It was only a few months ago that I first heard about the Epic Warpath game. It is a 10mm large-scale wargame set in Mantic’s Warpath sci-fi universe. Initially it looked like an opportunistic attempt by Mantic Games to ride on the coattails of the Legions Imperialis game from Games workshop. This appears to not be the case and just a case of bad timing. Mantic subsequently did a poll of their fans to determine what course of action they should follow and the result was an upcoming Kickstarter project to launch a starter box with two armies in it.
While the timing may have been unfortunate Epic Warpath does have some similarities to Games Workshop’s Space Marine title 1. These are superficial though and while it isn’t a revolutionary game it appears as if Epic Warpath is going to be a very fun game. Mantic recently posted a video showing three turns of the game. The game is still at an early stage but it still exhibits the core of a very good game.
A Disclaimer
This article is based on my cursory experience with Legions Imperialis as well as what appear to be early versions of the Warpath models and rules. Things will most assuredly change before the game is delivered.
If you are already familiar with the game’s rules you can jump down to my comments about the game.
The core of the game
Epic Warpath is played over a series of turns with each turn being broken into five phases:
- Command Phase
- Movement Phase
- Overwatch Phase
- Combat Phase
- End Phase
Command Phase
The Command phase starts with each player rolling for Command Points. Each player rolls three black command dice and any leaders added to a force will give one or more additional dice. There are different coloured dice in the game (green and orange) which represent the influence of better leaders that will provide more Command Points. Once that is resolved, each unit is secretly given one of three commands; Advance, Sprint or Overwatch.
Advance is a move with the opportunity to fire at a later phase. Sprint is a double move with the option to engage in close combat. The misnamed Overwatch allows the unit to fire before any other units.
This is very similar to the structure of Legions Imperialis which has four orders – First Fire, Advance, March and Charge. In Legions Imperialis, the Charge order is a bit confusing in that it can be used to give a unit a single move or it can be used to allow it to do a double move and then move into base contact. It seems superfluous and possibly confusing.
After assigning orders, players roll for initiative and then reveal their orders. There is an optional Fog of War mode in which orders are only revealed when a unit is activated. If I do play the game I suspect that I will be using Fog of War in most games.
Activation
A quick note about unit activation. In each phase, the player that won initiative has to determine if they will start activating units first or second. This happens in each phase allowing the initiative winner to determine different orders in each phase. If you want to fire first you do not need to move first. This is a subtle change to the normal way in which activation works and will pose some interesting questions for gamers as they play.
Movement Phase
Movement in the game is similar to games such as Legions Imperialis or Epic: Armageddon. Players take turns activating their units to take a single or double move depending on the order they were given. There is a single mention of a ‘snap-fire’ mechanic in the rules but I didn’t see it used in the video and it isn’t expanded on in the rules.
Combat comes after movement so players are using their movement activations to try to set up close combat or fire attacks. Or run away from them. Epic Warpath has a height stat for units which means that you can also move a unit to try to block a fire lane or assault path. There seems to be quite a lot of opportunity in the phase for all sorts of great shenanigans.
Overwatch Phase
Once movement is over any unit with an Overwatch order are allowed to fire. Players, once again, alternate activating units to fire. A player can also choose to remove the Overwatch order to delay a unit’s fire until the Combat phase.
Shooting things
Weapons in Epic Warpath have a Dice stat in addition to range and special rules. The dice determine how many dice each stand in a unit will roll to determine the results of the combat. So the Enforcer Peacekeepers have a Dominator Rifle that has a range of 12″ and 2 Dice. So a unit of 6 Peacekeepers will roll 12 dice when firing the Dominator Rifle.
This is similar to Legions Imperialis where a Tactical Detachment’s Bolter has a range of 12″ and 1 Dice. The core difference is that in LI the weapons typically have different to-hit values. In Epic Warpath all ranged weapons use the Shooting stat of the unit. It seems to be a simpler system with less to remember.
The player that is firing will roll the dice that the unit generates. For each result that is equal to or higher than the unit’s Shooting stat a hit is generated. The player can, if they want, spend a Command point to re-roll two dice that failed to hit. Some units also have abilities that let them re-roll but no dice can be re-rolled more than once.
Any hits are then rolled to try to equal or exceed the target’s armour value in an attempt to damage them. The player can, once again, spend a Command point to re-roll any dice that didn’t damage the target. In some cases, mostly vehicles, the target will have a Save trait that they can use to try to avoid the damage.
It sounds as if it would take a long time but if you watch the video it doesn’t seem to slow the game down.
Combat phase
Once all of the First Fire Overwatch has been resolved then players have the opportunity to resolve fire from any units that Advanced or engaged in Close Combat. In the previous phases, once a unit has completed its activation its order token was removed. If it can still fire or it has engaged an enemy unit in close combat then it has a combat token added to it. These tokens show which units are eligible to act in the Combat phase. Players take turn selecting units to fire or close combats to resolve until all possible combats have been resolved.
