Gates of Antares

[swiftnick]

So my club wants to play a mass combat sci-fi campaign. We play a lot of the rampant games so xenos rampant is a no brainer. We also play a lot of Bolt action. My question is are beyond the gates of antares just Bolt action with sci-fi add ons?

[Glasvandrare]

No, I'd argue that it is significantly more than that.

Sure, BA influences are seen in many places, but it has been extended to be more detailed, with more options and finer granularity.

[Major_Gilbear]

Antares is a bit more complicated and granular than Bolt Action.

Partly, this stems from being D10 based rather than D6, and partly it's due to the wider range of equipment/technology and unit profiles available.

If you've played BA already, then unit activation and orders, as well as a few other elements, will already be familiar to you. Other stuff, like drones, grenades, weapon types, armour types, etc will take a bit of learning though.

A few things to note;

The main rule book is a bit of a mess when it comes to presenting, explaining, or finding rules. Make sure you get the latest FAQ, and I think there's a downloadable index too.

Army lists in the books have all been superseded by the free ones available from Warlord. Use these, as they are better and more balanced than the book ones.

A new second edition of the game  is being worked on. How far away this is from release, I don't know, but the new edition is definitely coming.

From experience, whilst some units benefit from having a few extra models added to them, minimum unit size (or close to) is generally the most useful.

Make sure you have a fair amount of terrain on the table. If in doubt, err on the side of putting more down rather than less.

[swiftnick]

Thanks will have a look at it. Hopefully be easier than learning new rules from scratch.

[Major_Gilbear]

If you fancy having a look, Tabletop Warlords on Youtube have a lot of battle reports, unit analyses/summaries, and a play-through of all the scenarios in the revised starter set "Assault on Kar'A Nine". I think there's also a few interviews with Tim Bancroft up there too, who I think is leading the new edition of the game.

It's pretty warts-and-all (so their videos tend towards being quite long), but I personally like that, and it makes their stuff very helpful to learn the game from if you've given the rules a read-though and are feeling a bit lost afterwards.

It's also a nice way to see how smaller armies can be composed, and what they're like to play - FYI something like 500pts is quite small, whereas 1000pts is fairly large.

[swiftnick]

Thanks will have a look when I get home.
We are actually using a lot of the old warzone figures so I did wonder about WW2 on steroids and thought of just amending Bolt action.
Will give Antares a go though.

[Major_Gilbear]

Ah, using old Warzone figures you say? I wonder if Warlord's BA spin-off game Konflikt '47 might suit you then?

It's basically BA with some post-war and weird-war stuff added on. If anybody in your group has any Secrets of the Third Reich, Incursion, or Dust figures, they'd fit right in too.

...It's "WW2 on steroids" and it might save you the hassle of having to create your own games mods. 

You may have to split up some of the more unusual units (Brotherhood, Dark Legion, Cybertronic) between the other factions though, unless you make your own force lists using existing units as a starting point.

[swiftnick]

I do have it and have even flicked through it.
So it is in my mind to look at.