Warlord Games Beyond the Gates of Antares Concord Combined Command (C3) Strike Squad

‘Two years ago, the Gates began to slip beneath the photosphere of the Great Engine, Antares. No-one could explain it, let alone slow or halt it.’

‘In a cascade – across a sun so large that it would fill Lost Earth’s sol system to the orbit of Jupiter – the Gates closed once more on the promise of civilisation.'

'None knew how long it would last, and once our gate closed, there was silence, and we shivered, and we mourned.’

‘And then… scarcely two years later, as best we can reckon it, the Gates began to re-emerge and re-open.’

‘Join me. Join us, as we go Beyond the Gates of Antares once more.’

I'll be honest, up until about a month ago, I was only very, very peripherally aware of Warlord Games' Beyond the Gates of Antares - I'd heard of it, but I'd never really looked at it very closely however that all changed when the ever talented Edd Ralph began sharing some photos of the Antares miniatures he's been working on since the New Year (which you can check out here) and I did what I usually do when I spot miniatures I like the look of: began browsing photos of the range online, looking for reviews of the kits and researching the setting and background of the game. Thankfully Beyond the Gates of Antares is supported by a fantastic online resource in The Nexus so I was able to begin reading up on things quickly and easily and the harder sci-fi background was very intriguing. The Pan Human Concord quite quickly piqued my interest but for the time being, all I was doing was reading...

A short time later though Edd launched 'Beyond Gate 2022' which inspired me to dip my toe into the Antares 'pool' and shortly afterwards I ordered a Concord Combined Arms Strike Squad sprue - after my research and reading, they were models I liked the look of and I figured they would be quite fun to build and paint. 

A bit of background... 

The PanHuman Concord is one of the two most technologically advanced factions residing in Antarean space, the other being it’s ‘progenitors’, now known as the Isorian Shard or Senatex. The Concord is a society comprising both human and machine sentiences that are bound together by an 'integrated machine intelligence' or IMTel. By almost every measure, the Concord is a utopian society in which humans are free to devote their lives to chosen endeavours entirely free of compulsion, or the necessities of toil and unwanted obligations and responsibilities as the IMTel anticipates the needs of each and provides a benevolent governance to all within its reach.

The military arm of the Concord, the Concord Combined Command (also known as C3) uses some of the the most advanced weapons and armour in the Antarean universe, though they prefer to minimise casualties and almost always look to engage enemies from a distance. As such, they equip their Troopers with suits of incredibly effective hyper‐light armour and plasma carbines capable of variable fire modes. Man for man, there are few opponents that could truly be considered their equal but to be certain, the C3 supplements their infantry forces with support drones, providing them a powerful mobile arsenal capable of enabling to face the most heavily armoured foes.

The Miniatures

The miniatures come on a single sprue with parts to assemble 1 Strike Leader and 4 Strike Troopers armed with plasma carbines, 2 Spotter Drones and a C3D1 Light Support Drone with 2 weapon options as well as a pair of optional arms to assemble the Strike Leader as a Strike Trooper instead if desired and optional plasma lance for one of the Troopers:

The miniatures were very easy to assemble and although there were some components that needed to have mould lines cleaned up, they went together incredibly quickly as well. I decided to build a 'full' Strike Squad with Leader and to assemble one of the Troopers with the optional plasma lance and the C3D1 Drone with a 'Light Plasma Support' which admittedly was mostly because they 'looked cool' rather than anything else! 

The Spotter Drones needed no assembly at all, merely requiring to be clipped from the sprue and cleaned up. In both the fluff and game terms, they boost the accuracy of units they're deployed with, which coupled with their saucer like appearance reminded me a little of T'au markerlight drones in Warhammer 40,000.

Overall, I'd say that I was really impressed with the quality of the miniatures and they're detailed enough to be able to have some fun while painting them, but without being so detailed that they're difficult to assemble and there's enough components that you could get a bit of variety to poses if you were building multiple squads, at least for the infantry anyway.  

The assembled Strike Squad...

