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So, for those of you who already have played this game, how is it? Rules balanced? I looked at the prices online, and they seem fairly reasonable (compared to GW, they're flying rodent gak crazy cheap). How popular is the game?

Popularity is relative and you could have a game booming in your area and dead in mine. That said... I'm a bit disappointed in how little fanfare the game seems to have gotten. I got into it thinking that the Halo name and popularity would be a big boost but it doesn't seem that way either online or locally for me. I'm still working on my fleets (my UNSC are done with pics in my sig link) so I am rooting for it. I haven't actually played a game yet so whatever follows is purely theoretical and not from practical experience. The two fleets seem to play very differently from watching various youtube videos and reading the rules. The UNSC seem like drag racing glass cannon snipers with some pretty mean broadsides up close whereas the Covies are (in halo terms) invisibility shotgunners. The UNSC seems to have the advantage in straight line speed and long range firepower with their forward macs and hard burns but they're a bit fragile because they lose all their defensive dice from Titanium armor when they take their first "wound". The covies on the other hand are harder to damage for two reasons, cloaking systems and always active defense arrays. They're a bit slower in a straight line race but they have greater maneuverability as they can scoot to either side. The long range covenant firepower doesn't really impress me but they seem brutal up close. Because of the rules for plasma, they gain 1 firepower at short and lose one at long so they go from firepower 3 to 5 when they get to short range whereas the UNSC MACs are at 4 always. The larger covenant ships also have "area attack" beams that lose a few dice but can hit enemy ships in sequence instead of just 1.

I've been playing the campaign with a friend and we are on either the fifth or sixth scenario. So far I feel like the game is very balanced, though I've lost every game it's been close and I'm never left with the feeling that it was the rules. In fact it's more like my learning curve didn't want to occur, don't joust with Covenant. I can say so far I love the game and I've never played a game of Halo the video game in my life. I bought it cause I like to buy things and it had a shiny box. My friend though is a halo fanatic and says the factions feel correct based on the fluff. So far I've really enjoyed the game, I've not gotten into fleet building or any of that and I just used boarders but not wings yet (pro tip: sending one ships worth of boarders is sort of a waste, overwhelm your opponent).

As far as popularity, I think the fact that it's a traditional minis game and not a pre-paint like X-Wing limits it's popularity. Sprues can be daunting to the uninitiated. As Spartan Games simply doesn't have the market share to make a big push. I hope it does well though as I have plans to start picking up the expansion boxes.

 warboss wrote:
That said... I'm a bit disappointed in how little fanfare the game seems to have gotten. I got into it thinking that the Halo name and popularity would be a big boost but it doesn't seem that way either online or locally for me.

I imagine that when most people (including Halo fans) think of Halo, they think of Space Marines in power armour gunning down aliens up close and personal, not of space fleet battles. The Halo universe ships, while good looking in my eyes, are not exactly the stars of the show; I expect that most people who would easily recognise Master Chief or Cortana probably wouldn't instantly recognise a UNSC ship as being from Halo.

I am interested in picking the game up as I have very little experience with this type of game: I've only played a couple of games of X-Wing Armada so far, which I thought was interesting. Sadly I don't have the money or hobby time to invest in it right now, and I'm not sure if people around me would be interested in playing.

I played the first Halo game. I see it as (A) a first person shooter, and (B) a video game. It doesn't seem as if a tabletop space naval game is an obvious add-on, however if the ship models are nice and keenly priced, they could find buyers who will use them with other rules.

I know this isn't much help if you want to play the actual Halo Fleet game.

I'm getting Halo Fleet Battles for Christmas and I'm pretty excited about it. I've never played Halo and know nothing about it, so I'm going to read some of the novels to get into it. My friends all love space battles, so even if the Halo name doesn't get them, the cool ships will. If all else fails, I'll use the minis in Dropfleet Commander or BFG.

Spaceships are also incredibly easy to paint for beginners, minus decals or iconography.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
IIf all else fails, I'll use the minis in Dropfleet Commander or BFG.

Spaceships are also incredibly easy to paint for beginners, minus decals or iconography.

Agreed on both. That's my backup plan as well (assuming DFC gets some play locally next year).

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I've never played Halo and know nothing about it, so I'm going to read some of the novels to get into it.

While I enjoyed the Halo videogames, the background was never very clear to me. From what I've understood, humanity is at war with an alien civilization called the Covenant, made up of a collection of different alien races. The Covenant worship the Forerunners, an ancient race that built the Halos as weapons to destroy the Flood, taking out pretty much everything else (including themselves) at the same time. Storylines in the games tend to revolve around the remaining Forerunner installations and technology; the "Halo" that lent it's name to the first game being the original example.

