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Palm Beach, FL

It looks like units are bought as teams. Teams are 5 for regular infantry, 2 for heavy infantry, 1 for massive infantry. One of the models is going to be the 'hub' for the team, and casualties are removed one whole team at a time. For example, a Space Marine Terminator squad would look like this

Space Marine Terminator Squad
- Terminator Team (2 models)
--- 4 Power Fist attacks, 4 Storm Bolter attacks
- Terminator Team (2 models)
--- 4 Power Fist attacks, 4 Storm Bolter attacks
- Terminator Fire Support Team (2 models)
--- 4 Power Fist attacks, 4 Cyclone Missile shots OR 8 Assault Cannon shots, you choose each time the unit fires
- One team can be upgraded to have a Terminator Captain, giving access to Orders and reduction in the effect of Surpression
nd
When you'd shoot them, you'd either fire
8 Storm Bolters, 4 Cyclone Missiles
or
8 Storm Bolter shots, 8 Assault Cannon shots

in combat, you'd have 12 Power Fist attacks. If you got to the first Brk threshold, you'd remove one of the teams at the owner's discretion.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/05/22 20:37:38


 
   
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Foxy Wildborne







That sounds like they managed to jam together the worst of both worlds.

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Executing Exarch






So squads within squads? That seems needlessly complicated...
   
Made in au
Screaming Shining Spear





Adelaide, Australia

It's not actually that complicated - teams are parts of units, anywhere from 1 team (Enforcer heavy support unit) to 6 teams (Plague Zombies) in the limited army lists currently provided, and you do everything by the unit when activating. So you activate a unit, move all the teams to where you want them while maintaining team and unit coherency, and when attacking every team in the unit attacks - at least, every team in range and with line of sight. Measurement is hub to hub, line of sight is hub to any part of the target unit. That's my take on first reading anyway.

Some things are very similar to Deadzone, some are extensions, and some things are new. There are no opposed rolls either, everything is quick and clean against a stat line - so where Deadzone combines to hit and to damage into one opposed roll with armour an auto success and AP an armour canceller, Warpath has split it into a to hit roll and a to damage roll, unopposed, with the Deadzone add/subtract dice on to hit plus 4 modifiers that give +1/-1/-2 to the dice result against your accuracy, and to damage is only modified by adding any AP rating the shooting unit has and comparing to the target defence.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2015/05/22 22:34:29


   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Admittedly, it's just a summary, but it seems hugely counter-intuitive to not actually use the models/miniatures as such as basis for a game mechanic or two (say .. as wound counters for a unit), even if you don't want to go into 40K-levels of detail.

What's the advantage of "teams" over pinging rules off individual models? Wouldn't it make sense to just replace each "team" with a single model and simply (in the example of Terminators given above) double that models Powerfist/Stormbolter attacks per model so the current "team-stats" become the "model-stats" of miniatures in the unit?
   
Made in au
Screaming Shining Spear





Adelaide, Australia

Yeah can't claim to be a fan of the by-the-team casualty removal, as it stands every mini that isn't the hub is nothing more than a line of sight liability, not even rising to the heights of wound counter.

   
Made in se
Executing Exarch






^this. I see no reason not to use single models in this case. Also, if I'm reading it right, you measure LoS and range from one of the models in a team? So if you have three teams in a unit, you have to keep track of which three models are the "hub" for each team? Again, seems needlessly complicated.
   
Made in au
Screaming Shining Spear





Adelaide, Australia

Well that bit isn't so hard, you just have to make sure every hub stands out in some way - paint job, sergeant model, token, etc, no different than remembering which mini in a 40k infantry squad is the sergeant/exarch/whatever, just with extra measuring/los relevance

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 08:57:19


   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




Wonderwolf wrote:
Admittedly, it's just a summary, but it seems hugely counter-intuitive to not actually use the models/miniatures as such as basis for a game mechanic or two (say .. as wound counters for a unit), even if you don't want to go into 40K-levels of detail.

