Mantic SciFi Games News and Rumours Roundup

[Nightsword]

You asked, we supplied

And the main rules load ok?

[scarletsquig]

Everything's working. Got a timeout out on the first attempt, but a quick refresh sorted things.

[Sidorio]

Looking pretty good to me. Will have a read through once I've got some sleep. Now all we need is to see some models

[emperorpenguin]

Looks good so far, liking the speed stat, suppression and extra fire modifiers.

Couple of typos, the lists themselves still say "Alpha" and the Forgefather captain jumps from fire 3 to 10 with a second pistol

Looking forward to trying these out

Oh and Ballistic Firepower Guarantor?

[eastern barbarian]

looks quite good so far, not so totally different from WH40k but a lot of mechanic reminds me of cold war commander.. which is good when are you going to launch new minis?

[AlexHolker]

Thoughts so far:

- Collisions and Overruns still need Crushing Strength values, unless you want a Heavy Drakkar running over an Attackster to only do an average of 1/2 a point of damage.

- Based on the Fire-Wyrm and Heavy Drakkar, armour fire arcs need to be improved - I'd suggest extending the left and right fire arcs forwards to the centre line, giving each sponson a 135 degree arc of movement.

- I'd still make Piercing vs. Individuals get the Blast rule instead of killing outright. The current rule is all or nothing and ignores almost every variable that should defines the participants.

- I'd give TWF troops 5/10/20 Firepower instead of 4/8/16. Rifle troops would still get 8/16/32 Firepower.

- Fast should not automatically mean Nimble. An Armour unit's inability to charge should be a result of its lack of an Attacks value, not because it's an Armour unit.

- There should be a special rule for Fire Ports, of which Open Topped would be a derivative (A Chimera might have Fire Ports [L/R], while an Attackster would have Open Topped [A]). This could be a subtype for the Transport special rule, which would allow for composite transport capacities. A Stormlord, for example, would have Transport (20), Transport (20, Fire Ports [A]).

[Caiphas Cain]

Looks good so far, liking the speed stat, suppression and extra fire modifiers.

Couple of typos, the lists themselves still say "Alpha" and the Forgefather captain jumps from fire 3 to 10 with a second pistol

Looking forward to trying these out

Oh and Ballistic Firepower Guarantor?

The FFC's second pistol is just that good .

Edit - Also Nightsword, you should look in to taking AlexHolker as an assistant game designer (at the very least). I fully agree with him.

[Llew]

My opinions are as follows so far:

The problems that made it feel like a skirmish game have been kept or even compounded compared to the Alpha.

A) For a platoon on platoon shooting attack, you need to draw at least 100 sight lines to determine cover. In a tournament situation, this is a nightmare. You can bet that someone is going to make you demonstrate every last one of them in a tourney. The most likely outcome would be that people just automatically take the cover modifier if both units aren’t out in the open.

B) Movement is still by base, plus you’re required to make sure no model moves more than once or twice it’s Speed score depending on the sort of move. Therefore, you’re going to have to actually measure each individual model’s move for a unit, rather than just position the leader and then rearrange the unit to meet the unit coherency. You would need to answer any questions your opponent has about your unit coherency. In a tournament situation, this is another nightmare.

C) I’m hoping it’s a typo, but the diagram (Page 4, Diagram C) says that each model must be *at least* 1″ apart from others in its unit while staying within the 5″ command range. If it’s not a typo, that’s another big pile of measuring added to the movement, and it will definitely limit your ability to use cover, etc. Again, I hope and assume it’s a typo because it seems to conflict with other rule text.

D) Determining range for Shooting attacks will still encourage odd formations that would likely never actually see a regular battlefield. This is more of a problem for larger units, as smaller ones have limits built in as to what formations you can build due to their lack of numbers.

The rules for determining shooting ranges, as well as LOS will tend to encourage very strange formations. I predict the best formation for maximizing fire as a foe approaches will be lines of troops pointed toward the oncoming enemy, with moving into a broad firing line occurring as he gets closer.

On another note, Melee has been significantly weakened with the new Nerve chart. This may be intended, but I’m having trouble seeing how this is helping the melee units that were having trouble already. Follow on Combat will help some, but it still doesn’t prevent the problem of friendly units just nuking the foe that charged. (With 360° LOS, this isn’t hard to set up, especially if the former target moves At the Double to clear up some shooting lines.)

The Speed stat is a welcome re-addition.

The Fragged penalty is a nice, clean way to represent damaged units.

Aircraft are a more reliable choice now.

In skimming, I’m not seeing the option for everyone to get a chance to recover from Suppression. I think that’s a shame, as it takes Suppression out of being an automatic sentence of utter uselessness and likely death the following turn. No dramatic turnarounds here. I think the ideal result would be 6+ to recover for everyone, and Headstrong as a 4+. (Or, even make Headstrong an (n) ability, where the target number could be specified, allowing for some troops to be a bit better and some spectacularly hard to shake.)

