Cthulhu Dreams posted:

Yeah the only 6mm game I've actually found people to play f2f was HoTT which did not grab me for whatever reason.

That was years ago and I've never played stuff like pride of lions or w/e

NTRabbit posted:

Depends what alignment you need them to have for an allied unit - as evil, they easily sub for Scavengers, Gargoyles or Tortured Souls. For neutral, Harpies or Giant Eagles. For good, they're clearly Elohi made from monkeys that touched a strange black obelisk.

quote:

This Does Not Work: A Reflection on the Warpath Beta After Three Games
I am committed to Warpath being great, and to help make it great. As it currently stands, I think the game is the opposite of great, and that is does not really work as a game. Successful combat games have opportunities for advantage, and ways to counter those advantages. Napoleonic warfare perhaps epitomizes this in the advantages that Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry each afford a commander, yet they also have weaknesses, this yields a nice paper/rock/scissors relationship. In other theaters combat, more units types result in a paper/rock/scissors/lizard/spock relationship and this is great too. I’ll speak about two successful Mantic Games, and how they work, Kings of War, and Deadzone 2nd Edition.
Kings of War succeeds in this paper/rock/scissors relationship well, each unit has a way it can be powerful, and has ways its weakness can be exploited. Deadzone succeeds in this very well also. Armor helps protect units, but one can use armor piercing weapons to negate this. If one plays lots of Armor piercing one can oppose this with Tough units, or with a large number of units with no armor which means the player using lots of AP us spending their points on nothing. Shooting in general is powerful, but in the game there’s enough cover, and units are generally defensible enough that they can get into close combat and wreak havoc.
Kings of War and Deadzone also each offer clear advantages to strive for. In Kings of War, one wants to flank their enemy, this results in rolling more dice of course. Also, single units in Kings of War are not generally able to destroy an opposing unit. Usually one must create a two-on-one situation to destroy an opposing unit. Again, this is a clear situation to try to create, and for the opponent to try to avoid. In Deadzone, one want to get clear shots in shooting, and get two-on-one close combat situations, or get big model against small model situations. Also the very statistics of a unit provides advantageous and disadvantageous situations. If I have a great shooter, I want him at a distance, and shooting down your low survive model. That great shooter probably has a poor fight value, and the opponent wants to get their good fight model in the same cube as that good shooter.
Models and units in Deadzone and Kings of War are also resilient enough that they can live to complete objectives. These games succeed in being about more than just destroying the opponent’s forces. In Warpath, units have such capacity for destruction that objectives are meaningless. Or if I have manages to hold an objective, it’s only a win-more situation.
In Warpath, there units who destroy other units with ease, Stormrage veterans, big tanks that roll lots of dice with high AP, and there are units not really capable of destroying units, Forge Guard, Steel Warriors, basically any unit that only rolls four dice (and that doesn’t have blast.) This is all to say there is a huge disparity between units that actually destroy other units, and units who pretty much fail at everything. In Deadzone and Kings of War, “weaker” units can be maneuvered to creat a situation where they are strong. This doesn’t happen in Warpath. Weaker units are just weak, and strong units and just strong. There’s no real way to create an advantage in Warpath. It helps for a unit to be in cover, but this doesn’t really help that unit survive. There’s so much AP in Warpath right now that my rolls to would are usually on a 2+. Close combat units have no chance of getting to the enemy without being destroyed.
My first Warpath game was Asterians vs. Forge Fathers. The Asterian objective was to live until turn 6 and then infiltrate of the sides of the board. To start, my high dice, high AP units destroyed some Forge Fathers units, and the Forge Fathers units then destroyed my units with high AP and good dice. Neither of us moved our forces very much, almost no maneuvering was needed. (And we DID have lots of terrain on the board!) By the end of turn two, I lost most of my forces, and the units I had left did not have enough AP to destroy Forge Father Tanks or Iron Ancestors. I conceded.
My second game of Warpath featured Astarians vs GCPS, in a take back the city scenario. My big Asterian Tanks immediately destroyed my opponents troop transport, I used a refresh order to let it attack again. My missle lauchers and shoot value of 2+ annihilated my opponents forces. I moved very little, I hardly made choices, I pretty much destroyed things and by the end of turn two, the advantage clearly mine, and we ended the game.
My third game was Forge Fathers vs. GCPS, and in this game, my opponent, Tyler, and I elected to use all infantry and/or bike style units. I wondered if the vehicles were the thing that was unbalanced and that by using all infantry the game would be balanced interesting and fun. The hypothesis was false. The same sorts of power differential came up in this game, that is the disparity between units who destroy other units, and units who are just weak. There was one instance of my Borkkr units charging into a building to destroy the enemy and take the building. Otherwise to Close combat happened. Again shooting is all-powerful. Stormrage veterans destroy things. My artillery units rolling 10dice 3ap destroy things Valkyrs destroy things. Meanwhile, Steel Warriors and Forge Guard pretty much failed at everything. The Forge Guard were hard to my opponent to kill, in but their measly four dice did not destroy enemy units, and were they to move out of cover to try and engage in close combat, they would never make it to the enemy before being destroyed.
In none of these games did I see clever play result in winning. No one needed to maneuver to create advantageous situations to win and destroy the enemy. Powerful units just destroy other units. The all or nothing result of casualties (because only whole teams are destroyed) only furthers the disparity between power levels of units. Once some casualties are taken, and one is left with some single teams, there’s really no way for these units to be effective at anything. They don’t roll enough dice to destroy another unit with a shoot action, they will never survive marching into close combat, and there aren’t enough command dice to give combined fire orders to coordinate these small teams with each other. If I have units on the board, there should be SOME way I can use them to my advantage. And currently in Warpath, this just can’t happen.
I ask the game designers and developers to really look at what makes the successful Mantic Games successful. Maneuvering forces needs to matter. One needs to create advantageous situations to win and to defeat enemy forces. Units that are strong on one way, need to have a weakness that can be exploited. Close combat needs to actually be able to happen, and be a viable strategy on its own (The Plague!). I urge the designers and developers to take time, and get Warpath both working and right. Currently, I don’t see it working, it isn’t fun because my decisions don’t matter, it feels like arbitrary destruction of units, and again the objective don’t matter because it’s so easy to destroy units.
Please contact me if you would like more clarity on any of the points that I have made. I want Warpath to be amazing. I’ve been looking for an alternative to WH:40k that has less expensive models and a single rulebook. Warpath is trying to be the game I want it to be, but right now, it’s not succeeding.

