he Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age (T9A) is a free, community driven, rank-and-file wargame set in a fantasy world. The founding fathers of the Project were tournament players from ETC (see: ETC Events), one of the most competitive players societies. No surprise the Project’s first goal was to create well balanced game with no loopholes in the rules, suitable for highly competitive tournament scene. But as the community grew more and more players looking for a casual game with a few friends have appeared. How the project coped with satisfying needs of both those groups?

For “Powergamers”

The system has been designed by and for tournament players. It means at is core lies assumption that there is no improper way to play the game. Term ‘powergamer’ is just an excuse made by designers of systems who fail to provide players with consistent, well balanced sets of rules. If players abuse a game rules it is designers fault not players fault. Game by definition is a contest of two players that use all available means to best their opponent. It is designers duty to provide players with set of rules that will give them equal chances and will eliminate abusive actions. Players cannot be afraid to use cunny tactics or optimized army builds for the fear of opponents calling them a powergamer.

To achieve that goal Project has been designing The 9th Age game in iterations. Each published version was better balanced and more abuse-proof than the previous one. Special rules, model types and units have been carefully categorized to limit number of exceptions. Careful point pricing and option limiting have been introduced. Each version has been first given to a team of playtesters before going public. Today the whole community provides feedback for beta version of the final iteration of the rules which will be officially published this year. This final version of core rules called ‘golden edition’ will remain official version for the next few years.

For “Dirty Casuals”

As work on next versions of rules has been progresing it has been noticed that rules and army designs have become over-standardized offering players too few options and restricting them from building ‘themed armies’ like Artillery Train or Menagerie of Evil. Players raised issue that the game started to lose its ‘cool factor’ with each iteration. This was unintended consequence of tightening up legislation to eliminate abusive elements. Projects plan from the beginning was first to ‘clear the rubble’ and then to build more complex and interesting designs on the stable base. First such completely redesigned army has been made public – “Warriors of Dark Gods” army book is already available for download.

To provide casual players with even more content designers introduced ‘auxiliary armies’. These are armies designed as extensions of the core armies. Those books won’t be used for Team Tournaments as they might break carefully guided balance but they are perfectly valid for one-on-one games or even individual tournaments – as long as their Organizers will approve them. First such book, the ÅSKLANDERS, and is already published. It has been written for players who imagine followers of Dark Gods as barbarians horde rather  than armored cohorts of evil templars and is perfect for building themed armies e.g. on the base of Viking mythology.

Next steps

More redesigned army books will be published and next auxiliary armies will follow. Each published book will provide players with additional information on the Background extending games world. Stable base for army design serves both competitive players and those who prefer less stressful friendly games. This Summer StormRider will launch crowdfunding campaign to prepare professional printing of Golden Edition of core rules. In the future army books may also be delivered.

Photos Courtesy of Philip Harlos (battle of elves vs undead) and Matthew Pell (army of Warriors of Dark Gods)