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 Kanluwen wrote:
The Pillar of Autumn was a one-off modification of a Halcyon-class light cruiser.

The Marathon were replacements to the Halcyon class but, expensive as hell and rare. Usually admiralty had them. Then the Autumn class replaced them at the end of the war. They are stronger than the Marathon as they also have the hull reinforcement from the Pillar of Autumn's design (read, hexagonal design armor and reinforcing,) but, phased out the Marathon.

Omg omg omg!!!!! Halo is my favourite game series (also really enjoyed the books too) but now this I want it all!!!

I would love to at least try out the Fleet Battles. I don't see anyone around my area with it at present.

I've now had 4 games of this and it really is quite good plus the models are pretty cool! There are similarities with Battlefleet Gothic for sure.

I forget - did "exploding 6's" make it in here too?

 Alpharius wrote:
I forget - did "exploding 6's" make it in here too?

No. Depending on your firepower rating and rolls, you can get rerolls of misses but you never get more dice than you initially started with. The default firepower rating lets you reroll a minor miss for each major hit (there are basically two levels of misses and hits on a die).

I've played a couple of games and thought that I would put my two cents in.
1. The covenant are not as powerful as I thought they would be. Don't get me wrong they aren't under powered (though I do think the ccs is a little weak in armor for it's size) but if your are not careful with how you maneuver them the UNSC can destroy you at long range. At least in the smaller games I played the UNSC's advantage in number helped them out with this, though I suspect at larger point games the covenant will be able to even though odds. But in smaller point games the covenant will not win by quality alone. You need to get as many ships as you can on the table, the formation that lets you place four corvettes done is good for this. The CCS is as i mentioned above is a little to fragile for its cost so giving it a escort is important I think to give it more survivability. The ORS in the one game that We played with it was just a giant target for macs but that was a smaller point game so that one ships was half of his forces. In order to give the covenant a chance you need to lay a lot of terrain down for cover. More than the book says.

2. From the couple of games I have played the UNSC where much easier to play then the covenant you just need to deal enough damage to the Covenant at long range before they can get close. The marathon is a really tough ship that can take a hit and the Paris can dish out damage as well. The epoch also was able to bring out a lot of missile damage and the covenant need to focus some fire on it to bring it down.

My opinions may be completely wrong sense I've only played 4.5 small games but that's what I think so far.

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/meet-the-big-hitters

In a nutshell, it looks like the Punic supercarrier's function of carrying frigates lets it reinforce a damaged frigate base within 10" once a turn. It also has a front "super mac" and side mini-macs. For the covies, the CAS's focus (at least in the article) is as a carrier first with larger flights of bombers, free zealot boarding craft, and 15 hangar rating (it contributes 15 stands/chits of fighters or bombers to your forces, probably regenerating a bunch as a well). Each massive ship is bundled with a sprue of the same faction's small/medium ships from the starter.

I'm not a fan of the design of the Punic and will just wait for the infinity (and hope that it comes with the post war smaller ships as filler instead of the ones I already own). As I said before, the price point is an issue with this game (both the starter and these ships) and I'm not a fan of bundling two sprues of ships when it inflates the price. The massive ships like this come basically with half the contents of this upgrade pack:

http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/47743/s/spghfun03/

so theoretically they'd be $20-25 cheaper without it. I realize that "supported ships" is a theme here and it is reasonable that the massive ships are supported by front line normal sized ships but I wish that they'd just include the rules for that and then have folks fill in those mandatory supported ships from their starter instead of including it all in that one box. YMMV. I was initially last summer excited by the CAS but I've decided since to sell my covie models (PM me anyone interested in the US) so I won't be getting that one. If I don't get any local interest in Halo personally, I might still buy the Infinity just because but it may be my last purchase.

 RiTides wrote:
There seems to be a real shortage of 6x4 space mat options! Has anyone ever tried these, I've seen a few glowing "text" reviews, but no pics of them out in the wild:

http://somethinggeeky.com/space-gaming-mats/

They seem to at least have a different / more textured backing than normal vinyl mats... I'm interested in these since I've tried standard vinyl mats (Deep Cut studios) and they were just too thin and flimsy for my taste, got creased very easily, did not stay flat, and were extremely reflective... My preferred alternative would have been the 6x4 F.A.T. mat, but it's out of stock in the U.S. (still in stock on the UK/EU branch of the Frontline site, though).

If anyone can find a pic of the Something Geeky mats I linked to above in the wild (really, any mat of theirs of any type!) I would greatly appreciate it . My google-fu has come up empty... this is also being discussed on the Spartan forums with regards to the Halo game, but they haven't come up with any other options (and didn't have the Something Geeky ones listed there). That discussion is here...

Does playing on one in the Something Geeky factory count as "in the wild"?

We're playing under huge bright overhead lights, so it looks quite shiny, but here's a pic of a couple of us playing X-Wing on a 6x4 "Star Birth" mat...



More pics here: http://somethinggeeky.com/news/xwing/space-gaming-mats-action-shots

Incidentally, I'd love to see some pics of other people using our mats "in the wild" too, if anyone here is using them.

All the best,

Phil
Website Content Manager: Something Geeky
Creator of the Something Geeky space gaming mats.

For anyone interested, I've finished my starter set sized fleet (one more capital ship, dozen less tiny frigates) at the link below on dakka or my sig link (pretty much the same thing on both). I'll hopefully get to try them out sometime this year!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/670980.page#8271209

They look great, warboss!

Thanks. If I get bored and my covies don't sell, maybe I'll put them together and paint them as well, lol.

Those are great ships, Warboss. Well painted.


If you lived near me, I'd be interested in the covies, but shipping is a jerk.

