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Pretty simple question. I was digging around their site and the models look pretty neat. It seems like there is a narrow selection of units (not surprising for how established the game is), but other than that I think I'm curious enough to try it out.

Does anyone have any input on how it relates to 40k as far as army size, level of strategy, etc?

There's a new version of the rules in the works, supposedly. Mantic says that they'll be less identical to the fantasy Kings of War and more SciFi appropriate. There are a lot of folks who've really like the new Enforcer line, though I really like the stylings of the standard Corporation Marines myself. I'd consider getting some to stand in as Imperial Guard if I didn't have somewhere near 100+ IG infantry unpainted still.

I've gotten some of their fantasy dwarves and I do like the miniatures, plus the customer service provided by Mantic is superb. If you have any broken/missing models you'll usually get it replaced + extra within a few days.

Hi.
Yeah , the 'KoW in space ' for Warpath just didnt work that well.
Alessio has done a re-write using alternating activation, to fit the more modern units used.
(Skirmishing squads of infantry supported by armoured vehicles and artiley-air strikes.)
Dont you find it heartening Mantic didnt get past beta with 'fantasy rule set in space.'

Yet GW are on 6th ed.....

I belive the new rules are to be at skirmish level.(Similar size to 2nd ed 40k.)
But will be developed to cover battle games (3rd -6th ed 40k size.)

The rules are free to down load..So give them a go (proxy minatures to start if you like.)

Lanrak wrote:
Hi.

I belive the new rules are to be at skirmish level.(Similar size to 2nd ed 40k.)
But will be developed to cover battle games (3rd -6th ed 40k size.)

The rules are free to down load..So give them a go (proxy minatures to start if you like.)

I didn't realize that the rules were up for free...I will definitely have to do that.

@Clsaac: I agree with you about the corporation marines as stand-in guard. I have been thinking about doing the same thing, but haven't fully convinced myself. The enforcers remind me of the Cylon Centurions from BSG which I think is pretty cool.

According to the latest Mantic newsletter, the free download of Warpath 2.0 should be up on Friday.

Drummerboy wrote:
Pretty simple question. I was digging around their site and the models look pretty neat. It seems like there is a narrow selection of units (not surprising for how established the game is), but other than that I think I'm curious enough to try it out.

Does anyone have any input on how it relates to 40k as far as army size, level of strategy, etc?

50/50 good and bad.

It is not nessesarily "Fantasy in Space", but they are trying so hard to be... "Not GW" that it ruins the game for them.

Good points are the miniatures, the rules, and the generating of the hype, without being overly happy happy joy joy.

Bad points are thier attitude of trying too hard to be everybodys pal and the flim flam that they have about the system. The background really needs something to make it original, the guys are kinda ... craptastic, but they have character.

Like I said, it is really difficult to place the game.

My biggest issue with them is that they are trying too hard to be "Not GW" while trying to ape the stuff people miss about the old GW, that they lose themselves in the process.


I think I'm the only one that hates those new Iron Man knock offs. They look kinda goofy.

 Grot 6 wrote:

Drummerboy wrote:
Pretty simple question. I was digging around their site and the models look pretty neat. It seems like there is a narrow selection of units (not surprising for how established the game is), but other than that I think I'm curious enough to try it out.

Does anyone have any input on how it relates to 40k as far as army size, level of strategy, etc?

50/50 good and bad.

It is not nessesarily "Fantasy in Space", but they are trying so hard to be... "Not GW" that it ruins the game for them.

Good points are the miniatures, the rules, and the generating of the hype, without being overly happy happy joy joy.

Bad points are thier attitude of trying too hard to be everybodys pal and the flim flam that they have about the system. The background really needs something to make it original, the guys are kinda ... craptastic, but they have character.

Like I said, it is really difficult to place the game.

My biggest issue with them is that they are trying too hard to be "Not GW" while trying to ape the stuff people miss about the old GW, that they lose themselves in the process.


I think I'm the only one that hates those new Iron Man knock offs. They look kinda goofy.

So you're going to talk about everything other than what was asked about, Grot?

HI.
I think Mantic are trying to be a sucessful games company, that listens to its customers and tries to deliver good value for money.
This is far enough from being GW plc as a company can get.

