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It forces this ridiculous playstyle where you always try to have the officer up front and everyone else as far back as possible and hiding out of LOS.

Regarding sprues, look at DZ2. It made 380k and funded 9 new sprues including 3 complex infantry sprues (5 bodies, two full weapon loadouts plus specialists) besides a bunch of metal and resin.

KoW2 made 366k and funded 4 complex infantry sprues, but given that they were selling existing product at a large discount, I'm guessing the funding was less efficient than a normal KS.

Focusing mainly on HIPS, a well-run KS can easily bring 3 other factions up to Enforcer standards (basic infantry, elite infantry, specialist unit, vehicle) without breaking a sweat.

On Friday, we gave out the launch date for our mini-Kickstarter project to fund the Warpath rulebooks. In case you missed it, it’ll be going live on Monday 21st September. The project will go live at 1:30pm BST and there will be a number of highly limited early bird pledges available.

What is Warpath

Just like Kings of War, Warpath is a set of rules for playing squad-based sci-fi games, following the Mantic philosophy for games design:

– They are simple to learn

– They allow for fast games

– They are fun

– They allow you to scale your games, from small battles to fully fledged planetary invasions!



From a gameplay point of view, Warpath is different from Deadzone, even though they are both set in the same universe and share the same miniatures range (although large Warpath miniatures like Tanks and Flyers probably won’t feature in Deadzone!).

Deadzone is a game system for playing small skirmishes where every miniature is independent, in a tight and claustrophobic battlefield. The largest Deadzone games are the smallest Warpath games, they are specialist mission going on against a backdrop of all-out war.

This is where the squad rules come in – they facilitate faster gameplay whilst simulating larger scale warfare on bigger battlefields, from just a couple of squads and a commander to apocalyptic-sized armies with legion of infantry and squadron of vehicles in support.

With the Warpath Kickstarter, we are funding two rulebooks – Warpath and Warpath: Firefight – enabling you to play Warpath in a way that suits you. Over the course of this week, we’ll be explaining what Warpath and Warpath: Firefight are, and their differences.

We’ll also be exploring what you can expect from the Kickstarter, more on each of the races, and maybe a sneak peak or two of some of the miniatures we have lined up as stretch goals, later this week.

 Gallahad wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

Unit based movement is excellent - the squad is a cloud and representative of the area they control; however, multiple sub units all in coherency make it way too fiddly.

It's not even that, the cloud does not project any control, it projects vulnerability as range and LOS is measured only from the hub but to any model.

I think the idea of a single hub per unit makes a lot of sense and can really simplify all the problems around "3 of six guys in this squad can see 4 in the enemy squad but of those four 2 are in heavy cover, etc., etc." headaches that just slow a game down. The hub represents control and possible fire lanes, the spokes/cloudlings represent vulnerability. It makes a lot of sense to me.

I haven't read the rules, so I may be imposing my perfect vision of a hub system on a game that actually has to specify the details, but I think the idea itself has merit.

Your vision is pretty much the normal vision of higher-level abstracted gameplay. Having any sort of individually-based large-scale (greater than platoon) range-heavy game pretty much requires unit clouds if you wish to have a quick game.Unit-based rules tend to make the concession that the models are a representation of the area the unit controls, and the models are not necessarily static stone statues gliding across the battlefield.

Most unit-based rulesets have these in common:
Measurement done from unit leader to target unit leader
Movement based on leader, unit reforms in a coherency around the unit leader after movement is complete
Majority models in cover = unit in cover; or, unit by default has cover and only special circumstances where unit will have no cover.
"Fire zones" or "fire lanes" from edges of firing unit to ends of target unit (intervening units take hits)
Dice pools for firing/firing rating
Splitting fire reduces by more than half the unit's firepower dice/rating
Eschew true LOS for abstracted LOS system (size, etc)
"Assaults" or "Close Quarter Firefights" abstracted to a short range (no punching people, more like soldiers with M4 Carbines clearing a house)

[See: Stargrunt 2, Starship Troopers, AT-43, Ambush Alley, Force on Force, Tomorrow's War for various rulesets that have used unit-based elements of the above.]

Basically you have a what amounts to a large-scale skirmish game where unit leaders are the only form of measurement you do (for shooting, movement) but individual members of a unit amplify firepower rating/dice and tend to provide a "unit majority".
These systems also tend to assume normal shooting implies cover (the "models are not stone statues and are in fact taking advantage of microterrain and keeping their head down" mechanic) unless all models in unit are in the open, in which case firepower/etc gives a tremendous bonus (WW1 machine gun against silhouetted infantry, for example)

The underlying design principle is one of "you are the soldiers" (40k, WMH,etc) versus "you are the commander":
"You are the soldier" starts with the basic building block of the game as a single model, often represented as the "moving statue" (true LOS), having individual statistics or individual rules that grant them the ability to affect the game as an individual.
"You are the commander" must, by definition, move it's focus away from the player controlling individual models. At a platoon commander level, you abstract individuals for the sake of fireteam or squad playability. At a company commander level, you abstract squads for the sake of platoon playability.