Thanks. In some of the pics, the lighting makes the greys look much more similar than they are in actuality but I'm happy they're done. Painting ships (at least in that type scheme) is a hell of alot quicker than I thought; a simple wash really brings out the panel lines. I expect that the DFC stuff will be the similarly quick to paint up at least for UCM.

Wow! When are these Halo minis being released?

All the ship stuff is out now, lots on sale at miniature market

 krazynadechukr wrote:
Wow! When are these Halo minis being released?

Most of the minis are available already as stated before. The only ones not yet available are the "massive" ships I posted above, namely the UNSC Punic Supercarrier and the Covenant Assault Carrier. The good news is that those last two will be available either this week or early next week for sale.

An update on halo waypoint with about a dozen or so new ship designs detailed for the halo universe included some of the ones shown in the halo 5 guardians videogame intro.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/canon-fodder-holiday-shipping

I like the third from the bottom earth ship as well as the obvious choice of the Inifnity. The new huge whale of a pre-Covenant supercarrier used by the elites intrigues me but I think I like the sleeker lines of the covies a bit more.

I've been out of the loop for a while and re-reading the thread wasn't entirely conclusive: Is the ground battle game still going to happen, or is the fleet one pretty much it?

I don't think they've commented either way on the ground game since Salute (at least that I've seen).

Wow! Thanks for the link Warboss. I think it would be cool to see one of those massive ships in the game...maybe the first tri-base? I could see it being more of a collector's piece than a gaming piece though.

 godswildcard wrote:
Wow! Thanks for the link Warboss. I think it would be cool to see one of those massive ships in the game...maybe the first tri-base? I could see it being more of a collector's piece than a gaming piece though.

They've already got two massive ships out already on tri-bases, the CAS (second biggest covie ship in the group pic) and the Punic (second biggest UNSC in that pic).

Sadly the quality of the castings is quite lacking on the resin-ships... one can clearly see thick printer-lines on the miniatures.

And judging from their 50% discount on Halo on Black Friday it does not sell that well.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Sadly the quality of the castings is quite lacking on the resin-ships... one can clearly see thick printer-lines on the miniatures.

And judging from their 50% discount on Halo on Black Friday it does not sell that well.

X-wing was also on sale for 50% off during Black Friday and is a very popular and well selling game. Now if we see it going on sale for 50% off during a regular time with no subsequent restock, that would be a different story.

As for the 3d print stepping on the lines not being cleaned up prior to resin casting, I agree and have been vocal about it on their forums. They should have cleaned that up once instead of expecting each and every customer to do it. I suspect most folks won't notice the lines until they paint them and it's too late then.

I can't wait to break open my box tomorrow and start assembling the plastics. It saddens me that Spartan's resin minis are just as lacking as they ever were. If I fall in love with this game, will there be any new plastics not included in the starter for me to expand with, or am I out of luck?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I can't wait to break open my box tomorrow and start assembling the plastics. It saddens me that Spartan's resin minis are just as lacking as they ever were. If I fall in love with this game, will there be any new plastics not included in the starter for me to expand with, or am I out of luck?

The plastics are well designed and easy to assemble. I usually only glanced at the instructions and the few parts that weren't completely intuitive were covered specifically in the instructions (like the orientation of little jutting out parts on the marathons). They've said in the past supposedly that there will be more plastics but I can't give a link to it as I think it was a gencon second hand quote or something. Obviously apply salt as needed.

Do they require glue to assemble? I would assume so, but starter sets sometimes surprise me by being push-fit or snap tite in assembly. If they go together without glue, my son can help me assemble them, which might be a huge incentive to buy some of the fleet boxes later.

I've pretty much got my wife's blessing to buy the entire Bandai Starblazers 2199 Mecha Collection for this reason.

Spartan is doing themselves a big disservice having released the Supercarrier and Assault Carrier at such a high price point. I don't think including the escorts, dice, etc really adds much value beyond driving the price up. I would have picked up both if it came in at a discounted price around $50, but I can't see myself making the plunge at the current asking price.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Do they require glue to assemble? I would assume so, but starter sets sometimes surprise me by being push-fit or snap tite in assembly. If they go together without glue, my son can help me assemble them, which might be a huge incentive to buy some of the fleet boxes later.

I've pretty much got my wife's blessing to buy the entire Bandai Starblazers 2199 Mecha Collection for this reason.

It does require glue, but the assembly is incredibly simple. The Marathon has a couple fiddly parts, but that's it.

$50? How big are these ships? How much are they charging?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thanks, Triple9. I guess he can "help" me paint them at least.

Triple9 wrote:
Spartan is doing themselves a big disservice having released the Supercarrier and Assault Carrier at such a high price point. I don't think including the escorts, dice, etc really adds much value beyond driving the price up. I would have picked up both if it came in at a discounted price around $50, but I can't see myself making the plunge at the current asking price.

It's sadly alot more.at 55 GBP (so around 50% higher in USD). I commented when it came out that, just like with the starter, I wish they had included less and dropped the price point along with it. The massives so far are unfortunately (IMO) bundled with a sprue of medium and small starter set ships (and their bases, rules, tokens, and inserts) even though the rules for the actual massives do NOT reference them at all. It's not like with other ships where you can add a smaller ship to a larger base like a fish following a shark to upgrade the bigger model to a "supported" or "reinforced" variant. There really is no reason at all in game to bundle it except to raise the price and move some more plastic sprues. :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Thanks, Triple9. I guess he can "help" me paint them at least.

He can probably help you assemble them as well especially with the covenant. The small covie frigates are an easy tab in slot two piece model and the medium ship is only 4 pieces and pretty intuitive that most kids (depending on age of course) can do it after being shown a dry fit once or looking at the instructions. Even he's quite young, he can do the two piece almost impossible to misalign frigates (you get iirc 14 of them in the starter) and feel like he did alot seeing all 7 bases on the table.