Antares Template Guide

Beyond the Gates of Antares uses a few templates to make things easy to see what is happening on the tabletop. The clear blue plastic templates all are used to represent the effect of various drones and munitions in the game. This is a quick guide to what each component on the template sprue actually represents.

The Sprue

As you can see, the sprue contains a mix of seven different types of templates or markers – three each of 5 small markers (munitions markers, below), two each of the curved shields (Batter Shield templates, below) and one of an overhead blast template (the blue circle). We explain each below.

OH Blast Template

The round blast area effect will be familiar to experienced wargamers – and is used to represent the area of effect of explosive rounds – called Blast munitions – fired overhead (OH) by weapons such as the micro-x, X-Launcher, the Mag Mortar and other mag-rail systems. The template make sit easy to see which units are hit by the blast.

Batter Shield Template

A batter buddy is a defensive buddy drone that projects a kinetic energy shield or batter shield that can deflect or absorb incoming attacks. Kinetic shields are kinds of suspensor fields – the same sort of invisible energy fields that enable drones to hover and vehicles to move effortlessly through the air. Batter drones are often attached to weapon teams to provide them with mobile cover. Tactically they are great assigned to vehicle units, both to provide stand-off protection and also to shelter accompanying infantry. No part of the template may be more than 5″ from the batter buddy and the batter buddy must be in unit cohesion distance (1″) of the rest of the unit.

Ammunition Templates

Ammunition comes in many different forms. Except for Net shots, munitions designed to work with larger overhead firing launchers make use of a marker rather than the usual blast template. Markers are used to represent where a special munitions shot has landed, are left in place and can continue to exert their influence during the course of the battle. These rather handy markers can replace the paper examples provided at the back of the Beyond the Gates of Antares rule book.

The rules for these can be found in the ‘Special Munitions’ section in the Arms & Equipment Guide.