Just like buses, you wait years for a successor to Epic 40k, and then two come along at once. Following Games Workshop’s winter release of Legions Imperialis, Mantic Games has launched a crowdfunding campaign for Epic Warpath, a sci-fi wargame about big battles between huge armies of tiny models.
Wargamer interviewed Warpath’s designers, Matt Gilbert and Alessio Cavatore, earlier this week. Like Legions Imperialis, Warpath takes a lot of design inspiration from Games Workshop’s classic epic scale wargames of the ‘90s, with a similar order system and turn sequence.
However it’s something of a coincidence that it’s seeking funds so soon after the Legions Imperialis release. Epic Warpath was already well into development when Games Workshop made its plans for LI public, and Mantic sought opinions from its player community about whether or not it should even bother trying launch a game in this scale.
The community response favored a big launch for the game, with multiple factions at once, so Mantic set to work planning a Kickstarter. Said Kickstarter is now live, and you have until 6am PST / 9am EST / 2pm GMT on March 1 to back it.
One big difference between Warpath and Legions Imperialis is the number of different races available. Veteran Epic players were disappointed that Legions Imperialis focuses entirely on Imperial forces fighting during the Horus Heresy, missing the huge swathe of Warhammer 40k factions that were present in the ‘90s games.
The Warpath kickstarter launches with four factions, and more are promised for stretch goals. To start with, you can pick up minis for the Space Marine-like Enforcers, highly advanced Asterians, ravenous Plague horde, and Squat-esque Forge Fathers.
The first stretch goal faction is the Veermyn, Mantic’s space-faring ratmen, meeting the demand for Warhammer 40k Skaven that Games Workshop somehow won’t address.
The scale and pricing of Warpath minis are quite different from Legions Imperialis, too. Warpath is in 12mm scale, closer to TT Combat’s Dropzone Commander than LI – though your Legions Imperialis terrain will work just fine.
Pledges start at $75 USD (£59 GBP) for a hard plastic starter army, rules, tokens, and dice, or $112 (£89) for two starter armies and bits, which compares very favorably with the Legions Imperialis starter set. Reinforcement packs with extra units, and super-heavy units in either resin or 3D printer files, are also available.
For fans of retro Games Workshop games, make sure you check out Trench Crusade, a new skirmish wargame designed by Tuomas Pirinen, creator of Mordheim.