The Ninth Age: Fantasy Battles

After the release of the End Times expansions for the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 2014–2015,[1] Games Workshop discontinued both its game system and its lore. It was then replaced in its catalog by Warhammer Age of Sigmar, which left some tabletop wargamers estranged.[2][3]

In June 2015, Lagge and fjugin, two prominent staff members of the Swedish Comp System (a fan-made expansion for competitive play of Warhammer), initiated a separate project called The Ninth Age and aimed at providing a new and balanced game system. The main target audience are tabletop players interested in a rank and file army game rather than skirmish games such as Age of Sigmar. A primary goal of the project has been to allow former players of Warhammer to use their model collections in games of The Ninth Age.[4]

The project attracted the attention of wargamers[5] and tournaments organizers in Europe[6] and North America such as the European Tabletop Championship 2017 edition[7] in Salamanca, Spain, and the Buckeye Battles[8] in Columbus, Ohio. Independent miniature manufacturers, including Avatars of War,[9] Titan Forge[10] and Tabletop Miniatures Solutions,[11] have launched lines of models dedicated to or compatible with the rules of The Ninth Age. The game has also become supported by BattleScribe,[12] Quartermaster[13] and Magnetic – Movementtray.com.[14]

To ease the introduction of new players to the game, the authors released the Quick Starter edition in April 2017.[15] It represents a faster and easier version of the core game, played on a smaller scale. The 72 page rulebook includes elementary lists for all 16 factions, an introduction to the world of the Ninth Age and unique artwork.

The second edition of the ruleset was released in December 2018 after a year of beta testing and is intended to stay unchanged for several years during which the team will focus on the production of new army books.[16]

Each army book, free to download from the game's website,[17] details the composition and rules of the military of a specific faction. The team is gradually converting slim books, focused solely on the rules, into "Legendary" books with artwork and lore background.[18]

Most of the lore and units of the Ninth Age are inspired by Historical fantasy, mythologies, fairy tales, human History and natural history, for instance the Beast Herds' Jabberwock, the Vampire Covenant's Varkolak and the Saurian Ancients' Taurosaur.

The 9th Scroll is a bi-monthly online magazine available for free on the game's website, featuring interviews, do-it-yourself tutorials, homebrew rules, armies showcases and other articles from the community and the T9A staff. Issue 4 (July 2017) has over 75.000 downloads.[32]

Similarities: The Ninth Age: Fantasy Battles invention was triggered by the discontinuation of WHFB after the End Times campaign. A main goal of the project was to create a game that continues on the same level of scale (i.e. army size, model count, game duration) and playstyle. The playstyle was specifically important as Games Workshop follow-up product "Age of Sigmar" changed in this regard from a "Rank and File" system to a "Skirmish" system. Additional goals were to allow former WHFB players to carry over their collections to The Ninth Age without greater modifications. This directly resulted in the same initial number of playable armies.

Differences: Opposed to WHFB, T9A is a model-agnostic system. There are no specific T9A models to represent each unit entry. This allows manufacturers to create a wide range of compatible models, which can look quite differently. This also means, that there is no "reference model" for an entry in the respective army books. Another important goal is set internal and external balance of army books to increase the playability of all entries in the respective army books. T9A does not aim to release new rules or create an expanding set of options in the playable armies. As a direct result of balancing considerations, the army categorizations are different for each army. Where WHFB used a fix separation of core/special/rare entries, T9A books categorize armies on the roles of units, e.g. shooting units, ambushing units, highly-mobile units may have their own category. Based on the first two complete revisions of army books (Warriors of the Dark Gods and Daemon Legions), the difference in army organisations and unit entries will become even more distinct over time, as the so-called Legendary Army Books (LABs) are developed and finished.

• Official website
• The Ninth Age: Fantasy Battles at BoardGameGeek
• https://opinion.cooperativa.cl/opinion/sociedad/novena-era/2020-07-03/105557.html