Posted by Euan on 01/10/2015
Greg and I played our third alpha playtest of Mantic’s Warpath 28mm mass sci fi battle game today. Warpath is currently blowing the bloody doors off of its umpteenth stretch goal on Kickstarter. The alpha rules are available to download and playtest for free here. You can read about our first game here. And our second playtest can be found here. N.B. both of those games used older iterations of the alpha rules.
We’ll be posting a few articles between us in response to positive comments (thanks!) – Greg has a super secret setup article here – and we’ve got at least one post each in the works.
[Edit: and here is Greg’s side of the battle report too]
Plague army
We decided to try a 2,000 points battle using the (emphasis here) provisional points values in the alpha rules. I played with Plague – I have quite a lot of them from Deadzone, and recently converted 20 extra 3rd Gens using the DreadBall Mutants team. My army list looked like this:
| Unit | Teams | Upgrades |
| 3rd Gens | 1 normal, 1 ranged support, 1 grenade support | Unit Leader (normal), all three have Beast support |
| 3rd Gens | 1 normal, 1 ranged support, 1 grenade support | Unit Leader (normal), all three have Beast support |
| 3rd Gens | 1 normal, 1 mortar support | Unit Leader (normal) |
| 3rd Gens | 1 normal, 1 ranged support | Unit Leader |
| Zombies | 8 teams | |
| 2nd Gens | 2 teams | |
| 2nd Gens | 2 teams | |
| 1st Gen | ||
| Teraton | ||
| Teraton | ||
| Strider | ||
| Strider |
for a total of 2,000 points exactly. Quite an impressive horde on paper, and even scarier to look at!
Greg’s army list is in his post here, along with some pre-battle tactics musings.
Deployment
We each had one objective building in our deployment zone, and there were four buildings across the middle of Greg’s awesome sci fi battlefield. Three of the buildings had Deadzone objective tokens on them – building X would be worth 2VPs to the player holding it at the end, while the other objective buildings were worth 1VP.
Coming into this game I hoped to used the Command Orders more frequently, and also to be more aware of the alternating activation system than I have been previously. I was also looking forward to trying out the new Suppression mechanics, which we had previously commented on.
All that was left was to choose an epic soundtrack for the battle:
Turn One
In Greg’s first activation he took the landing pad building with a unit of Assault Enforcers. My first activation was to use the Order “Move! Move! Move!” on the Zombie horde, which allowed them to make a triple move – 15″ directly towards the centre of the board. I hoped that this would force Greg to focus on the Zombies and miss what else I was up to with the rest of my army.
Lucky for me, Greg chose to respond immediately by charging the Zombies with his Peacekeeper Defender unit. This led to the first combat we’ve had in all our playtest games in which both units survived – one Zombie Team died but the Peacekeepers’ armour held strong. Of course, Greg quickly realised that the Zombies would now have the Peacekeepers trapped in a tar pit until the inevitable heat death of the Universe….
The rest of the first turn involved us advancing and shooting at each other (mainly using Blaze Away) to try to put Suppression markers on each other’s units. Notable moments included my 2nd Gens assaulting the landing pad, one Team being shot down as a charge reaction, and the other Team self-destructing while killing one Enforcer Team. Then Greg’s Orbital Commander acted, as his final Activation of the turn…
Showing typical Enforcer decision-making, he opted to blast my Plague Lord with a gigantic space laser attached to a ship in orbit. This replaced my 1st Gen with a smoking crater, and also engulfed a nearby unit of 3rd Gens. Learning point – Enforcers have a point and click to delete two units from the game weapon, plan accordingly when facing them!!
At this point I felt on the back foot. Greg had put a lot of Suppression onto my units, and had also occupied all the buildings on his side of the board making it more difficult for me to hurt his units. I knew I had to put some pressure on in response.
The answer was the Orders system. I used the Level 2 Order “Refresh” and succeeded, which allowed me to remove the Activation token of the 2nd Gens on my right flank. This led to a surprise charge on Greg’s bikes, wiping them out, and using the free move following the combat to occupy one of the objective buildings. And so ended turn 1!
