+ inload: Karba's Huntsmen +

+ Painting Karba's Huntsmen +

+ The colours of Isorian 8854th Kleisoura +

+ Still firmly WIP, but coming along nicely. Can you tell I'm enthused yet? The Isorian Senatex – indeed, the broader setting of Beyond the Gates of Antares – has really caught my imagination, as it combines lots of aspects of slightly harder sci-fi than my usual gaming, and also brings in Pulp and historical appeal. +

+ The work-in-progress force as it currently stands. +

+ Not pictured are the painted Phase Squad and Tsan Ra Commander (you can see him in the pic below), and also missing are half a dozen spotter drones (like the little eyeball in the front here), and the X-Howitzer and crew, which are simply undercoated. Seemed a bit pointless to photograph, so they'll be up in a future inload. +

+++

+ Painting the Isorian 8854th +

+ Slightly earlier stage, to show what a difference an evening's painting makes. +

+ In general, I'm pleased with how they're coming along. I did slightly regret painting them so like the official scheme, but as the force builds, they're starting to look a bit more distinct – so I think the overall balance is working. I particularly like how the white faceplates are working, so I'm glad I reserved the yellow ones for squad leaders. +

+ I haven't made any notes on how I'm painting these, but as I've got into the swing of things it's starting to fall into place. Unless noted, the paints are all from the Citadel colour range:

• Prime brown (Halford's camo brown).
• Paint the whole model with a flat coat of Incubi Darkness.
• Drybrush the whole model with a 50:50 mix of Incubi Darkness and Cabalite Green.
• Paint the base – a base coat of Scorched Brown followed by successively lighter drybrushes of Skrag Brown, Desert Yellow (Tallarn Sand is the modern equivalent, I think), and Desert Yellow with Vallejo Off-White.
• Paint the 'carapace' around the shoulders and the gun with Charadon Granite.
• Add the first washes: Nuln Oil over the carapace and Coelia Greenshade over the rest.
• At this point, I paint the face. Here's a link to a tutorial for human faces [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], as it's a fairly small stage for these models.
• Paint the mask – I paint this with Vallejo Off-White, then paint Apothecary White over it. Once dry, I emphasise the highlights with more Vallejo Off-White before picking out the eyes/lenses with Abaddon Black followed by Fire Dragon Bright (or a similar saturated orange paint).

+ Halfway through and game-ready +

+ They'll look like the picture above at this point. Why do I do the face at this point? Well, the simple answer is that it gives me a bit of punctuation. I find bashing through a big batch very wearing, so having the opportunity to get the figures 'done' to a certain standard is a relief. While I would prefer to get them more developed than this, I think that they're certainly table-ready. If you're aiming to get things done for an event, focussing on the faces and bases, and leaving the rest as neat and clean base layers is a good way to go. +

+ Moving on, it's time for detailing.

• Highlight the grey hard armour and gun with a mix of Charadon Granite and Warpaints Mummy Robes, followed by a second smaller highlight with the addition of Vallejo Off-White. I don't go pure white for this, as I think it looks too stark.
• Highlight the green soft armour with Kabalite Green, and a second smaller highlight of a mix of Kabalite Green and Vallejo Off-White.

+ Pictured prior to the wash – the highlights are too bright and clear. +

• Now we wash both areas: the grey carapace with Agrax Earthshade, and the green areas with Coelia Greenshade. You can do both of these simultaneously for speed. Try to keep the washes separate, but don't worry too much if they merge a bit.
• Once dry, re-establish the highlights with the lighter-tinted mixes. Keep these fine and sharp at this stage to avoid the effect being chalky and washed-out.
• Use Off-White to paint the plasma coils and any details you want orange, then paint with Gryph-Hound Orange contrast paint. You can use pretty much any orange here – in fact, a brighter orange ink would probably work better: GHO is simply what I had to hand.
• For the organic coils in the suits, I've used a variety of approaches, and haven't quite decided which I like best. At the moment I'm using Emperor's Children pink, washing with Druchii Violet, then using Vallejo Off-White to highlight before washing it again. However, this is a bit of a faff, and I think I'd like it to pop a bit more, so I may experiment further.
• Tidy up any other bits. The Tsan Ra have bits on their forearms that I've interpreted as fabric, which I've painted as leather in a similar way to my Rogue Trader model here [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+] – basically lots of layers of increasingly light browns with washes of Agrax Earthshade then Seraphim Sepia. The 'teeth' that pop up on lots of the models I've layered up from Skrag brown to Vallejo Off-White.

