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antares

Antares – “Race for the Vermillion Star”, and campaign app.

Posted on April 11, 2017

We’ve been playing Blood Bowl for a long while now. There are a few reasons I think why it has had success: small model count, utilizing models people had already, there were a good number of people who already knew how to play when we started so the community was easy to build, the league structure that our commissioner built up, the games RPG-like elements, and lastly: a good app to track it all.

I can’t do much about a lot of that stuff, but the last 3 we can build. I partnered with a friend who wanted to do a map-based campaign to write some rules, and I set about writing an app. This is what has been taking up all of my free time for a few months, and I’m ready to show off the “first draft”.

Goals

I had a few goals going into this project.

Simple, but not too simple.
Each game has to have meaning, within the context of the greater campaign.
Ensure that no one misses a game because of a lack of opponent.
Make it easy to join, and easy to leave. I’ve seen to many map campaigns die because 3/8 people stop being interested.
Allow scheming. Everyone in my club is connected through WhatsApp, so we should be able to get some devious moves going on.
Allow a narrative to be written. 40k has taken some flak in our group from “forge the narrative”, but it doesn’t have to be so serious. A story is as simple as “we all need to kill Chris because he has a movement 10 gutter runner!” That’s a story, and although it isn’t one that will sell novels, it’s worth writing about.

How I met those goals:

Maps are pretty simple. I also had a couple friends go over the app to ensure it was somewhat user-friendly. This was a good idea, as I hadn’t “killed my darlings”, as they say in the writing trade. 🙂
We added a point-system whereby players gain 1 point for winning a game, and points for playing games at the end of themonth. Points can be spent on things like attacking anywhere (instead of adjacent map spaces), placing extra terrain on the table and gaining a few extra points on the table. (but not too many).
I’ve currently missed on “no one misses a game”. I wanted to include rules to allow in-faction fighting, but not necessarily encourage it. We left those out for now, with plans to include them should we notice a problem.
The campaign is entirely faction based. In other campaign systems, you hold sections of the map personally. In this game, you hold them with your faction. This means that players can drop out if they lose interest, and join if they think it’s interesting, without needing to allocate or de-allocate sections. The trade-off is that players may feel less ownership, which could lead to a lack of interest.
There is a front page news feed that displays information from campaign-creators, as well as players who fill in their entries.

Rules

While I was writing the app, myself and another person were working on a set of campaign rules that would fit with my goals and would also be fun to play. This was the result. This document drove all of the “game-like” aspects of the campaign (the game outside of the game), which strives to give the reason why someone would play in a campaign at all. It’s gone through a lot of revisions, and I expect it will see a few more once it actually hits the pavement.

Video games start with a design document, which outlines what the goals of the project are, and a little bit of what someone could expect when they play the game (which hasn’t been written at that point!). I think of these rules as my design document for the app – the game must be playable with just the document, and the app has to facilitate that play.

Photos

I’m deliberately not posting a link, because it’s not ready for public use right now. I want to run a full campaign through it locally, and make a few more user-friendly features before I offer it up to others.

These pictures are all from my development copy of the app, so some of the text will be gibberish. 🙂

The app has been designed to be game-system-agnostic. It tracks wins and losses and the map, but doesn’t tell you how to drive those games. You just could as easily play Backgammon.

At the front page, there is a news feed. This comes from 3 places: sites administrators can post news, campaign-creators can add news, and players can add a narrative to their games. Only the news from the campaigns you’re a member of will be shown here.

On the left, there are a few buttons. Clicking the “Campaigns” button opens a side bar that shows a list of all campaigns in the app. Here you can Create a Campaign, as well as click on an existing one to look at it.

Entering a game

To join one, you’ll click on a campaign in the sidebar and it will bring you to a screen similar to this. I’ve already Joined this campaign, otherwise there would be a Join button at the top. Campaign administrators have a gear button to give them some extra options. Regular players click on the map to select which section they wish to attack. They can only attack sections adjacent to their existing territories.

At the top, there is also information about:

Phases. This is a generic term to denote a period of time. We’ll come back to this.
Materials. You gain materials for winning games. They can be spent in game on some special things. You can also give materials to your faction-mates!
Mandatory attacks. Each phase, each player in a campaign must attack a certain number of times. This is to motivate people to play at least one game per phase!
Optional attacks. Each phase, each player is allowed to attack a few more times. We limit this, to ensure that someone with infinite free time doesn’t steamroll.
VPs. Who is winning!

After you click a territory, you come to this entry page. Here you’ll fill in how many points you got, and how many materials you used, as well as the same information for any opponents you played in the game. You can also fill in a narrative for your game, if you want.

Lastly, you’ll Save it (if you want to come back to fill in information later) or Finish it (if you’re completely done).