That brings up an interesting point actually; is there any fluff that accompanies the game? When is it set in relation to videogames, or is it not specific about that? The reason I ask is that in Halo 3 elements of the Covenant split off and allied themselves with humanity, so that could potentially be reflected in-game.

Having read the starter box description, it says there are 49 ship models, including 32 Human and 17 Covenant. (This seems like good value for the ship models, though I haven't looked at them in detail.)

This suggests that the game is Human versus Covenant, and the Human ships are weaker individually. If this is the case, you could split off some Covenant and ally them with the Humans, but you would have to reduce the number of Human ships to preserve balance of forces.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Having read the starter box description, it says there are 49 ship models, including 32 Human and 17 Covenant. (This seems like good value for the ship models, though I haven't looked at them in detail.)

This suggests that the game is Human versus Covenant, and the Human ships are weaker individually. If this is the case, you could split off some Covenant and ally them with the Humans, but you would have to reduce the number of Human ships to preserve balance of forces.

The number is technically true but a bit misleading if you're expecting "normal" sized ships. IIRC, 41 of those ships are very small (like the size of a 40k heavy bolter or smaller). Here is a comparison pic I took with the smallest and largest UNSC "human" ships in the box. The Covenant ships are bigger than the human ones for each class.



The large ships were surprisingly large (a big plus for me) but the small ships were surprisingly small (a minus IMO). The relative number and size of the small ships is balanced by the fact that they're typically mounted in squadrons of 3 to 4 on a base for the UNSC (2-3 for the small covie frigates).

Wow, that's a huge size difference. Hmm, now I'm tempted to put actual bolt guns on bases and use them as ships...

I had a look at the starter box and add-on boxes. It doesn't necessarily worry me that the largest and smallest ships are very different sizes.

WW2 was fought with destroyers of about 2,000 tons, cruisers of about 10,000 to 15,000 tons, and capital ships of about 25,000 to 35,000 tons, so a wide disparity of sizes is to be expected. The three ship types in Halo FB seem to fit these displacements.

It would be nice to have more variety of designs. Other ranges like Cold Navy have more variation for each fleet.

However, the price is good and there are advantages to an all plastic fleet.

I guess I was more used to other games like B5 and BFG that cluster closer to a 3-4 inch average with less size outliers. Other than the ships in the starter, they've added two massive ships (the 6" biggest starter set ship is on the right that is bigger than the scale pic one above )



And they were displaying another half dozen at gencon including larger than the frigates UNSC destroyers, larger Valiant cruisers, and super MAC cannon platforms. Covies get hab ships and something tiny that goes 4/base. Some of those were supposed to be out this month but no word yet.

http://kimtekeng.egloos.com/3152401

I'm actually not buying more currently partly because I want more ship variety instead of more of what I already have.

This game looks pretty neat. If it wasn't for Dropfleet I probably would have bought in. I watched the GMG video and it seemed cool.

The internet really seems to dislike Spartan Games. I don't know if that is valid. In addition, I worried about it be stifled by its setting. With only 2 factions that are basically opposites (one long range forced and one close ranged) I worry the after a few games it would lose its luster. I am going to wait and see how it develops.

Perhaps they would eventually introduce flood ships and forerunner ships. That would be interesting.

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
Perhaps they would eventually introduce flood ships and forerunner ships. That would be interesting.

I could see forerunner. Aren't flood just infected humans or covies? Would they even use fleet tactics/guns or would it be an all boarding action team? Not sure they would work.

Could be cool though, definitely waiting and seeing how it develop.

I always sort of figured the flood was semi similar to tyranids in terms of space transportation and intelligence because gravemind is so intelligent, like the hive mind. There's currently no fluff justification in my knowledge for flood having its own bioships or anything like that though, but I don't see why they couldn't introduce it and help explain the interstellar threat of the virus. I mean realistically if it doesn't travel through space somehow in a semi - meaningful direction how would it spread enough to be that serious of a threat? Perhaps they steal the other factions ships and cover them in infection and alter their systems.

No clue how they would work in game though it would be hard rules to write. There's not a giant amount of fluff for the halo universe that I know about. But all I've done is play the games and read two of the novels. The novels said nothing about the flood and space.

Forerunner is a very good and likely choice. For the Flood, though, I can't see them being anything more than a mashup of the Covies and UNSC ships in the same fleet. For the models themselves, they'd just likely be the normal ones with some resin Flood gribly bits added on.