Units that are pinned or that are assaulting into a building are given the Assault Hindered token to remind players that their attack rolls are at -1 for the combat.
Close Combat
Close combat in Epic Warpath is almost exactly the same as the fire combat. Stands of models that are in base-to-base contact with an enemy stand or within 1″ of a stand that is in base-to-base can fight. Players determine the dice they need to roll using the Dice stat from their close combat weapon and then roll using their Assault stat. Players then take any hits and then roll to damage using the Armour stat of the enemy unit.
The main difference between close combat and fire combat is that after all damage is resolved the side that has taken the most damage is judged to have lost the combat and then has to make a number of rolls based on the difference between the damage totals. This uses the Nerve value of the army. Any failures result in additional damage. The losing unit is then marked as Pinned.
If there are still infantry units left after the close combat has been resolved then they remain locked in combat. Vehicles that survive a close combat are moved 1″ away from their opponent and are not locked. If an enemy unit has been eliminated then the winner of the close combat is allowed to move up to 4″ as a consolidation move.
End Phase
Finally, in the End phase any status tokens are removed from units and any Pinned units can roll to remove their pin tokens. If they are within the command range of a Leader then they are able to roll two dice to try to pass the test. Then victory points are determined based on the scenario and the next turn continues unless one player has met the scenarios victory conditions.
Other details
This is a Mantic Warpath game and so it uses D8s instead of D6s. I am a fan of any game that avoids a D6 as it gives the game designers more range for unit stats and also gives you more possible results to roll. The math for a D8 is not as simple to do as a D10. Each face of a D8 is 12.5% which is simpler than the 16.6666% for a D6 but obviously still a bit trickier than 10% for a D10.
The Epic Warpath video shows infantry being transported in APCs but there doesn’t currently appear to be any rules covering transported units in destroyed vehicles. The rules do cover Hover and Flyer transports and the game does have unit Traits to allow infantry to deploy from flying and hovering vehicles. That is always a great addition to a sci-fi game 2.
The rules currently don’t have a lot of special traits but that may just be a factor of the lower number of units in the game. That said, Firefight and Deadzone don’t have a lot of unit traits so I am not expecting that there will be more added.
Infantry in buildings look to be very tough and taking them out appears to be something that requires artillery or special preparation.
Things I like
The Epic Warpath rules appear to have simplified the order system from Space Marine/Legions Imperialis. There are only three orders and despite the Overwatch order needing to be renamed (unless they are going to add an actual Overwatch/Snap Fire capability) it is about as many orders that a game like this really needs.
Split movement and combat
It goes without saying that I like games that use alternating activations but I also am fond of the split between manoeuvre and combat. As much as I like Epic: Armageddon one of the problems of the game was that units could move and fire in the same activation. If you didn’t want a formation to make it into a building or onto a victory point you could move a large unit up and shoot the heck out of them and try to break them before they could activate.
Lets look at an example from the video to show the difference. Later in the game, Andy is moving some transports to try to stop Matt from moving a Plague unit onto a victory location. In Epic: Armageddon Andy would have moved the transports and fired. Since the infantry are in the open they probably would have been broken and not able to move.
With the current Epic Warpath rules Andy can only move and then wait until the Combat phase to try to shoot. At that point the Plague infantry are in the woods and already on the objective.
Now, what Andy could have done is move between the infantry and the woods to force the Plague unit to have to assault the transports. He wouldn’t want to do that if those Plague troops were Leapers but if he really had to stop them from moving onto the objective he has options.
In Epic: Armageddon there were always units on the table, like an Imperial Guard Leman Russ Company, that you had to either avoid or shut down. Moving and shooting with a unit that had ten tanks and multiple weapons could wreck other units.
Morale
The morale system looks as if it is still being worked on and expanded but I like that the rules use a single token to mark a unit as Pinned and that this effect isn’t as debilitating as it is in Legions Imperialis or in Epic: Armageddon. Formations in Legions Imperialis seem to break the first time they take fire. Currently this is a problem with people not having enough units to build larger formations or build formations that are large enough that they can take fire and not immediately need to make a break test. Epic: Armageddon had a slightly more nuanced morale system but it required you to track the number of Blast Markers 3 a unit had taken. With Marines, or large Ork units, this could require a few markers. Smaller units in E:A were fragile (i.e. all of the Eldar) and once a formation had been broken once it was usually only a hit or two away from breaking again.
Currently Epic Warpath is avoiding those two extremes but it does seem as if there may need to be more negative repercussions for a unit being Pinned. That is something that would need to be playtested.
It is exciting to see that even at this early stage in the game’s development that it plays well, the main systems are easy to use and that it already provides players with a lot of interesting choices to make. If you watch the video (and you really should) you can see Matt and Andy having to puzzle out their moves and firing options.
