Friday 2 March 2012

Mantic Warpath Box Arrives

After all my strong willpower over the last couple of months I've fallen foul of that classic downfall - the Ebay bargain impulse buy. In this case the Mantic Games Warpath starter box "Fate Of The Forge Star" for £26. For an early game play review I will point you at this good review .

At the risk of being mocked , I'll just go over my initial reactions to what is in the box.


Opening the [flimsy] cardboard box the first reaction was "Holy Plastic Sprues, Batman". It also looked very thrown in the box, especially as Mantic always list their practical packaging/storage in the selling points of their units.

Orc Sprue #1 (x 10)

Orc Sprue #2 (x5)

Dwarf Sprue (x 8)

Plastic bags with Orc Trike (Raptor), Dwarf Cannon platform (Hailstorm)
and Dwarf Heavy weapons team (5 figures)
Also included are 10 10mm dice an A5 scenario & stat sheet and an A5 fold out rule sheet./book. To be honest the impression of the production is "cheap". However, it is the actual content that interests me, not the packaging so lets move on.

The detail on the figures is nice a crisp with next to no mould lines/flash. The Dwarf sprue has two lower body options (with cape or without cape) and two upper body options. One of the upper body options is ready moulded with head and weapon, the other is customisable with parts on the sprue - 3 head options, and standard gun or a pistol and open hand/hammer combo. This mean that around half your standard grunt soldiers will have capes and half won't, which is a bit strange (and not evident on the site pictures). The Heavy weapons team are all full torso sculpts with separate arms.



I quickly made up the two most basic constructions of either side so you can see them. The attempt at adding a scale ruler at the back hasn't quite worked, but is pretty close for comparison. The toe to eye measurement of the (slightly hunched) Orc is 25mm, which is probably a good bit shorter than their Games Workshop equivalents.

So what's the opinion? The orcs do look very fantasy with sci-fi guns but should look in a mob (which is how they appear organised), but the dwarfs look a better squat army. With all those 60+ figures and 2 vehicles it good value at it's full price (~£50 RRP). At the half price I managed - even more so, consider the conscience clear!

3 comments:

  1. Good value for money then mate. Nice to pick up bargains like this. I like the look of there Project Pandora

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  2. How well do the figures fit together? I bought Dwarf King's Hold and found the two-piece dwarves quite a pain to assemble.

    I don't mind the orcs in this set being a bit smaller than GW's as I tend to think Warhammer 40,000 has gone a bit too far in pushing their orks to the bulky end of the spectrum.

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  3. Kelvin, having put together the 2nd type of dwarf on the sprue now I must say that they are also "gappy".

    Having had a closer look online I see that the lower body parts are exactly the same sculpt as the fantasy ones and suffer according to your experience. On the table I'm sure the eye will be drawn to other details other than the gaps, especially as you only see them in units if you play the Warpath rules!

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