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Actually, yes there are some striking similarities in the sense that people are rushing to make judgement on something based on second-hand evidence or rumour.

Although, at least in this case the rules have actually been read by some and JudgeDoug has done the good thing of posting his findings here.

 carlos13th wrote:
I would have to look at the rules myself before making a judgement. If the game handles squads/fireteams in a similar way to how Full Specturm Warrior handled them and makes suppression and flanking important I will be very tempted. I think Sabol trays with removable casualties is a good way to do unit basing or clouds where only the leader is important for Sci Fi.

Well until then I can tell you that units are broken up into squads/fireteams called teams and that suppression plays a larger role on the overall battle from my point of view. Flanking isn't included as of this release which is kinda too bad because that plus breaking up a unit into it's team temporarily could open up some interesting options.

EDIT: oops all this is compared to the last ed of WP.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Amusingly enough, 40K has used multibasing for years: Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons Teams.

And the most common question asked by Imperial Guard players since those teams were introduced has been 'Can I base my heavy weapons guys on separate 25mm bases?'

 judgedoug wrote:


So, in your mind, ANY ruleset that does not use individual model measurement for every aspect of a model's interactions is a "multibase game"?

I feel like I'm in a weird twilight zone where literally no one has ever played anything other than 40k and it's making me weep for the state of gaming

Come off it. You know that people are using multibasing to refer to the whole-fireteams-removal mechanics. Being deliberately obtuse is doing wonders for your image.

I played 40k up until 6th, where I felt that the rules had gone completely bonkers and there were too many models on the table for any meaningful manoeuvring - and note that Warpath is aiming for a similar number of models and scale. I play KoW, Epic:A and Warmachine. I have previously played/collected Starship Troopers, WHFB, Gorkamorka, Deadzone, Flames of War, Bolt Action and plenty of others. I first saw these rules several months ago and have played a game of it.

Am I qualified enough for you or am I just a silly sausage who has only ever played 40k?

28mm scale is too big for mass battle. The largest battle of 40k I've ever played is 1500 points and I felt that was too many minis on one 6x4 table for meaningful tactics.

Mass battle sci fi needs to be 6mm or 10mm, 28mm sci fi can't go any bigger than the company level or else it drowns the table.

The whole fireteam thing seems to be a core principle as per the design goal

Simple unit-based core mechanics
for fast and intuitive gameplay.
The base unit in the game
should be a team rather than an
individual figure.

In my opinion any method of wounding would probably have to be abstract per that design goal.

Oh well, as long as it's a design goal then that's fine. All of our issues with it are gone.

I re-read Space Marine/Epic 1st edition lately (and the WDs from that time) and plan to play it using 28mm figs on cardboard/mdf/plastic trays. It's good to see Warpath will go into this direction too. Really looking forward to the new ruleset

 Daedleh wrote:
Oh well, as long as it's a design goal then that's fine. All of our issues with it are gone.

I wasn't trying to hand wave your argument. I just wanted to point out that the smallest unit in the game is supposed to be a team and so methods of wounds are limited by the goal.
The biggest issue folks seem to have with team removal is that it seems unrealistic, I haven't heard any complaints about how it plays or is supposed play. If that's untrue feel free to post your opinion on it
and some ideas on it.

 NobodyXY wrote:

The biggest issue folks seem to have with team removal is that it seems unrealistic, .

From reading the last few pages, the issue that people have with it sn't that it's unrealistic, it's that it's pointless complication that doesn't really add anything useful to the game.

In my opinion single models as the smallest measurement of your force is needlessly complicated.While units as the smallest measurement of your force isn't ideal if your goal is a more realistic wounding method. So i guess what I'm saying is that I don't recall anyone coming up with a better method without resorting to single model removal. Apologies if I misrepresented anyone's position.

I am mostly just stating my opinion that having a unit in any game be represented by a single large base with several models on it makes interactions with that unit and nearly any sort of detailed terrain horribly clunky. I would hate to see any more games that simulate WHFB's style of Napoleonic tactics, and would be happily wrong about Warpath.

