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the 99.00 starter with hard cover rule and plastics is being welcomed by sci fans in the New Hampshire area anyone else having fun with this ?

Our club (in northern Germany) is always a bit slower with new games than others but the reception has been good so far. There was a move by many members (excluding me) from 40k to Bolt Action and Flames of War a year and a half ago. It seems GoA can fill that scifi void for these gamers in the not so far future.

I bought the GoA starter set and as a 40k player (since '92) I can say this is it!

A well done modern scifi ruleset with a good background. The rulebook especially, and you could technically play the game with your current 40k collection, is just amazing and recommended to everyone interested in all kinds of SciFi wargames or wants to bring a bit of fresh air to his 40k games. The game scales pretty good too - not only mid sized but small and 40k sized as well.

Warlord Games is already writing the first GoA campaign book and there are lots of miniatures done and awaiting their release. It's really interesting to see this new game from Rick Priestley making its first steps.

I'm not really interested in the models, but would pick up the rulebook. What are the templates like, and are they "close enough" or compatible with any other games' existing templates

Ill check the templates and respond later today. You can photocopy the templates in the back of the book though. There are two or three drone effect templates (shields I guess) that should be the only different ones and they are also in the book. Will verify this asap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
GoA uses these templates

http://www.warlordgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=17117

The blast template is 3" like the small blast marker from GW. The drone marker shown on top of the pdf is the only special one for Antares. Print the page, the other markers are very useful, or photocopy the updated sheet from the rulebook and you are fine. The game needs command dice, but you can use coloured (at least two different) d6s instead. GoA is played with d10s and also a few other like d4s. Distance is measured in inches. There are 6 army lists in the rulebook with quite some interesting options. Tau, Necrons, Marines, Dark Eldar, Eldar, Harlequins, Orks and Imperial Guard for example can be used for the game without any changes or additions. The Concords use a lot of drones, so their army list is good for playing with Tau models. I hope this helps. Have fun, Azazelx

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm not really interested in the models, but would pick up the rulebook. What are the templates like, and are they "close enough" or compatible with any other games' existing templates

If they're not, I'll probably whip up something on the cheap for them.

Warhams-77 wrote:
Our club (in northern Germany) is always a bit slower with new games than others but the reception has been good so far. There was a move by many members (excluding me) from 40k to Bolt Action and Flames of War a year and a half ago. It seems GoA can fill that scifi void for these gamers in the not so far future.

I bought the GoA starter set and as a 40k player (since '92) I can say this is it!

A well done modern scifi ruleset with a good background. The rulebook especially, and you could technically play the game with your current 40k collection, is just amazing and recommended to everyone interested in all kinds of SciFi wargames or wants to bring a bit of fresh air to his 40k games. The game scales pretty good too - not only mid sized but small and 40k sized as well.

Warlord Games is already writing the first GoA campaign book and there are lots of miniatures done and awaiting their release. It's really interesting to see this new game from Rick Priestley making its first steps.

Definitely agree!

Really, really liking the game so far. It's like Bolt Action but with an extra layer of depth/complexity. I haven't played a game yet other than a quick run through of the starter missions but hopefully those extra rules don't make things too complex.

And 100% you can tell it's written by Rick Priestley, got his touches running all the way through it which are immediately noticeable if you've played Warlord's other games (and the older versions of 40k for that matter).

Interesting. I don't have the time or money to buy new figures, but if the rules are good and it works with my 40K stuff it might be worth looking in to.

Can anyone tell me what a "typical" game would scale to in terms of Space Marines? So would it be something like a Captain and two full TAC squads (call it around 500 points), or is it too hard to try to draw a comparison that way?

That's a good comparison. But in GoA your unit selection scales with the game size.

There are categories, similiar to the 40k army selection (HQ, Troops...) but you do not have to take more than a few squads for a start. The maximum number of characters/army leaders, command squads, tanks and artillery available rises the larger the army value for a game gets.

A ~400 point Space Marine army - four 5-men tactical squads and one 3-5 men assault squad (played as Drop Command squad in GoA) and something you can use as drones would make for a good Concord army to learn the rules. Mirrormatch (2 Concords) and you can help each other with the unit rules.

Landspeeders (including LS Storm) can be used to proxy the Concord (or other factions') skimmers in later games to play with the vehicle rules.

We just started building our armies, so most forces played with aren't that big yet. The starter army sets have this amount of miniatures

http://www.warlordgames.com/new-antares-army-deals/

Two of these sets plus ~4 vehicles (models will be released in the next 12 months - the rules are already in the book), and more artillery and character models should be the estimated size of a quite large GoA army. This would offer a similiar amount of tactical possibilities and gameplay like a 1850-2000 points 40k game.

Currently most players have about 25-35 models in their army including drones. This makes for interesting games of 45-90 minutes, depending on the mission and forces selected.

The six current GoA factions have quite large differences so it is less WWII in space but more like 40k and other scifi games.

Interesting. How important are vehicles to the game?

