Warpath

I must admit I do have a bit of a soft spot for Mantic Games, I enjoy playing Kings of War and recently backed the DeadZone kickstarter so it followed that I was going to check out their Sci fi range Warpath.
I remember signing up to Beasts of War membership almost two years ago now to gain access to the alpha rules release and getting excited about a possible true competitor to 40k, over the years its been interesting to see the rules develop and while they've not yet reached the same level of simplicity/strategy of KOW I still keep my eyes open for any updates etc.

The bigger problem with Warpath has to do with the range of models available, the initial box sets were based on the KOW sprues and did the job (apart from that awful dwarf firing a weapon model) and over the years the ranges have been expanded but there are still large gaps in the army lists that need proxies. The DreadZone kickstarter although being based upon its own game looks like it is going to fill a few of these gaps with its own range of models, and in some places looks to hint and expand upon the army lists. Also rumored for next year is another Mantic kickstarter to fill out the Warpath range and add vehicles/finalized rulebook etc, exciting times ahead.

The Forgefathers were the first faction that drew me to Warpath, like most people it was exciting to see the return of "squats", I picked up the Fate of the Forgestar boxed set and added a few extras to build up a small force. The Huscarl in particular is a great metal miniature with nice detailing and the Iron Ancestor adds to the nice chunky feel of the army:

Moving on to the Marauders, I have a ton of plastic sprues shelved away, I think close to 60 or more models but as I already have a 40K Ork army and having learnt my lesson with trying to paint armies these have yet to be put together. The Marauder army is one that really needs to be filled out by Mantic as at the moment it just feels like a huge group of foot sloggers with the odd vehicle thrown in. Along with the boxed sets I picked up the Marauder Ripper Warlord metal model, this really is a great sculpt and was fun to paint, it really shows that when Mantic produce individual metal models they come out really well.

Lastly is this oddity from Mantic, Mortis the Zombie Apocalypse hero. This metal miniature is basically just a head swap of the Verr-myn Night Spawn and i'm not sure where is really fits in to the Warpath universe/range, there are no rules for it and Mantic have hinted that it does not fit in with the new Plague army lists, maybe its going to fit in with the Warpath kickstarter next year or maybe its just meant to be a proxy for a certain 40K Chaos Lord (it was released shortly after the Chaos codex). Either way its an okish model and came with a box of other kit from ebay so didn't really cost anything: