Warpath - 2.0

Had one of those lucky?! days last week where I had to take a day off to recover from a minor operation, as it was planned I was rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of being able to spend a whole day at home with no wife or kids and being able to indulge in some painting and gaming :)
Unfortunately things never turn out as planned and just before my wife left for work she handed me a big list of things that needed doing round the house! but i'm ill! then sit down while your doing it then!.... anyway once all the work was finished and I had finished hobbling around I sat down to paint some of the backlog and ended up grabbing a Mantic Marauder Raptor off the shelf and slapping a quick paint job on:

Mantic Raptor alongside a GW buggy

The Mantic vehicles that are available surprised me at just how chunky and solid the parts are, although these retail for over a tenner you can pick these up for great prices elsewhere. Compared to the GW equivalents these are quite large as well but I like them and no, i'm not going to get drawn in to what they are made of! is it Resin/Plastic/Restic or PVC? who cares, does it look good, do I like it, yep.

Anyway, i've been putting off playing Warpath for a while so got the mat on the floor (i've been "removed" from the dining room table!) and put down two 900 point armies. I used the latest 2.0 rules and army lists and each side got the following:

Marauders:

• 2 x Raptors
• A Warlord
• 4 Squads of 10 Maruader grunts with an anti tank gun and ripper claw.

Forge Fathers:

• Huscarl leader
• 2 x Jotunn Hailstorm Cannons.
• Squad of 5 Stormrage Veterans
• 2 x Squads of Steel Warriors (one with 10 men another with 5).
• Iron Ancestor

The first game went fairly well, the rules are still light enough to pick up after a quick read or two (although the transport rules could do with all being together) and the alternate activation works well, it adds a layer of strategy when choosing which units to activate and the push your luck nature of activating units can really pay of or leave you stranded depending on how your luck goes!
The Marauder raptors were fast, very fast, on a single move they can get across the table and then some although their armour is pretty weak and falls pretty easily to the forge father fire (I liked how units transported in destroyed vehicles still have a fair chance of not being wiped out).
The Jotunn hailstorm cannons provide a HUGE amount of firepower, 12 shots each, they can effectively hold back any squads on foot and they both caused the most destroyed units in the game. The marauders on foot found it really hard to get across the board in the face of all that fire!
One of the big things that came out was just how less effective characters are, more suited to a support role, your not going to see any characters taking out whole units in close combat for example, quite the opposite.

If there was a major criticism of the rules it would have to be close combat, that the only models that can attack are those in base to base combat was a bit of a pain with some larger units being penalized by not being able to get so many troops in to base combat. I prefer the more simple nature of kings of war and so we played the house rule that if a unit enters close combat it enters close combat and all unit members can fight, simples.

Someone nicked the table!

In the first game the Marauders were almost wiped out before they got across the table so to even it up we replaced a squad of Marauder grunts with some stunt bots (GW killer kans) and took advantage of the Marauder Raptor speed, it certainly made the difference and the game was a lot closer.
It was interesting listening to the latest Mantic podcast with Ronnie hinting that Warpath may be changing direction again with multiple based troops and big games, around 20 units a side! I guess that they are still trying to find that magic formula that made Kings of War so good to play, anyway i'm certainly looking forward to whatever's coming in the future. :)

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: