Over the last decade, Mantic Games has been causing quite a stir in the world of miniatures wargaming with Kings of War. The game of fantasy battles is praised for its clear and concise ruleset as well as some head-turning models. But the British company’s science fiction lines, which include Deadzone and Firefight, haven’t seen the same level of critical or commercial acclaim in the U.S. A new crowdfunding campaign could help change that — and further expose one of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise’s weakest flanks. It’s called Warpath, and it goes live on Kickstarter today.
Warpath is an Epic-scale miniatures game that will directly compete with Legions Imperialis, which Mantic’s down the street neighbor in Nottingham, England — a little company called Games Workshop — launched in November. With tiny robots and tanks that can fit on the face of a quarter, the game explores company-level strategy. That’s a much smaller scope than a game of Risk, to be sure, but on the table Warpath will take up a lot more space than a traditional 28- or 32-millimeter wargame. Infantry are just a bit larger than a grain of rice, and with battles fought over four-foot-by-six-foot battlefields, there are likely to be hundreds of them in play at any moment.
Early renders of Mantic’s miniatures look excellent, but the real selling point for me is the ruleset, which was developed with the help of Alessio Cavatore. Cavatore is a veteran of Games Workshop, where he worked on all three of the company’s marquee titles, including Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer 40,000, and Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game. In addition to co-authoring the rules for Mordheim, he’s also the man behind the well-regarded rules for Mantic’s Kings of War.
Speaking with Cavatore and co-designer Matt Gilbert, it’s clear the rules for Warpath are a bit more sophisticated than Legions, as well. The pair have baked in a simulation of command and control, for one, meaning that the quality and the disposition of your battlefield commanders will be just as important as the number and caliber of your heavy weapons. But they’ve also ginned up a novel system for line of sight, one that’s inspired by its other science fiction franchises like Deadzone and Firefight.
Unlike Legions Imperialis, where players must get down to eye level with their tiny soldiers to literally see if they can make a shot on a given target, elevation in Warpath will be abstracted. At the beginning of a game, players on both sides of a battle will go over the battlefield in detail, assigning numerical heights to various features. A building may be height six, for instance, and a group of trees are height four. Part of each individual unit’s profile lists a height as well, so even before they’ve moved into position, players will know whether or not a given piece of terrain will obscure certain units as they maneuver. There will even be interactions between units of different heights, meaning that advancing infantry could use armored columns of tanks for cover.
But it’s the potential for exotic game tables that really has me excited. While the Legions Imperialis ruleset struggles to depict anything other than a perfectly flat, urban landscape, Warpath should be able to accommodate rolling hills and other, even more exotic types of terrain with ease.
“There’s no friction there,” Gilbert told Polygon. “When you come to it, you’ll just look at it and say, Well, I’m height six. You’re height two. I can see over you. I don’t [even] need to work this out.”
The kicker is that, unlike Games Workshop’s civil war struggle, which effectively has only the one faction fighting with itself, Warpath will launch with four different tiny boxed armies, each with a total of 160 hard plastic miniatures and assorted extras. A single army will set you back roughly $75. All four will be closer to $190. The campaign kicks off today and runs through mid-March.
