Chronique:Canon Fodder - Infinity & Beyond
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BY GRIMBROTHER ONE - 9/11/2015
ISSUE 41
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“Future fleets and warships were discussed at length during GenCon meetings. We will – of course - be seeing the Infinity in UNSC fleets, but that will be releasing with a wave of post-War craft seen in Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians – including the svelte Sangheili Man O’ War and heavily-armed Strident-class frigates! These will alter the balance of power within the fleets as the delta in technology between the Covenant and UNSC becomes smaller, but will also open new opportunities to play out critical battles between the resurgent Covenant and the Arbiter’s Swords of Sanghelios!”
Darkened stars
“Whether the parasitical Flood would appear in Halo: Fleet Battles was a very common question (#2 after inquiries regarding release schedule), and the answer to that is: only if we can do them right. Making Flood simply the “boarding party faction” isn’t terribly interesting and doesn’t do them justice. After a lot of brainstorming with the Spartan Games crew we hit on a set of mechanics that can make them both thematically interesting and fictionally consistent, but it will take a lot of playtesting to ensure balance and fun. Flood-specific ship models are not planned at this time, but I would not discount the talented folks at Spartan Games creating something super-cool. The faction will use existing ships in new and unique ways, with special overlays and game mechanics that reflect their hive-mind and puppeteering abilities. Resin add-on "infestation kits" to show Flood growths are also possible.”
Masters & Commanders
“I can’t wait to see the new ships hit the table, but we also have new Fleet Commanders and Heroes waiting in the wings! With beautiful art created by the extraordinarily talented David Heidhoff here at 343 Industries and cool game mechanics by Spartan Games that meld fiction with intriguing tactical options, we are sure these will be seeing a lot of play alongside the always-reliable Vice Admiral Stanforth and Supreme Commander ‘Barutamee from the core game.”
Xytan 'Jar Wattinree: Though he would meet an untimely end during the Great Schism, Xytan’s genius for war and his surviving battle recordings continue to instruct new generations of Sangheili Shipmasters serving with both Jul ‘Mdama’s Covenant and the Arbiter’s Swords of Sanghelios. While Xytan was not present at the Fall of Reach itself, his brilliance combined with the audacity of Supreme Commander Thel ‘Vadamee would have made for a devastating combination during that battle.”
Gameplay: Design intent for this cunning Covenant commander was to represent a dagger-like tactical genius. In Halo: Fleet Battles we modelled his unique command style with orders that allow him to automatically seize initiative at key junctures of the battle and constantly throw his enemies plans into disarray.
Ministry of Etiology: Assigned to Thel ‘Vadamee’s Fleet of Particular Justice as master of the support ship Infinite Succor, this ambitious Legate would eventually meet his end fighting the very threat he had spent much of his life studying – the Flood.
Gameplay: This was a fun card to help design! In addition to adding dice to the Fleet Commander’s command pool, the Minister can pull rank to adjust results to his (no doubt selfish) goals and ensure that he’s alive to reap the benefits by ordering Shipmasters to maneuver into enemy attacks meant for him! That’s important because unlike Fleet Commanders, who are represented as an off-board presence, the Minister of Etiology is a Heroic Character who must be assigned to a specific ship in a fleet!
Cortana: For Operation: RED FLAG, Cortana selected the Master Chief as her Spartan partner, based on his combination of luck and talent. The combination of John-117, Cortana, and Mjolnir power armor proved to be a hyper-lethal success, but her ability to handle the complexities of starship combat was also second to none.
Gameplay: How could we not get Cortana into the battle for Reach’s fate? This Cortana (as with all Commanders and Heroes there may be alternate versions) is a battlenet specialist, significantly augmenting the tactical flexibility of the Fleet Commander she is assigned to and able to hack enemy Battle Groups to reduce their firepower. Though Cortana must be assigned to a specific ship, she is able to augment her allies and hinder foes across the naval engagement.
Lord Hood: It was Hood’s indefatigable leadership during the Covenant War that allowed the Navy to survive as a fighting force against impossible odds, and every captain who survived can tell a story of the Fleet Admiral appearing at crucial moments to inspire the forces or make seemingly prescient strategic adjustments on which the fate of entire campaigns hinged.
