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Never had chance to play Warpath, but am really looking forward to the kickstarter for Warpath 3.0.

Even though i have 100's of corporation guys for my 40k Corpy guard, would love some nice hard plastic multi-pose models of them as well as some Vehicles.

Hope they do the rebs as full faction as well, would love to field a unit of Teratons.

Hope the rule set is good and it will be enough to get some people at my gaming club to buy into it.

 Pacific wrote:
As has been said, think Mantic have got some very difficult decisions to make regarding what they want Warpath to be, and that can be seen to an extent by the way the game seems to have see-sawed between game styles previously.

My first thought would be for something along the lines of Bolt Action or Tomorrow's War - in terms of unit action and interaction, rather than mass-scale combat which I don't think works at 28mm without having unit bases. But that area is already now occupied by Deadzone to an extent, especially considering that game's potential for expansion.

ive seen bolt action played before and the game feels "wonky" and doest feel polished. what stands out the most for me for bolt action is the random turn sequence by pulling player unit dice out of a bag. ild like warpath to stick with its version of alternate activation or normal alternate unit activation or alternate army activation.

The thing about Mass Scale combat is I'd rather do it as a truly mass battle system - so I'd want to be playing an analogue to Epic rather than 40k with even more troops. There's simply not the space on a normal table for proper fire and maneuver - or ranges - at any decent kind of large scale when using 28mm...

Needs more dinosaurs.

The only thing I really want changed is individual model casualty removal.

Lets make indivual models matter to the game. Even so, i dont want them to be to important, the unit is what matter, not the models. So, lets say this way:

1st- everytime a unit take a wound, instead it lose a model. Keep nerve tests the same way,

2nd- the controler of the unit choose wich model will be removed.

3nd- the Leader will never be removed.

Resuming: models are removed from the unit as it take wounds, the wounds also create a penalty to the combat capabilitie of the unit (less guys shooting/attacking. Special (heavy) weapons are lost too, but are the last ones. Finally: the unit dont just die die to wounds, instead it keep making nerve tests, and inspired leaders can do incredible feats of courage and honor.

I will work better on this, but maybe it is a good "half-way" trough "individual models" and "unit based game". What you think?

I quite like the Bolt Action way of removing casualties. Defender picks unless attacker rolls "exceptional damage" (a 6 followed by another 6) where then the attacker picks the casualty (killing special weapons or the squad leader, and a squad leader dead means permanent negative morale penalty)

Individual casualty removal is a must. I remember reading Warpath 1.0 and thinking

"This isn't a battle, this is a mating contest. Two sides look angrily at each other until one loses nerve and leaves."

Perhaps the coolest thing about these new Warpath rules is the opportunity they represent. Mantic aren't tied into a single platform and system in the same way as 40k, where the rules writers are forced into making minor tweaks (and returning to old tweaks) built on essentially the same mechanics for 3-4 editions, but have got the possibility of making something that works well at the scale that they want to make the game.

They've got a bunch of extremely experienced (and talented) games designers working for them, who can build on some of the games that have come out over the past 30 years, get some of the best elements of each and create something fresh but also enduring.

If I had to guess I would probably say that testing is already well underway. If they can do a 'Kings of War', and produce a similarly tight/efficient but at the same time tactical rules system, they could be on their way to reaching a whole new level of popularity.

In any case, going to be very interesting to see how it turns out!

I'm just curious as to why they haven't gone away from the obsolete D6 for most things. There is a lot more room for unit versatility, flavor, and variety if they brought it up to a D10, or maybe even a D12.

 ultimentra wrote:
I'm just curious as to why they haven't gone away from the obsolete D6 for most things. There is a lot more room for unit versatility, flavor, and variety if they brought it up to a D10, or maybe even a D12.

My money is on a couple of things:
1. d6s are everywhere. You can buy them at 3AM from a convenience store or raid them from yahtzee sets.
2. The target audience plays a game with d6s at the core. You don't want to spook the herd by changing too much at once.

Deadzone uses D8, maybe Warpath will do the same.

 judgedoug wrote:
I quite like the Bolt Action way of removing casualties. Defender picks unless attacker rolls "exceptional damage" (a 6 followed by another 6) where then the attacker picks the casualty (killing special weapons or the squad leader, and a squad leader dead means permanent negative morale penalty)

I like this, but as a special rule of some weapons (maybe heroes).