Creating a campaign

If you click Create Campaign, you’ll be brought to this simple entry form. Give your campaign a name, enter whether it is a Simple campaign (no map, no meta-game features) or a Map campaign. I have thoughts of adding some other options here as well – a tournament is one possibility.

You will also add as many factions as there are in your campaign here, and they will be automatically assigned a colour. When you’re done, click Save or Generate Map.

A map is generated automatically for you, but you still need to place your factions on the map so they have a starting point. It is a simple drag-and-drop interface to give factions their start sectors.

When you’re all done, you Save your campaign!

The Future

I’ve got thoughts, but most of them have to wait until we actually get this campaign going and I get real people running through the system.

I’m not happy with how the “in progress campaign” screen looks. The map is large and unwieldy, and looks awkward. I keep looking at Google Maps for inspiration, but they get to use a map that fills their entire screen. The map isn’t “out of place”, because it’s the reason you’re on the page!
Clark wanted me to add tournament support, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to.
User customization of things like number of squares, size of the map, colours, themes, etc.
Whether to monetize some of it. I look at the Roll20 app and think that I’m not that far away from having something that might be worth a few bucks to some people.
The public…

But for now, it’s going to be about running through the stuff I have with real people who are actively trying to use the system!

Work-in-progress

Antares – Concord Plasma Cannon Team

Posted on April 9, 2017

I totally forgot I asked Mike to buy these for me, and picked up the D2 drones a while back because they were actually available whereas this guy was not at the time. I wanted some heavy firepower, as my opponents were starting to bring res 12 models to the table, and the plasma support team is a relatively inexpensive way to bring that down to res 6.

But now that I have the bikes, I have a different plan. An “eggs, meet basket” plan. I’ll take the bike squad, and buy a compactor drone and stuff the plasma cannon into it. I’m planning for Wet Coast, right, so flexibility is good. The bikes are a super mobile unit for taking objectives, and when they get to their destination they’ll be a giant piece of artillery too.

Could also be a terrible idea, a 200 point unit that loses their super gun on a lucky shot. >.>

Work-in-progress

Antares – Concord Bikes

Posted on April 1, 2017

Wet Coast GT is being planned, and Clark is planning to run Gates of Antares at it and I’m doing helper-monkey things and planning to play in it. I finally broke down and decided that if I was going to try to win a game (I did win one, a few weeks back) I needed bikes. Speed is going to be the name of the game, and bikes are the best speed Concord has.

Similar to the D2 drones I started (and didn’t finish), I drilled into the existing flying-stand holes in these models to allow the flying stand peg to sit deeper into the model. The guy in the back has an unnaturally long stand, but I’m confident the other two won’t fall over when you look at them.

These are nicer models than I gave them credit for in the photos. I thought they looked dumb and disproportionate, but I’m pretty happy with them on my desk. Except the heads, which are the softest cast I’ve seen out of Warlord. >.>

Musings & Meta

Antares @ CHOP!

Posted on February 20, 2017

For the number of people talking about Antares locally, there still isn’t the representation I was expecting at our Sunday gaming club. I arrived late, around 1:30pm (we open at noon) and one guy was sitting with his army set out, and a table set out, waiting for an opponent. I looked around and saw 2 Antares people playing Blood Bowl, and 2 watching another game, one of whom I found out was waiting for his BB game! One issue we have with growing this game is that Blood Bowl is a commitment in our league, so if you fall behind on games you have to prioritize it over other games!

I got asked if I wanted to play BB, but I only brought Antares, so I played 3 games of it! 😀 This post won’t be a battle report, because I kind of hate (reading) them, but read on because it’ll turn into a mini-review of scenario #4 “Tunnels” from the Xilos supplement.

First Game

I played the poor guy sitting with his army out. The trouble is, that he’s a guy that others have been complaining about. Not that he’s a bad guy, but he plays this wicked fast Boromite army that’s in your face turn 2 and it’s quite daunting to have to deal with 2 rock rider units, the rock rider character, 3 units of lavamites and 3 X-launchers. The lavamites are quite good.

We played one of the scenarios I wrote for the scenario competition a while back (still no links, since maybe it’ll be published one day, that’d be nice!). It was the only scenario I didn’t get a chance to play test before I submitted it, mainly because I didn’t have time and I was more confident that it would be good. And oh man, was it ever.

I was trying to write a game that scored more like Malifaux, with VPs accruing at the end of every turn. This allows you to “lock in” points so you can forget about those points and focus on how to get other ones. It has a interesting “flowy” feeling to it, since you don’t have to be focused on the entire board at once. “This one, then this one, then this one” sort of feeling, if that makes any sense at all!

Until you get flanked by lavamites. Rapid sprinting at you, and rolling 1s for their Ag tests so they move 25″. I played a denied flank, leaving a Strike Squad dangling to bait him and trying to push more force up a single side, while he spread out evenly. It was on the verge of working, except that because his entire army is so fast and so strong there’s no flank to deny, it’s just a flank taken. He ran forward, grabbed the points and just kept running. The only thing that saved me from getting completely destroyed was on turn 3 about half his (Co 9) army failed a Command Check, then failed again to remove their Down orders!

