Revisiting 9th

[Valkyrion]

I didn't like 9th. I may as well be honest about it from the jump!

But since 10th, I've realised that 9th was actually okay but was just a bit full on, just a bit much. There was too much going on all the time. 

But the datasheets themselves, I thought, were okay.  So if one assumes that the basic rules are known, could a basic codex datasheet vs codex datasheet battle be fought with some semblance of identity, or would it just be rolling dice?

e.g - Orks vs Marines - no relics, no warlord traits, no stratagems, just datasheet vs datasheet, tactical squad vs boyz, dreadnought vs killa kanz etc

 

Good game? Or might as well be doing something else?

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Sure you can have identity. That’s largely why they started giving every datasheet special abilities 

[crimsondave]

What little bit I played 9th, that's pretty much what we did.  Some of the most fun I had playing 40k was 8th edition Indexes.  It was kind of like that.  Wasn't balanced well but it was fun for the casual players.

[MARK0SIAN]

Some big problems from 9th came from the datasheets such as high volume of shots, basic weapons with ridiculous AP or giving too much stuff multiple damage. This was a big reason why everything felt like it had the durability of wet paper.

 

Stripping it back would remove some of the problems but I still don’t think something like marines would feel like marines because they’d still be too fragile.

[Madao]

Have you considered https://www.onepagerules.com/games/grimdark-future?

[Brother Captain Vakarian]

6 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

Some big problems from 9th came from the datasheets such as high volume of shots, basic weapons with ridiculous AP or giving too much stuff multiple damage. This was a big reason why everything felt like it had the durability of wet paper.

 

Stripping it back would remove some of the problems but I still don’t think something like marines would feel like marines because they’d still be too fragile.

In fact, a lot of your resilience came from stratagems, like Transhuman Phsyiology for marines (can only be wounded on a 4+). Without strats a lot of units just couldn’t hang around in 9th. It was very much a game of trading whole units with your opponent, at least in my experience. 
 

This was made worse by the fact that each army had something like 20-30 strats (more if you got special subfaction strats) so you’d have to memorize a lot of information just to play a single game effectively. But because they moved so many unit abilities from the datasheets to strats, your units frequently just didn’t function properly without strats. 
 

I also didn’t love that characters couldn’t join units, and that they were still sticking with a S/T spread reminiscent of 3rd-7th despite the new to-wound chart. 
 

That said, I did really enjoy the amount of customization you could do for characters with the wide variety of relics and warlord traits. That was a huge positive of 9th IMO (I wish 10th had a “generic” enhancement section that characters could use with any detachment and then still had the detachment-specific enhancements, if maybe less unique options for each detachment then). 
 

Simply put, yea, I think you lose a lot playing 9th without all of its additional stuff. Not that it couldn’t be fun, but the game will essentially just be about trading units without some way to increase defensive options. 

[ThePenitentOne]

9th was my favourite edition. The innovation from 10th was limiting the amount of strats available to an army in a single battle, but lots of people figured that out in 9th and just did it themselves. So you pick say 10 of the 30-40 available strats and you say "Great, this are the ten I'm going to use. I'm not going to whine about the fact tyhat the others exist, because for this battle, they literally DO NOT MATTER."

 

This was a superior system to what we have now, because you could CHOOSE your limited selection of strats, rather than have it assigned to you. Think the bespoke strats/ relics flanderize your sub faction? No problem, just don't use them- there were other options to choose from. YOUR DUDES!

 

Detachments could be what they were supposed to be- organizational battlegroups built around a theme within a larger army. And it was fun, because in territorial map-based campaigns, you could split detachments to occupy conquered territories, bringing in nearby detachments as reinforcements if and when necessary. But now, detachments are silly halfway substitutes for subfaction identity, and literally everything special about your army flows from them, despite the fact that they only creative control they allow you to exert is which of a mere 4 enhancements you will use.

 

Edited March 5 by ThePenitentOne

[phandaal]

On 3/4/2025 at 4:05 AM, Madao said:

Have you considered https://www.onepagerules.com/games/grimdark-future?

 

Second this. The core rules are solid, and for $5 you get access to an evergreen version of the advanced rules. The advanced rules let you layer many different extra rules onto the game to bring it closer to what you might expect for older versions of 40k. Very good system!