Beyond the Gates of Antares visual look

Last week I received my copy of the Beyond the Gates of Antares rulebook. As most of you probably know, this is the new scifi game developed by Rick Priestly, and published by Warlord Games.

The rulebook is a pleasant surprise. A lot of the scenery used in the photographs is stunning, the miniatures are superbly painted, and the whole atmosphere just blew me away. Mind you, I haven't read all of the rules yet, but the whole lay-out, the imagery, the spirit the book embodies is something that woke up into me the same excitement I felt when I first read the WH40K Rogue Trader book back in the late eighties.

One of the images of the original WH40K book that appealed to me tremendously, was one in which a modern looking cityscape with brightly coloured skyscrapers served as the scenery for a game. It wasa photograph in the back of the book, in the "Modeling and Painting" section, but it was exactly the visual look of a scifi universe I wanted to play games in.

Later on, the WH40K look-and-feel became more and more gothic and dark, and that didn't appeal to me at all. I guess I am more a hard scifi fan rather than a gothic scifi fan. More Traveller and StarGrunt than WH40K.

Anyway, I see the same visuals for scenery and setting in the photographs in the Antares rulebook. Bright figures, in brightly coloured settings. For some reason, such a setting is much more inviting to play a game in.

(warlordgames.com)

(warlordgames.com)

(warlordgames.com)

Now for the crucial question ... will I ever play Gates of Antares? Probably not. We have developed our own scifi skirmish tactical rules over the years (also called Antares - pure coincidence - and using a lot of original WH40K miniatures - probably also no coincidence), but I might steal a lot of clever ideas!