...and C3D1 Light Support Drone and Spotter Drones.

 

As I was getting everything prepped to begin priming, I made a last minute decision to switch from using the thinner bases the miniatures were supplied with to some 'Citadel style' ones as the thin bases felt a bit too light to keep the minis stable.  The thin bases probably would have worked fine, but I've got big giant sausage fingers and the bigger bases just felt 'safer' to me.

With everything assembled, the next task was to select a paint scheme - I wanted to emulate the 'dual tones' of the box art while doing something a bit different and ended up choosing a blue-gray augmented by a dark tan for the hyperlight armour, while the plasma weapons were painted in a matt black, with green plasma coils as I figured the guns themselves would be made of some kind of futuristic composite or bioplastic while the green glow would enhance the overall 'sci-fi' aspect of miniatures. 

Although it's not immediately obvious from the photos, I paid some particular attention to painting the undersuits of the Strike Squad as their appearance brought to mind the Mjolnir armour of the Spartan-IIs from the Halo universe, which is a combination of plates designed to reflect energy strikes and an undersuit comprised of multiple layers of composites and gel to form a ballistic armour layer which is also fully environmentally sealed.

For visual interest I'd added some small chunks of slate slate to the bases before using Vallejo Earth Texture finish them off and once they were painted I added some Gamers Grass Dark Moss 'Tiny Tufts'. I had a bit of fun glazing green into some of the crevices of the slate to give the impression that they had lain undisturbed for quite some time and had algae or moss growing on them.  

Beyond Gate 2022

While I was painting the models up, I drafted a few snippets of fluff to go with them and as an aside, while doing so I learned that the scientific term for a full period of a night and day is Nychthemeron which hopefully gives a little more context to the passages below: 

"C3-602 is almost exclusively focusing resources in this sector on containing the latest 'Sorian advances along the Weleth salient, so diverting us to this miserable little ball of rock makes no damn sense at all.

Nothing showed up on the orbital scans or the long range sweeps from the T7 as we dropped in but IMTel is insisting we push deeper into the mountains though... What do they know that we don't?"

[Py'dræn, Nychthemeron 4.7]

Strike Squad Haar of the DXIth Jerivim 'Æestocs'

"We made steady progress through the foothills, the rainfall that had plagued us since our landing growing ever more fitful as we climbed higher until finally it ceased altogether as we gained the relative respite of a plateau that was likely carved by macro-glacial action some time in this miserable planet's past.

Although the going became easier as the weather and visibility improved, we found ourselves confronted by a new hazard as we were forced to traverse numerous torrents of icy meltwater in order to maintain our course.

Of any hostiles, there remained not sign nor spoor forcing us to continue to wonder just what kind of ghosts the IMTel might have us chasing..."

[Py'dræn, Nychthemeron 9.7]

C3D1 Light Support and Spotter Drones

"... the Light Support Drone that Haar had assigned to range north east of us as dawn broke returned shortly after meridiem bearing news of tantalising indications that ruins potentially of Builder origin lay within but a few miles of our current position.
Sensing that perhaps this was why the IMTel had insisted upon our deployment and that we were not embarked upon some fools errand after all, we left the rushing torrents of meltwater in our wake and made haste to follow the D1 as it began to lead us in the direction of its discovery... "

[Py'dræn, Nychthemeron 13.2]

What's Next? 

With Squad Haar finished, I've a strong temptation to pick up some more miniatures from the Antares range to act as adversaries for them. Much of the range is currently produced in metal though, but there are a few plastic options including the Algoryn Armoured Infantry Command sprue, which is a very strong contender for another foray beyond the Gates, perhaps even providing a foil for exploring just what Strike Squad Haar might have found on the planet Py'dræn...

I've also seen some strong indications that there may be resin Isorian Senatex infantry inbound from Warlord Games soon as well so I might hold off picking anything else up for now until there a bit more news on them because the Senatex also look like they would be an interesting project. Either way, I'll be keeping a closer eye on what's emerging from Antares going forward!