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 scarletsquig wrote:
Glad to see those are live, we've tried to make them an exhaustive document covering all the edge cases, and clear up a bunch of minor errors (mostly things like models that should have Beast not having it, and consistency errors like not listing the stats for default weaponry in all the profiles).

The Infestation supplement has only three pieces of errata, which I'm quite pleased about since the RC wrote it.

Wow, you can see the huge difference that actual caring and effort makes. Congrat SS and the rest of the RC

The errata for the main rulebook actually is enough that I just want a new one. Does anyone know if a reprint will be available, or if there's an e-reader or pdf or digital version that has all these updates included?

I'm sure there will be a Kickstarter soon for a cleaned up rulebook that has all the rules in one book, too!

 judgedoug wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
Glad to see those are live, we've tried to make them an exhaustive document covering all the edge cases, and clear up a bunch of minor errors (mostly things like models that should have Beast not having it, and consistency errors like not listing the stats for default weaponry in all the profiles).

The Infestation supplement has only three pieces of errata, which I'm quite pleased about since the RC wrote it.

Wow, you can see the huge difference that actual caring and effort makes. Congrat SS and the rest of the RC

The errata for the main rulebook actually is enough that I just want a new one. Does anyone know if a reprint will be available, or if there's an e-reader or pdf or digital version that has all these updates included?

The amount of errata is pretty sad, especially considering the book has only just come out. Agreed with Doug - the RC is far and away superior to Mantic itself in terms of rules, editing and tightness

It isn't entirely errors, quite a bit of it is in response to community feedback (adding more weapon options, 2 nerfs to gamebreaking units, etc.).

Quite a bit of it is consistency errata as well, such as all of the edits defining default weaponry profiles in the statline itself, they're already listed in the weapon list, but they should be in the profile as well for consistency.

Aside from that it's mostly a case of giving Beast to models that should obviously have it and other minor things.

The FAQ should be considered in the same manner as a comprehensive rules document for a CCG, the bulk of it isn't fixing errors with the book, but rather clearly defining answers to very specific edge cases.

I do feel that there's sooo many changes that at the very least there needs to be a summary sheet with the updated model and weapon stats made for download for each faction.

^ We're already working on something very similar.

 scarletsquig wrote:
It isn't entirely errors, quite a bit of it is in response to community feedback (adding more weapon options, 2 nerfs to gamebreaking units, etc.).
.

Kind of hard to not consider 'game breaking units needing nerfs' NOT to be an error. If they had been play tested properly they would not have been in the book as game breaking units...

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ We're already working on something very similar.

Woohoo!

To be honest, I'm probably not going to be playing the game until something like that comes out, in this day and age I don't want to be flicking through multiple pages of a book to figure out how to play a dude.

The beta lists were publicly accessible for 3 months and many, many issues with Jake's first draft of the army lists (basically v1 copy+paste with Marauders massively overpowered and Rebs massively underpowered) were resolved in that time.

Can't catch everything though, hence a major nerf to plague zombies and a minor nerf to rainmaker suits.

Any word yet on when we might see the Mars Attacks lists?

Those are one of the next projects on our list now that the FAQ is out. I'll be writing the Martian list since I played that faction quite a lot in v1.

 scarletsquig wrote:
The beta lists were publicly accessible for 3 months and many, many issues with Jake's first draft of the army lists (basically v1 copy+paste with Marauders massively overpowered and Rebs massively underpowered) were resolved in that time.

Can't catch everything though, hence a major nerf to plague zombies and a minor nerf to rainmaker suits.

I don't think it's fair to insinuate that the public should have picked up the errors. I don't personally have enough time to play my finished games let alone beta test for Mantic (or any other company). I just kinda expect "finished" rules and lists to be properly playtested for the most part, and the onus is on whoever is publishing them to get it done properly. So again, not on the unpaid RC, but Mantic itself.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Those are one of the next projects on our list now that the FAQ is out. I'll be writing the Martian list since I played that faction quite a lot in v1.

Thank goodness! Martians were my main faction in v1, and my 'traditional' factions don't have anywhere near the breadth of selection painted and ready.

