When I had looked at Antares the first time the concept of incorporating drones into the game seemed interesting. Drones have already had an impact on modern combat so seeing it integrated into a sci-fi game just makes sense. Once I actually decided to take the plunge and read the rules... well, those little buddy drones are amazing! They really let you add some tactical options to the army and by making them part of the units or members of shards (typically a unit composed of drones) they don't throw off the balance created by the order dice mechanic. The question is how to model them.
Warlord sells mixed and single type packs of drones which is great plus they aren't too expensive either. That said I have a ton of C3 sprues lying around so I have their spotter drones in abundance. Luckily I saw a post on the Antares Facebook group where someone converted a spotter into a batter drone by chopping off the sensors on the sides of the spotter and adding the fins from the subverter matrix. I quickly slapped one together and started brainstorming some ways to create the other drones I needed.
In the front of the "pack" is a regular spotter drone. Clockwise from there is a batter drone, a shield drone, and finally a gun drone. To make the shield drone I decided to cut down on the size of the spotter and mount the engines closer, the theory being that this would make it more nimble to intercept incoming fire. The conversion was easy enough as well; I snipped off the sensor wings, cut off the rear engine, cut down the stem on engine and then glued it on vertically. Quick and easy but I think that it gives it enough of a different profile that it works really well.
The gun drone I'm less happy with. I debated mounting carbines on both sensor wings but the drone only carries one so that might look a bit odd. I also cobbled one together that replaced one of the wings with a carbine but that one also didn't do much for me. The final product is what you see; the central sensor is cut back to give the carbine a good mounting surface and then I just attached the end of a carbine to it. It's not bad but I'm not thrilled with it. Even so, I just need a couple of them for my NuHu so the design will work for now.
And on a somewhat related note, I stumbled across a Ghar Command Crawler on Amazon for a really good price so now I'll be able to have my two 750 points armies face off against my one 1500 point Ghar army. Time to start building some battle suits!
In the front of the "pack" is a regular spotter drone. Clockwise from there is a batter drone, a shield drone, and finally a gun drone. To make the shield drone I decided to cut down on the size of the spotter and mount the engines closer, the theory being that this would make it more nimble to intercept incoming fire. The conversion was easy enough as well; I snipped off the sensor wings, cut off the rear engine, cut down the stem on engine and then glued it on vertically. Quick and easy but I think that it gives it enough of a different profile that it works really well.
The gun drone I'm less happy with. I debated mounting carbines on both sensor wings but the drone only carries one so that might look a bit odd. I also cobbled one together that replaced one of the wings with a carbine but that one also didn't do much for me. The final product is what you see; the central sensor is cut back to give the carbine a good mounting surface and then I just attached the end of a carbine to it. It's not bad but I'm not thrilled with it. Even so, I just need a couple of them for my NuHu so the design will work for now.
And on a somewhat related note, I stumbled across a Ghar Command Crawler on Amazon for a really good price so now I'll be able to have my two 750 points armies face off against my one 1500 point Ghar army. Time to start building some battle suits!
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