Ghartastic!

As I've mentioned previously, our little gaming group has gotten into Beyond the Gates of Antares.

Or rather... we bought the rules about a year ago and have been slowly collecting figures... but never played the game. Until now! Assembling a 500 point scout force each we gathered at Mats' cat's house (Mats insists he's only the caretaker and pet slave) on Sunday to try this new malarkey.

Tectorist scouts. They use their scanners to point out targets to the other Ghar.

Ghar are bred for war, riding in giant three-legged battlesuits. Failure means you are relegated to outcast status and have to footslog it without the big suit, but still expected to do your bit and die for the Ghar Empire. As I play horde armies in 40k I didn't want another horde army for Gates of Antares, but only using battlesuits means I get few units and few activations, which limits my tactical flexibility (as if I had any tactics).

Outcast command squad. Apparently the troops need motivating.

As I had to get at least a few outcasts I decided to paint them as fast as possible. Desperately trying to get some paint on the figures I resorted to the Army Painter dipping method. (I already had six battlesuits painted and a seventh basecoated in metal). I sprayed them with GW Zandri Dust, opting to let that be their skin colour. Then I blocked in their equipment (they don't seem to wear clothes but I painted their bodies the same colour) in a couple of different grey shades. (Only two, not fifty!)

The leader of the command squad has extra copper bits on the back. I guess they are shield projector thingies.

The round protruding bits were painted copper and the connecty bits were painted silver and then they were dipped in Army Painter strong tone. As in literally dipped, no time for carefully applying the stuff with a brush. After hitting the figures with Tamiya Flat Varnish they were table ready, even though the bases weren't finished. I plan to do the lenses on their helmets some day, but it's not essential.

Mats' awesome Systema terrain set up for the battle. You can se my arm as I'm pretending it's a plasma claw.

I played against Håkan's Rebel Ghar -- basically a bunch of outcasts not content with dying for the Ghar Empire -- which outnumbered me by four or five or something like that. We both had Tectorist Scouts so they advanced rapidly across the table while my suits lumbered up behind them.

My assault suits get ready to advance. A tectorist indicates the enemy is near.

Immediately we started to flip through our rulebooks. "Ten-sided dice? Standard movement is five inches? Random force activation? Low rolls are always better? Who wrote this game?" Actually the game is very good.

It's not just Bolt Action with S/F models. It's just not Warhammer with D10's. It's entirely it's own game even though you can see traces of Rick's previous works in it. Just like E.T. is an entirely different movie to Saving Private Ryan, even though they are from the same director.

Even though heavily armoured, one of my assault suits blows up almost immediately.

Since the game is so fresh we made lots of mistakes. Like being too careful with the assault suits, which ended up being pinned and not getting anywhere and then slowly shot to pieces one by one over the course of the game. Like not remembering there was a reaction system until the next to last turn. Like not knowing if you should try to rally your pins or try to move instead.

"Hello? Anybody home?" A Tectorist Scout doing his job, errr... tectorising a house.

I lost the game of course  (I'm blaming the dice, they were used to rolling high) but still had a very fun time and went home eager to paint more Ghar. I have an Outcast squad and a Command Crawler to paint and something like twelve more battlesuits to assemble!

An outcast disruptor cannon with loader, an outcast squad leader and two more scouts.

In an attempt to further speed up the painting I sprayed the next batch of outcasts with white, and then painted their skin Zandri Dust by hand. A few equipment items were painted light grey, connectors silver and protruding bits copper like before. I did the same with the disruptor cannon except the legs were painted dark grey. And then they were dipped. I really like the effect of Army painter over white, so I will be using this method for the rest of the outcast squad and any more outcasts I buy. I hadn't decided how to paint their eyes when I did this test batch, I'm thinking yellow now.

A Ghar Bomber Suit being assembled. Sadly I can't use it in small points games.

So what can I say? I'm hooked. Well played Mr. Priestley, well played.