(The answer would usually be to use that as a reason to get some stuff assembled and painted, but my gaming group decided to play the Destiny of Kings campaign this summer, and my Undead needed a lot of tweaks and additions to take it from a half-updated WHFB 8e Vampire Counts to a fully-functional KoW 2e Undead army...)

Very interesting FB post from a Warpath beta tester who basically demolishes the game. Let's hope Firefight is better.

This Does Not Work: A Reflection on the Warpath Beta After Three Games
I am committed to Warpath being great, and to help make it great. As it currently stands, I think the game is the opposite of great, and that is does not really work as a game. Successful combat games have opportunities for advantage, and ways to counter those advantages. Napoleonic warfare perhaps epitomizes this in the advantages that Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry each afford a commander, yet they also have weaknesses, this yields a nice paper/rock/scissors relationship. In other theaters combat, more units types result in a paper/rock/scissors/lizard/spock relationship and this is great too. I’ll speak about two successful Mantic Games, and how they work, Kings of War, and Deadzone 2nd Edition.
Kings of War succeeds in this paper/rock/scissors relationship well, each unit has a way it can be powerful, and has ways its weakness can be exploited. Deadzone succeeds in this very well also. Armor helps protect units, but one can use armor piercing weapons to negate this. If one plays lots of Armor piercing one can oppose this with Tough units, or with a large number of units with no armor which means the player using lots of AP us spending their points on nothing. Shooting in general is powerful, but in the game there’s enough cover, and units are generally defensible enough that they can get into close combat and wreak havoc.
Kings of War and Deadzone also each offer clear advantages to strive for. In Kings of War, one wants to flank their enemy, this results in rolling more dice of course. Also, single units in Kings of War are not generally able to destroy an opposing unit. Usually one must create a two-on-one situation to destroy an opposing unit. Again, this is a clear situation to try to create, and for the opponent to try to avoid. In Deadzone, one want to get clear shots in shooting, and get two-on-one close combat situations, or get big model against small model situations. Also the very statistics of a unit provides advantageous and disadvantageous situations. If I have a great shooter, I want him at a distance, and shooting down your low survive model. That great shooter probably has a poor fight value, and the opponent wants to get their good fight model in the same cube as that good shooter.
Models and units in Deadzone and Kings of War are also resilient enough that they can live to complete objectives. These games succeed in being about more than just destroying the opponent’s forces. In Warpath, units have such capacity for destruction that objectives are meaningless. Or if I have manages to hold an objective, it’s only a win-more situation.
In Warpath, there units who destroy other units with ease, Stormrage veterans, big tanks that roll lots of dice with high AP, and there are units not really capable of destroying units, Forge Guard, Steel Warriors, basically any unit that only rolls four dice (and that doesn’t have blast.) This is all to say there is a huge disparity between units that actually destroy other units, and units who pretty much fail at everything. In Deadzone and Kings of War, “weaker” units can be maneuvered to creat a situation where they are strong. This doesn’t happen in Warpath. Weaker units are just weak, and strong units and just strong. There’s no real way to create an advantage in Warpath. It helps for a unit to be in cover, but this doesn’t really help that unit survive. There’s so much AP in Warpath right now that my rolls to would are usually on a 2+. Close combat units have no chance of getting to the enemy without being destroyed.
My first Warpath game was Asterians vs. Forge Fathers. The Asterian objective was to live until turn 6 and then infiltrate of the sides of the board. To start, my high dice, high AP units destroyed some Forge Fathers units, and the Forge Fathers units then destroyed my units with high AP and good dice. Neither of us moved our forces very much, almost no maneuvering was needed. (And we DID have lots of terrain on the board!) By the end of turn two, I lost most of my forces, and the units I had left did not have enough AP to destroy Forge Father Tanks or Iron Ancestors. I conceded.
My second game of Warpath featured Astarians vs GCPS, in a take back the city scenario. My big Asterian Tanks immediately destroyed my opponents troop transport, I used a refresh order to let it attack again. My missle lauchers and shoot value of 2+ annihilated my opponents forces. I moved very little, I hardly made choices, I pretty much destroyed things and by the end of turn two, the advantage clearly mine, and we ended the game.
My third game was Forge Fathers vs. GCPS, and in this game, my opponent, Tyler, and I elected to use all infantry and/or bike style units. I wondered if the vehicles were the thing that was unbalanced and that by using all infantry the game would be balanced interesting and fun. The hypothesis was false. The same sorts of power differential came up in this game, that is the disparity between units who destroy other units, and units who are just weak. There was one instance of my Borkkr units charging into a building to destroy the enemy and take the building. Otherwise to Close combat happened. Again shooting is all-powerful. Stormrage veterans destroy things. My artillery units rolling 10dice 3ap destroy things Valkyrs destroy things. Meanwhile, Steel Warriors and Forge Guard pretty much failed at everything. The Forge Guard were hard to my opponent to kill, in but their measly four dice did not destroy enemy units, and were they to move out of cover to try and engage in close combat, they would never make it to the enemy before being destroyed.
In none of these games did I see clever play result in winning. No one needed to maneuver to create advantageous situations to win and destroy the enemy. Powerful units just destroy other units. The all or nothing result of casualties (because only whole teams are destroyed) only furthers the disparity between power levels of units. Once some casualties are taken, and one is left with some single teams, there’s really no way for these units to be effective at anything. They don’t roll enough dice to destroy another unit with a shoot action, they will never survive marching into close combat, and there aren’t enough command dice to give combined fire orders to coordinate these small teams with each other. If I have units on the board, there should be SOME way I can use them to my advantage. And currently in Warpath, this just can’t happen.
I ask the game designers and developers to really look at what makes the successful Mantic Games successful. Maneuvering forces needs to matter. One needs to create advantageous situations to win and to defeat enemy forces. Units that are strong on one way, need to have a weakness that can be exploited. Close combat needs to actually be able to happen, and be a viable strategy on its own (The Plague!). I urge the designers and developers to take time, and get Warpath both working and right. Currently, I don’t see it working, it isn’t fun because my decisions don’t matter, it feels like arbitrary destruction of units, and again the objective don’t matter because it’s so easy to destroy units.
Please contact me if you would like more clarity on any of the points that I have made. I want Warpath to be amazing. I’ve been looking for an alternative to WH:40k that has less expensive models and a single rulebook. Warpath is trying to be the game I want it to be, but right now, it’s not succeeding.