What's the advantage of "teams" over pinging rules off individual models? Wouldn't it make sense to just replace each "team" with a single model and simply (in the example of Terminators given above) double that models Powerfist/Stormbolter attacks per model so the current "team-stats" become the "model-stats" of miniatures in the unit?


I haven't had chance to try the rules in a game yet, but I think the idea is that it makes different weapons within a unit much easier to manage. The examples in the rules have a squad of enforcers, one team of 5 men has the normal laser assault rifles, the second team has a burst laser for extra firepower.
It also means that individual units can be spread a little more than they would be in something like 40K, 4" between teams in a unit is the rule for cohesion.

Someone mentioned hubs above, the hub is the officer or team leader, and must always be visible to both players, so the guy with a standard, officer marking on the helmet or whatever, so it should not slow things down at all in practice.
   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Not slow things down? From what I understand, in a squad of 10 Peacekeepers or such you'll need 5 fancy leader dudes, and keep track which of the 5 mooks is best buddies with which of the leaders because they move and die together - but apart from that, the mook just gets in his boss's way.

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Made in au
Screaming Shining Spear





Adelaide, Australia

There's no squad of 10 peacekeepers, at least not in the demo list - the Peacekeeper Unit is two teams of 2 peacekeepers, plus a team of 2 heavy weapon peacekeepers for a total of 6 models, 3 of which just need a stripe on the helmet or a ring around the base to indicate leadership.

Or, leaders all get their leader mini/stripes/whatever you choose to use, and all the mooks in his squad get the same coloured ring around their base, either painted or an additional bit of perspex.

Once you have a system in place and you get used to it, it doesn't seem all that hard to keep track of; mooks just getting in the way is a different problem


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's 4" cohesion between hubs in a unit, 2" cohesion between models in a team and their hub.

Also models cannot be within 1" of each other unless they are assaulting, and that goes for friendly models too (confirmed by Mantic), so no tight clustering.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/05/23 09:24:48


   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Brilliant, so Peacekeepers come on sprues of 5 but are fielded in units of 6. GW would be proud.

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On an Express Elevator to Hell!!

I think you need to calm down a bit lord_blackfang, you're jumping to conclusions about the rules when we haven't had the possibility of digesting them properly. I'm reading through them at the moment and will post comments later on this evening.

Although, admittedly this is the problem with releasing them in a limited fashion and not just having them available to download from Mantic's website. Information is coming out piecemeal, and as is the way with these things people are jumping to the worst conclusions possible in each case.

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NoggintheNog wrote:


I haven't had chance to try the rules in a game yet, but I think the idea is that it makes different weapons within a unit much easier to manage. The examples in the rules have a squad of enforcers, one team of 5 men has the normal laser assault rifles, the second team has a burst laser for extra firepower.
It also means that individual units can be spread a little more than they would be in something like 40K, 4" between teams in a unit is the rule for cohesion.

Someone mentioned hubs above, the hub is the officer or team leader, and must always be visible to both players, so the guy with a standard, officer marking on the helmet or whatever, so it should not slow things down at all in practice.


But how is that different to doubling up, say, the Tac Squad in 40K from 8 dudes with Bolters, 1 Sergeant and 1 Plasma gun to 16 dudes with Bolters, 1 Seargeant-team/due and 2 guys with Plasma guns, always removing "teams of 2" when you take a wound, giving each "team" the total number of attacks/shots that currently a single Marine has (or triple it, or quadruple it, or whatever)?

And 4" cohesion is fine with me, but you can do 4" cohesion between individual models as well as "teams". That rules isn't really tied to the "team"-thingy.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/05/23 10:15:09


 
   
Made in gb
Pious Warrior Priest




UK

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Brilliant, so Peacekeepers come on sprues of 5 but are fielded in units of 6. GW would be proud.


Units of 10 for Warpath retail, I heard.

Fair point about 2 man teams being fiddly for Large Infantry, it's something that stood out as odd to me too, just made a post about it in the RC forum.

With 2 models in a team the rules lose the benefits of abstraction and create more micromanagement than having teams of 1 would involve.

