--- title: "Epic Warpath" subtitle: "Rules review" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-07-26 00:01 date: 2025-07-26 00:01 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: book_warpath-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [gaming, wargame, scifi] --- Recently, Mantic Games released the PDF version of the **Epic Warpath** rulebook to Kickstarters. I appreciate this, because it means that while I wait for my game assets to arrive, I can start learning the game. As a player of **Firefight**, I predicted the rules would be at least a little familiar, but I don't mind reading over the specifics to have a headstart on internalising the mechanics. I've been reading through the rulebook over the past few days, and they look fun and really interesting. More importantly, they feel evocative of massive combat, which is one thing you might want from a wargame using 12mm miniatures. This is my review of just the **Epic Warpath** rules as written, with 0 hours of actual gameplay. The "epic" label on a wargame has lately come to denote, somewhat confusingly, miniatures that are smaller than usual. The theory is that the smaller the miniatures, the more miniatures you can fit on your tabletop. In other words, with smaller miniatures you can have multitudinous armies, and anything using the adjective _multitudinous_ must be _epic_. Given this expectation, I've been hoping for a game that set itself apart from the mid-range and skirmish battles I've been playing. I didn't know exactly what that meant, I just knew that I was hoping for some game mechanics that made it clear to me that I was playing a game about a vast army. I want to feel like I've got hosts of infantry and lots of vehicles. Forget mortar fire, I want my army to inadvertently crush a city just by traversing it. Don't get me wrong, I have no idea how to accomplish that. But that's what I was hoping for. Did I get it? Not to spoil the review, but yes. Yes I did. ## Battles at scale Scale is a peculiar thing. What looks huge suddenly looks tiny when compared to something larger. What looks small is huge next to something smaller. And yet something smaller can also look vast in multitude. And what feels like a big battle with an impossible number of troops feels almost cosy when you bring in several other regiments. That's how Epic Warpath works, from start to finish. The models are small, but you have more of them, which makes your previous battles in **Firefight** or **Warhammer 40,000** feel like they were mere skirmishes. Because you have a bigger [smaller] army, you also have to imagine that you can't just radio your other squad commanders to coordinate your tactics. A big army ought to have a sense of detatchment. You've moved up in the ranks. You're a major general (or something) now. You're not on the ground waving at a fellow captain from across the battlefield. To emulate a sense of tactical detachment, **Epic Warpath** uses a lot of Action Tokens. In the Command Phase of each round, each player places a secret Action Token by each unit. Then they roll for initiative, and then their concealed Action Tokens are revealed. After rolling for Command Points (just like in **Firefight**, and using the same d6 Command Dice), players alternate turns to activate each unit. Every unit already has its orders, so unless you have Command Points to spend on surprise actions, each unit performs just the action you decided during the (aptly named, come to think of it) Command Phase. In other words, you're not a commander on the ground any more. You're not stopping short of your advance because you caught sight of an enemy troop sneaking behind some ruins. You're the one issuing orders to the commanders, and they're carrying your orders out with no questions asked. The ground battle itself is a lot like **Firefight**, or at least enough like it that you can easily play **Epic Warpath** with minimal adjustment. When 2 opposing units are locked in Assault (essentially melee combat), they each automatically get a Combat Token so they can't be given different orders later. There are also Hindered Tokens for difficult terrain penalties, and Overwatch Tokens, and probably others I'm forgetting about. Vehicles and walkers and super-heavy units have some exemptions from certain conditions, so you must build your army list wisely. The heavy use of Tokens is intriguing to me, and I'm looking forward to the experience. ## Blast templates and target dice Another way **Epic Warpath** evokes the sense of a mass battle is with the use of blast templates for area of effects, and target dice. A blast template marks the area on your tabletop that's potentially effected by a large blast. You roll Attacks against all bases under the template, with the benefit of exploding 8s (when you roll an 8, roll an additional dice). If you're using a blast weapon during Overwatch, you roll a special Targeting Dice. Some sides of the Targeting Dice has an arrow and number on it, which tells you the physical direction and the number of inches you can move your Blast Template. Both of these seem like really fun subsystems, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. ## Buildings Infantry troops can "enter" a building, and similarly any unit outside can attack a building. You can get on top of buildings, or take cover behind them. Buildings are definitely more than just tabletop decoration in **Epic Warpath**, and that's a nice feature to have as an option. I don't actually interact with buildings much in my wargames, aside from using them as cover. I'm not sure I'll use them much in **Epic Warpath** (although I have purchased the option terrain kits along with my pledge, so I'll certainly have plenty of buildings available to me) but I appreciate that I can start, or at least use them in extreme circumstances. ## Fliers So far, I haven't loved the concept of fliers in wargames. There's something about a flier model, even when it's elevated, being on the tabletop that I can't resolve in my imagination. What does the model actually represent? It's not the actual scale footprint of the flier, at least not relative to its actual location in the game world. Maybe it's the targeting reticule of the flier gunnery? Whatever it is, **Epic Warpath** does seem to have reasonable rules for flier models. You can shoot at a flier with a -2 modifier to your Hit roll (-1 for super-heavies) unless your weapon has the **Anti-Aircraft** keyword. Some fliercs can also deploy additional units, which seems like it could be fun. ## Epic gaming, coming soon I don't have my **Epic Warpath** models yet, but when I receive them they'll definitely be the smallest models I've ever attempted to paint. I'm not sure how that'll go, but I'm looking forward to trying the game once I've got everything battle ready. The rules are very promising, and refreshingly familiar. It does appear that [late pledges](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manticgames/warpath-the-game-of-epic-scale-sci-fi-warfare/description) are still available, so if you've never tried gaming at a smaller (er, bigger) scale then this might be the perfect time to try it!