Tokens
One of the more interesting parts of the game are how tokens are used. If you have played games at this scale before you know that it is easy to forget things. Did my Land Raiders fire? Did we finish this assault? Did I move these infantry units? Epic Warpath has a handy way to avoid this. Units are given orders and then as they are activated those tokens are either removed or they are replaced with a combat token if the unit has options in the next round. If you Advance with a unit of tanks the Advance token is removed and replaced with a Shoot token. If your infantry charges into an Assault then their Sprint token is replaced with an Assault token. Those are then removed in the Combat phase after the unit has fired or assaulted. At the end of the turn there should be no tokens left (other than status tokens or Pinned tokens) and if there are then you forgot something and can rectify it there.
This was a frequent problem in Epic: Armageddon but it also came up in games like Future War Commander and even Space Marine.
Artillery
Now this seems to be an odd thing to like in a game but the artillery rules, as shown in the video, are clear, concise and have some randomisation to them. The Barrage Point system in Epic: Armageddon took a long time to work out and for all of that effort and testing it doesn’t really seem to be any better than the one currently in Epic Warpath. The Indirect fire rules make sense and the different results between direct and indirect fire mean that a player will have discrete choices to make about placement of artillery and how to fire them. And without a barrage table.
Number crunching
Currently it seems as if there isn’t any game systems that are creating artificial impacts on how players build their forces. In both Epic: Armageddon and Legions Imperialis there is a push to maximise the size of your formations to avoid reaching break points too soon. When testing E:A, one of the issues that come up constantly was what impact the base size of a formation would have in game. Too small and it would break too quickly and too large and it would be too difficult to fight against. The barrage table also impacted army building. There were sweet points in army lists between the cost of more artillery and the number of Barrage Points you could generate.
These sorts of effects are things I really dislike in games. It isn’t realistic and it often just rewards people who min/max their army lists. I don’t want to play like that and I expect games to not reward that type of thinking.
Things that need work
So before I begin, lets remember that the rules, models and even the available units in the game are still very much a work in progress. This is also based on watching the demo video, reading an older version of the rules and reading the News posts from the Mantic Games website. No dice have been rolled to inform these comments. Also, I didn’t really see, or read, anything about this game that I didn’t like. I can’t say that about Legions Imperialis and even Epic: Armageddon, a ruleset I tested for years, had things I wasn’t a fan of 4.
I like the simplicity of the morale system but I think that there needs to be more repercussions for Pinned units. Perhaps a modifier to checks to remove the Pinned token? Or an additional damage point in assaults? I certainly don’t want anything as complex as in Epic: Armageddon but some additional detail here would be appreciated.
The boxed set that is currently planned has the Plague versus the Enforcers. The Plague don’t really do anything for me and I think they are a bit one-dimensional. Great for a game like Deadzone or Firefight but I think they lack units and expanded abilities for a large-scale game like this. The Marauders would be a better choice.
Warpath also doesn’t appear to have the breadth of combat units that a game of this scale and scope requires. Mantic never went down the same path that Games Workshop did and forced players to buy enormous vehicles that shouldn’t ever be on the field in a 28mm game. As a result they don’t have a lot of units to draw on for Epic Warpath. That I am aware of. This isn’t a major problem but every game needs stupidly big tanks or air units like the Space Marine Thunderhawk or the Storm Raven.
I have to assume, based on previous Mantic Kickstarter projects, that there will be followup forces for the Asterians and the Forge Fathers. Those are actually the two factions in Warpath that I like the most. Especially the Asterians as they seem, to me, to be how you actually handle a race like the Eldar. I would be worried about the two initial factions in the game since I don’t really like the Plague that much but I am going to assume/hope that more factions will be available quickly.
The miniatures (and again, caveats apply) don’t seem to be up to the level of detail that GW is putting out. That said, painting all of that details in an 8-10mm miniature is a total PITA. You see them when you pick the mini up but you don’t when you are playing and it is far easier to get a unit of vehicles painted when they don’t have a wealth of detail on them. The Space Marine Storm Raven for Aeronautica Imperialis has eight lift fans on the bottom of the vehicle. Why? Simpler models might not have that wow factor but they do paint up quicker.
Summing it all up
This has been the first large-scale combat game I have been excited about since Games Workshop gutted Specialist Games and killed Epic: Armageddon. I love the Horus Heresy but after watching some videos and playing a few test games I can’t really see myself playing Legions Imperialis. It feels like an incomplete and rushed system and isn’t fun. I have been gathering all the necessary resources online to use the minis with the old Epic:Armageddon rules in case any of my friends want to use those minis.
The Epic Warpath rules are clearly still a work-in-progress but even at this early point they present a game in which the players need to make choices and which can still present surprising results. I can’t wait to see more and I hope that there are more videos coming form Mantic.
- The title graphic does look a lot like the Epic Armageddon logo to be honest. ↩︎
- It always annoyed me that Assault Marines jumping from Thunderhawks was removed from Epic: Armageddon. ↩︎
- I would have thought that a game produced by an English company wouldn’t put a term in a game that would be abbreviated BM.
↩︎ - Assaults could be a real PITA for example and see footnote 2 above. ↩︎
Pile of dice 
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