Other thing i was thinking about is "remove a model on each "1" on defense rolls". Defense in KoW is practically thoughness+armor, so i guess that sometimes the shoot hit, but the soldier shrug off and continue (pass defense roll), sometimes it take the shoot and "feel the hit" (defense roll fail), and sometimes the hit just do to much damge and the soldier cannot fight anymore (defense roll is 1, and the model is removed, the unit take the wound). During the battle the unit suffer various morale issues, some soldiers die, but most of them stay alive, eventually fear and fatigue take place, and the unit decide to randevouz.

Most modern tactics circle around the mission and the health of the team, and sometimes field commanders fail to see the whole picture (ordering a retreat when their commanders are yelling "advance"). That is a "nerve test" and its results. That is cinematic. That is why i dont worry so much about "non model removal" rules.

Think about that hollywodian militar squad who is shoot, wounded, bruised and stabbed during a battle, lose one or 2 soldiers, and end the mission with half its guys goying to hospital: this is the unit who got those 7-8 wounds, lose 2 soldiers to those "1" rolls, and repeatedly roll 2 or 3 in its nerve test.

"Black Hawk Dawn" is a good example of this type of battle (think about an enforcers transport beying shooted in the center of a marauder horde ).

So: we need model removal, but not as the main way to count damage on units.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Deadzone uses D8, maybe Warpath will do the same.

So long at it is easy to get them in bulk, I'd be more than happy with this. In just a couple of weeks of playing DZ, I've noticed a dramatic difference in variety between D6 and D8.

I also like the DZ/DB idea of modifiers reducing/increasing the number of dice rolled, rather than being modifiers to the roll itself. It makes it far easier to keep track of, and there's something about the feel of it. Rolling more dice because of a bonus rather than adding to each individual score makes any advantage or disadvantage far more obvious and physical. I've no idea on the maths of whether modding the score or the number of dice is more significant, but it's not something that really bothers me.

Also, I hope they keep, in some way, the exploding 8 (6 on a D6) featured in DZ. The idea that anything can hurt anything with enough luck is something that can be very rewarding and fun to deal with, as well as allowing models to damage or survive against all odds. It really does liven things up. The other day, I had taken 5 potential damage on a Reb trooper, and had only 3 survival dice. 2 exploding 8s later, I'd saved all the damage despite the unlikeness and it was a great and engaging moment.

 Paradigm wrote:
The other day, I had taken 5 potential damage on a Reb trooper, and had only 3 survival dice. 2 exploding 8s later, I'd saved all the damage despite the unlikeness and it was a great and engaging moment.

Sounds suspiciously like you forged a narrative there. You're not supposed to do that unless you're rolling 50 dice in an interminable 'to hit, to wound, to save' cycle, whilst debating a vague rule wording.

tl;dr You're doing it wrong!

 Riquende wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
The other day, I had taken 5 potential damage on a Reb trooper, and had only 3 survival dice. 2 exploding 8s later, I'd saved all the damage despite the unlikeness and it was a great and engaging moment.

Sounds suspiciously like you forged a narrative there. You're not supposed to do that unless you're rolling 50 dice in an interminable 'to hit, to wound, to save' cycle, whilst debating a vague rule wording.

tl;dr You're doing it wrong!

That's the difference between 40k and DZ. 40k you have to 'forge' your own, in DZ the narrative so often makes itself thanks to the engaging and interactive rules. Basically, if they can do the same with Warpath, making it engaging, fast and fun, then I'll be all over it.

 judgedoug wrote:
I quite like the Bolt Action way of removing casualties. Defender picks unless attacker rolls "exceptional damage" (a 6 followed by another 6) where then the attacker picks the casualty (killing special weapons or the squad leader, and a squad leader dead means permanent negative morale penalty)

That... sounds so sensible and logical that it just might work!

I... really like that rule.

The Auld Grump

Yep. I like that and the 2.0 current casualty system.
Both are justifiable and practical.

Alessio's two solutions to the casualty problem:
1. Allow defender to pick unless exceptional damage occurs (BA)
AND
2. Make special weapon and leader, in that order, be the last two casualties---assumes somebody will take up the charge as leader and somebody will fire a machine gun from a fallen comrade instead of their squad issued weapon.

The BA idea being that the 'exceptional damage' also ruins the special weapon itself (bullet goes through machine gun and kills the bearer, shrapnel renders the weapon inoperable, etc).

I think it works really really well. The 'exceptional damage' killing the NCO and reducing the squad's morale permanently also makes sense (the sarge is dead!) and an army like the Germans, whose infantry were cross-trained in squad tactics, have a special rule where they can possibly ignore the morale loss because another soldier takes command who was just as good as the original NCO (Enforcers might have a special rule like this).