Java Edition 1.9-pre1

1.9-pre1 is the first pre-release for 1.9.

Changes

 * Shields
 * Durability increased from 181 to 337.


 * Obsidian pillar
 * Some of the pillars will now generate with iron bars again, which was removed in last snapshot.

Trivia

 * Interestingly, the release date for 1.9-pre1 was (though not confirmed by Mojang themselves) hinted at in the 16w06a blog post in the hotbar, where the wool values corresponded to the numbers 1, 7, 0, 2, 2, 0, 1, 6, which represented the date February 17th, 2016 - the day this was released.