I lost this one 6-4, but am super happy with the scenario!

Second Game, Xilos #4

My dudes, cramped in a tunnel. The scenario description recommends 750, and I heartily agree!

I’ve had it as a goal of mine to play through every scenario in the Xilos book. I usually buy books like these and then read and forget them – “scenarios are hard”, “lets just line them up and smash each other”. After my stint in Malifaux, I’ve learned that scenarios are the best to play a wargame. The Xilos book has been a source of some very excellent ideas, but I’m afraid to say, some less good implementations.

My opponent “broke through” first, so got to place a unit ahead…and then cramped the rest of his army. The caverns he’s standing on are the ones placed before the game starts.

The first scenario was so asymmetrical I think I would have been annoyed if it hadn’t been explained in the scenario summary that this was the case. Xilos #4 is one sided, and I don’t think it was intended to be so. It feels like the writer had a really good idea…and then wrote something different down. It’s a game where you place tunnel sections on the board, tunneling out your map as you go. Very cool idea and I was really excited to try it out, but the rules have this terrible conflux:

You must always place your first tunnel section at a right angle to the table edge.
You must always place subsequent tunnel sections heading directly towards the table center line (used in one part of the rules) or “your target”. (a phrase used in another part of the the rules without explanation of what my target might be?).

When you combine these two, if you both don’t place your first tunnel section directly in line with the initial canerns, you will very likely, never meet. (when you place a tunnel, roll a D10, if you roll a 10 you can place a cavern that can be placed to adjust your tunnel course slightly). If you do place your tunnel section directly inline with your opponent, I think you end up with a very uninteresting game with a long tunnel where only 1 unit from each side can shoot at anything.

This game my opponent placed in line with the existing tunnels and I placed off-center to see what would happen. It wasn’t until turn 6 (out of 8) that I rolled a 10 and managed to place a connecting piece that the game got any sort of interesting. He almost won without interacting with me at all, but we got to turn 8 and he won 3-2.

We finally met. If he’d sprinted at this point, across into the far cavern, he’d have auto-won.

The state of the game at this point. We ended up “just moving” most of our armies, without drawing dice because everything at the back couldn’t do anything but keep up. Saved a lot of time!

I moved into the battleground cavern to block his movement and shot up his guys a lot.

Don’t cross the streams!

The end. I couldn’t run into the left-most cavern in this photo to contest it and tie the game up. He won 3-2.

Third Game, Xilos #4

We re-racked and tried again with a small rules variation – you can place a tunnel section at any right angle – so you can choose to change course as you wish.

This was much more interesting. We both placed our initial sections off-center from the middle, but only slightly so that a single tunnel section could be used to break into the main cavern whenever we wanted. I pushed to 2/3s of the way up, and he pushed to half way and that was the winning move for me. I managed to bottleneck him in his single line and he didn’t have time to break in again while I sprinted to the far end of the cavern to win automatically 4-0.

I broke in at two points, allowing me to Ambush with the left-most squad and keep his army pinned in his tunnel. I sprinted a squad across the biggest cavern to hold 4 at once and auto-win.

Not a Fourth Game

We thought about other variations that could work to make this more interesting. I initially wanted to be able to use Orders dice to place another tunnel section during your turn, but since the game was so cramped and movement-heavy already, I worried that spending any dice not moving would bog the game down.

My opponent suggested that you could put D3 pins on a unit to place another section. This was an interesting idea that I hadn’t considered, your troops getting tired from digging so much! In my Antares scenario designs I haven’t thought about pins as a “resource”, and I’m super happy that he made me think about them that way!

What I wanted was to be able to build more interesting tunnels – with the current rules it looks like the optimal placement is two off-center lines that could break in at any point, giving you flexibility but also protection. But that you had to break in at the 2/3s mark no matter what, in order to prevent your opponent from stealing the game like I did. If you place additional sections during your turn, you could push hard in one direction and still be able to defend if you needed to.

And that’s about it!

Featured Images Musings & Meta

Antares – Pin Markers and Excuses

Posted on February 18, 2017

I think this was the last time I had a painting slump that felt like this. I haven’t done any painting or modelling since my last post, which is disappointing to both of us. (Or, at least just me). I have in mind, the following hobby projects queue’d up:

Skaven Blood Bowl team has 5/16 models fully finished. Another 9/16 are about 70% done. Another 2/16 are just primed white.
2 C3 Medium Drones that are just primed, a light drone with subverter matrix that got to a single layer of paint before being shoved in the case.
5 Algoryn troops and spotter drone that I wanted to paint as part of my Strike on Kar’a Nine review.
- Don’t get me started on the plans I had to go through each part of that box piece by piece. I haven’t had time to game.
Most of a Freeborn force that I picked up for a steal.
Use that photo setup I’m very pleased with. 🙂
Play every scenario in the Antares Xilos expansion.