Given time to get it right, I am sure the final published rules will be as good for Warpath , as the rules for Kings of War are.(Because letting gamers test the beta rules is the best way to find any problems.)

 Dysartes wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:

Drummerboy wrote:
Pretty simple question. I was digging around their site and the models look pretty neat. It seems like there is a narrow selection of units (not surprising for how established the game is), but other than that I think I'm curious enough to try it out.

Does anyone have any input on how it relates to 40k as far as army size, level of strategy, etc?

50/50 good and bad.

It is not nessesarily "Fantasy in Space", but they are trying so hard to be... "Not GW" that it ruins the game for them.

Good points are the miniatures, the rules, and the generating of the hype, without being overly happy happy joy joy.

Bad points are thier attitude of trying too hard to be everybodys pal and the flim flam that they have about the system. The background really needs something to make it original, the guys are kinda ... craptastic, but they have character.

Like I said, it is really difficult to place the game.

My biggest issue with them is that they are trying too hard to be "Not GW" while trying to ape the stuff people miss about the old GW, that they lose themselves in the process.


I think I'm the only one that hates those new Iron Man knock offs. They look kinda goofy.

So you're going to talk about everything other than what was asked about, Grot?

Opinions about Mantic..... HMMMM....


Like I said. A 50/50 hard decision about Mantic altogether. I do very much like the fantasy stuff, but the more I looked into the Sci Fi, the more I was put off by it. Not everything, but most of the stuff was just kinda meh.

Did think they were going in a good direction, though, and might have to check out these changed rules that you speak of.....

 Grot 6 wrote:
Opinions about Mantic..... HMMMM....


Like I said. A 50/50 hard decision about Mantic altogether. I do very much like the fantasy stuff, but the more I looked into the Sci Fi, the more I was put off by it. Not everything, but most of the stuff was just kinda meh.

Did think they were going in a good direction, though, and might have to check out these changed rules that you speak of.....

The OP's questions were specifically about the Warpath game, Grot, not Mantic as a whole.

And I quote...

Does anyone have any input on how it relates to 40k as far as army size, level of strategy, etc?

Regarding Warpath 2.0, the last newsletter said the new rules will be available as a free download as of Friday.

You'll definitely want to sign up to the Mantic newsletter, the Warpath 2.0 rules are being given away in it next Friday.

And it's a very, very different game to Warpath 1.0.

There are a few moves back in the direction of 40k-style gameplay (individual casualty removal rather than it being a unit-based game), but also even more radical departures away from it, with an alternating activation system that works extremely well.

And yeah, it would be good to avoid another "Mantic rant" thread. This is like someone asking about what the 40k rules are like and then having someone coming along and whinging about GW prices and banging on about the fantasy razorgor being a bad sculpt instead of talking about anything remotely related to 40k at all.

Warpath will be getting a kickstarter to expand the game sometime next year (get saving for march/april time) to really expand and flesh out the game with a lot of new units.

Current plan that Ronnie has outlined for future model plans is hard plastic large vehicles, and lots of them.

In the mean time, Corporation and Forgefathers have the 2 most complete model ranges, so go for either of those if you're looking to get started, or proxy using 40k models.

It's a really fun game, don't forget to put a lot of terrain on the table though, you'll need it! It's very much a short-range firefight game, using suppression fire to pin a unit before it can attempt to activate is quite a fun tactic.

The game is around the same size as 40k in terms of model count, with possibility for it to scale upwards a little easier. Level of strategy in-game is absolutely higher, as cover is handled better than 40k, and there isn't an i-go-you-go turn structure... there is instead an activation system that is combined with a morale system, so the more damage a unit has taken, the less likely it is to be able to function on the battlefield.

"Fire for effect" to suppress a unit rather than destroy it is also a key part of the shooting tactics, and the melee rules are designed very well to create quick and brutal combats that are resolved in a single turn rather than dragging out over a long time.

I participated in the beta-testing for Warpath (which was open to the public), and we really ironed out a lot of the problems before they even got a chance to rear their heads. Public internet feedback on the rules and army lists is something that Mantic does well.

