So many miniatures and games, but so little time – the conundrum of all gaming hobbyists to deal with in their own way.
I recently purchased a copy of Warlord Games’ Beyond the Gates of Antares sci-fi rules due to a number of reasons: the neverending search for a modern clean ruleset which sits well between skirmish (like Deadzone) and large scale games (Epic 40k or arguably what the ‘modern’ 40k has headed towards with superheavies) and a good dose of nostalgia tied to Rick Priestley’s earlier involvement with 40k.
I did back the Warpath kickstarter, but this was more out of a desire to bulk out my Deadzone collection a bit and on the off chance that the Firefight ruleset would hit the right sweet spot for me, but there still isn’t even a beta ruleset for that currently. Antares seems to be what Firefight promises to be.
My initial impression from skimming the rules is that there are some interesting mechanics, and it looks like Warlord are commiting a lot of resource to fleshing out the factions although little is in plastic other than the Ghar and Concord.
The concord are very generic sci-fi and don’t really grab me too much personally and I have plenty of Mantic’s Deadzone Enforcers and Sedition Wars Samaritans which I could proxy. The Ghar on the otherhand do interest me with their tripod battlesuits being quite unique looking so I decided to ebay for a single sprue and so how well they go together:
I opted to go for a similar scheme to my 40k Necrons as the aesthetic is reminiscent of the Canopteks – I quite like how this test figure came out, but ultimately sanity did prevail and I looked at my pile of other unfinished projects to discourge myself from rushing out and buying an army worth.
It did get me thinking though what other game systems could I use these proxies? I never liked the Deadzone Marauders much although I did like the rules – these would make good alternatives to ripper suits. I could then use my basic Necron Warriors as Marauder troops.
Heretic 30k 
I like the possibilities of mashing up, too. There’s more to that than just saving time and bucks.
Indeed! Even with behemoths like GW there are parts of their range that are poorly served. For example, with Horus Heresy 30k the Cults & Militia list is so massively flexible in creating themed forces there are many cases where 3rd party figures or serious kitbashing is required. I have decided that I will repurpose the Veermyn from the Deadzone Infestaion kickstarter as ‘mutant cultists’ for 30k Cults & Militia list. Likewise, I really like the Ghar battlesuits, but not so much the little gribbly out of suit guys – since I did the Ghar battlesuit in a scheme similar to my old 40k Necrons, I could either use the Ghars as Canoptek Wraiths in 40k or use the Necrons as unarmoured Ghar in Antares.