I think those all of are the hobby “commitments” I’ve given myself, that I haven’t done anything with. It is nice to see the list.

Here’s what I did tonight:

You need pin markers for Antares. I’ve been using just a bunch of tokens to mark pins, but as part of that Freeborn force I got some of the Warlord games pin markers and I wanted to use them. On their own, they are exceedingly difficult to read and the Antares Facebook group has a lot of people doing something similar to this so you can actually read the numbers.

Wash of Abaddon Black. I don’t think this worked out well.
Wash of Drakenhof Nightshade. I like this colour more than most blacks, because it’s deeeeep.
Quasi-careful highlights of white over the numbers.
Went back in with the Drakenhof to touch up the edges where I’d messed up.
Purity Seal for safety?

I’m a little worried I should have primed something or something, but priming something you aren’t painting all of is a pain.

Now onto the excuses? Yeah, I don’t feel like going to bed yet. These are all the things that are filling my brain, instead of painting:

My wife is pregnant!!! woooot! We have a lot of things that need doing around the house…including keeping her fed and watered, which isn’t always easy. She’s suffering a lot from pregnancy sickness. 🙁
I’ve had some sort of intestinal issue for about 4 months now. Constant light cramps and gas, and often feeling like I gotta go, even when I don’t. Sucks a lot, particularly since the solution is 30 days of a very stringent diet (plus antibiotics) that I’ve somehow failed to follow perfectly.
Trying to plan a diving trip.
Trying to plan to teach some friends toddler to ski.
Planning meals for the above intestinal issue. Can’t just walk out the door and eat, this thing needs careful management.
Two circus shows – one in March and one in June.
A secret hobby project that I’m going to talk about but not tell you any details for a few months.

Before I got a career job, programming was a big hobby of mine. I’ve written tons of little programs that have barely had any use, just because I thought it would be neat to have a program that did that thing. Over the last few years, because of globalization and Google Play the world has been able to benefit more from this hobby. I’ve written 4 apps for Android that help with various gaming related tasks. My new project, which is literally sucking up and devouring every moment of time I have that isn’t scheduled otherwise, is a new web app that I hope might be of use to some of you when I’m done. There’s also a possibility that I might try to monetize parts of it (although the basic functionality will be free), like a DLC for your web app.

It’s time for sleeping, thanks for reading and I hope the photo of pins markers will keep you satisfied until I return. Tomorrow at least I’ll be playing some Antares and maybe I’ll have some photos of that. I’m on Xilos #4 and it looks really good!

Musings & Meta

Beyond the Gates of Antares – Strike at Kar’a Nine

Posted on January 26, 2017

I mentioned last time that I had a lot of projects suddenly, and this is one of them. I’m super excited to be able to review this box set for you, particularly since it’s the first time my blog has generated income. Yes, this time I get to add the caveat: this product was provided for free for review! 😀

This article will be very “quick and dirty”, since there’s a good bet that if you play Antares you’ve seen the entire contents of this box already. I have a series of follow-up articles planned that will require some time to get out. Here’s my plan

Give the C3 sprues to a friend. He’s planning a Freeborn Command Squad conversion that I can’t wait to see. I’ll take photos, and get him to write something about what he did, or interview him and post it here.
Split up the Algoryn sprues. I had planned on winning the scenario contest (takes a lot of hubris to “plan to win” a contest :D). I was going to give the sprues from that to Myles, since he was instrumental in playtesting my scenarios. Since I didn’t win that, I’m going to give him a sprue from here. I’ve got another friend who plays Algoryn who I’ll give a sprue to. Then I’ll assemble and paint a sprue of my own.
This box contains a series of starter/demo game scenarios that I’m going to play and review.
I also want to talk about the 2D terrain and fold-out board, as well as the rulebook and starter book.

Enough about the future, let’s get to this box!

Review

It’s awesome.

Starting out with the least important detail – it’s very well packaged. It’s a fairly small box that one might expect to only contain a single Space Marine Rhino, but instead contains an entire game in a box. You can’t buy many board games this big, let alone an entire miniatures game.

The top layer holds the mini rulebook, the starter book and a little Warlord advertising thing. Underneath those are a quick reference sheet, which also has two cut-out rules on the sides (not shown). This box has been designed for the beginner Antares player, and the reference sheet is well designed for that purpose. If you are an expert, I suggest using the one hosted at Vardos Delhren instead as it is more complete.

