Warpath – Beta Playtest
July 4, 2011 by dignity
Video Sponsors: Battle Foam - Wayland Games
Well guys its finally here, and for the first video of warpath week we have Ronnie, Alessio and Andy sitting down to talk about about the Beta Rules and what feedback Mantic are hoping to get from you.
But the big question has to be... is everything better in space?
Get the Rules here:
Beta Discussion Groups here:
Also if your a Backstage Pass holder you can download a set of Unofficial Markers & Templates we created.
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Now i have the rules i shall have to start testing…at some point…actually might as well start now
Hey guys the game is much better. i can definitely tell you have listened to use feedback and improved on it. I havent had a chance to playtest. Going to get my buddy over here in a couple days and have a go at it with my warhammer dwarfs vs tau again.
Are the Two Ronnies playable characters in the rulebook? Could you use four candles instead of a measuring tape? Or would fork handles in different lengths be more effective?
what ? o..O
Haha, sorry, mate… Bit of comedy history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ
Couldn’t resist making a silly joke, you see?
ah ok makes much more sense ^^
So far I have read half of the rules, I will continue later on.
For now the stats are cool, they seem fine and have no problem with that, however I am sick and tired of the same miniature war gaming games, Mantic could introduce some new stuff to “spice” up the game. As it is in the future you could introduce a new stat involving technoligy, lets say if units have high technoligy numbers they have more access to good weapons, equipment? Or able to operate the same to dropped stuff (from dead soldiers)-that’s an idea. It seems this game relies on just terrain cover, by moving-shooting, combat and is repeated. From technoligy points an army could use sheild bubbles, walls etc to have a flexibility for tactics and make it even more fun! If units have higher tech numbers (from spending points) they could use equipment to see behind wallse ctc. That sort of stuff could be epic if looked into more.
The turn is the same as other games, I have never played Infinity, however the idea of moving and the enemy seeing you-and able to shoot at you during your turn does seem different, I don’t know if it is fair or not but maybe look into that sort of process to make it more better, most games rely on the dice rolls, companies try to make it as realistic but overall it depends on the player rolls the dice good or bad and that “tactical” theme goes out of the window. What I mean is instead of controlled turns of moving, shooting etc try and add a variety, if a player moves any unit, when the oppoinment rolls it depends on their luck of rolling, sorry if this still does not make sense! 😛
The line of sight to me, sounds abit weird, why does the leader have to see the enemy? Are the other troops that stupid to decide if they see them or not?! And also why the torso? if only one can see the head then only that one shoots. Or you could do it like this, if one (Any troop) sees an enemy in cover the whole squad fires at that area, one thing that would really make it realistic and fun is to introduce destructible enviroments (Only to certain terrain-brick/metal walls etc) This then makes it slighty fair, as miniatures can not run fast enough to flush them out, it even gives a more tactical realistic theme to make the game interesting.
The units structure seems fine to me.
For now Warpath seems like a really good idea however the idea’s for the games mechanics seem to be the same and also dull, this ain’t the whole response (As I’m busy tonight) Though if new ideas, mechanics were introduce them Warpath will be very good.
Your going way outside what Mantic wants to do with Warpath, they want to keep it simple, fast and fun to play. adding Technology points is just another way to over complicate the game unnecessarily, their skills with weapons are already taken into account for with the weapons they already carry, their ‘To Hit’ stat and you could also argue the range can be influence by skill.
If you incorporate the idea of picking up enemies weapons, you would then have to consider how would you represent the dead unit? Do you have move over the dead unit to pick the weapons up? This then adds the problem of having to leave a ‘dead’ unit on the table or even a marker, and with the use of Wound Counters already on the board, its going to get cluttered.
Infinity is a good looking game, but the idea of Warpaths IGO/UGO system is that you control everything in your own turn, its up to you to get your turn over as quick as possible before your time runs out (assuming the use of a chess clock as they suggest). If you then start adding what is effectively the old Overwatch rule, your turn is going to be slowed down, and in Tournaments some players might use this to force their opponent to run out of time.
