WARPATH: Initial Thoughts
Heya, Rabscutle and SpankyHarrison here to share our initial thoughts regarding Warpath’s beta rule set.
First, from Spanky:
Unsurprisingly, Warpath shares a lot of features with the Kings of War rules. In fact, they are almost identical. More than anything, my first impression of Warpath is that it is Kings of War with a few modifications to support Sci-Fi stuff like tanks. Which, to be fair, is exactly what I expected. Of course, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. After all, even Warhammer 40k started out as a modification of 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles.
The primary differences are the addition of BFG’s (special/heavy weapons) and separating a unit’s attacks into two different stats, one for ranged, and one for melee. They also include vehicles, which mostly behave like monsters with extremely high defense scores and some special movement rules. Also of note is the inclusion of flyers, which is pretty cool for a ruleset at this early stage. The flyer rules are nice and simple, while still giving them a unique feel and function within the game. I also like Warpath’s take on reserves.
Overall, I don’t see any particularly glaring oversights in the rules, save that the rules for measuring range are a bit vague (I’m sure Alessio will clear that up in no time).
I’m interested to see how an actual game plays out, and we will give you a battle report in the near future!
And from Rabscutle:
I agree with Spanky’s assessment regarding the similarity to Kings of War. The two rule sets are virtually identical. This lends itself to an easy player model, where if you know one rule set, you can ramp up in the other game very fast. This makes for an easy cross pollination effect for new players. Also, this is the first Beta set of the rules, so I imagine they will change as the game evolves.
I’m going to be very interested to see how the Nerve mechanic plays in a skirmish game, as it makes worlds of sense to me in a movement tray game like Kings of War, but I don’t think the idea that you don’t remove bodies for casualties has ever been tried in a skirmish game. I’m likely wrong, so feel free to tell me so. Either way, it is an interesting concept, and I want to see it play out on the table.
Once the mad dash that is War Games Con is over, I want to get some games in to see how this plays. I’ll be sure to report back with what we found, along with commentaries on the initial Orx and Marauders army lists.
Have I mentioned how odd it is to borrow GW minis to use as proxies for another system while we await the Warpath model’s arrival. This is gonna be fun indeed…
So, have you had a chance to play Warpath? What did you think of the rules after you read them?
