Hi!
As promised, here's my read through of Void 1.1 along with some initial thoughts.
The book itself is from 2000 and is actually the revised edition with the purple cover (originally there was a blue one which was more of an introduction to the game and later there would be a starter boxed set edition). Initially produced by i-Kore but later Urban Mammoth, Scotia Grendel and now Seb Games.
The book itself runs to 64 pages which is a pleasingly short volume and better yet, the rules themselves are only 14 pages with the rest of the book covering the background of the Void universe as well as the four human and one alien forces.
Looking back, Void came out soon after the demise of Warzone so rules wise there's some similar elements to it but the background is very similar to the old Kryomek game featuring a fractious Human empire stumbling across a technologically advanced alien civilisation.
The first segment of the book covers the background of the Viridian Solaris system, the homeworld for humanity and the great powers that have developed there before taking a quick overview of panhuman space but it keeps things pretty open which give folks a lot of flexibility with how they want to play things with the frontier being the main hotspot between the human powers and the alien Koralon with humanity not only facing the threat of an unknowable alien species but also squabbles amongst the great powers.
While it doesn't have tons of background, there's enough to get you going and the setting did get fleshed out further in the army books and Battles With Miniatures, i-Kore's in house magazine. The artwork was largely produced by Stuart Beel, the ex Warzone illustrator and the colour artwork is rather more akin to anime or computer game art with a high tech and generally sleek look to the forces but there's also some nice black and work artwork that looks more pen and ink. This artwork is a bit more rough and ready and is more sketch like than final illustration but does break up the text nicely and helps illustrate the setting.
The art and background are a bit less grimdark than GW with humanity under threat but very capable of defeating the alien foe if they can stop squabbling amongst themselves. It's a smidgen more hard sci-fi but there's still lots of swords and close combat so maybe it's closer to Star Wars than Star Trek.
The next segment are the rules themselves which are fairly straight forward while not being simplistic and allows for fast playing and fun games that don't require much record keeping or memorising tons of special rules.
The rules cover model activation, shooting, morale, close combat and vehicles and I'll look at them in more depth another time but needless to say, a couple of read throughs of them should set folks in good stead for playing out a quick game.
The final section takes a more focused look at the individual forces and includes armylists. The forces covered are the megacorporate conservationalist Viridians, the despotic and brutal Junkers, the high tech Syntha, the peacekeepers of VASA and the alien Koralon.
The armylist gives stats for core units and a couple of characters for each but one thing I do like is that each human force can take some of another forces troop types (for example Viridian's can still take Junker Convict Legionaries)
Each force is interesting and plays differently enough to give folks a good variety of gaming style, with the Viridians being good at close combat and shooting, the Junkers having numbers and brutal close combat troops while the Syntha have terrifying firepower and VASA being fast and very good at close combat.
Overall each force is well thought out and interesting but I do find the Koralon to be the weak spot of the lot as the concept of an aquatic invertebrate being the big bad doesn't really work and the figures they produced in the first attempt were a bit shonky and the later sculpts (designed by Adrian Smith of Chronopia and GW fame) were more akin to a cross between Tyranids and The Thing.
That being said, I must say that they have some really interesting rules thanks to their Phazons ability to warp spacetime.
I suspect I'd replace them with the Kryomek if I'm to collect a force as they are a far more sinister and stylistically pleasing foe as they really have the Xenomorphic menace that a sci-fi game needs!
All in all, Void 1.1 is a good addition to anyones game collection with solid rules and some interesting forces to play around with or incorporate into your own setting and as it's free to download, its absolutely worth downloading a copy to peruse.
I plan to post up a bit of a battle report in the coming weeks but I also hope to write up some more rulebook review for some of the other old games I have and try some of them out too so watch this space!
In the meantime, All the best!
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