In disciplined units, you can imagine the Leader would order his men to fire at what he believes is to be a threat, in most combat situations you can easily imagine a team of warriors would be following his orders, and if they were to disobey and shoot at something else, they would be disobeying a direct order, so that makes sense to me. And only being able to shoot if you can see the torso, although seems weird at first, sounds about right, because a real enemy wouldnt hide behind a wall and stand up so his head was in plain sight or stick out his arm waiting for that lucky pot-shot, so it represents them kneeling down or ducking behind cover.
Destructive terrain is a nice idea, but again over-complicates the game, I can see arguments as to what can be destructive and what cant be half-way through a game with that one.
You have some nice ideas there 🙂 but i dont think they would fit into Warpath, based on its simplicity and ease of play, although I would like to see more BFG and Special combat weapons options for the army lists
This is how every single company should be ! Great work, but …. Wil it Blend ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko
As much as I hate Apple but seriously ….WHY D: ….no one should treat technology that way ( even not if its an IPad )
You need to see the torso because an arm or a head sticking out just isn’t enough, in real life if a bunch of guys are hiding behind a chest high wall the sergeant wont be sticking his sword/fist/claw/rifle/cricket bat/stick of celery up in the air giving a battle cry, he’d be hunkered down with the rest of them.
Most of what’s showed up “wrong” so far has been typos EG on the movement or balance issues between the list it says “The other models in the unit are rearranged no further than 5″ from the Leader and at least 1″ from another model in the unit” which would make it impossible to fit 20 models within 5″ of the leader, it say “and at most 1″ away” or something to that effect. There’s a few things about balance- though with only two lists its hard to tell for sure- and some stuff that could be made clearer like do certain units(the battle bot and Iron ancestor) count as vehicles, and what base sizes are models supposed to be on.
Hey would you look at that a typo while I’m pointing out a typo….
Battle Bots and Iron Ancestors dont count as vehicles, they have the Hero/Monster Unit Type, so use the non vehicle Nerve chart, and dont suffer from the Piercing special rule either… too tough for regular shooting to damage, but not really heavily armoured enough to count as vehicles
I know few would agree but ‘nerve’ just doesn’t work in a sci-fi game.
Sure it works, it doesnt matter how far into the future it is, or how technologically advanced a race may be, all living things in the universe will have basic fear as a survival instinct. And you have to remember Nerve is not just all about fear, it represents the unit running out of ammo, getting butchered completely, tactical retreat, maybe even surrendering
that’s not what i meant. I mean, it’s just clunk having to pile on tokens, when I could have just taken models out of the squad. In Kings of War it’s ok as they are on movement trays. But with sci-fi games, it seems to me a bad idea. If a man in the squad is taken out, then that’s one less gun to shoot. I don’t see why nerve has to be introduced.
All the things you mention can be represented by better rules. There is something satisfying about seeing the size of your enemy’s unit shrink. With the current Nerve rules, it’s possible for a unit to take quite a lot of damage but get a lucky dice role and be able to fire all its weapons. That’s just not intuitive. Bah I don’t know.
Don’t just have to use tokens, you can add to the visual appeal of the with little blast markers (plumes of smoke, little craters, a severed arm) for single points and maybe a bigger base size marker (big explosion) for 5 damage. Like battle fleet gothic or epic. Then you would have all your painted guys on the table, keep the mechanic, which I like, plus you get to see which units you’ve battered instantly by the destruction around them. Just move the markers about so they don’t block movement or LOS, after all an explosion would only be there for a few seconds. If I can’t find my old epic markers I’ll need to invest in some steel wool and collect a few 1 and 2p coins. Job done.
What was missing from KOW is big machines, we all love the big stuff to build now and then, Warpath should have some though :), hope they make some for KOW, mind you Mantic need to sort out there warehouse guys and deliverys first!
I agree with both points 🙂 I would love to see trebuchets firing corpses for my undead, and some huge cannon for the dwarfs etc…
I bought one of those £150 undead armies and it took well over a month to get the whole lot, came in two parts and was still missing some revenants after that, but got it sorted 🙂 still loving Mantic and what they do, just need some improvements here and there thats all
I’m interested to see where this Game takes us to be honest. I am not sure the world needs another Sci-Fi Minis game system right now..but I like to keep an open mind.