"Playing Gates of Antares?" Topic

I think the bug got my last attempt at this. I just saw a Q and A with Rick Priestly (BTW he's not looking well; I hope he's okay). Are you playing? Is this game being played widely? Is it 40k in different clothes? Is it immersive? Fun? Thanks for the thoughts.

I would like to play, but like any game that is not 40K or Warmahordes, it has not made much of an impact locally. There is one player I can find in a 50mi radius, though there are a bunch more between 50 to 100mi radius… :/

Damon.

I helped playtest the original rulebook and,frankly, wasn't that impressed, largely because it played very much like Bolt Action with rayguns, despite Warlord's statements to the contrary.

That said, Warlord has added a fair amount of stuff since the original book was released and I can't speak to what changes and (hopefully) improvements they might have made.

LT

Seemed like a good idea initially. Read the Beta rules, purchased some figs. Not that it was bad but underwhelming. So I passed on it. The figs will get used in other games.

I think the core rules work fairly well. It is are indeed similar to Bolt Action but does have enough differences to justify itself. Most noticeably with expanded statline, reactions to enemy actions and D10 dice.

However I have a problem with how one of the armies plays. The Ghar have heavy armoured battle suits as the core of their army which some of the other armies struggle to deal with. Those games often come down to the Ghar crushing the other side or the other side managing to pin them out of the game. Neither of which is particularly fun.

Unfortunately the Ghar are one of the starter box armies and one of the few with plastic models. They also have one of the more interesting background and cool models so they have a lot going for them with the except of playing the game.

I think outside of the Ghar the game plays well and is fun.

I've been playing Antares for a while now, and had a lot of games in. It's a very different beast to 40k as everything is quite balanced and the game is very much infantry based with no huge dominating units, with an emphasis on pinning and breaking enemy units moral.

Here's a link to my overview of the game at it's release last year link

I like Antares. It's a lot different from 40k – energy beams don't stop at 24"… My thoughts can be found here:

link

On the Ghar, at first I found them impossible – but then I realised I was reading the rules wrong. Their battlesuits aren't vehicles and fail a 'res' test on a 10, regardless of the weapon. Concord can rapid fire their plasma carbines to great effect. I agree with Andy, is is well balanced.

Guy

It's a lot of fun. The new reaction rules are a huge upgrade over Bolt Action… Give it a try!