Beyond the Gates of Antares

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Beyond the Gates of Antares is a 28mm science fiction tabletop war-game, designed by Rick Priestley and Tim Bancroft and released via Warlord Games, who made the V2 rules and army lists available for free at AntaresNexus site. The only reason not to check it out is a lack of interest and/or time.

Antares utilizes the same order dice that are used in Bolt Action, but has several key differences, such as primarily using D10s and rolling for equal or under, and individual units having different stats. Overall, the system is very crunchy, especially when compared to Mantic's Firefight, with several actions available to units, Agility rolls to move past obstacles or through difficult terrain, blast templates and overhead shots that can land on your dudes, a large variety of equipment and weapons with secondary firing modes, several possible reactions, both to being assaulted or fired at, special units that can activate two or more times per round and roughly 30 keyword special abilities.

Oh, you can also make units of mixed morphs, which gives each model a slightly different statline!

Setting

The Antares is a colossal machine, powered by a red giant star, and a companion dwarf star, that has tunnels and gates to millions of different places around the universe, thus acting as a Nexus. Ships that can handle the 2,000° Celsius trip while on the Nexus can easily make FTL travel by jumping through these gates. Gates aren't static and they may collapse, essentially cutting access to parts of the universe, then rebuilding the gates and pointing them to different places. Such events mark the Ages of the Antares universe, and the game is set on the brink of a probable seventh collapse.

Although it's not specified or even hinted how Antares looks, considering that ships passing through have to fly within the star's photosphere (its "surface"), almost "sailing" through its plasma currents, it's likely that the nexus is a form of Dyson Sphere, with the gates on the star-facing side. This also means that ships are forced to deal with a time dilation of 5.6 to 1: for every 1 hour the ship and its passengers experience, roughly 5 hours and 36 minutes passed "outside".

For the most part, human society is post-scarcity and everything runs on nanomachines nanospores, son. This means that where these things are present, human brains are effectively connected to the internet at all times, which is called Integrated Machine Intelligence, or IMTel. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, though, as the nanospores of different factions are largely incompatible with one another, which is where the Freeborn houses come in: they work mostly getting stuff from one faction, sterilizing the nanospores' defense mechanisms, then selling to other factions.

The term panhuman is used to identify any species, called morphs, that originated from ancient humans. These are the Algoryn, Boromites, Ferals, Gyohn, Hantale, Krasz, NuHu and Vyess. There are also misgenic rejects, which are the results of failed experiments into creating new morphs, such as by inserting and mixing animal genes with artificial genes and another morph's genes.

Actual intelligent alien species in the setting include the Askar (insectoid), Ghar (bioengineered to destroy humans), Hükk (weird, strong aliens) and Tsan Ra (weird, insectoid gorillas). The Vorl are a separate case, as they are an amalgamation of several things into one.

Factions

Faction	Short Fluff
Algoryn Prosperate	The Algoryn Prosperate is the largest and amongst the most advanced of the independent panhuman federations, and fights a constant war to protect its borders - particularly against the Ghar.
Boromite Guilds	The Boromites are bio-adapted for asteroid mining. Their hardiness makes them highly valued mercenary fighters and they uniquely make use of weapons developed from mining tools including mass compactors and frag borers.
Panhuman Concord	The military of the Panhuman Concord is directed by a branch of the IMTel called the Concord Combined Command – or C3. The Concord responds to threats against it with logical ruthlessness, dispatching heavily armed forces throughout Antarean space.
Freeborn	The Freeborn are great merchants and traders whose fleets maintain a free-flow of commodities and technology across the whole of Antarean space. They hire armed troops to anyone willing to pay for them.
Ghar Empire	The Ghar are twisted, spiteful and pitiless creatures driven by an unquenchable hatred of all panhumans. They view other kinds of human as vermin that it is their job to eradicate. The Ghar themselves are hunched, repulsive creatures but they are rarely seen out of their huge, amoured battle suits. Their tech is relatively primitive, powered by unstable plasma reactors that constantly leak toxic radiation.
Isorian Senatex	The original Pan-Human Concord, the Isorian’s broke off (became a separate shard) when they became infected with biosilicon nanospore. As a result, their organic aesthetic is very different and one of the most interesting to be found and they utilise their former alien enemy, the Tsan, in their forces. They are, however, as advanced as the Concord and have access to some unique equipment and capabilities in both weapons, armour and the Tsan Ra aliens.
Virai Dronescourge	The mandatory "life-erasing robot AI" on nearly every sci-fi setting. Vira are an artificial life form with a complex machine intelligence. They do not call themselves the Virai: it is the rest of the universe that has done so – Viral AI. Even their logo is the warning symbol used by the Antares races to warn of Virai – the stylised top down view of a Virai Warrior drone.
Vorl Ordo	The Vorl are an intelligent, technologically alien species who were connected to the Nexus some time during the PanHuman Second or Third Ages (precise connection times are not known). They are a symbiosis, a merge of three distinct creatures who, far back in their evolution, merged to better forage and survive. Since then, the Vorl have continually tampered with their genetic make-up – indeed, it is part of their (complex) reproductive practices that DNA from species they eat are incorporated into their offspring.

Stat Breakdown

Example stats card
Trooper	M	Ag	Acc	Str	Res	Init	Co	Special
Concord Strike Trooper	5	5	5	5	5(7)	7	8	-
Isorian Tsan Ra Trooper	6	5	5	7	6(8)	6	8	Monitor

• Move (M or Mv). This indicates the model’s basic move in inches. The most common M is 5”.
• Agility (Ag). Used when moving across awkward terrain.
• Accuracy (Acc). Used when shooting to determine if a shot hits.
• Strength (Str). Used when fighting hand-to-hand to determine if a strike hits.
• Resist (Res). A defence against enemy attacks. If the Res stat has a second number in brackets this is the Res including the most often-used bonus from any armour.
• Initiative (Init). Used when making reactions.
• Command (Co). A measure of a unit’s morale used when testing to activate a unit or to check its willingness to fight on.
• Special. The column at the end of the stat-line indicates special rules that apply to that unit or individual.

External Links

In case you've missed the ones thrown around the article:

• Rules central, with PDFs for the rules (duh), weapons and equipment, lore stuff, etc.
• Army Lists, each faction has its own PDF, roughly 10-15 pages long.