Hi scarletsquig.
I think the changes sound great.Definatley moving towards modern warfare type game play.
Which should make it more intuitiuve. ('Modern units' in a 'modern warfare game' !)

Being nitpicky...
In game chioces are usualy refered to as tactics.
Strategic chioces happen before the game starts.(force selection and deployment ect.)


My ONLY reservation is the alternating unit activation.As I heard good dice rolls allow multiple units from the same force to activate.
Which might cause problems if units are imballanced.
EG 6 powerful units vs 15 multiple small units.

(Alternating phases eliviates this sort of problem.Has this sort of game turn been concidered?)

Ill have to play the new rules thoroughly to make an informed decision though....

^ The MSU problem you mentioned came up in playtesting and was fixed.

There's a variety of stuff in the game that makes things far more complicated than "always pick 5 man units" or "always pick 20 man units".

For starters, the Nerve system favours MSU, but the activation system favours blob squads, so you end up with the large units able to put out a bit amount of firepower and reliably activate, but on the other hand, they are more vulnerable to suppression fire, since that's 20 guys instead of 5 that can't shoot if they get suppressed.

It took a long time for us to thrash out the mechanics and I played games of 2 platoons vs. 10 teams to highlight some early problems with the game (namely, you could inflict 1 damage on a big unit of 20, get a lucky Nerve roll and destroy the whole unit)... those were then fixed.

Reducing the level of randomness in the game is one thing that all of us playtesters pushed for. We also managed to get the -1 modifier for moving and firing removed to encourage a more mobile game, as well as fixing a loophole that favoured MSU too much with the activation system and a whole host of other quite major tweaks to the core of the game.

I'm not aware of the full extent of the changes at the moment, that'll have to wait until this Friday, but on the whole, Mantic has been great at listening to the feedback, and I'm really happy with how open they are when it comes to listening to (and acting upon) good quality internet feedback compared to GW.

Adding on to what SS said, in testing initially you activated one squad at a time, each player alternating, and whoever had squads left over could activate them freely.

This was a bad idea and was a severe balance issue with MSU spam, but more importantly, Mantic listened to the feedback and corrected the problem.

The very next edition of the playtest rules the next week had a fix that the forum members had proposed, changing it to any of these "extra" activations had a flat-out 1-in-3 chance of failing to activate, meaning that using MSU spam meant that there was a good chance you'd be wasting points on units that would never reliably activate. It balanced it wonderfully, fixed the problem without having to resort to "If I have twice as many units, I activate two when you do one" kind of fixes, but still keeps MSU effective for the reasons SS mentioned above.

Frankly, I'm foaming at the mouth for the rules on Friday, and I highly recommend taking a look at Warpath for anyone looking for an alternative to GW but in a similar scale, overall feel, and size of army.

I'll hold my hands up. I gave last years' Warpath rules a cursory glance, decided they weren't really playable (essentially just Space Kings of War) and didn't pursue the matter (also not being interested in space Orcs or Squats). When I went to the Mantic open day last month we were given the new rulebook for Warpath, but I wasn't too bothered and it sat on the back seat of my car since. When a friend asked after the game I remembered the book and decided to give it a quick read through, out of polite interest.

Well, I'm certainly hooked. It uses the basic building blocks of Kings of War but puts them together in a subtly different way that works better for the style of game it's trying to be, whilst still being comfortably familiar to a KoW veteran. There are still a couple of question marks for me: 'true' LoS is iffy (especially when the rules imply you should get down behind a tank's gun barrel to determine LoS) and it seems like it's uncommon that any unit will rout (bog standard human/orc infantry have a 1/6 chance on every test), but suppression is a byproduct of the Nerve system and nicely plays into the activation mechanic so that suppressed units will naturally gravitate towards the back of your activation order (as trying and failing to get them moving will end your go).

It might be a while before I get around to a game, given how slow our club generally is on the uptake and the fact I don't have a pre-existing 40k army to proxy in for the purpose, but I would strongly recommend, if you're jaded of the awful job 40k does of trying to represent futuristic wargaming, then sign up for the newsletter in anticipation of Friday's FREE ruleset, and give them at least a try.

@Scarlet Squig.
Thanks for expalining that , it certainly sounds like a good way to balance number of units, and unit size.

Looking forward to friday....