Unboxing Antares

Guess what came in the mail this morning? Gates of Antares! Dr Rick Hudson is doing the review on the game for the next issue of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, so I’ll let him review the game properly. So what do you get in the box? Two starting factions and pretty much everything you need to play except a tape measure.

The first thing is the Beyond the Gates of Antares rulebook itself. It’s an impressive volume rivalling Black Powder or Hail Caesar for size and content. The layout is superb. There will certainly be a few new rules to learn, but the basics of the game itself looked pretty simple, as summarised in a small booklet. The game also uses the cool Bolt Action activation system with a clever little exception (a special rule for the Ghar, which I assume is pronounced like the ‘Gar’ in Garlic). The dice used are mainly D10s apart from the activation dice mentioned and a few others. All the dice (activation and otherwise) are provided, of course. There’s even some nifty looking supression markers and templates for the game.

As for the contents, there’s quite a lot! The models themselves remind me as being inspired by high science fiction, from games like Mass Effect or films like Fifth Element or Prometheus. This is not the grim ‘dark’ future of 40K but a grim new future lit with plasma beams and particle cannons! Pew, Pew, Pew!

There are two squads of Ghar (the ‘baddies’) consisting of six battle suits and four squads of 5 Concord troops with 12 Drone support (the ‘goodies’). The four sprues of Concord troopers each have five troopers plus two standard spotter drones and a light support drone. The box came with a metal special character too, Strike Leader Kai Lek Atastrin.

The Ghar are equipped with battle suits, which are very cool. I’ll have to resist talking to my opponent in a monotone voice - “We .. ARE .. the .. GhaRR! You .. will .. be.. eradicated!” in my worst Dalek impression…

There was six Ghar battlesuits in the box - I liked these models the most, as they were suitably alien. However as this only gives 400 points of Ghar, I can feel the need for more…

So our conclusion? “The Force is strong in this one.” We’ll need to take it for a spin and give the game a go tomorrow night… Expect a battle report soon.