Captain Invictus posted:

No you don't

fnordcircle posted:

Post from a Mantic group (not mine)

Captain Invictus posted:

I remember them from the Warhammer 5th edition starter box and they loving sucked and were boring

LordAba posted:

Too old for this poo poo.

Two weeks away from retirement.

Sunber posted:

Fwiw, those saurus and that colour scheme are rad as hell

Atlas Hugged posted:

Overall, I'm not sue how I feel about the color scheme on these guys. I think the GW saurus have the advantage that the blue scales are limited to their backs and heads whereas these are blue all over. They're almost too blue. Oh well, I'm committed now.

Sunber posted:

You could always portray it as armour instead of scales? I'm not sure how well it would work in practice but it would tone down the amount of blue they have

The Deleter posted:

Everyone at my games club has dismissed Mantic's models as terrible and I think they look fine.

sassassin posted:

They're right, Mantic's stuff is hideous.

Not a viking posted:

Come on, you can do better than that.

The Deleter posted:

Everyone at my games club has dismissed Mantic's models as terrible and I think they look fine.

moths posted:

They're basically complaining that this Mac & Cheese isn't orange enough to be real Kraft brand Mac & Cheese, their favorite food product because it's all they'll eat.

sassassin posted:

Captain Invictus posted:

lol are they high

Mantic's stuff lately has been looking outstanding. The Forge Fathers are some of my favorites and pull off "Space Dwarves" a lot better than any other attempts, but Enforcers are fantastic as well. Asterians aren't my jam but I can see folks liking them, etc etc

Atlas Hugged posted:

Warpath has been split into two waves. Apparently the Chinese hosed up.

thegodofchuck posted:

But hey, they'll take advantage of this to make a new kickstarter campaign