The Warpath Alpha rules released several months ago were a weird combination of some unit-based rules but still holding onto individual-model rules with a death grip. It was awkward and made little sense.

So I guess Warpath:Firefight has a separate writer. Latham I think the blog post said. So perhaps the bolt-on rules we saw for Firefight in the alpha will be different. If they commissioned this guy after that fact.

I gotta say, Firefight is a lot closer to the game size I would like to play, but I'm rooting for both systems.

And lots of funding 'cause drop ships.

Firefight is certainly shaping up to be the kind of thing I'm looking for. Here's hoping Mark Latham can pull it off!

And yes, Drop Ships. And plastic Striders. And Dropships carrying Striders.

Still think it's a mistake to split Warpath into two rulebooks and two sets of rules. They need to make a decision on one set and stick with it

I have to say, over the last few years I'm finding I prefer skirmish gaming for my sci fi. (And perhaps in general, really.)

Striders are fine in restic I'd be happy with some alternate arms in resin though.

Have they improved the rules at all from the gakky Alpha?

 Alex C wrote:
Firefight is certainly shaping up to be the kind of thing I'm looking for. Here's hoping Mark Latham can pull it off!

I can certainly see how spending a year as leader of the opposition could make you good at wargaming, but I'm not sure a guy who was comprehensively spanked in the election at the end of that is the right guy to be writing rules.

Good to see him get some work anyway, after resigning from the Fin Review last month

Two sets of rules will be good, it will let the community decide which one gains traction and which one doesn't.

I think it'll be a case of 20-60 model games with firefight being the standard with the occasional game of 60+ model warpath.

Far better to have two rulesets that are appropriate for the model count rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Firefight is certainly shaping up to be the kind of thing I'm looking for. Here's hoping Mark Latham can pull it off!

I can certainly see how spending a year as leader of the opposition could make you good at wargaming, but I'm not sure a guy who was comprehensively spanked in the election at the end of that is the right guy to be writing rules.

Good to see him get some work anyway, after resigning from the Fin Review last month

I assume that's some sort of Aussie politics reference I'm unaware of...

Anyway the guy doing Warpath: Firefight is Mark Latham, formerly of GW. Not sure if he dabbled in politics down under, but maybe...

It strikes me as somewhat ironic that there are complaints about having two sets of rules for Warpath, when other people have asked for the same thing to happen for 40K for years.

 Alex C wrote:
I assume that's some sort of Aussie politics reference I'm unaware of...

Anyway the guy doing Warpath: Firefight is Mark Latham, formerly of GW. Not sure if he dabbled in politics down under, but maybe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Latham

 scarletsquig wrote:
Two sets of rules will be good, it will let the community decide which one gains traction and which one doesn't.

I think it'll be a case of 20-60 model games with firefight being the standard with the occasional game of 60+ model warpath.

Far better to have two rulesets that are appropriate for the model count rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

This is exactly how I feel, and why it was concerning when Fire Fight had to be pushed for hard, and that even now it feels a little like an afterthought, when it's probably going to be the most used of the two.

New logo for the game too, in case anyone missed it

I like that logo.

It is readable, unlike most of the concepts they had...

Two rulebooks is good.

Mantic already makes models that can be used with more than one ruleset, so I don't see it as splitting the player base, I just see it as adding another game in a very efficient manner.

• Get into the thick of the action, using true LOS, per-model hits in shooting and melee, improved terrain occupying rules, and Warpath’s Orders system.

using true LOS

true LOS

 judgedoug wrote:

• Get into the thick of the action, using true LOS, per-model hits in shooting and melee, improved terrain occupying rules, and Warpath’s Orders system.

using true LOS

true LOS

How can you get fast games out of TLoS and per model hits? Additional bookkeeping just means slower game play which is what has made 40k so clunky over the past few years (IMO).

 agnosto wrote:
How can you get fast games out of TLoS and per model hits? Additional bookkeeping just means slower game play which is what has made 40k so clunky over the past few years (IMO).

You can't. Welcome to argument city, and "I'm going to shoot your model because I can see his foot" and busting out laser pointers. barf.jpg

C'mon, Mantic. WMH got volume right, Starship Troopers got size right, Terminator got them both right. Rules systems aren't copyright-able. Just swipe Terminator's and move on. Even Kings of War has abstracted LOS, ffs.

 agnosto wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

• Get into the thick of the action, using true LOS, per-model hits in shooting and melee, improved terrain occupying rules, and Warpath’s Orders system.

using true LOS

true LOS

How can you get fast games out of TLoS and per model hits? Additional bookkeeping just means slower game play which is what has made 40k so clunky over the past few years (IMO).