I didn’t get far enough into the vehicle rules before to make a judgement if anything has changed there yet. I had devoted my attention elsewhere.

The rules feel like a skirmish game, grown large and with very little streamlining to make mass battles practical. It has huge holes in terms of it’s ability to be “tourney ready” and it has gaps ripe for exploitation by unsporting, or just overly anal, opponents. Right now, it lacks the elegance of design of it’s sister-system, Kings of War.

[scarletsquig]

I agree with the above post, there's just something "off" about the rules.

KoW feels simple and elegant, reading through warpath it just seems really weird... like taking KoW (unit-based game) and trying to add some of the worst elements of the 40k rules (skirmish-based game) to it.

I think the core problem is definitely a "square peg, round hole" situation where the rules can't seem to decide if they want to be a skirmish system or a mass-battle system.

They really need to be either one or the other, there are far too many skirmish-game complexities bogging things down at the moment. I think the "one size fits all, rules have to work for all sizes of game" approach is hurting the overall appeal of the rules.

If it's a skirmish game, you don't want abstraction like damage markers. If it's mass-battle, you don't want loads of fiddly little per-model rules to mess about with. Warpath beta has both of those things (abstraction and fiddliness) in spades.

Abstract LOS instead of true-line-of-sight would be so much better, quicker and easier for a game like this instead of all this TLOS model-to-model measuring that actually has a lot in common with the horrible system that 2nd edition 40k used, laboriously tracing model-to-model LOS for each model in the unit.

Abstract LOS was one of the really good things about 4th edition 40k that got taken away in 5th and nobody really liked the change. It was so much easier to just move models into a bunch of trees and go "right, they're in cover" rather than having to bicker about "well X model can see that model's torso because he's not behind one of the trees so no cover for you".

Alessio probably isn't going to want to hear that since it's a change he personally made, but it's true. TLOS is utterly horrible for skrimish games with a high model count. It is only tolerable in 5th edition 40k because the vast majority of games are "transports and tanks vs. transports and tanks".

The rules really do feel like they aren't enough like 40k to interest it's players, but too much like 40k to interest those of us who want a good tactical wargame rather than an exercise in dice rolling (which really is all 40k is once you've picked your army list, along with metagaming the heck out of the rules).

I was kinda hoping for rules that were similar in feel to Epic Armageddon... unit based combat with massive armies, with small games working just as well, very little dice rolling, simple stats, minimal special rules.

[rodmillard]

A) For a platoon on platoon shooting attack, you need to draw at least 100 sight lines to determine cover. In a tournament situation, this is a nightmare. You can bet that someone is going to make you demonstrate every last one of them in a tourney. The most likely outcome would be that people just automatically take the cover modifier if both units aren’t out in the open.

B) Movement is still by base, plus you’re required to make sure no model moves more than once or twice it’s Speed score depending on the sort of move. Therefore, you’re going to have to actually measure each individual model’s move for a unit, rather than just position the leader and then rearrange the unit to meet the unit coherency. You would need to answer any questions your opponent has about your unit coherency. In a tournament situation, this is another nightmare.

I am tempted to experiment with WotR movement trays to see if unit basing can work. If it's successful, I may make myself circular and/or oval trays (for "blob" movement) - 4" diameter with 5 holes for teams, 6" with 10 for sections and 8" with 20 for platoons. That should solve some of the movement/LOS headaches (although I agree the way LoS is done is an open invitation for donkeys to make you waste your time allowance in tournaments). TBH I may make them anyway for use as display bases...

The rules feel like a skirmish game, grown large and with very little streamlining to make mass battles practical. It has huge holes in terms of it’s ability to be “tourney ready” and it has gaps ripe for exploitation by unsporting, or just overly anal, opponents. Right now, it lacks the elegance of design of it’s sister-system, Kings of War.

I think part of the problem is that it's trying to be too like 40K, importing a lot of the flaws along with the good bits, and it hasn't gone abstract *enough* for mass battles. Like 40K, Warpath needs to decide if it wants to be a mass battle system or a company level skirmish game - at the moment I don't think it really works as either

[Anthony Case]

Yeah I think that's definitely the crux of the problem, it simply doesn't feel like a mass army game yet. I can't see why the unit rules couldn't be based entirely on the just the unit leaders. So for example, when moving you just measure the distance for the leader then the remaining unit models can be moved however you like. Again for charging, shooting, cover, etc, you just use the leaders, essentially the regular models are just there to look pretty. It would be a hell of a lot simpler and would allow you to base up the units a bit like a KOW unit which would also allow you to use more of a KOW approach to moving and flanking which is where KOW gets its tactics from. The rules for vehicles seem quite overly complex as well.

