Warpath

Warpath
Wargame published by Mantic Games
No. of Players	2
Session Time	A few hours
Authors	Stewart Gibbs, Matt Hobday
First Publication	2011
Essential Books	Warpath, Warpath: Firefight, Warpath Sourcebook, Dreadball

Warpath is a relatively new 28mm scale tabletop game from the upstart UK-based miniatures publisher Mantic Games. The miniatures are slightly cheaper than the established competitors (Games Workshop and Privateer Press), and are highly detailed, if wide-headed and lacking in options.

It's fair to say that Warpath has been on the development back-burner for quite some time. It was Mantic's second major release (after the rather brilliant Kings of War), but didn't generate anywhere near as much interest. A limited range of miniatures were released for four out of eight promised factions, but general consensus in the community was that the rules were not up to scratch and Warpath almost dropped off the radar. In the meantime, Mantic released two other sci-fi games set in the same universe, Dreadball and Deadzone, which helped develop both the background and the range of miniatures. 2015 looks to be the year Warpath finally comes to the fore, with a set of alpha test rules unveiled at the Mantic Open Day in May and a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the full release of the game, which happened in April 2017.

The models are currently made of plastic (basic units) and plastic resins (vehicles, characters, and elite units), with hard-plastic vehicle kits coming courtesy of the latest Kickstarter. The rules were available for free on Mantic's website (currently that page is now just for Kings of War). The latest version of Warpath 2.0's alpha rules (posted in early October) are available here

A smaller version of Warpath also exists, called Warpath: Firefight, using the same minis, and largely the same rules and flow, but designed to be the size of Bolt Action or 40k 2nd, with just a few dozen guys and a tank. This is done different points and force construction, by shifting down to a focus on squads, as opposed to Warpath which uses the team (which contains multiple squads) as the basic building block. Deadzone breaks this down again, by focussing on the individuals in the squad. Really, Mantic has you covered no matter how big or small you like your battles.

The Factions

• Asterians: Space elves and their army of drones. Amazing leadership and shooting abilities with every drone able to release a smoke screen of poisonous gas. Also have hovering weapon platforms that do things like shoot exploding balls of plasma. Also have a faction of naturists who ride large beasts and wield swords and bows and arrows made out of futuristic polymers.
• Corporation: The main human faction and the bad guys of the setting.
  • Enforcers: The Corporation's special forces. They wear armour that looks a bit like Iron Man's suit and have access to a variety of high tech gadgets.
• Forge Fathers: The space dwarves with lots of high tech toys. Guns in this faction either melt through armor like butter or spray bullets like it's going out of style. The tough faction unsurprisingly.
• Marauder Orx: Orx and goblins in spaaaace. Whilst they might appear to be brutal savages the Marauders are actually highly disciplined, professional soldiers for hire. In Warpath, they are a sub-list of the GCPS, meaning you get to add GCPS tanks and flyers to your greenskins without needing ally rules, and likewise can use Orx as shock troops in front of your humans.
• Plague: Ordinary citizens turned into vicious killing machines by an alien mutagen. They are the most combat-orientated of all the factions.
• Rebs: A ragged army of anarchists and freedom fighters. Although humans have a strong presence, the Rebels can field a variety of alien species such as the Yndij (cat-people), Sorak (which walks on its arms and shoots with it's feet. Seriously!) and the almightly Teraton (massive teleporting space-dinosaurs!). Currently Deadzone only.
• Veer-Myn: Space Skaven.
• Z'zor: Bug people. Still only a Dreadball team at this stage.
• Nameless: A confederation of squid, octopus, and other aquatic cephalopod species living far beyond corporate space, allegedly already laying the ground work for an inevitable war. First minis coming with Star Saga, along with a Deadzone beta list, and Warpath lists to follow.

Project Pandora

See Space Hulk to get an idea of what the game is about, except instead of power-armored Space Marines against insect-like Genestealers, you have Imperial Guard-like human soldiers fighting mutant rat-men on their own space ship. Now out of print, and replaced in the lineup by

Star Saga

A scifi dungeon crawler using a 2.0 version of the rules from the fantasy game Dungeon Saga, kickstarted and due out to backers and retail in late 2017

Dreadball

A spin-off game set in the Warpath universe, Dreadball is like Blood Bowl, but is set in space, uses aliens, is played on a hex grid, isn't based on American football and has completely different game mechanics. Dreadball has become something of a runaway success for Mantic, with plenty of leagues and regional tournaments springing up in the UK and beyond. The fluff is subversive, and explains how the GCPS use the sport for huge propaganda and public distraction value, like desensitizing the public to alien threats by showing them as beatable sportsball athletes who may or may not be highly sophisticated total fakes (Weekend at Bernies Z'Zor, humans surgically altered to look like something that could be Asterian), while famous incorporated alien players are treated like WWE stars.

A revised second edition is due in mid 2017.

Deadzone

Deadzone is an urban skirmish game which pits small 'strike teams' of around 10 models against each other. Some comparisons between Deadzone and Necromunda are inevitable and it will appeal to the same market, but Deadzone is significantly distinctive from Necromunda in terms of gameplay, aesthetic and background to quell any accusations that Mantic are stealing ideas (in this game at least).

Deadzone is played on a gridded 2'x2' mat with modular scenery tiles which allow players to construct 3D gaming environments (in the fluff, most Corporation colony buildings are built from these mass-produced flat-pack tiles and connectors produced by a futuristic version of Ikea). No tape measures are required because all distances are related to the grid; a rifle, for example, has a range of 6 squares, a normal model can move up to two squares in a turn.

Fucking Awesome