For me 28mm gaming is all about tables of awesome terrain, and having a unit on that scale operate like a stand of Epic infantry would be a damn shame. The only way it's ok at 6-10 mm scale is that it's nearly functionally impossible to have things like small groups of scatter terrain like barrels, etc, so the lack of the ability of individual models to move between and around such things is not a noticeable thing.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Well if it's (making snap judgements based in incomplete or assumed information) good enough for every GW release that hits the forum why should Mantic get away with anything different

I think it's dumb when that happens too.

I would argue that the difference in this particular situation is that Mantic is actually playtesting this stuff publicly (well, fully public soon) and gathering feedback to make changes. What public playtesting and feedback collection does GW do?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I am mostly just stating my opinion that having a unit in any game be represented by a single large base with several models on it makes interactions with that unit and nearly any sort of detailed terrain horribly clunky. I would hate to see any more games that simulate WHFB's style of Napoleonic tactics, and would be happily wrong about Warpath.

For me 28mm gaming is all about tables of awesome terrain, and having a unit on that scale operate like a stand of Epic infantry would be a damn shame. The only way it's ok at 6-10 mm scale is that it's nearly functionally impossible to have things like small groups of scatter terrain like barrels, etc, so the lack of the ability of individual models to move between and around such things is not a noticeable thing.

Could you go ahead and play with single-minis without the large bases, and just keep them close together as if they were on the large base, and proceed? This would allow you to position them on differen elevations (which might be clunky with big bases/trays...

Models within a team only need to be within 2" of their Hub so you can spread them out a bit. Hubs from the same unit must be within 4" of each other.

If anyone wants the alpha rules, the facebook group "Warpath Universe" has them uploaded. I won't link out of courtesy to Dakka, but it's easy enough to search for.

Main thing that Mantic are looking for is feedback based on playing the game.

 NobodyXY wrote:
I wasn't trying to hand wave your argument. I just wanted to point out that the smallest unit in the game is supposed to be a team and so methods of wounds are limited by the goal.
The biggest issue folks seem to have with team removal is that it seems unrealistic, I haven't heard any complaints about how it plays or is supposed play. If that's untrue feel free to post your opinion on it and some ideas on it.

My issue isn't model removal, it's the fact that playing a unit of 30 Orx will require tracking 7 different coherencies within just the one unit. It's as ridiculous as the micromanagement currently required in 40k because of directional shooting damage. Not to mention the headache and aesthetics issues of actually marking the models that belong together, or using multibasing (which also neatly prevents you from using the models with any other 28mm game). It gets even worse with Large Infantry. Is grouping models in pairs really worth all this extra hassle?

Add the fact that the system isn't even consistent (Massive Infantry gets Wounded instead and Vehicles are targeted individually even if they form a unit)



There also seems to be some wonky math in the suppression rules, but I don't have time to double check. Seems to me that the odds of "grounding" a unit oscillate as damage increases.

I can see lord_blackfang's point here, and with the rules as discussed in this thread I agree with him. This sounds like a bad move, and I think some people are intentionally mis-hearing the argument.

If the plan is to have teams of >1 models within units, and these teams cannot take wounds or lose members in any way, and they always move and fight as a team, and they are removed as casualties all at once as a team, and range and LOS are always determined from the team leader's position, then: placing them on the table as separate models serves *no* gameplay purpose. It's just money spent to make your game look cool, and time spent moving around models that aren't even wound markers; they literally may as well not be there. The teams are functionally identical to individual models within a unit and you may as well save yourself the money and play them using single models.

If you want to continue playing a 28mm game with individually based models, ideally you would keep most all of the abstractions mentioned above - "cloud" units that use team leaders for range and LOS - but retain the idea that individual models are removed as they die and the unit's strength scales accordingly. This removes the fiddly aspects of precisely moving and positioning a horde of models and checking LOS to each one, but still gives you a good reason to have all your giant pretty models in the first place.