Vehicles are fully included ruleswise and have simliar roles as in 40k. Mobile firepower, troop transport, protection against anti-infantry weapons (I havent read all vehicle profiles and rules yet, afaik there are open-topped vehicles too). In the current state of the meta (well very early :-)) GoA plays challenging enough without vehicles but the possibilies to advance into mechanized warfare is fully there. Interestingly many vehicles get two command dice so they can act differently to the infantry units - who have one. An army of e.g. 8 of such tanks against a small unit count force like the point-wise expansive Ghar walkers will probably allow for some tank rush manoveurs. That's why the Ghar players add cheap slaves (outcasts) and drones to their force to counter that. I lack the time to explain how the activation of units work - there are good videos by Warlord on YT - but tanks are not just better armored infantry with more hp. Each of the crew gets a command die so vehicles act and react more than once as far as I understood the rules. Also the more dice you can draw each round, the better the chance to act before your enemy's units for example.

Warhams-77 wrote:
Ill check the templates and respond later today. You can photocopy the templates in the back of the book though. There are two or three drone effect templates (shields I guess) that should be the only different ones and they are also in the book. Will verify this asap.

GoA uses these templates

http://www.warlordgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=17117

The blast template is 3" like the small blast marker from GW. The drone marker shown on top of the pdf is the only special one for Antares. Print the page, the other markers are very useful, or photocopy the updated sheet from the rulebook and you are fine. The game needs command dice, but you can use coloured (at least two different) d6s instead. GoA is played with d10s and also a few other like d4s. Distance is measured in inches. There are 6 army lists in the rulebook with quite some interesting options. Tau, Necrons, Marines, Dark Eldar, Eldar, Harlequins, Orks and Imperial Guard for example can be used for the game without any changes or additions. The Concords use a lot of drones, so their army list is good for playing with Tau models. I hope this helps. Have fun, Azazelx

Thanks mate! Warlord usually have a Boxing Day sale (I found out this the hard way last year when I placed an order on Christmas Eve(!) so I'll probably grab the GoA essentials then. Which armies do you find the best proxies for the various 40k factions? (Aside from Concord>Tau)

We picked up the starter set, looks like I'm going to be learning another game. I love how clearly defined terrain is in this. Makes my job so much easier.

 Azazelx wrote:

Warhams-77 wrote:
...

Thanks mate! Warlord usually have a Boxing Day sale (I found out this the hard way last year when I placed an order on Christmas Eve(!) so I'll probably grab the GoA essentials then. Which armies do you find the best proxies for the various 40k factions? (Aside from Concord>Tau)

You are welcome! As of yet I haven't sorted out each faction. We proxy throughout several systems (40k, Warpath, Deadzone, GoA - and also within 40k). My brother is a Squat collector (130+ 1st ed miniatures / some later Bob Olley sculpts / Mantic). Our friends play Imperial Guard, Eldar and Tau, and I play Eldar, Orks, Forgefather and Chaos.

We have started our GoA ideas on what base sizes and functionality/battlefield roles the minis should have in GoA. My brother plays his Squats in 40k as Space Marines and IG and it works well for him, lots of list variety and he can find units in their Codizes for all his minis. He has a large amount of 1st Ed minis, even Robots, Squat Adventurers and Pirates and likes to use them throughout several scifi systems. In case of 40k - line of sight to them would not be like Marines, so he always gives his opponent a 'larger imaginated area' to shoot at if need be. But larger than stunty minis obviously dont need this. My brother currently uses his RT Robots as Centurions on the proper sized 50mm bases.

Tldr; This gives an idea how we handle miniatures in our games in general.

We will do this with GoA as well. Making sure the base size and general apperance (humanoid, mechanized, skimmer etc) of the miniatures fits. My brother will proxy his Squats as Boromites for a start (large artillery like Thudd Guns fit well in our opinion) and I will play Eldar as Isorians against him.

I now like the Concords from the starter set so much that I will start building a proper army. Also started work on some of my unbuilt Necron models and plan to use them as Ghar proxies in addition to the Ghar models from the starter set. I thought about Flayed Ones and the Hobbit(TM) plastic goblins as Outcast proxies.

IG Stormtroopers could be used as Concords too, add some scratchbuilt drones (servo skulls?) on proper bases.

Necrons - Ghar
Tau / IG - Concord
Eldar / DE - Isorian
Marines/Squats/FF - Boromites
Necromunda Gangs / IG / Eldar / Exodites / DE - Freeborn (they have sevral animals in their list - atm experimental rules in the rulebook)
Dark Eldar - Algoryns

Due to the different scales of some of the ranges, we will probably switch armies between battles. Squats vs Ghar (including Necs) looks good. Space Marines vs Concord is a bit weird. So it depends. To learn the rules and a different system it works for us.

I can understand ressentiments against using the same models for different systems. We always did this in one way or the other.

Thanks, Warhams. I've always used a mixture of official and unofficial models for my games, and proxied better-or-cool-looking models into my forces, regardless of who published or wrote the rules for any given game.