Luke Skywalker : What is it?

Obi-Wan Kenobi : Your father’s light saber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

~ Star Wars

Recently I’ve been posting regularly, so I thought it was worth dropping a quick note to let you know that Plastic Craic will be going quiet for a few weeks.

There’s nothing major going on here; I’m currently changing jobs, and also pivoting back to Marvel Crisis Protocol with a GT coming up in Melbourne. Moving forward I’ll still be playing both systems and covering Age of Sigmar here on the blog – there’s loads I want to write about, so you won’t be able to shut me up for a good while yet.

I’ve also picked a great moment to enable ads on the site. It does cost me time and money to run this site, so a couple of years in we’re probably at the point that it needs to wash its own face. You should start seeing ads on the site soon but frankly I’m figuring this out as I go along, so please let me know if they are super annoying and I will mess around with the settings to make them less intrusive.

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Let’s pour one out for Beyond the Gates of Antares, which is moving into its second edition while also having support removed by Warlord Games. My limited understanding (and it’s a pretty unusual setup) is that the minis will mostly be ported across to Skytrex, while the rules support will completely cease from Warlord’s side, and essentially become a labour of love for the devs in their own spare time.

Speaking of the devs, you may be aware that this game was created by Rick Priestley, the OG creator of 40K. I can’t recommend this interview with Rick on the early days of 40K highly enough:

But back to Antares, and we did give this a try locally – tempted in by the cool minis and the Ricky P factor – and although I enjoyed the gaming days I attended, it was ultimately just far too crunchy for my own tastes. It’s often said that 3D printing is a hobby in itself, and this game reminded me of an era when learning rules was a hobby in itself: taking me back to early teenage afternoons, reading rule books on my bedroom floor for hours at a time. Now with kids of my own and a full time job (and let’s be honest, the distraction of a smartphone and a bunch of streaming services), those hours just aren’t there any more.

From what I can gather, morale in the Antares community is pretty robust: the player base seems to be keen on the V2 rules and glad that the system lives on in its new capacity. Still, there’s a degree of uncertainty about which exact minis will make the cut, so if there’s anything there that catches your eye now might be the time.

When I bought into this game it was mainly through cheap starter sets and promos. Unfortunately the full price kits are quite pricey, but there are some very nice models there that could bring plenty of joy to other systems. A few ideas off the top of my head:

• Stylized Imperial Guard detachments – check out some of those heavy weapons teams
• Unique Rebel troops for Star Wars Legion
• Humans in sleek space armour from a planet annexed into the T’au Empire
• Loads of scope to make yourself a bespoke Kill Team

Sincere best wishes to the staff who’ve lost their jobs through this, and I hope you find something good soon.

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Further Reading

I want to give a big shout out to my mate NC Dave and his new site Sigmar Central. Dave’s vision is for this site to be the Australian hub for competitive Age of Sigmar, and it will be going live on Saturday 6th May with some of my own previous articles reprinted alongside plenty of new content that Dave’s been working on, so make sure you check that out.

Beyond that, I’ll give my recurring recommendation to read Competitive Innovations in the Mortal Realms on Goonhammer every week, and I’ll be on my way.

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So my current plans are to come back in a month with the results of the Seraphon list building challenge – although it’s fair to say that my DMs haven’t been going crazy over this one, so if you’ve submitted lists unsuccessfully in the past, now might be your chance to shine. I will also be working on a product review to compare and contrast the various objective markers on the market after I’ve given them all a real-world battering, so keep an eye out for that one too.

Well I hope you all have a great weekend, ladies and gents. I’ll be back in a few weeks – see you on the other side.

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