If you want to streamline the game such that teams are the smallest divisible element of the game in every way, you may as well stop pretending like individual basing is still a real option, because it's an option without a purpose (except for ease of placement in terrain, but with all the added complexity of maintaining coherency) - as far as the rules are concerned, your models may as well be multibased.

And that's fine. For large battles, that's preferable. Epic: Armageddon is my favorite wargame by far, and multibasing is clearly superior for huge conflicts. But why bother writing rules for a 28mm multibased game? Be honest with yourself and either play a compromised ruleset where your massively expensive model investment means something (at least as wound counters), or play at a scale where removing 5 models at a time makes sense.

never mind

As a follow-up to my previous post, doing some reading on Mantic's forum I found this straight from the horse's mouth (i.e. their rules guy):

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, people who are in it purely for the gameplay will play a system like this at a smaller scale. People who play at 28mm do so because they like the models, and therefore the argument about needing them to actually do something holds a little less weight. Kings of War could be played with rectangles of cardboard if you wanted to, with no loss of playability. However, let's not get into that debate now

Personally I feel like it's a good looking ruleset, but at bad way to go for a 28mm scale game. I suppose I fall in with the first group of people the designer mentioned. I'd rather just play a game like this at 15mm or smaller. It does at least offer an interesting alternative for 28mm mass-battle that I think is missing from the marketplace, but I can't help but feel I'd be much more keen on it if 80% of your infantry models mattered for something besides LOS liability. I fully agree that in a modern wargame, suppression is MORE important than damage, but it's not that difficult to track damage (and scale firepower) by removing individual models while also tracking suppression in a more abstract way.

Now that the WP3.0 rules have been released I opened a poll over on the Mantic forums asking which version of Warpath you like best. The way I see it a simple poll might be the easiest way for Mantic to see which direction people want the game to go in, so if you care about the future of WP this is your chance to get your opinion across in a simple way!

Vote on the poll here: https://manticforum.com/forum/warpath/warpath-rules-discussion/228939-which-version-of-warpath-do-you-like-best

Honestly... I might not mind using Warpath 3 for 15mm. FOW basing looks neat at that scale, and I don't particularly like any of the existing 15mm sci-fi rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, here's another annoyance. Orders use a dice pool mechanic with custom D8s. Really, you couldn't make this work in a way that is consistent with the rest of the rules? It feels like the 40k7 magic phase.

CalgarsPimpHand, you have eloquently summarized my concerns very well with your post; have an exalt good sir.

To put it another way, my concern centers around the idea that models are not free. Hobby time painting them and the materials to paint them are not free. The time spent transporting them and moving them around on the table isn't free. The risk of breakage is an ever-present one we all accept (and probably have glue in our carry bags for that reason). From what I've heard thus far, there's no point to doing any of that other than "to look cool" which, while certainly a valid reason and overwhelmingly so in specific cases, I'm not sure offsets the time involved for all gaming scenarios. If the rules function well enough with a single model per team and a (comically) oversized base, it should beg the question of it is even worth having the other models on the table. If all they accomplish in the grand scheme is to up the cost of the game without providing a means for those models to actually be useful in their own right, I can't help but feel it's something of a raw deal. KoW and other fantasy mass-battle and historicals get away with it because it's highly thematic, and you can cheat on painting the interior models with slightly less care. No such luck in a modern/sci-fi theme.

I'm fine with multi-basing at a smaller scale, such as 15mm and under, because those stands of 4-5 guys still take less time than a single 28mm model; the "hobby cost" of a 15mm team is about even with a 28mm model. Doing a 28mm model at the number of models similar to 15mm or even 6mm scales, even to a basic gaming standard, is quite a different kettle of fish. I'm not really looking for a "return" per se when discussing costs, but it does factor into what I'm going to do as a hobbyist. If I can play WarPath, but it will take me dozens of hours more to create a fieldable army that's a disincentive towards picking WarPath, especially when for 80% of models I paint there may have little "reason" for them to be there.

