NTRabbit wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

My FLGSs don't order Mantic minis any more.

Is that because everyone buys everything they want on kickstarter and not at retail, so they don't bother anymore?

 NTRabbit wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

My FLGSs don't order Mantic minis any more.

Is that because everyone buys everything they want on kickstarter and not at retail, so they don't bother anymore?

 Polonius wrote:
there are just way too many ways to get Mantic for well under retail that MSRP has lost a lot of meaning.

It's a pity about the Pledge Manager. Like most people, I was holding off on the abyssals until I saw sculpts. While I like them enough for the KS prices, I'm not sure i'll be buying them retail. I guess we'll see.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Yeah, I would have bought the Abyssals for the price they had them for on the KS. Quite a lot of them. But now I won't be spending a dime on them other than the $1 I put into the KS. This is time number 2 I've been burned by Mantic with their Pledge Managers so I think I'm good from here on out with them.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
Yeah, I would have bought the Abyssals for the price they had them for on the KS. Quite a lot of them. But now I won't be spending a dime on them other than the $1 I put into the KS. This is time number 2 I've been burned by Mantic with their Pledge Managers so I think I'm good from here on out with them.

You do realise I'm not agreeing with your position right? Mantic and retailers want you to buy them from retailers, do you always refuse to buy kickstarter products anywhere but the kickstarter itself?

 NTRabbit wrote:
...because a game needs retail presence to thrive.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
...Mantic and retailers want you to buy them from retailers...

Or this.

privateer4hire wrote:

Not so sure this is Mantic's view.

 Vermonter wrote:
In this particular case, Mantic's retail strategy excuses nothing. If they wanted customers to buy from retail instead of during a 2nd go on a pledge manager, no problem, but then they never should have said that pledgers would get a second crack at the pledge manager. Simple.

 Theophony wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
In this particular case, Mantic's retail strategy excuses nothing. If they wanted customers to buy from retail instead of during a 2nd go on a pledge manager, no problem, but then they never should have said that pledgers would get a second crack at the pledge manager. Simple.

Let's lok seriously at this. IF they wanted retail sales to increase, why did they take existing army bundles and put them in the kickstarter? Seriously, any store that did stock the army bundles just got screwed even worse. Mantic could care less about retailers

 carlos13th wrote:
My local sells at 10% discount

I understand kickstarter gets mantic more profit per product but I wonder if that night be short term profits for long term losses. If retail doesn't stock it then there tends to be a huge post kickstarter drop off with people not playing an unsupported game in their local stores no community being built around the game and player drop off. With the eighth retail support low could be hugely popular as it's a fantastic game however I think their kicksrarter heavy model may be preventing that.

Not saying mantic have do anything out of the goodness of their heart just thinking they be be sacrificing long term growth for short term profits. That's jot certain btw I am not claiming any of it as fact just something worth considering

privateer4hire wrote:
This is what I've observed at stores from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and now Phoenix, AZ area.
Hard for FLGS to compete with KS and deep discount online retail.

Three weeks ago Warpath returned, with a set of alpha rules released exclusively to Beasts of War backstage pass holders. However, we couldn’t hold them back from the masses forever, so today we are putting the alpha rules on general release!

warpath logo final with TMThis is the new iteration of the Warpath mass-battle sci-fi game – a game that has been nearly five years in the making. To get an understanding of what we are trying to achieve, please read the previous blog here.

The alpha period so far has been fantastic, with over 150 comments on the feedback thread, and lots of games going on, and I’m really looking forward to a new wave of players entering the fold and letting us know what they think. To be clear, the game is still very much in an alpha stage – we’re still playing around with things to improve the game, as you’ll see later. We’ll keep the game at this stage for another month or two, and then we’ll pool together all of the feedback and polish it into a beta version, to start fine-tuning the detail.

Please post all feedback here. https://manticforum.com/forum/warpath/warpath-rules-discussion

For those of you who have already read and played through the Beasts of War version, you’ll want to know what’s changed. All of the changes have been listed here. There were some excellent suggestions and comments from the community, so you may see some of your own influence in there.
Vehicular Combat

Last time we talked about Warpath, we showed off the Enforcer Interceptor, which went down a storm! This time around we’ve got concept art of the Forge Father Tank for your feedback – an assault variant and an APC. There will be additional weapons for the assault version too.