"Paint 5 different colours per unit, + base rings and stuff to pick out leaders" is much trickier than either "the models are all 1 model teams" or "2 teams of 5 guys and the 2 leader models are leaders".

I will play some games first, but have a feeling that teams should be either 5's or 1's with the rules as they are.

The 40k terminator squad wasn't the best analogue to describe the hub/team system, about 90% of the units in the game have teams of 5 rather than 2, which works great.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2015/05/23 10:34:07


 
   
Made in gb
Is 'Eavy Metal Calling?





UK

The more I hear about this ruleset, the more I dislike it. The team mechanism seems both unnecessary and overcomplicated, and just there for the sake of being different, rather than actually improving the game. I don't see the point in it, when you could just divide the attacks for each team and do it per-model (thus being far more familiar to most gamers).

Can anyone see/explain what actually makes the team mechanic better than single models?

 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




 scarletsquig wrote:


The 40k terminator squad wasn't the best analogue to describe the hub/team system, about 90% of the units in the game have teams of 5 rather than 2, which works great.


From the limited information, it seems fairly irrelevant whether it's teams of 2, 5, 10 or 1.000.000. They seem to be the "equivalent" of a single model in a larger squad-type organisation.

They don't serve as an organisational unit you can activate by themselves (because you activate/move the whole squad of several "teams"). Neither do they provide anything game-play wise, that other squad-based 28mm games do with single models.

Admittedly, similar mechanics do exist, mostly in ~10mm games. It feels a bit like a "base of guys" (3 or 5 or howevermany) as you'd seem them in old Epic or DZC, but it is - mechanically - a clunky mechanic there, which mainly exists for reasons of scale/immersion, because individual 10mm infantry models would be rather finicky to handle physically and because infantry isn't the main-show of these games for the most part. Hell, even 40K uses it to an extend for IG heavy weapon teams and the like.

It's not unheard of. It's just not very elegant (from the limited information I've read) and it needlessly breaks the "link" between rules and models for no clear benefit I can see (at 28mm scale).

   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






Sounds like a pile of crap to me. I was expecting a streamlined ruleset for mass combat like KoW, not all this fiddly bollocks.

Oh well, saves me money at the end of the year for other stuff.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 10:45:35


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With GW and 40K being at their most 'vulnerable' in well, possibly ever, this is not sounding like the ruleset we were looking for!

   
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The rules make more sense if you assume people will multibase their teams, so you don't need to worry about the leader or whatever. It's been left up to the player whether they multibase or not, in the same way that you're "free to multibase" in Epic or leave all the models separate.

Warpath isn't intended to be "40k but not" and I think Mantic are wanting to do something that's more different to 40k than KoW is to WHFB.
   
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 Daedleh wrote:


Warpath isn't intended to be "40k but not" and I think Mantic are wanting to do something that's more different to 40k than KoW is to WHFB.


But what would actually change, rules-wise, if you'd replace this multibase of, say, 3 models that makes a "team" with just a single model that has identical stats to the previous "team", all other rules remaining unchanged?

Whether it's similar or different to 40K is not really the question. I'm scratching my head as to what game-play advantage you'd actually gain from this approach.


This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 13:38:52


 
   
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Smokin' Skorcha Driver





I'm not defending it, just explaining I'm not a fan of the approach.
   
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West Michigan, deep in Whitebread, USA

Ugh. Multi-base units just don't do it for me, though it's obviously a mechanism to push the apocolypse-level gameplay Mantic wants from Warpath.

Unless the bases are like War of the Ring with removeable individual figures, storage is going to be a pain, and regardless multi-basing will work horribly clunky with the terrain common to sci-fi wargames.

Even At-43 and Confrontation Age of Ragnorok used leaders to measure range, bit kept individually based figures important for everything else.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 13:42:39




"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."  
   
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Under the couch

 NTRabbit wrote:

Or, leaders all get their leader mini/stripes/whatever you choose to use, and all the mooks in his squad get the same coloured ring around their base, either painted or an additional bit of perspex.
That would look ghastly.

