PRESS RELEASE

TOPPS & MANTIC ANNOUNCE MARS ATTACKS WARGAME

May 14, 2013 – NEW YORK. Is your tabletop ready to be invaded? The Topps Company and Mantic Games have joined forces to bring MARS ATTACKS to life as a miniature-based tabletop wargame! Combining high quality sculpted figures with fast and fun tactical gameplay, Mantic will deliver an exciting new dimension to the resurgent sci-fi property.

Mantic Games, makers of the popular WARPATH and DREADBALL tabletop games, will make MARS ATTACKS their first license. "MARS ATTACKS is a cult classic series that fans have been falling in love with generation after generation," says Ronnie Renton, Mantic CEO. "Its oddball blend of retro sci-fi visuals, dark humor and over-the-top violence will make for a unique tabletop experience… our team can't wait to bring the Martians to life in ways no one has ever seen before!"

Set against the backdrop of the new and expanding MARS ATTACKS universe, the game will feature all of the fun and thrill of the classic series, plus new characters and factions that will see action in upcoming comic books and toys. It will also tie-in closely with Topps' just-announced all-new trading card series, Mars Attacks: Invasion, releasing in October.

"MARS ATTACKS is a world where giant robots, mutated insects and hordes of Martian soldiers face off against Earth's military and innocent civilians— how could you not want to see a game out of that?" says Topps' Adam Levine. "Mantic has quickly become one of the best in the business, and they're the perfect team to adapt our outrageous visuals into this exciting new form."

Mantic plans an early 2014 release.

This ruleset was designed with the idea of making a fast and easy version of spaceship combat using the Warpath 1.0 ruleset, and allowing for use with a wide range of scifi ships. This was a fairly quick idea, so please let me know where any of the undoubtedly-present imbalances are.

As the ruleset was originally written for Warpath 1.0, I recommend either using those army lists if you still have them, or checking out Hellebore's wonderful Warpath 1.1 Mass Battle rule revamp which streamlines and improves the original WP 1.0 rules considerably.

Much of the base outline for the rules has been lifted from my previous work on Blood Fleet, so let me know if you find any errors or rules that need clarification. Thanks!

v1.1, updated 5-15-13

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Someone told me Mantic was trying to empty their warehouses of all KoW product. Is that true? Id so, are they getting ready for a re-launch of the game or are they just dropping it in favor of more popular games like dreadball and the up coming dead zone?

Taken from James M's post over on the Mantic forums.

Hello all mantic supporters :)

I am thinking of buying a couple of boxes of the Abyssal Dwarf Black Souls, can anyone confirm the composition of the kit?
Is it metal and plastic? I have never bought from Mantic before, any links to product reviews would be great.

So I know deadzone is on the horrizon, but I was just wondering if they had anything else for sale/preview at salute, or any deals on - I'm after some judwan and those funky robots, maybe some of the MVP's hint hint.

I've finished my first draft on a modified version of the 1st ed of warpath. I liked the abstract EPIC esque nature of the game, although moving individual models in units was a pain.

I've instead made all units consist of bases of 5 models so you've basically got sub-unit movement trays. Bases are between 60 and 75mm.



So if you actually LIKED abstract damage and mass battles, then feel free to give me feed back on this. It's in it's earliest state so far, so changes are inevitable.

As for unit bases, they don't have to be perfect circles - cut some rough shapes out of cardboard and blu-tac 5 models to each one....

Hellebore

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Here at Shades of Chaos we have really been enjoying playing WARPATH so much that we want to share it with our readers. All this month we will be talking about background, rules and tactics and even some battle reports for this great game. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have...


First and foremost WARPATH is an affordable sci-fi skirmish game created by mantic, it is the brain child of Ronnie Renton with Alessio Cavatore writing the rules. Both these gentlemen once worked for Games-Workshop and are responsible for some of its greatest achievements. The game does not need hundreds of miniatures to play it and is very open to using miniatures from other games companies.
For example, I started playing WARPATH with my old Space Ork army from Games-Workshop. Almost every model in the army had a suitable entry in the Marauders army list. Those models that didn't fit into the game, such as my deff koptas and the leader from the gretchin unit, are included in the force with some quick and easy home brew rules written by yours truly (more on that in a future post).


The game started off with a set of beta rules very similar to Mantic's original game, Kings of War. But the gaming community felt that the abstract rules for units didn't fit a sci-fi game. So Mantic listened to their fans and created a smaller scale "skirmish" game and added in another element the community had been calling for, alternate activation. Although the mass battle version of WARPATH is still going to happen but not until a later date.
The rules are still in beta testing and are awaiting a future Kickstarter campaign to fund a hardback rule book and lots of pretty new miniatures, and hopefully the conversion of some units from "restic" to "hard plastic". This method was used to bring the popular mass battle fantasy game Kings of War to the general public, Proof that it works.

In the current beta rules you have the choice of four factions; the ambitious Corporation, Stubborn Forge Fathers, brutal Marauders and sadistic Veer-myn. There are four more races already in the pipeline for WARPATH including the soon to be revealed Plague!



The game is not only affordable due to its fairly small model count, the models come at a very reasonable price. You only have to look at the beautiful £12.49 Iron ancestor or £14.99 Marauders grunt platoon (20 models) to realize that. In the case of the Marauders, that is just 75p per model, with heavy weapons and power claws etc included!


As I have already mentioned, the game has a fairly small model count. It really depends on your faction and choices you make when list building as a 2000 point corporation army can consist of as few as 4-5 enforcer units but a Marauders army of the same points value could be as many as 20-40 grunts units! It really caters to all styles of play.



Im looking forward to the finished product but I am really enjoying the beta rules for now. If you haven't tried it yet you really should give it a go. All the feedback on the Mantic forum will help make the finished game the best it can be.


Shades of Chaos have a lot more WARPATH coming up including; reviews, tactics, army showcases, home brew rules, fluff and more...

To see the rest of the WARPATH showcase follow this link... http://www.shadesofchaos.com/

Check out more pics on my site here:

Klaxus Redbomber's Gallery



Thanks
n.