The official beta cycle of 1.9 has been delayed until Synchysi can find time to work on RC7. Meanwhile, some testing and feedback on some of the new changes in 1.9 would be nice, so I've hacked together a playable patch with the most important 1.9 changes available for testing. It was made by taking RC6, pasting in the code banks from 1.8.6, and then applying the patches Think and I made for 1.9. Hence, frankenpatch.
It has all the changes BTB made up until RC7, and all the hacks for 1.9 made by Think and myself. That includes battle for Narshe, stamina Counter, stamina Cover, defense-ignoring Flails, Gem Box auto-crit compatibility, Throw for Gogo, Lifehack, lineup MP restore, and the Golem nerf. Anything that's purely Synchysi's doing is missing, and anything BTB changed after RC6 is missing.
This is not an official release, but BTB has given it his blessing for a temporary closed beta release. Thus, I won't be posting it for download, but hit me up in Discord or in a PM here, and I'll send you the patch.
EDIT: please note that you will not be able to patch RC7 or any other patch onto the frankenpatch unless you enjoy the game crashing in potentially hilarious ways. The purpose of this closed beta is to test the new features to ensure they are ready for release. I wouldn't recommend this patch to a first time player. However, if you've played BNW before and you want to try out the new features, it's fully playable from start to end and most likely a good facsimile of 1.9. But, any savefiles will be incompatible with the official 1.9 release. Updated; savefiles will be compatible with the final version.