As per the post below I have decided to start playing “The 9th Age” in addition to my historical wargaming. A friend had agreed to give me a 2000 point introductory game, so I sat down the previous weekend and read the rules and wrote an army list. My initial impression was it would play in a very similar way to warhammer but with significant modifications to the magic phase. I would be using Dread Elves and my opponent was using Empire of Sonnstahl.
I could see unsurprisingly that the cost of certain units that were “overpowered”in the old Dark Elf book had seen a significant increase in cost and a curtailing of their abilities. The most obvious example of this were the Dark Acolytes (Doom Fire Warlocks) which now gained magical ability by upgrading the champion to a wizard for 60 points. The 9th Age team have approached the armies with balance in mind and my view is this type of modification is perfectly valid providing they have been even handed across the races.
I noticed there were unit choices that also had significant points cost reductions. The Dread Knights fitted this category. In a number of warhammer tournaments where there had been significant comp (e.g the Swedish comp system), I had successfully run Dread Knights (Cold One Knights) with “Killy” characters and I decided to write a list based around these.
I took:
A Dread Lord on a cold one with the plus three strength sword
A Battle Standard Bearer on a cold one
A level 2 wizard apprentice using the path of Alchemy
13 Blades of Nabh (witch elves)
13 Repeater auxiliaries
5 Dark Riders
2 bolt throwers
5 Harpies
10 Dread Knights
6 Dark Acolytes with the wizard upgrade
A hydra
My opponent’s army was as follows:
General on a Griffon
A L4 Archwizard on Light
Battle Standard on foot
A Captain on a Pegasus
An engineer
A block of Heavy Infantry (swordsmen) upgraded to weaponskill 4
A smaller block of Heavy infantry
5 skirmishing bow
16 crossbows
5 Knights
5 Reiters with pistols (pistoliers)
4 Knight of the Sun Griffon (DemiGryphs)
A cannon
A volley gun
We were just playing a normal battle line game without any secondary objectives as I was going to have enough trouble remembering how you play the game without worrying about objectives.
My opponent put his full army down first meaning he would get first turn (something quite new compared to warhammer that I will have to read up on). I deployed quite carefully to stay out of range of the shooting.
The Reiters pushed forward to threaten my dark riders, and the cross bows had extra range added to their shooting by an “order” given by the General – a neat new special rule. I managed to fend off magic missiles aimed at my harpies, but I lost one to cross bow fire.
My turn saw me advance with the Hydra and Dread Knights on the right flank. I then turned my shooting first on the Reiters killing them to a man and then the bolt throwers on the cross bows killing several.
My opponent’s second turn saw him charge my Acolytes with his Knights and my hydra with his Captain on a Pegasus. The knight charge in particular took me by surprise – I had forgotten how far cavalry can charge !
The Acolytes surprisingly managed to grind out the Knights over a couple of combats. The Hydra took a couple of wounds from the captain but also emerged victorious after a couple of combats.
The empire line now advanced straight towards my cross bows and bolt throwers. I shot off the cross bows and skirmishers and positioned my harpies to charge the organ gun, which they did the following turn but not before the volley gun had managed to kill four dread Knights. I also lost my Hydra with two wounds left to the cannon. I got my own back though with the harpies killing the cannon after making short work of the volley gun.
I swung the Dread Knights around the wood to face the rear of the Sun Griffons, but they weren’t hanging around and headed straight for the bolt thrower. My Repeater Auxilliaries were clearly in trouble, and so I bailed the wizard out of the unit. The Empire general was eyeing up my second bolt thrower and my Blades of Nabh were suffering from magic missiles. Although I was well up on points I could see the scales were about to swing the other way and indeed my opponent managed to get my two bolt throwers and the Repeater Auxilliaries.
I knew the points were really close and the fifth turn saw me attempt to cast a boosted Molten Metal on the Griffon General. It had a 2+ armour save, and if I had got the spell off I would very likely have killed the general and won the game. I rolled well above the casting value (with the maximum allowed 5 dice), I also got a double six. However my opponent also rolled a double six to dispel (no irresistible force now !) and he managed to dispel the spell. This was the third time I had failed to cast the spell.
In his last turn my opponent killed my wizard but the blades of Nabh survived (one left). In my turn I got his engineer. I tried to catch the Knights of the Sun Griffons with my knight bus but I failed to reach. The game was over and had ended in a draw.
Great fun and I had learnt a lot about 9th Age but I had also reminded myself of some key principles of playing warhammer. I enjoyed playing with the Elves again but I was far too cautious with my Dread knight bus. I also found I really struggled to cast spells. I think I may upgrade to an Exalted Oracle. I also need to be careful with charge distances after such a long time away from the game a 20 inch charge range with swift stride came as a surprise.
I am looking forward to my next game which I will also write up. I will give some more thoughts on the game and Dread Elves in general. Thanks for reading.
The Curious Wargamer 