Dice! I think the D10s are the same as the Xilos starter box, as I don’t know if there’s a good reason to have the black dice in this bag! It was in Xilos for the Ghar Distort dice. At the same time, the C3 (and maybe Algoryn, I don’t know) often need different coloured dice in a single squad to differentiate between the Plasma Carbines and the Plasma Lance shots. The orders dice are the C3 colours and the Algoryn colours. The blue on red is exceedingly difficult to read, but since these are just markers for the most part it’s not a huge deal.

Sprues! We’ve seen the results of the C3 sprue countless times. It’s still a great sprue, containing 5 Strike Squad members and 1 C3D1 drone, which gives you a great combination of “what you need” and “what you want”. The Strike Squads are the C3s bread and butter, whereas once you get a few more units in your army the D1 drone is a nice optional choice to make among many other great units. 2 spotter drones round out this sprue, which is great since they are in every C3 squad I put together. (even still my bits box has ~10 spotter drones un-built). There are 2 of these sprues in the box, which is a great starter number. A C3 player will likely want 1 more before branching out, as I tend to have 3 Strike Squads as a basic component of any army I’ve made that didn’t contain Drop Squads (as they take up a lot of points and also fulfill your Tactical requirement).

The Algoryn sprue is a little more difficult for me to talk about confidently, since I don’t know what these weapons are. But here’s a few guesses about what’s on this sprue:

Definitely there are 5 models. 🙂 5 legs of roughly 3 different poses – two “stepping” poses, two “bracing to shoot” poses and one “already stepped” pose. The torsos are all identical. There are 7 heads, 5 with full helmets, one half helmet and one open faced.
The guns are where it gets complicated, but I’ll do my best:
- 5 mag guns. I think the mag gun is the one that’s on the bottom left of the sprue in this photo.
- 2 micro-x launchers. I think the micro-x launcher is on the bottom, the right-most gun, just before the torsos.
- 2 mag repeaters. I think the mag repeater is on the bottom, just up from the bottom-left-most mag gun.
- 1 mag pistol. This one is the obviously pistol-like one. 🙂
1 spotter drone. I’m super stoked that the Algoryn get a very different looking spotter drone! The C3 one is nice, but while the Freeborn sharing it makes sense fluff-wise, it bugs me as a miniature painter.

Other people have done a far more comprehensive job of outlining exactly what army options are on this sprue than this, so I suggest reading Listing to Ports write-up if you’re an Algoryn player and want real knowledge!

Going deeper into the box, there’s a sprue of templates and a sprue of blast markers which is really nice. Then we get down to the bottom. There’s a large fold-out piece of paper that has an awesome poster on one side which is a larger version of the Strike on Kar’a Nine box art, and on the other side is a fold-out table mat. Lastly, there is a single piece of 2D terrain.

I’m looking forward to trying these out. I love the fold-out mat, since it means you could set up anywhere immediately. I also wonder if I love 2D terrain. I’m consistently annoyed by needing to go to the back room to get 3D terrain, carry it out, gently unpack it trying not to break anything, and then reverse the process at the end of the game, all the while knowing that you can’t help but break and chip it by constantly moving it around. I’ve never seen a good terrain carrying solution, and so it ends up rubbing against itself constantly. 2D terrain, if I’m ok with the 2Dness of it, could mean never needing to worry about breaking it again. I’m going to play all of the starter scenarios with this terrain, and may Sharpie the edges of the terrain first as several others have done.

Lastly, here’s a photo of the entire contents of the box and my cup of tea. I’m not British, but I still can’t get through the day without a cup of tea.

Price

One last thing is a comparison of the cost of this box compared to the contents. This is in CAD, with costs generated by asking XE.com to convert from the UK store. In Vancouver, Canada this is how we tend to buy Antares because the US prices on the US store tend to cost us about 15% more.

2 C3 sprues $33CAD
3 AI sprues. The Warlord store sells them from $33CAD for 2, so 1.5 is $49.50CAD. Note that we’re only 2 line items into the breakdown, and we’re already well past what the Strike at Kar’a Nine box actually costs. >.>
Templates $9.90CAD
Blast Markers $9.90CAD
D10s $9.90CAD (and you only get 1 colour, not 3)
Order dice $16.50 for 10, and you get 5 in the box so $8.25CAD
Rulebook $49.50CAD. This isn’t strictly a fair comparison, as it seems that the hard cover rulebook has rules in it that aren’t in the mini rulebook. This is a disappointment, but with the help of Battlescribe, likely not a big one. Also, personally, I own the PDF rules so I can always go there.

Which adds up to…$169.95CAD. Which is ridiculous since the box only costs $58CAD. $112 savings is unreal.

Summary

If you are looking to get into Gates of Antares, this box is still a good deal even if you don’t want to play the C3 or Algoryn as the other contents cost $87.50CAD for $58CAD and you could sell the sprues to friends.

The difficulty is that the rulebook isn’t complete, which I think we’ll get into later. The internet says it’s missing special ammo and special unit rules, which makes it less useful. I haven’t looked though, so do your own research on this if it’s important (or wait for when I get to review the paper contents in more detail :))

If you are planning to play C3 or Algoryn, this box is an insane deal. Buy it now!

