Warpath Alpha Rules

The first draft of the Mantic Warpath Second Edition rules dropped on Thursday in preview of their coming kickstarter. The rules released are for there Battle version of the game which lists that it is for like 100+ figures per side while the not released Warpath:Firefight is for the 30-100 figure range.



These Core Warpath rules read very much like Epic Armeggadon with EA Units(Stands)= Warpath teams and EA Formations = Warpath Units. The game has alternating Unit actions between the player with some special stuff (Commands in Warpath, Seizing Initiative in EA) to break that up. The combat rules are a little more involved than EA but Teams are removed and suppression markers used so again very similar. The team is really just the leader with the extra models mainly just window dressing (though on the defensive side shooting is measure from Hub to model and get assaulted when they get there hub to one of your models).  Looks like a perfectly fine game except that generally I have found that 100 models in 28 mm per side is really too many for the stand 6*4 board.

Here I have a 8*4 piece of insulation foam taped down to standard 6*4 covered with 100 minis at the standard 40K coherence seperation of 2 inches.  With the 1 inch no closer type rule at the front and back they occupy almost 25% of the whole board area.  Two armies like that on the board and 25% terrain and there is really no where for tactical movement and such with only about 25% of the board area clear.

In Warpath the teams have Hubs(Leaders) from who the team movement and shooting are measured.  With a standard movement of about 6 each Hub controls an area of about 132 square inches on the board.  Any closer than that and I can engage you with a standard move action.  This makes the table able to fit about 26 hubs for both sides or about 65 models each.

The Hub to Hub distance in warpath is set pretty small at 4 inches while the models in a team have to each be within 2 inches of their hub.  This will certainly keep things compact as the farthest I can have the hubs apart is not far enough to keep me from putting models from 1 team closer to the hub for another team than their own hub.  I think personally I would like the hub to hub distance to be closer to 6 inch which would allow a little more tactical placement of the individual hubs as opposed to just very slightly elongated mass.

This small hub to hub distance will compact up the units into smaller average threaten zones than the 132 per hub above and get you to about 100 models I would guess.  More than that still seems like a rough go into a 6*4 space. I think I am more of a firefight guy for 28 mm.  Individual models within units whose positioning with respect to terrain and modeling of weapons on the models work great at this scale compared to trying to jam so many models into a space that you have to move units in very specific orders or they just cannot move.

Their kickstarter begins today so take a look for yourself.