Turn 2
Greg opened turn 2 with a charge from the Peacekeepers who had jumped out of the Interceptor, supporting their fellows who were stuck fighting the Zombies. This was a risky move as it turned out, because the Zombies killed them all while only losing one team. Greg’s initial Peacekeepers were still stuck fighting, but only 30 Zombies remained!
Things got a bit crazy after this. I charged the landing pad with a big unit of 3rd Gens, wiping out the Assault Enforcers holding it, and occupying it instead.
On my right, my baseless, part-painted Strider stepped forwards and flamethrowered the building held by a normal Enforcer unit. I rolled four dice needing 6 to hit – and got three hits! The flamethrower is “Blast 2D3” meaning each hit became 2D3 hits. I can’t remember how many hits it turned into, but when I rolled to damage it ended up being 9 points of damage – unit toasted!
In retaliation, Greg used the Level 3 Order that gave his Orbital Bastard another shot with his LASER FROM SPAAAAAACE – which bounced right off the Strider! Although it killed the unit of 3rd Gens in the building next to the Strider.
Just before that, my 2nd Gens jumped out of the building to finish off the Peacekeepers who were stuck fighting the Zombies. To be fair, the Peacekeepers had reduced the unit of 40 down to 25, but the Zombies had more than got their points back.
At the end of turn 2 we called it, victory to the Plague. 5 VPs to 1 I think, and we didn’t count up kill points but it was quite a clear victory in the end. Greg had three pretty embedded Enforcer units left, plus the Interceptor and the Orbital Commander. I had the Zombies, two units of 3rd Gens, one unit of 2nd Gens, 2 Plague Teratons and 2 Striders left.
Aftermath
The game definitely lives up to its brief of being fast and bloody! The new Suppression mechanic is much better than the previous iteration, our issue with it has been completely fixed and then some. Splitting Resilience and Nerve is quick and easy to remember. We were able to really focus on adding Suppression tokens to enemy units to try to Suppress or even Ground them before charging into combat.
As the first of our games in which Orders were used frequently, they added a new dimension to our play. Some of the Orders are needing another look for power level! At one point Greg used a Level 1 Order “Courage Under Fire” to fully remove TWELVE Suppression tokens from a Grounded Enforcer unit, who were then able to act as if nothing had happened. This seemed like a huge advantage for only 1 Command success and we wondered if maybe if should count as the unit’s Activation to remove all their Suppression.
Monstrous Infantry seem quite easy to kill – for example the Plague Teraton which has Defence 7+ but only Resilience 2. In a previous iteration of the alpha rules, Monstrous Infantry would become injured the first time their Resilience is exceeded, and dead the second time. As far as we could tell this has been removed, but now they seem a bit fragile. Sure, the 1st Gen who was dealt 7 damage by the LASER FROM SPAAAAACE would definitely be dead, but he normally only needs 3 damage to be dead.
Greg was continually frustrated by the Peacekeepers doing hardly any damage in combat, but to be fair it was one team against 8 teams of Zombies, a very optimal match-up from my point of view!
My Learning Points
- Zombies were unit of the match and I could use another 40 of them. Hello, Kickstarter insanity…
- 2nd Gens in bigger units (3 teams instead of two) will be better at assaulting occupied buildings.
- 3rd Gens in units of 3 teams, with one HMG and one Grenade launcher seemed like a good balance on paper, and turned out to be. Fire in the Hole preventing charge reactions is absolute gold.
- Upgrading every 3rd Gen Team to have Beast Support for just 10 points is a must! Maybe we misinterpreted the rules as written and/or it needs to be toned down, but the Plague are meant to be universally brutal in combat and that’s how it turned out.
- As Greg predicted, getting into buildings is a great tactic. The rules really simulate well how advantageous it is to hold a fortified defensive position. For a close combat-oriented army like the Plague, this forces you to think very carefully about how to assault occupied buildings. I like it!
- I cannot wait to get movement trays for my army. Firefight will be a nice option to have, but we’ll be playing big battles every time given the choice.
Overall the game is really starting to come together. I would encourage anyone who has suitable miniatures for proxy and/or an opponent handy to try a game out!
Secret Cave HQ Gaming Club 
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