Now that Squig has given me a way to read over the rules myself though (thanks Squig!), I'll undertake that and see if it's much ado about a little. I suppose in a worst case if it's just a good 80+ model/Not-Apocalypse ruleset, then I'll look at using Dakka's game to fill the gap of the more platoon-level combat (and if I get into Maelstrom's Edge, perhaps WP3 is a good mass-battle ruleset for that skirmish game).

 scarletsquig wrote:
If anyone wants the alpha rules, the facebook group "Warpath Universe" has them uploaded. I won't link out of courtesy to Dakka, but it's easy enough to search for.

I've seen no sign of it. I've found the Marvel Universe's Warpath, Mantic's Warpath Universe and Transformers Universe's Warpath, but no Warpath Universe Facebook group.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
If anyone wants the alpha rules, the facebook group "Warpath Universe" has them uploaded. I won't link out of courtesy to Dakka, but it's easy enough to search for.

I've seen no sign of it. I've found the Marvel Universe's Warpath, Mantic's Warpath Universe and Transformers Universe's Warpath, but no Warpath Universe Facebook group.

Had the same problem using a search engine. Using FB's search feature takes you right there.

See, I think even at 15mm scale I would rather play a game with individually based models in squads. moving and removing single figures has never been a problem for me.

I think it'd be cool to see another game work it's ranged combat like the short-lived AT43 from Rackham (the company tanking was more of it than '43 being a bad game). I'm pretty rusty on it but it went something like this:

All ranges are measured from the leader of a unit, but other than that all unit members operate like single figures, but as a "cloud". When shooting, the range gets measured from the unit leader to the target unit's leader. But the cool thing was that you then establish a "zone of fire" that was a corridor whose outside edges were between each unit's outermost models that could be hit by the attack. When the shooting rolls were all said and done, the target unit had to remove casualties from the closes models to the attack first. But the cool part was that if another unit's models, friend or foe, were in the zone of fire between the two units and were of the same size or larger than the target unit, they had to actually take the casualties first- as friendly fire.

Other than that, line of sight was established with the actual figures in the unit, so if half the unit and their leader was behind a large building and out of LOS and only three guys were hung out in the open, the range was still measured to the leader, but the zone of fire was only as wide as the attacking unit versus three figures (so a thin cone) if half or more of the unit was behind the building, those three guys got cover saves, but even if the attack rolled 5 hits, only the three guys could be allocated hits and removed as casualties.

I introduced the game to my buddy who was a hardcore 40K tournament player, and he thought games of AT43 went much faster with the smoother shooting and subsequent casualty removal mechanics therein.

So WP3 is Flames of War in 28mm, seems like StarshipTroopers-pK is still the besteht alternative to 40k....

 kodos wrote:
So WP3 is Flames of War in 28mm, seems like StarshipTroopers-pK is still the besteht alternative to 40k....

Mantic's not making a 40K-alternative.

Mantic is angling for all those FoW/DZC-players, who constantly think to themselves: "Awesome game. I just wish the models were larger so it would look more like 40K parking lots on undersized tables."

Wonderwolf wrote:

Mantic is angling for all those FoW/DZC-players, who constantly think to themselves: "Awesome game. I just wish the models were larger so it would look more like 40K parking lots on undersized table."

Both of them!

But as I said before, 40k-alternative or not, I really can't see what this team mechanic actually adds to the gameplay, beyond making 80% of your minis superfluous to actual gameplay and mandating either multi-basing or tedious 'who's in what team' bookkeeping. If there was a reason given beyond just being 'different', then I'd be more intrigued, but I just can't see the point at the moment.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Honestly... I might not mind using Warpath 3 for 15mm. FOW basing looks neat at that scale, and I don't particularly like any of the existing 15mm sci-fi rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, here's another annoyance. Orders use a dice pool mechanic with custom D8s. Really, you couldn't make this work in a way that is consistent with the rest of the rules? It feels like the 40k7 magic phase.

Are you kidding about custom d8s or was that just hyperbole?