[Nightsword]

Here are the links for where to put your feedback - keeping it all in one place will allow us to more accurately collect and take into account your feedback.

Core Rules

Marauders

Forgefathers

I also think it's pretty easy to determine what's in cover and what's not.

C) I’m hoping it’s a typo, but the diagram (Page 4, Diagram C) says that each model must be *at least* 1″ apart from others in its unit while staying within the 5″ command range.

Looks to me like a typo - the Advance! rules states - "Remember that models must *remain within* 1" of each other and within 5" of the unit’s leader."

[kaimarion]

The rules are very simple and seem very easy to pick up if your a 40k player due to the similarities between the two games. I'll be taking a copy of the rules to my LGC tomorrow to test out the game with a few friends and see what C&C they can provide.

So far nothing really catches my eye as bad except for the rules for fliers where they have to constantly come on and off the board which was always a pet peeve of mine with the old 40k flier rules. But other than that the rules look quite good IMO.

[Hellebore]

I think in some ways the fact that increasing model number produces a discrete unit is a problem for making it a mass combat.

Unless you want the game to look like scifi napoleon with ranks of gunners shooting at each other the models need to appear spaced out.

You could make a circular movement tray with 5 models on it spread about no problems. I've been experimenting with 5 man disc movement trays the size and composition of CDs.

However, the problem is that the game says that 20 models is different to 4 units of 5 models.

If however the rules worked like this:

All infantry come in groups of 5 models on 5" diameter movement discs. Unit Leaders are always placed in the centre of the disc and line of sight is taken from them. All other measurements are taken from the edge of the movement disc.

A Team consists of one group.
A Section consists of two groups that must stay within 2" of each other and count in all ways as the same unit.
A Platoon consists of four groups that must stay within 2" of each other and count in all was as the same unit.

Designate which squad leader in a Section or Platoon counts as the overall leader and use them for LoS.

If a section or platoon performs or receives a charge then the whole unit counts as engaged regardless of where each individual group might be.

Then you can get around that.

Hellebore

[Llew]

I've suggested something similar, although with different bases, back in the Alpha. There seems to be a deep, emotional opposition to movement bases in Sci-Fi by a certain core of the players. They can accept the abstraction that a given model may appear to stand, but really be hiding in cover, but not that a unit base touching cover could represent a team scrambling into cover.

[Hellebore]

Well there's really no way around it if you want to move large chunks of troops at once. Strange about the reluctance.

I've found that 5 models on a CD have a nice spread - 1 in the middle and four around the periphery.

One thing I would hate is to have them lined up ala WFB/KoW. THAT would look silly. But there's no reason you can't have them spread out like the above.

Hellebore

[Llew]

The large rounds would be a good way to handle that, I agree and aesthetically it would be pleasing. There are a lot of things at present that appear to work their stated design goals of being tournament friendly, fast/simple and scale from small engagements to large ones.

Right now, it feels like the system is stuck in between and I'm sensing a reluctance to really go for a mass combat system.

[scarletsquig]

Here are the links for where to put your feedback - keeping it all in one place will allow us to more accurately collect and take into account your feedback

I am sick of arguing with certain trolls over on beasts of war. It's just a terrible environment to attempt to discuss things in an adult manner because there isn't any moderation, so people tend to just go nuts. How on earth am I supposed to discuss rules changes when I'm having to deal with off-topic comments?

Telling us to move to another forum will cut out all of the interesting discussion that comes from Warseer, and most of the good comments over on the BoW site are being posted by Warseer members anyway.

Is there any chance we can simply start a few "official feedback" threads on warseer and ask you to poke Alessio to read them instead?

I'm thinking 3 threads, one for the main rules, one for each army list? Would that be okay? We could even have them as stickies temporarily, but we would need to be supported by you guys for that to happen.

I really cannot express in words how much I hate having to post on BoW, there are plenty of good people there but everytime I visit I stumble on one of the usual "mantic sucks" trolls who just will not shut up about the same point for dozens upon dozens of posts. Warseer moderation is massively better, and I would really rather be posting here than there.

[Llew]

BoW isn't the easiest forum to post on, but for the most part trolls just get added to my mental "skim over and ignore" list. Just don't let yourself get drawn into discussions with people who aren't there with reasonable or thought-out criticisms. I'm happy to bludgeon people with long explanations of my position, but I won't waste that on people who I don't think are arguing in good faith.

[Darkover]

Maybe we could start a topic on BoW where we collect the feedback from Warseer?

We would simply need someone who keeps an eye on the suggestions in this thread, collects everything and copies them over to BoW.
This should be fairly easy.