Featured Images

Antares – Drop Squad and C3D2 Drones

Posted on January 8, 2017

It’s been a while since I wrote, because Christmas and some other things got in the way unfortunately. But tonight I powered through the last of my drop squad guys and finished assembling the C3D2 drones.

The drop squad guys are the same recipe as the leader, drone about a month ago. I painted one a night for a few days and then life. These are absolutely the coolest models in the Gates of Antares range. They’re so dynamic, and so bad ass looking and every drawing in the rulebook of them I see makes me dream of awesome space war movie scenes. I’m glad I’m done them so I can move onto other projects, and I’m super stoked to play with them all painted!

The last game I played I noted that I was very behind in the arms race. My NuHu was the only way of getting a really solid anti-tank weapon — SV4 on the lances just isn’t enough — and the NuHu is very expensive at 200+ points if you kit her out properly. I wanted some guns that were a little more tough to kill, and a little more dependably anti-tank. The C3 plasma cannon support team hadn’t been released yet, so I ordered the C3D2 Drones which have a plasma cannon on them. They are more glass cannony than the support team version – they have +1 Acc which is great, and +3 Res (roughly) which is awesome, but the support team I think wins out the defense race because it has 2 (or 3) guys to soak hits and the drone has to roll on a weapon drone chart which doesn’t make up for that.

These guys were stock to assemble, except that I took a drill bit to their underside to drop them lower onto the pegs. I learned from watching Clayton and his Freeborn Skyraiders that metal models standing high on little flying stands are going to get knocked over a bunch.

Remember years ago when I would pull out my photography equipment and take some really nice photos with nothing in the background to distract you? I got lazy. Thankfully, TableWar came to the rescue with this kickstarter, and I bought a new home. Once that KS comes in the door I’ll be setting up a small area to take photos, and we’ll make this happen.

I also have a couple Antares related projects coming up, so if you love Antares hold onto your hats, this is going to be a great few months!

Musings & Meta

Antares – Writing Scenarios

Posted on December 15, 2016

The Beyond the Gates of Antares community on Facebook is super active. One of the Warlord employees is constantly on there, and he recently put up a scenario writing contest.

Scenario writing is a good exercise. It’s very similar game design, but the parameters are really limited. You still have to build something that is readable, understandable, makes sense, and is fun for everyone. But you are limited by (some of) the actions already available in the game and by the theme or genre of the game. For example, I love the hell out of how Malifaux does scenarios, but I can’t just drop a Malifaux scenario into Antares, because (just for starters) in Malifaux units get 2 actions per turn and in Antares they get 1 action per turn. Antares already has the idea that orders dice denote an “action”. If we were playing in 40k, there are no “actions” at all — units in 40k are either standing near something or they aren’t, killing something or they aren’t. The language of the game doesn’t support anything more interesting than this.

I instantly had an idea for one scenario, and ideas for 3 more were conjured up days later. I wrote 3 of them out, and the 4th one was left on the drafting room floor, as it had too many moving parts for me to have time to finish. I haven’t included the files here, since I don’t know what Warlord is going to do with them, but I’ll try to put them up if they don’t end up using them in any official capacity.

The scenarios were:

What Does God Need With a Starship? A 2-player game where both players have a lot of mobility, but limited reach and so need to choose positioning carefully. I like games that have a lot of mobility, so that tactical positioning is really important, but because the game is still about “shooting that guy over there”, you can’t just be able to show up without constraints. I split the table up into 3 sections that couldn’t interact with each other, then placed objectives players need to shoot on each of them, and a “God” in the last one who was invulnerable until his shields were taken out, and who was shooting at players the entire game.
Hack the Shard. A 3-4 player game of lying while racing to the center. Players must choose how best to use their limited actions to earn victory points, vs killing their opponent to reduce their available options. I’ve always been inspired by the lying and bluffing of the Battlestar Galactica board game, and this game comes a little bit from there. 1 player is secretly holding the “Superior IMTel” and has different victory conditions from his or her opponents. Players are incentivized to run to the center because of the VP-holding marker there, but also have to use their actions to discover who has the Superior IMTel. You can lie about who has it, if you’re a decent liar, to put people off the track of where the real VPs are held.
The Antarean Trail. Race for 8 markers, each of which earn you points once per game. You can quickly grab a few points, but you’ll have to work harder to get them all. We didn’t get a chance to play test this one, but it’s the simplest of the bunch, so I’m more confident it’ll work as-is. >.> I like that in this one players get VPs as the game progresses, so you can keep a running total, and also don’t have to worry about your VPs. Once you have 2VPs, you’ll always have at least 2 so you can change your focus to the next goal. It’s kind a “checking off the list” game – “Ok, I got the medicine and the food but need the equipment still…”. I also really love the Oregon Trail reference. 😛

Here are some photos of our play test last night! Everyone really enjoyed the game, to the point that we’re still talking about the rules and how to best manipulate them today on WhatsApp!

