The Nexus is coming…but what exactly is it?
There’s been a lot of excitement here at Warlord recently, with an idea of Rick Priestley’s coming to fruition: the Antares Nexus. It was mentioned a few times over the 10th Anniversary weekend, and snips and outlines have been shown on Facebook and in podcasts. Those involved have been pretty delighted at what’s happening – so it’s not surprising the question is: ‘What exactly is the Nexus?’
Well, at its most basic, it’s an info-site. For historical wargames, there are resources all over the web and in libraries, books, lecture halls – you name it. If you want to find out the history of the Hittite chariot or the speed of the Soviet T-26 it’s out there, somewhere, and in multiple places. For a new game and universe like Antares, though, all we have are the rulebook and supplements plus the articles in the Warlord webstore archive. We need something more, someplace we can go to find out everything we can about the factions, history, background and technology of Antares…
And we need more. Beyond the Gates of Antares is taking advantage of the web in providing online rules extensions and free updates to army lists. New unit specs are even released for free in online PDFs rather than in expensive print publications. But – and we have to acknowledge this – the releases can appear to be disparate and difficult to find, especially when part of a massive, multi-system archive like the Warlord articles site (Rick freely admits he struggled to find things, though admitting to Neanderthal attitudes towards technology!).
So we need all that in the Nexus, too. As players, we need to have an easy, quick access to all things Antares.
Hence the Nexus. Sure, it’s got background and history (all under the category ‘Background’!), army lists accessible from one entry (‘PDF Army Lists’), and has all the rules in one place: ‘Rules Central’. It’s also got breakdowns of every unit, run-downs of each faction, ‘Getting Started’ articles, player showcase articles, scenarios, links to videos, blogs and podcasts… in fact, it has many of the articles that we’ve seen come out for Antares over the past few years plus many more.
The Nexus is the repository for Antares.
But it’s just a start. We’ve already put some example items up marked ‘Personal Shards’. This is an area on the Nexus where all the unofficial but useful lists, aids, optional rules, articles or planets can be placed without impacting on the core universe – but still being accessible to the players! We’ve some volunteer editors – the Nexus IMTel – and they’ll help us manage what goes up.
For all that goodness, this is where we have to say that the Nexus is a work-in-progress. We have plans to improve the user interface, include messaging, enable groups for factions or campaigns, forum-style functions and whatever game aids we can provide. It will all take time, though, and resources, but we thought it best to roll out something useful now rather than perfection in three years time!
So, the Nexus will be regularly updated and modified – we’ll be adding more to it regularly, perhaps even weekly. For now, though, we’re already finding it useful, a central place to go for everything we need.
A gateway to Antares: the Nexus.
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Dive into the Antares world with the Kar’a Nine starter set!
Sam Phillips