 
   
Made in gb
Is 'Eavy Metal Calling?





UK

 Daedleh wrote:

Warpath isn't intended to be "40k but not" and I think Mantic are wanting to do something that's more different to 40k than KoW is to WHFB.


Thing is, though, whether they're trying to be different from 40k or not, I'm not seeing any kind of positive to the mechanic. It would work for 6, 10, 15 or even 20mm gaming, but in 28mm it seems like an attempt to be 'different' for the sake of it. At the end of the day, the reason a lot of games copy each other is that there are some mechanics that just work, and Mantic shouldn't be ashamed to use them, or try and deviate just because they can.

Warpath has swung wildly in scope and style over the years; is this version pretty much set in stone even if a large portion of the potential audience don't like it? Or is there some chance that, if enough people comment to that effect, we may see something more akin to 2.0?

Either way, I think I'll just keep playing 2.0 as my alternative sci-fi system.

 
   
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 Paradigm wrote:
 Daedleh wrote:

Warpath isn't intended to be "40k but not" and I think Mantic are wanting to do something that's more different to 40k than KoW is to WHFB.


Thing is, though, whether they're trying to be different from 40k or not, I'm not seeing any kind of positive to the mechanic. It would work for 6, 10, 15 or even 20mm gaming, but in 28mm it seems like an attempt to be 'different' for the sake of it. At the end of the day, the reason a lot of games copy each other is that there are some mechanics that just work, and Mantic shouldn't be ashamed to use them, or try and deviate just because they can.

Warpath has swung wildly in scope and style over the years; is this version pretty much set in stone even if a large portion of the potential audience don't like it? Or is there some chance that, if enough people comment to that effect, we may see something more akin to 2.0?

Either way, I think I'll just keep playing 2.0 as my alternative sci-fi system.


I agree. There are good reasons why the same mechanics keep coming up time and time again, and good reasons why certain mechanics, such as 28mm sci-fi multibasing, aren't done.

I don't know how set in stone this is. There's been a lot of work put into it (I saw a version several months ago and that was already a long way into development) and there are some people who like this approach, such as the Warpath 1.0 fans. I don't know if they're the majority of people, don't think they are, but then I don't know if Mantic want their game to appeal to the majority or whether they're going for a niche set of fans.
   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Multibasing in 28mm is ridiculous.

5-man teams could look better by just saying you have X individual units that have to stay within 4" of each other.

2-man teams are nonsense and if it comes to that - I would just not even deploy the mooks. These 3 models are a unit of 6, done.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 14:48:00


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Pretty much. Why buy 25 models if 5 will do? Particularly since Ive still got to build and paint them? Ive never liked big 40k games, the scale is just wrong for it. Warpath shouldnt even try. 28mm just doesnt work for it.
   
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Riverside, CA USA

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Multibasing in 28mm is ridiculous.

5-man teams could look better by just saying you have X individual units that have to stay within 4" of each other.

2-man teams are nonsense and if it comes to that - I would just not even deploy the mooks. These 3 models are a unit of 6, done.


That's the entire problem with the proposed system, there is NO reason to deploy mooks at all. Even in 5 man teams, if everything is handled by the team leader and if there's no removal mechanic for individuals, just buy your one guy and use the other 4 as 4 more "teams", it's all the same except your money goes 400% farther and you only have to paint 1/5th of the models to play the exact same game. As has been said, this sounds like the worst of all options with no upside. It works so well in KoW because most armies, whether for KoW or other fantasy/historical games, are already practically multibased already. In fact it helped to solve an issue in WHFB where you bought models individually but they were essentially just wound markers on what was essentially a multibase to begin with.

 insaniak wrote:
 NTRabbit wrote:

Or, leaders all get their leader mini/stripes/whatever you choose to use, and all the mooks in his squad get the same coloured ring around their base, either painted or an additional bit of perspex.
That would look ghastly.

took the words out of my mouth


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As an additional thought and at the risk of being positive about something for once, maybe Warpath as-written but with single-models would make a decent skirmish level game?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/05/23 15:54:53


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