We played Hack the Shard with 4 people. I choose a force of only 5 dice at 750 points to reduce the chances my opponents would be able to h4x0r my shard. At the same time, this reduced the number of dice I could use to h4x0r other shards. A trade-off that ultimately paid off. 😛 Drop Command with Medi Drone, Drop Squad, 2 Strike Squads and a Light Support with Batter Drone.

Clayton’s Freeborn are really cool. He had this 300+ point Command Squad that was blowing 18 SV0 shots per turn around the table. Downside is, in a game with a lot of trees SV0 isn’t good enough to make your opponent fail a lot!

Racing for the center to try to take the intelligence marker. I moved up my C3D1 drone to provide batter shield before I moved my troops up.

Next turn I moved it up again, pinned and/or killed the Boromites to my right so I only had to worry about the Algoryn to the front. Unfortunately, this strategy ultimately failed as the Algoryn had too many units still on the table and were very much able to kill my shit, then race in with his bikes and take it away!

Another photo of Clayton’s Freeborn Command Squad. This thing is a beauty!

Two of us had the same coloured dice, so we used my Orders Dice (Android) app to play the game.

This was a great game, that only needed a few numbers tweaks to make it better. I got what I wanted from it – at one point I believed every person had the Superior IMTel other than the person who actually had it. Well played.

We play tested What Does God Need With a Starship? last week, which went extremely well. It’s really nice to be able to have down to earth conversations about what is and isn’t working in a game!

Tournaments

CHOP! for Xilos – Scenario 3 – Exploration

Posted on November 10, 2016

Following quickly on playing scenario 2, I managed to convince a group of people to play the multi-player scenario 3!

Even though we only got through turn 2 over ~2.5 hours, the game went very smoothly. Everyone had a good time, very unlike massive GW games. I think the alternating activation, and quick activations (except for assaults) keep everyone mostly engaged at all times! I was also pretty militant about pulling the next dice – with 5 people and 46 dice in the bag (in turn 1) I needed to keep things moving!

This was also the first game of Antares for one of our most passionate game players. He’s the guy who owns mostly every game played in the club, but unusually he’s also the guy who runs tournaments for most every game played in the club. 😛

I took a ton of photos!

46 dice! We added another Distort dice in turn 2, as per the scenario special rules. We had some odd pulls – in both turns Dan received most of his dice before anyone else, and Clayton received most of his dice after anyone else!

Pretty much at the beginning of turn 1. We had the Freeborn allied with the Ghar, as Clayton’s Freeborn had been paid off by them to help hold Xilos, and also to give the new player an ally. We changed some of the other rules — we gave the non-Ghar players a 15″ deployment depth, and had the “Ghar” come on from the table edge on turn 1 since I wanted people playing right away and didn’t imagine we’d get to turn 3. 🙂 We told the “Ghar” players they couldn’t assault on the first turn as well, since assault is pretty brutal and they were pretty close.

I deployed my C3 in the closest corner of the table in the photo, Ryan deployed his Isorians to my left, and Pat deployed his Algoryn opposite me.

My corner of the board quickly became a quagmire, with the Algoryn opposite and some of the Builder Relics between us. Then the Freeborn and Ghar came on the table edge and started shooting things!

This was funny. The Ghar put on their Command Crawler, just the one unit, behind the Isorians battle lines. The Isorians spent both turns trying to make the Crawler go away, but just kept being completely unable to do anything about it. I believe that Ryan is looking forward to Isorians getting some heavier weapons.

The problem on my side didn’t dissipate. I moved forward and tried to “cross the streams” of the Batter shields of my T7 and the Algoryn Avenger? I don’t know what that thing is, all the Algoryn’s look alike. 😛 (a little casual fantasy racism for ya!)

While the Isorians were focused on the Command Crawler, these Ghar suits snuck up behind them and started pounding on them.

Behind my view, the Algoryn had a mag mortar and x-launcher on a hill and were trying to pin these suits to death. After they were removed, the mag mortar pivoted and took part in the middle of the battle a bit more, but 2 turns is hard to do much in. 🙂

I moved Arenal Yu up the hill to use her IMTel Stave to remove the Avenger, but whiffed. I was corrected, in that I thought she had 3 shots at SV3 but she actually has a single shot with D3 hits. Because of this, I didn’t give her a Spotter drone, since I didn’t think a model with 3 shots needed it. It turns out that Spotter drone is just a 10 point mandatory upgrade!

