Today one of our club members held a Beyond the Gates of Antares tournament. I got into this game because I had the itch for something a little more “massed battle” than Malifaux and Blood Bowl, but not a GW game. I looked briefly at Bolt Action, but to much Real Life in my Fantasy makes me a little uneasy.
If you read my blog regularly, you’ll know I’ve been busy working on an army. It was 750 points, roughly, which was how many points the event was. We had 6 people to start, and got to 7 (someone sat out) mid-day. The plan was to have 8, but the 8th got busy…something about his girlfriend needing to go shopping or something.
We played 3 games and they were relatively quick. We played scenarios 3, 5 and 6 out of the main rulebook. In short — “get to the other side”, “defend objectives” and “take a thing from the center”.
I took some photos after I got destroyed in my first game. I learned a lot about mortars in that first game, and about how they are supposed to be used. Followed by some bad luck with my own mortars — the first was destroyed in an unlucky 10, and the second spent the entire game trying to recover from a Down result that it just couldn’t shake.
The photo just above this line, at the bottom left, is the mortar that just wouldn’t “go”.
I learned some important things about the game, and my army in particular:
- It’s nice to have portable shields (those blue template things), but it’s not as useful to need them to be portable and have them on your long-range artillery. There are other units that can take the shields, and I’m going to look into them as options. Perhaps a General Purpose Drone with a Batter Drone — 40 points for an extra dice (tempo) and a portable shield.
- Having no units that can move any faster than 5″ and still be effective, is a real pain. You can see below, it’s a foot-slogging army. Scenario 3 needs you to literally run across the table. Scenario 6 needs you to run in and then out again. Scenario 5, which we all think we messed up on, requires the attacker to run across an open field towards the defenders. Faster can mean moves faster — like jump infantry or bikes — or it can mean has more actions per turn — like tanks. I don’t know which direction I’m going to initially go, but it’s nice to see the use of each.
I lost game 2 horribly, and took no photos of it. Every single attacker felt it was a super lame scenario. The defenders got to place 3 pieces of terrain on their side of the table, along with 3 objectives, and then 3 pieces of terrain on the attackers side of the table. The 3 pieces on my side were all hills, which are True Line of Sight in this game. So I had nothing to hide behind while my gun-line opponent shot me to death. Maybe some trees?!
Game 3 was great. I played against another fellow who had lost both of his games. 😛 It was a “run in and out again” scenario, and we both had some great tactics and bluffs and it just really felt like there was a back-and-forth, the kind that makes for a great game. This photo is of my troops lined up behind a shield, looking for a good moment to grab the prize!
At the end, every one got a special edition Concord model (shown in metal below) and a Ghar battle suit sprue (which I don’t know what I’m going to do with). I won Best Painted, which in this case is also known as Only Painted. 😛 It’s such a small community and everyone is just starting out with it and I guess they all just don’t have the same “if you’re playing in a tournament, it’s gotta be painted” mentality I do.
Lastly, here’s a photo of us poking fun at the special edition model. The model looks very much like it’s on one knee taking a selfie, so we all mimicked it for this photo (not a selfie…)
