Volley Fire Painting : Beyond the Gates of Antares C3M4 launch day

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to make lots of friends in an industry I love, and last weekend I was very graciously invited up to Nottingham by the gang at Warlord Games to take part in a huge game of Beyond the Gates of Antares at John Stallards house that saw a horde of players descend for a roughly 12,000 point game between concord and Freeborn forces, with no less than 11 Drones on the table.

On the side of the noble and glorious Freeborn were Warlorders Nick and Dave, alongside myself and Sam Phillips .

Facing us with the dastardly and oppressive Concord were Matt Houghton of Evil Bear Wargames, Sculptmaster Wotjek from Warlord, and the deviant monster that is Jez Allum.

The Game was umpired by Andrew Chesney, whilst Richard Dando floated around taking pictures that are immmeasurably better than mine.

No army lists were used, it was purely a case of pile everything onto the table, and we were each assigned 10 order dice to use as we pleased (Except for Dave, he only got 2...).

The game length was set for 5 turns. Objectives for the Freeborn being to destroy 3 power generators, and conserve our tanks, whilst the Concord had to secure 3 areas in the Freeborn half of the table, and also conseerve their tanks. Victory points were awarded one for each objective secured, and one for each tank destroyed.

For a game that featured 310 order dice pulls in what is in essence a large skirmish game, the flow was fantastic, each turn to pull all 62 order dice took approximately 45 minutes, and even with time to wander around, chat, eat, drink tea, stop for lunch, chat, drink more tea, pose for pictures, and occasionally actually play the game, we were done by just after 17:00, and started at around 11:30.

Flow of the game was very interesting, with the tanks facing off against one another and spear heading the assaults on objectives, whilst the rest of the armies tangled with one another. Despite being MOD2 (2 activations per turn rather than the one of most units), the tanks didn't feel particularly dominating, and all parts of our forces felt like they had a roll to play.

Man of the match has got to be Sam's Freeborn X-Howitzer, as that managed to slay anything it landed a shot onto, and was truly entertaining to see in action.

Eventual victory point score was 4 all, with the remaining forces being heavily in the favour of the Concord, and victory narrowly being awarded to them (Boooooo).

Sunday saw Sam, Matt and myself take a scaled down version of the game to Partizan at Newark, and this was a fantastic little event with some cracking games on display.

For our game we pitched Concord and Freeborn against one another again, with Sam taking on the Concord and Matt playing as the Freeborn, and myself alternating between Ghar and Freeborn forces.

For a giggle we(I) threw in some Ghar too, this time saw a decisive Freeborn Victory, after Sam presumably broke his dice during our game on Saturday.

All in all, was a great weekend, and a huge thank you to all those who made it possible. I for one Can't wait for the next one!