Clayton has been super excited about his Nuhu, calling them the best models in the range! I don’t know if I can agree – I don’t really get behind the “dance party” aspect that he’s loving so much, but they are pretty awesome! Apparently his Nuhu are a pair of Space Germans from Space Berlin who are constantly on the look out for the next EDM dance party. The constant oontz, oontz, oontz from his side of the table is pretty hilarious.

I didn’t mean for these to be comparison shots between the Freeborn M4 and my T7, but here it is! This is the best model in the range! I love the hell out of it, and wish that I could get a T7 and an M4 into a 1000 points (or even 1250 – 1250 is “possible”, but super difficult!). It just looks so cool!! (also, the more I look, the more I think the bottom photo is from a different game…).

Tactics?

If you got this far in reading, I commend you.

The Nuhu’s use is getting more solidified in my mind. I put her into the T7 with 2 Shield Drones, and the T7 had 2 Shield Drones. This is a lot of points in one place so I wanted to protect it well on it’s way up the table. This also helps give the Nuhu a lot more mobility since the T7 can move 10″ over MOD2 and then she can move another 5″ and still get her shots off. Since the Stave is fairly short range, this additional mobility is pretty important. I do regret (as above) not giving her a Spotter drone, but that’s easy enough to fix.

I took my max number of Get Up!s this game (didn’t get to use them), which I will prioritize in future games. Having a unit that you need to not be Down, but be unable to roll a good number for, lost me my last game and it just doesn’t need to happen.

Drop Command are nice with Acc 6 and a medi-drone, but not as nice as I want them to be. Like others, I do with I could take a Drop Squad without needing to take the Command first. The limitation means that there isn’t room (with my current models) for the Squad, which limits those all-important Lances!

I’ve put on order an Algoryn Plasma Cannon I’m going to use as a C3 PC. Because I need more high SV weapons, I added the Nuhu into this list for her SV6. But she’s ~200 points and limits what else I can fit into the list. The PC has SV6 and is a lot less mobile, but is also ~100 points cheaper so I could get my heavy weapon and still be able to fit more mobility into the list. Movement is key in all of the games I’ve played so far, so having those Drop Squads in the list is going to really help out with that!

Fluff?

The Algoryn and C3 have maintained hesitant ties throughout the Xilos initiative, but when actual resources are on the line communication breaks down and the gloves come off. Maybe their fractured alliance can be repaired, but maybe this is the end of their common ground.

You can never tell with any given Freeborn whether they’ll deal with you, or kill you, but this band of space DJs appear to have been heavily bought off by the Ghar Empire and didn’t even ask if there was a counter-offer on the table.

The Isorians have had very little presence on Xilos so far, but showed up just in time to help out their ancient and incompatible enemies, the C3. Arenal believes that their assistance was given only because they were distracted by a Ghar Command Crawler, and they didn’t have time to worry about other things, but I believe the ancient human saying is “any port in a storm”.

The Concord led by Arenal continue to receive a beating at every opportunity given, even simulated opportunities, and there is a good chance that the NuHu will take some time to meditate on the correct forces to send into the next battle. Reinforcements may be necessary. They may also be unavailable.

Tournaments

CHOP for Xilos – Scenario 2 – Counterattack!

Posted on November 9, 2016

I once again failed to get many photos for this game. I played Dylan in his first game against 1000 points of his Boromites! The first Xilos scenario felt complicated with the deployment mini-game (which has me thinking a lot, by the way, about unique deployment methods), but once you got into the game it was fairly straight-forward. This game was straight-forward to start with, making it a decent beginner game.

The forces of Arenal Yu stood resolute against the cold metal bulwark of the Last Tree on Xilos (not actually the last tree, just a symbolic name created by the IMTel to encourage troops to work harder. Ideals are easier to promote than Reality). The hard working men and women of Adama’s work gang had a job to do, to dig a giant hole under the Last Tree, and they weren’t going to let the C3 stand in their way. Unfortunately, the Last Tree was also the site of an in-progress transmat station that the 21st Regional had been ordered to protect and construct. This timing was exceedingly poor in the end, as the coincidental arrival of the Boromite workers put an end to the construction of the transmat station and thus also set back the C3 progress on landing their heavier support on Xilos.

Afterwards, Clark pulled out his Tsan-Ra. I love and hate those elbow spiders! I can’t wait to see someone paint and play with them!

I lost the game by being overwhelmed. I rolled to build the transmat 3 times, rolling a 1, a 2 and a 5, before I lost enough troops to lose the game. I used some of my troops poorly (I failed to Ambush twice while lavamites approached…), and made some poor decisions in army selection (Batter drones from my X-Launchers would actually have been a good idea here, as opposed to the last time I did that). On the other hand, this was the first game I’ve played where I felt like my troops actually had some teeth. Before this, I would get removed quite quickly while merely putting a few pins on a few opposing units. Here I removed a couple units, pushing them back to the table edges.

This was my first game with my new Drop Command as well, but they spent most of the game pinned and down. 🙁

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