+ Not quite finished, but nearly there. This picture's a good example of how I often hop from one area to another – as might happen if I have lots of a particular mix and don't want to waste it. This figure hasn't had his skin highlighted yet – though a bit of skin coloration variety might not hurt anyway. +

+++

+ The future's bright + 

+ Since getting into the game, I've been listening to The Freeborn Shard podcast (available wherever good podcasts are found) while painting, which has been very enjoyable. There's only a certain level of understanding you can pick up from reading the rulebook, and hearing other gamers discuss the practicalities of the game has clarified a few things for me – even if a lot remains slightly baffling! +

+  For obvious reasons, the Podcast has been largely on hiatus for the past couple of years, but the material there is still fun to listen to – particularly if you're new to the setting, as I am. +

+ Why do I mention it? Well, the Freeborn Shard mentions the second edition of Beyond the Gates of Antares a number of times. It was, apparently, planned for 2019, and is still bubbling under. The game as a whole seems to have lain fallow for a number of years, with no new releases, so the more cynical part of me would suspect that means it's largely 'vapourware'. A lot of that can be chalked up to the pandemic, of course, but I do get the impression that something is happening – perhaps not in the immediate future, but at some point this year. +

+ First and foremost, the models below were previewed and are currently unreleased. As I understand things, these will be the first new releases for a good couple of years. +

+ The new sculpts, reportedly resin, have a similar but distinct aesthetic, and I'm already thinking of how I'd integrate them into the army. A couple of thoughts:

• An elite unit (in background terms), picked out by a largely red paint scheme.
• A shard from a different Isorian world – while there are common aesthetics across the Isorian Senatex, there's still room for a little variation: isolated shards might well develop functionally identical equipment in a visually different way.
• The giant machine that is Antares goes through periodic collapses, and gates occasionally descend beneath the photosphere and become unreachable, stranding the system. With the pandemic having spoiled everyone's wargaming fun for the past couple of years, it'd be neat to nod to that in-universe through a blurb like that.

+ Other second edition Gates of Antares rumours +

+ For anyone interested in the game, but hesitating to get involved with a dormant ruleset, I thought I'd gather the extant info on second edition:

• As mentioned on the Freeborn Shard (tFS), the Vorl were in development in 2019, with Rick Priestley talking about the biology and – I believe – some test sculpts or prototypes being produced.
• The second edition has been stated to be a tidy-up rather than a complete ground-up rebuild.
• The rules in the update and FAQ [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] are explicitly the current playtest rules; and likely the template for second edition.
• Both Isorians and Boromites were mentioned in passing as difficult to produce in plastic, so perhaps resin is Warlord's answer for these factions?

+ Tim Bancroft of The Freeborn Shard, and Warlord's Anatares co-ordinator shared this preview on the IMTel Facebook group [+noopshericexloadlink embedded+]:

+ What can we take from this? +

• Simplified points costs system – many of the options like grenades seem to 'baked into' the entry, and costs are reduced across the board by a factor of 10 – a unit that cost 115pts is now 11, for example.
• The addition of a movement stat is new – and perhaps heralds changes to the rules for Slow and Fast.
• The naming has altered – things are now presented with more in-universe terminology. The 'Nar Vesh Phase Monitor' was previously a 'Isorian Phase Squad Leader', for example.
• New weapons – you'll see the new sharpshooter has a previously unknown plasma rifle.
• A few tweaks to the Unit/Force restrictions; though I'm not familiar enough to really understand the implications here.
• The terminology around drones seems to have been tidied up, with the 'spotter buddy' hopefully clearing up potential confusion around Buddy drones being treated differently to Probes (currently they're the same models and stats, but fielded in different ways).

+ One final thing to note is that a sort of Antares-style Kill Team supplement called Incision Shard quietly emerged on 10th December last year. The full rules are free to download from the IMTel site on Warlord Games here [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. They looked fun, but you can also put 2 and 2 together when you spot the following detail in the weapons entry (page 37 of the document):

Phase Rifle Direct Fire 20 30 80 1×SV2 – Exploit SV4
Phased 10 20 60 3×SV1 – Phased Fire, Exploit SV3

+ Those are some neat new rules; perhaps heralding how the plasma rifle above works? The names are different, but perhaps that's simply a playtesting thing? Anyway, perhaps it's all a bit tinfoil hat, but in case it's of interest, here's the relevant rules text. Perhaps you can test it out in your own 1st edition games?

Phased Fire
[...]The weapon temporarily phases out the trooper and itself from normal space so the trooper experiences time slower than others on the battlefield. Some firepower and range is lost due to the phasing. 

Phased Fire can only be used on a Fire order and allows the trooper to fire multiple shots without being classed as shooting in RF mode – so suffers no RF penalty and allows the use of Sniper and Marksman skills on the shots. The shots can be spread across one, two or three targets, but all must be within 1” of each other. Phased Fire cannot be used in any other situation, even on a Reaction.

Exploit SVx 

Exploit is given to Isorian plasma rifles that fire a carrier wave alongside the plasma beams. The wave attempts to infiltrate whatever hardware it comes up against: though typically ineffective against hardened machines, armour and the like, other equipment can be vulnerable. 

Any hit by an Exploit weapon against enemy equipment, buddy drones or probes is counted as having the SV ‘n’ specified. 

+++