 9th this weekend at 1k points. These were experimental games to get a feel for the new rules and the models in Indomitus. We played Necrons vs Orks, Necrons vs Space wolves (grey hunter-heavy) and the Indomitus marines (as Crimson Fists) vs Raven Guard. I thought I'd post some observations about these games and it would be interesting to hear what others found too.

 

One thing was that terrain felt really different. Obscuring terrain was useful, though actually not all that different to just having a simple LoS blocker. The things that really felt different were having terrain that gave -1 to hit, and stuff that cost you movement.

 

Things had -1 to hit a lot of the time. Quite often we found that we might as well advance because we were already at -1, so things couldn't get any worse. This was quite a big change really. It felt like -1 to hit was more significant than the previous +1 to armour save for everything.

 

Defensible terrain was also very significant at one point. I charged some hellblasters in a ruin with my outriders, and took 10 wounds from overcharging plasma who were getting +1 to hit. Not great!

 

These two changes mean that getting full rerolls, instead of just rerolling 1s, is seriously good. You're going to need a 4+ to hit a lot of the time so full rerolls will be increasing your effectiveness by 50%.

 

We found the terrain rules a bit odd at times. For example ruined walls and barricades are two kinds of obstacle. They're pretty similar in appearance but their rules are almost totally different. That was a bit confusing.

 

Secondaries ought to scale, but they don't. Some of them are very bad in small games, because you just can't kill things that aren't there. This won't matter if we mostly play 2k games in future, but it's something to bear in mind in small games.

 

Armies definitely have to be designed to play missions now. You want to be able to play the whole board and do various things all over it. So for example Inceptors are far more able to do missions than outriders are, which is a big point in their favour. Outriders don't get to be in cover, for example, and can't do actions. This is a shame because lots of actions require you to go across the board, which they're great for.

 

We used a storm talon in one game (against Indomitus) and it was awesome. The Indomitus marines don't really bring much heavy firepower so they couldn't really deal with it, and it just buzzed around gunning people down all game. Its ability to hit anywhere on the board was extremely valuable.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Mandragola

[XeonDragon]

Thanks for sharing. The couple of games I've had have made me think that inceptors are going to pretty much be an auto-include in most SM lists. They are fast, can get onto objectives, do actions, move along. 

[Berzul]

If I cam share, I've only had 4 games of 9th under my belt, but what I've learned so far, is the following:

 

1) Blast is a big deal. I don't think I'll ever take a full squad of marines without combat squadding them down to 5-man teams, again.

 

2) Primary objectives are critical, secondary objectives are tie breakers. Seriously, the secondaries can sometimes be a walk in the park, sometimes impossible, and often times will negate your own units since you will be using them to score instead of attacking. But you will only be able to max them sometimes, most times not. And they score very little at a time. With the primaries? Once you get the lead, is hard for your opponent to catch up.

 

3) Turn one (and turn two, sometimes) is better soent crippling the enemy, before moving on to babysitting objectives. You need to stop your opponent quickly, or they will outscore you. Turn one/two alpha strikes are much more valuable now. After you are done crippling the enemy, you can start focusing on your Primary Objective. You only need to score it 3 times in 5 rounds to max it out, after all, so you can spare a turn or two moving in for the kill, even if you are not scoring much.

 

4) You have to design the list according to the mission, and pick secondaries according the opponent. For instance, I played a Terminator Heavy list both on the Scenario SUPPLY RUN amd on the Scenario ASCENSION, both Incursion matches from the tournament booklet. On Supplies, I got beaten up 60+ points to 21, since I just could not wrap up enough out of the 6 objectives with such a small list. On Ascension? Although I did lose, it was 54 to 53... A much better result. Why? My list managed to grab the center turn one, and score on it with the Scenario Secondary and Psychic Ritual, like they were giving the points away. With so many bodies there, I could not be shifted until the fifth battle round, and almost won the day.

 

5) This is an edition for transports. Seriously, get transports.

[jarms48]

Personally, as Guard who has to take troop choices of 10. I don’t think minimum 3 blast is all that great. It’s only when you start seeing max shots it gets scary. Auto 12 demolisher cannon or manticore missile shots will kill a lot.