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Has anyone got an opinion on warpath and Warpath:firefight?

I'm looking for a game I can play using my Space Marines against Veermyn or Orks.

It seems like mantic have completely stopped supporting warpath and firefight.

Unfortunately, Kings of War has been a substantial success for Mantic. Due to that, they have largely stopped supporting much of anything else. Deadzone, Dreadball, Warpath, Star Saga, etc. all linger on with a mention or maybe a book once a year these days.

Deadzone has some support with a yearly book and they recently announced more minis and future plans.

As for Warpath/Firefight, it's a good ruleset (as usual for Mantic games). Currently free to download too, so possible to give a try. I'd rather play Warpath than 40k, if I could.

The problem is, with so little support for these other than KoW, it is very hard to find anyone else that wants to play the stuff. I think they are mostly good games, too - but the reality is the gaming community at large has largely turned their noses up at them.

The game has a good core, but has some balance issues. An FAQ did fix some things, but the game is lethal a bit wonky. Played casually, it’s great, but it can be broken without a lot of effort.

Honestly, Grimdark Future is the fun, fast, and balanced ruleset to try if you specifically want new life for GW models. Its creator is constantly re-balancing as needed, and adds rules within a week of GW releasing a new model/unit.

It didn't take off, rules didn't cut it.

Too much alpha strike, game over in 1 or 2 turns and the more interesting parts of the rules don't get a look in because everything dies too quickly.

Warpath is a good game but it needs the updated rules from the FAQ and "large" forces and unit bases to work well (~1500-2000 points which would be about the models for 1000-1500 points 40k)

FireFight is better than 40k but does not work as well as WP.
the rules were made on request of 40k players on the KickStarter who wanted a game more like 40k and less like WP/Deadzone

therefore Mantic is going to replace it with a less deadly version that is more similar to Warpath and fills the gap between Deadzone and WP

 totalfailure wrote:
Unfortunately, Kings of War has been a substantial success for Mantic. Due to that, they have largely stopped supporting much of anything else. Deadzone, Dreadball, Warpath, Star Saga, etc. all linger on with a mention or maybe a book once a year these days.

How do you get that idea
lot of KoW players were upset as Deadzone and Dreadball got all the support prior 3rd Edition

Deadzone gets new models/factions on a regular bases and had a Summer Campaign, Star Saga got a new Scenario for free some weeks ago.

Warpath FireFight is going to get an updated Version this year, to get it more in line with Deadzone/Warpath as Deadzone is Mantics top selling game next to Walking Dead

A tiny dribble once a year is not supporting a product. There are no regular releases for anything at Mantic but Kings of War.

overall all products have similar release waves and focus

and that a product needs new stuff each month to stay healthy or to be "supperted" is not Mantics buisness model, for non of their games
(to be clear, they don't release as much as possible with new stuff make old one obsolete and the "fix it next edition" mantra, but actually test things so that they are balanced and add something new to the game)

King of War sells. It gets new products and of shoots like Vanguard FREQUENTLY. All of the other games have a limited to poor following; they get scraps when Mantic feels like getting around to it. And Mantic doesn't care much at all about their games post-release, either - rather, let's let some pumpers and fluffers from the now discontinued message boards be a 'rules committee'...

 totalfailure wrote:
King of War sells. It gets new products and of shoots like Vanguard FREQUENTLY

Vanguard is a different game, and according to Mantic, Deadzone sells better than KoW

And Mantic doesn't care much at all about their games post-release, either

looking at what Deadzone got post release, this is not true

FireFight was the game Mantic stopped caring about at it was made for a specific group of people who got everything they wanted with the game design (no matter if Mantic or other people liked it) and were gone as soon as the Game was released (back to 40k as 8th Edi was the best Edtion GW ever made)
So it did nit fit the other games and those who wanted it abandoned it

I agree with some other people here in saying that Warpath and/or Warpath Firefight is better than 40k (But I have 6e 40k so take anything I say regarding 40k with a bit of salt) I wish Mantic would release more stuff for the Space Orks though.

Just to clarify.
Since deadzones release we got:
5 new factions(veer'myn, gcps, nameless, mazon labs[basicly umbrella-love them] and mercs)

With tons of new models and "subfactions" like the voidstalkers(veermyn) as well as elitelists bringing in new specialists.
Also pathfinders and steelwarriors came as late as second edition.
On top of that we got 2 campainbooks with premade storycampaigns(2 campaigns in nexus psi) plus encoutercharts for open campaigns. This year receiving a new subfaction with the matsudon.

As far as deadzone goes there is a steady support.

As for warpath... yeah... that got a bit neglected. The worst mistake in my opinion was not releasing all the vehicles within a year or so. That was pretty detrimental for plague for example, but now they got it sorted by now. Which may be too late for this edition i am afraid. Even though warpath still gets updated with new dz-units (nameless can be played now in wp) it really needs a new edition to get that initial draw back.

-----------------

With the miniature range it has now, it's a really cool game now. Wp beeing better than firefight. Even though i really like firefight, i hope they ditch it. It's better to have only one system at that size, because wp scales down quite a bit.
To play firefight now is nice and dandy but one should not get too attached to it if he wants new releases incorporated.

Deadzone xl( if that name stays) would be a bit smaller than firefight is now. Only 1 big vehicle(tank/flyer) slot f.e. i played it at last years november open day. Felt great.

Btw. There is a nice starter campaign namely operation heracles which uses the models out of the 2 player boxed sets(wp and firefight). It should still be free to download.

A number of free rules, a scenario or two, and an e-book at Mantic. This includes WARPATH.

https://www.manticgames.com/mantic-games-free-rules/

 kodos wrote:
FireFight was the game Mantic stopped caring about at it was made for a specific group of people who got everything they wanted with the game design (no matter if Mantic or other people liked it) and were gone as soon as the Game was released (back to 40k as 8th Edi was the best Edtion GW ever made)
So it did nit fit the other games and those who wanted it abandoned it

I don't think this is 100% fair to those who were interested in Firefight. The problem wasn't really mass-abandonment of the rules to run back to 40k, but an inability to garner interest from other players. I can absolutely love a system, but if I can't get anyone to play it with me then it's going to gather dust on my shelf.

Mantic's issue at the time was their sub-par miniatures and fluff. I stopped following them years ago so while I see the miniatures have improved I imagine the fluff is about the same as it always was, i.e. it sounds like it was written by a 14 year old.

the fluff released with the new Warpath books wasn't as much as 40k, but for sure better written than the 7th Edi stuff GW came up at the same time

main problem on Mantic side was do not release the missing vehicles soon after
Miniatures already got the new plastics, fluff was written for the game (and not just as an excuse to sell alternative 40k minis) and with Deadzone being well received there was a playerbase for it (which was not that keen on a 40k like game)

Mistakes were made and it seems Mantic has learned from it

Warpath and Firefight are both pretty decent, but if you are looking for a system to play space marines, space rats and space orks you could do worse than use Grimdark Future which is a simplified version of 40K with alternating activation and lists for all the forces in 40K and Mantics Warpath universe. It is all free and is supported with updates, if that is important to you!
https://onepagerules.com/portfolio/grimdark-future/
I think it is worth looking at all three rulesets and seeing which one suits you best.

I find the Warpath/Deadzone background very entertaining. Read the sourcebook a while back when it was free to download and it was great! It had that underlying tongue in cheek tone that is sorely missed in other games and the overall level of detail and writing is very decent too.
A new background book compiling all the supplement info (from DZ, at least) and other new ideas to expand the universe would be fantastic.