Quite easily. TLOS is as easy as 'can I draw a straight line between any point of these two models' and 'is there a part of that model I can't draw a line to' (for cover purposes), and per-model hits/wounds is fine, it doesn't slow the game down at all. the calculation of how many dice to roll is just basic maths (shots per model x total models) and I can't see how anyone's brain would be taxed just taking out individual models and counting how many are left.

Moreover, games don't need to be 'fast', I don't think, if that comes at the expense of immersion. Per-model damage/shooting ect means that every roll does matter, and there's no binary 'a unit is either fighting at full strength or dead' that works in KoW but really makes no sense to me as sci-fi. The fact that even within a squad/army, every model's stats and position and such matter is why I think 40k is so fun, despite its flaws, and I'd like to see Warpath take a similar route.

 Paradigm wrote:
Quite easily. TLOS is as easy as 'can I draw a straight line between any point of these two models' and 'is there a part of that model I can't draw a line to' (for cover purposes)

there's nothing inherently easy about TLOS. The basic premise of it makes no sense: our soldiers move around in static positions, unchanging their positions? Prone soldiers are always prone and cannot shoot past a wall that is above their eye height. Kneeling soldiers cannot go prone to shoot under a log, nor can they angle their head up to see targets above them. Starting from that premise, we then introduce laser pointers and now target our stone statue models' feet, elbows, weapons, that are inbetween tree branches and tall blades of grass.
TLOS has no benefits. It ruins immersion by turning our models into chess pieces, is impossible to write concise, unambiguous rules for, and slows down any game by requiring awkward positioning of laser pointers and vague arguments followed by concessions and players who feel slightly cheated because a model got knocked over and returning the model back to as close to it's original position actually reveals it's head as a target.

Meanwhile, several other systems have discarded TLOS for faster, less ambiguous, and more realistic LOS rules.

The nice thing is, Firefight doesnt have to be *as* streamlined. There are less models anyway, amking the game faster. If you want larger games, it gets clunky, sure. But thats when you play using the "normal" Warpath rules. Its pretty much the best option for them, since it covers all bases at minimal cost to them (ie, using a ruleset at a scale that it doesnt really support - Apocalypse...)

 Tyr13 wrote:
The nice thing is, Firefight doesnt have to be *as* streamlined. There are less models anyway, amking the game faster. If you want larger games, it gets clunky, sure. But thats when you play using the "normal" Warpath rules. Its pretty much the best option for them, since it covers all bases at minimal cost to them (ie, using a ruleset at a scale that it doesnt really support - Apocalypse...)

But why burden your new shiny game with clunky, lazy, terrible rules design such as TLOS when literally every other LOS system is better? A new rules set shouldn't just be "good enough" and that's it.

My problem with the Firefight Alpha rules was that they just did them because some people were screaming for an alternative 40k size ruleset which is the same like current 40k (which WP already is because current 40k is way too big now for its rules)

If Firefight (& WP) would be more like Starship Troopes and less like 40k this would be a different story.

The rules are still in alpha, and Mantic listens to feedback, I'm sure TLOS can be dropped for abstract

 NTRabbit wrote:
The rules are still in alpha, and Mantic listens to feedback, I'm sure TLOS can be dropped for abstract

someone tell them to buy a copy of the Terminator rulebook and read it. And then read it again. And again and again, and then they will know what rules elegance is.

Are the Terminator rules by Alessio? And is he any part of the Warpath rules?

Not long until this KS hits, I hope that Mantic use the blog to get some previews of what is to come this week.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:

Not long until this KS hits, I hope that Mantic use the blog to get some previews of what is to come this week.

They are doing exactly that. Firefight article today.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Are the Terminator rules by Alessio?

Yes, his magnum opus, in my opinion.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
And is he any part of the Warpath rules?

Not that I'm aware of. He's working on a Terminator expansion, the Labyrinth board game, and the Bolt Action 1.5 refresh afaik.

 kodos wrote:
My problem with the Firefight Alpha rules was that they just did them because some people were screaming for an alternative 40k size ruleset which is the same like current 40k (which WP already is because current 40k is way too big now for its rules)

If Firefight (& WP) would be more like Starship Troopes and less like 40k this would be a different story.

Reading the Warpath beta I definitely had the feeling that the author had never seen any rulesets other than Mantic's existing games and 40k. It is a crappy Frankenstein's monster stitched together from KoW, Warpath 1.0, Deadzone and 40k. No other influences. None.