It seems disappointing that in 2 out of 3 games the player in the weaker position conceded, it would be more instructive to see how the games would play out (even if the results went as predicted)

other than that I think the beta rules are due for general release next month? so those interested can make their own judgements (although I wouldn't be surprised if he's right)

Warpath was never going to be good.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Warpath was never going to be good.

OUCH!!!! Sadly that's the feeling I had as well. I went in for a buck to get the free rules (or buck rules as it were).

Don't worry, there will be another KS down the road to 'tidy up' the rules.

Sounds like the issues are a bit beyond the level of a tidy up.

I knew there was a chance of this happening, especially when they blindly ploughed ahead with making the mass battle rules the main event, when it was pretty clear that Firefight not only had the most demand, but was the sensible and correct starting point, with mass battle being an extension/expansion of those rules, rather than Firefight being a fundamentally different rule set we had to repeatedly (and still have to) force them to make.

 judgedoug wrote:
Does anyone know if a reprint will be available, or if there's an e-reader or pdf or digital version that has all these updates included?

The Mantic Digital enhanced rulebook should be kept up to date with any errata:-

https://www.manticdigital.com/product/deadzone-rulebook-enhanced/

I am hopeful that the backer PDF will also get fixed with the content from the first batch of errata at the very least.

Let's hope....

It always confused me that they did not enlist Alessio, with additional help from the excellent rules committee, to adapt KOW into a sci-fi rules set. KOW is almost universally lauded and also scales very well whatever the size of the game. Obviously it would need a fair degree of work but surely it would have avoided some of the rumoured issues with Warpath. That said hopefully Mantic do not rush Warpath and can make a good rule set out of it eventually, there are a fair few great sci-fi games out there so it needs to be up to snuff to compete.

Warpath is on my radar since the day it got advertised for the first time (2010 if I remember it correctly). I bought several of the first army boxed sets and therefore own and have read both rulesets but in my club it hasn't been played at all as it felt like being in a neverending early-access status to most.