Warpath Firefight

One of the biggest areas for discussion has been about the general scope of Warpath, and what people are actually looking for in a sci-fi battle game. Opinion has been divided between those who are excited about playing big battles with whole units, and those who are looking for something with fewer models and more granularity and detail for the individual figures. This is addressed in the discussion on Warpath ‘Firefight’ – which you can find below. Have a read and let us know what you think.

Essentially, we want to create an alternate version of the game, scaling down the same mechanics to provide the individual casualty removal and detail that people are looking for, while keeping the game as slick and fast as possible. This game will have a sweet spot of 30-50 models, so smaller than the core Warpath rules, but closer to some of the other games on the market – hopefully providing a viable alternative for those who are looking for it. We haven’t fully developed this alternate version yet, but I have made some comments on the original rules to explain how it would work.

Check out the initial thoughts here: Download Warpath Firefight (PDF)

That should give you plenty to digest for now – I’m really looking forward to hearing what you think. Over the next few weeks we’ll put out more army lists, and we’ll be on the forums to answer your questions.

Please post all feedback here. https://manticforum.com/forum/warpath/warpath-rules-discussion

 OnePageAnon wrote:
Did they ever explain why Alessio is not the one writing the WP3.0 rulebook and they are being written by Stewart instead?

 Alex C wrote:
APC looks like the robots that always won Robot Wars.

 edlowe wrote:

Edit, ok so I've opened the firefight rules on my tablet and their identical to the alpha? Am I missing something?

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
APC looks like the robots that always won Robot Wars.

The greatest robits of our time

 edlowe wrote:

Edit, ok so I've opened the firefight rules on my tablet and their identical to the alpha? Am I missing something?

You have to open them in adobe and not just your browser, the rules are the same but the document is studded with comment boxes explaining where and what the current planned and potential differences are going to be

 edlowe wrote:
ok can't do that on my tablet can someone explain the differences and please I hope it just not make one model count as a team of one or I rage quit mantic

 NTRabbit wrote:

 edlowe wrote:
ok can't do that on my tablet can someone explain the differences and please I hope it just not make one model count as a team of one or I rage quit mantic

Can do chief, I'll copy over the comments. Buckle up, it's a little bit of a slab all at once, each bit is preceded by the subtitle it's attached to on the page if you want to cross reference

Spoiler:

Teams - This is the most fundamental change - teams do not exist. The statlines will be for a single figure, and 'units' will be made up of these single figures. Throughout the rest of the rules, just read 'team' as 'model'.

Hubs - See the other comments throughout on hubs. Either they need to be integral or be deleted entirely. It depends on the level of granularity that people are looking for.

Positioning - All models must be within 2" of another model in the unit, and there is no requirement in relation to the hub. The rules about entering within 1" of another unit or a terrain piece remain the same.

LoS - For simplicity, I think line of sight should be drawn from the hub of the unit as before - the rules remain the same. Individually checking for each model would slow the game down, and in most cases wouldn't make a difference. However, I understand that this might be a sticking point for people who want to focus on the detail of how to place their models. Something to discuss.

Unit statistics - Instead of a statline for each team, there will be a statline for each model. In the case of a Corporation Marine, it would be:

Spd 5
Acc 4+
Def 4+
Brk 1

Weaponry
Laser Rifle: Range 24", Power 1, AP -
Assault: Range A, Power 1

There is a good case for revamping the statline entirely for WP Firefight - putting melee attacks into the main statline, and having weapons listed separately. The unit entry would then list all the statlines and tell you how many of each type of model you could have, in the same way that WH40K does. Potentially there would be another stat to interact with Suppression - see later in the document. The unit selection and statline is the area of the rules that would need the most radical change in Firefight. Its interaction with the rules would be largely the same, but we would redo the army list. In the case of a heavy weapons team or any other model consisting of multiple figures on a single base, the simplest method would be to list the figures separately. However, this would be awkward if the damage caused was only enough to kill one of them. For Firefight it would probably make sense to add a rule for how to allocate damage on a unit with varying break points. We'll just need to work out a way to do this without it slowing the game down.

