Antares: Stirke On K'Ara Nine... The Forces of the Concord Combined Command

Way back at the beginning of the month I finished painting all the minis for Strike on K'Ara Nine, one of the Beyond the Gates of Antares starter sets produced by Warlord games!  They took a bit longer to paint than I'd originally intended (and even longer to actually post pictures of) but life happens and I have to say that I'm happy with the results.  That said, let's take a look at the first of the two factions included in the starter, the Concord.

The Concord troops included in Strike on K'Ara Nine, including two converted batter drones

This force weighs in at 408 points but by adding in another strike squad and dropping some of the options you would have a playable 500 point army.  This gives you a good base and its very easy to expand which I've already done.

Beyond the two strike squads from K'Ara Nine, I have painted up another three strike squads, split the two light support drones into two separate units, added a support team with an X-launcher, and added in a shard of targeter probes.  This takes my list up to 958 points and 8 order dice.  This leaves a little room to add in some of the army options to kick it the rest of the way up to a 1000 point list.

My full Concord force... minus the targeters who I forgot to include.

From a gameplay point of view, this should be a fairly balanced army on the table.  While most of the force is made up of strike troopers, they are a flexible option on the table as they are fairly well rounded troops.  With good armor, range, and accuracy, the only place where the strike troopers are lacking is in assaults but that is pretty common for the Concord as a whole.  They tend to put more of an emphasis on maneuvering to bring their weapons to bear at range than running up and punching you in the face.  Beyond the tactical units, the support choices give the list some extra oomph as well; the C3D1s are both equipped with batter drones to give the troops some mobile cover in addition to their own firepower while the X launcher can had back and link through the numerous spotters to drop shots on the enemy at range.  I'm sure that I'll want to expand beyond this (I'm really itching to grab a T7 transport just because I love the way it looks) but this is a great place to start from.

Overall, I have to admit that while the aesthetic of the Concord didn't do much for me at first but they have really grown on me.  They also have a lot of options available to them in plastic which makes them one of the more affordable and conversion friendly factions.

Random Update: The Workbench Is Almost Usable

So last week I decided to set the goal to have my hobby space cleared out by Sunday.  It's a reasonable goal, it really is... except for it being my wife and daughter's birthdays plus my daughter having a karate competition.  But other than those things, its absolutely possible!

I did actually get some headway, enough to get the creative juices flowing again at least, so I've made some headway with my extra Concord forces.  The remaining minis to get my force up to 750 points are all assembled and I've got a good start on the painting as well.  I'm not as pleased with how these ones are coming out but its been a while since I've been able to get any real painting in so I'm feeling a bit rusty.  Still its nice to see them coming along and I can't wait to finish them off.

I'm also thinking about mounting my Strike On K'Ara Nine matt and throwing together some terrain for it so I can finish off the introductory scenarios.  I don't have much desert style terrain but I think it would be fun to bash some together.  I'll have to see what I can dig out of my various terrain totes to for material to build with.

On the gaming front, I've been looking at Rangers of Shadow Deep which is by Joe McCullough, the man behind Frostgrave and Ghost Archipelago.  Unlike those games, Rangers is actually designed so that it can be played solo which makes it very appealing to me especially since I have an abundance of fantasy figures floating around.  It does have its own campaign in the book which features zombies, something that I didn't have many of in my collection but I've picked some up from the Zombicide Black Plague game and I'm really happy with how they look.  There is a good variety of sculpts and they are a good size for the other minis I already have.  I was able to snag ten of them on eBay but I'm thinking I might grab another batch just because.  You can't have too many zombies and the price was more than reasonable, so why not have a whole zombie horde?

Workbench: Concord Buddy Drones On The Cheap

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!

Workbench: 750 Points of Antares At Last!

This past weekend I placed an order that will give me a well rounded 750 point list for my Algoryn troops.  Finally!  It's taken longer than I wanted but real world concerns need to come first.  I also took a good look at my Concord and Ghar forces and figured out what I need assemble and paint to field 750 lists for both of those as well so I finally have some direction which helps.  Before this I've been a bit too haphazard to really make any solid progress but things should work out nicely now.

This also seems like a good time to address the paint scheme for my Ghar as I've decided to mix things up a bit.  Currently I was looking at dark red but red tends to dominate my color palette. I'm going to paint my Concord command squad and NuHu red, plus my Sulia mercenaries are already dark red so something different is needed for the Ghar.

Given their comparatively primitive technology and limited skill set just a basic bare metal sounds perfect.  I'm thinking a dark steel shade for most of their gear with select bits picked out with either a gold or brass.  Hit this with a coat of Nuln Oil, pick out the reactor highlights, and this sounds perfect.  Simple and utilitarian which just sounds right for them.  So far I only have paint on two of them as test models so this is the perfect time to switch as well so I'm excited to move forward with that once my Algoryn and Concord are painted up.

I've also picked up some zombies and spectres from Zombicide Black Plague.  My selection of undead is kind of lacking and since I'm looking at running Curse of Strahd for my D&D group it seems like something that I should have on hand.  Plus know I'll be able to use them for other things to so it just seemed to make sense.

Now if only I could finally resolve my workroom to get it more usable.  I've been very slowly chipping away at the mass that has been stopping me from moving forward but I need to just invest some time into getting it organized.  Easy to say though things do have a tendency to pop up that I need to take care of.  Still, its overdue and hopefully by putting it out there on the blog I can finally get it finished so I'm aiming for the space organized by Sunday night.  Even just an hour a day should be more than enough to get things sorted out and it will finally get the clutter out of my creative space so I can focus on getting some of these projects done.