I think a printed ruleset with a sufficient amount of army lists and a follow-up like a campaign book with more army lisst sounds like a good plan.

Waiting longer for it is okay (after so many years) and I will most likely buy the new edition. But I hope Mantic takes the time it needs to be an at least okay-ish wargame. No pressure because of the kickstarter. Open beta-testing sounds sensible. But then fix the issues and/or re-write it if neccessary.

 Azazelx wrote:
Let's hope....

Gordon R. Sullivan wrote:Hope is not a method

 scarletsquig wrote:
Those are one of the next projects on our list now that the FAQ is out. I'll be writing the Martian list since I played that faction quite a lot in v1.

Thanks a lot for all you guys' and girls' work at those projects and especially you and DaveC for keeping us informed about what is happening.

This is disappointing, as I too would love to have a good set of "not-40k" rules I can play. And given the current plastics for deadzone/warpath, I could see building a mantic warpath army... but the rules need to be there.

Warpath will do for most of those who just wanted to have a "balanced" 40k.

Everyone else will consider it bad and not being a real alternative.
It is not that easy to explain, but to sum it up, WP took some (broken) game mechanics from 40k in the very first place to keep the ex-GW players happy. The look nice on paper and look familiar to those who played 40k but do not work with the other rules the game is build around.

So Vehicles/Tanks and Close Combat is the same mess like in 40k and will lead to the same frustration.
(and it already was in the first alpha draft)


After KoW2, I really hoped that Mantic would make a nice SciFi game but at the moment it looks more like I should hope that there will be a 9th Age like Community project to get decent SciFi rules to use Mantics miniatures (unlike others, I like their new stuff a lot more than the new GW minis)

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
It always confused me that they did not enlist Alessio, with additional help from the excellent rules committee, to adapt KOW into a sci-fi rules set.

Alessio did write the first two versions of Warpath but is no longer involved directly AFAIK. IIRC Warpath 1 was very much KoW in space. As for the KoW RC they have been kept very busy on KoW and KoWH. Many of them are looking forward to prospect of a bit of a break from RC duties (or at least a lower workload) until work on the next KoW supplement begins to ramp up.

First, Kodos, thanks for the insight. I have a problem with your approach to how Warpath rules are created. Games Workshop writes them?

I assume Mantic is not forced by anything or anyone but actually they have been given a fair chance to surprise us with a good SciFi ruleset of their own. They have been financed for this already. Looking at Terminator Genesis and Gates of Antares for example, we can see good, modern scifi rules are achievable with the right effort and talent.

What Mantic releases, will be their work. They will get made responsible for it. You dont like the mechanics and think they dont work. Tell them, they have the chance to fix it now.

Could it be Mantic suck at writing a good scifi wargaming ruleset and will fail because they have no talent at hand? I dont know.

Is it other people's fault? Definitely not

 Maccwar wrote:

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
It always confused me that they did not enlist Alessio, with additional help from the excellent rules committee, to adapt KOW into a sci-fi rules set.

Alessio did write the first two versions of Warpath but is no longer involved directly AFAIK. IIRC Warpath 1 was very much KoW in space. As for the KoW RC they have been kept very busy on KoW and KoWH. Many of them are looking forward to prospect of a bit of a break from RC duties (or at least a lower workload) until work on the next KoW supplement begins to ramp up.

Same goes for the Deadzone RC as well, while I was recently also added to the Warpath RC, I've just been too busy with Deadzone to contribute much, and in any case, the structure of that RC appears to be more advisory than anything else, Warpath development is being handled in-house with lots of playtest days and games being played. There has been an open beta process, but again, not a huge amount of interaction there, since it's basically a 1st edition without an established playerbase, whereas KoW and Deadzone had quite a bit more player feedback from v1 players.

Also, the quote criticism of the game a few posts up isn't entirely fair, and if you look at the full thread on facebook, there's a lot of counter arguments from people who have played 30+ games rather than 3.. it's a game with a lot of possible counterplays. They may still need to look at the vehicle rules and potential for deathstar units, though.