Break point - This would be a single number rather than a series, and any damage caused would remove that many Break Points' worth of models. This stat could move to the individual statline rather than the overall unit statline, which would be cleaner especially if there were varying break points within a unit. At that point it might just be more elegant to just have individual statlines for everyone as mentioned previously. It would be ok to then have varying Accuracy stats within a unit, but varying Speed or Defence would require additional rules to be added to the game, which I would prefer to avoid. One problem with this change is that it does lose some of the subtlety of the stats. In Firefight, an Enforcer and a Corp Marine will both have a Break Point of 1, so the only difference is the Defence value. In Warpath, an Enforcer has a Break Point of 0.8 and a Corp Marine 0.6, and Forge Guard have a Break Point of 1. Using fractions is far too mathematical for what is supposed to be a quick game, so Firefight will have to use whole numbers only. To differentiate between troop types, new special rules will have to be added, or I will have to come up with a new stat to represent the element of morale/nerve/leadership that is currently part of the Break Point. See Suppression.

Move short action - Movement is one of the simple parts of Warpath that will probably need to be changed for Firefight. There are two options: Movement is still measured from the hub and carried out exactly as it is now. However, this will mean that there has to be a limit on how far models can be from the hub, or it would be open to hugely exploitable leapfrog moves. Restricting how far models can be from the hub limits unit sizes and formation shapes. Alternatively, movement is measured for each model. This is cleaner and far less exploitable, but physically slower to do. I think this is the more practical option for Firefight, and it will be the area where the speed of the game has to be compromised for the required granularity. If we go with the second option, it is one less thing that hubs are required for. There comes a point where they could be done away with altogether - if we changed line of sight to also be measured for every model, hubs wouldn't be needed, but this would be another thing to slow the game down. How far do people want to go?

Range - Currently, range is measured separately for each team within a unit, this would simply change to being separate for each model within a unit. Remove casualties - As discussed previously, a number of models would be removed based on how many Break Points' worth of damage was done. So, if each model had a Break Point of 1, and the unit took 9 damage, 9 models would be removed. If each model had a Break Point of 2 and took 9 damage, 4 models would be removed. In addition, casualties would have to be restricted to only models within range and line of sight - other models cannot be hurt.

Suppression test - As detailed in the Changes document, I am considering removing this entirely for WP. It will definitely be removed for Firefight.

Flee - Unlike Shooting, I would want to leave this section in for Assault, to keep them brutal. However, the actual mechanic would have to be reworked depending on how Suppression is addressed.

Suppression - The rules for Suppression could actually be kept largely he same if we wished - as there are no more teams, a unit would be Suppressed if it had more suppression tokens than every 5 Break Points' worth of models in the unit, rounding up. So, a unit with a combined Break Point of 6-10 would be Suppressed if it had 3 or more tokens; and a unit with a combined Break Point of 11-15 would be Suppressed on 4 or more tokens. However, this is a little clunky to write, and to calculating it mid-game may be awkward for units with Break Points higher than 1. I think the better solution for Firefight would be to add some sort of morale/nerve/leadership stat, and base suppression and grounding on that.

Recovery - Recovery exists in the first place to provide a way to kill units that are too tough for you to reach their break point normally. Considering that Break Points will be lower in Firefight, it is no longer needed and the rule can just be ignored.

Combined attack - The original purpose of this order was to allow units to overwhelm enemies even if they couldn't beat their break points individually. However, with individual casualties the order is far less useful. In Firefight I would add to it so that taking fire from multiple directions causes more Suppression. It would inflict 1 point for being hit by each unit, another point if there were more hits than models, and another point if there were twice as many hits as models.

 AlexHolker wrote:
Since they asked for feedback on the tank, here's an idea: replace the turret with an unmanned weapon pod that can be stowed for transport, like the APC in Aliens. I'd also make the hull wider, but I didn't put that in the picture.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
I look forward to seeing what are considered Massive Infantry, since their rules sound similar to vehicles.

I'm guessing stuff like Striders and Iron Ancestors, but I'm hoping for bigger and crazier things.