Gameplay: As befits his responsibilities and role, Fleet Admiral Hood has abilities that augment overall fleet efficiency. From a fiction perspective it was crucial that he felt ‘detached’ from the fate of individual ships as a function of being responsible for the UNSC Navy as a whole; his actions in Halo: Fleet Battle represent carefully-calculated plans and measured attention to detail rather than micro-managing ship captains or even being directly aware of events at the relatively small scale of a fleet skirmish.
Ground Beefy
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“We made significant progress on the ground game development during meetings at GenCon, both in terms of nitty-gritty production requirements (plastic sprue layout, fiction wordcount, initial release units) and design philosophy (game mechanic complexity, force organization, etc.). We announced Halo Wars 2 shortly after the convention, so this obviously factored into certain planning details! We’re going to be holding some cards about this game a bit close to our chest for right now, but we can reveal some interesting details:”
- We are not ready to reveal the final name for the product. We can confirm it won’t be Halo: Ground Game.
- Scale is 1/100 (c. 15mm). Halo: Fleet Battles is 1/20000 scale as a point of comparison!
- Basic game mechanics (e.g. the dice system) are similar to Halo: Fleet Battles, though troop morale plays a key role. Where appropriate we are using the same terminology across both games.
- Design intent is to allow players to field platoons of infantry supported by up to a dozen vehicles and have a game play out in a reasonable span of time (about 90 minutes, although players can easily expand their forces to play all day!).
- The actual mechanical parts of the game is focused at the squad level. You will not be rolling for individual “sticks” with plasma grenades. However, we are looking at concessions for “rule of cool” Halo elements, like Warthog splatters and vehicle hijacking.
- Infantry have multiple models on a single base, representing fireteams for the UNSC and lances (or demi-lances) for the Covenant. Line troops are on larger bases, command elements and specialists on smaller bases, so you can easily pick them out on the tabletop. The base unit of maneuver is the squad or file, which consists of line and specialist bases in various combinations. The sprue design we’ve worked out should give considerable flexibility in force composition right out of the box (even more if you want to magnetize some key units).
- Dropships are a core part of the game, though not a central element of maneuver and strategy. Whilst the current plan isn’t to include a *Pelican or Phantom model in the starter box, we do intend to include a full size template (top view on one side, wrecked on the other) for a UNSC and Covenant dropship so you can make use of them even before Spartan Games releases the models themselves. And dropships are not going to be the largest units in the game...
- Drop pods will be key to both Covenant and UNSC victory! Meteoric assaults by UNSC ODSTs and Elite SpecOps are vital in getting firepower in the right place, at precisely the right time. Using drop pods as impromptu orbital artillery may not make the final cut.
- We heard the call for crossover rules with Halo: Fleet Battles loud and clear, both with regard to playing out boarding actions in a ground game ‘sideboard’ and simulating orbital assaults. Using both games at once will be optional, due to the extra complexity and time involved.
- Interesting and unique factions are part and parcel of Halo, and you will be seeing more than just the Covenant and UNSC in the future...
There’s always next year
“Thanks to amazing retail partners and a dedicated group of the Spartan Vanguard volunteers many lessons were learned during Spartan Games first foray into the colonies. Already Spartan Games aims to be back - bigger and better - for GenCon 2016 to show off the ground game and the latest warships for Halo: Fleet Battles. As part of the planning for next year we kicked around ideas for demo table designs I thought were impossibly ambitious, but Spartan Games assures me are doable. If you thought a scale Long Night of Solace for terrain was impressive, wait until you see what they bring out next August 4 – 7 in Indianapolis!”
Phew! A thousand thanks to Kenneth and the folks from Spartan Games for the fantastic update. If you want more details on how to get your hands on the latest and greatest additions to the Fleet Battles family, check out Spartan Games’ September 2015 update. And with that, we draw to a close for this edition. If you’re hunting for details on other upcoming Halo fiction, you’ll probably want to turn in next week, just saying. And in the meantime… Go read Halo: Last Light!
Until next week, Live well, play Halo, and don’t shake the lightbulb.
-Grim
New universe entries this week!
Iona was a smart artificial intelligence created specifically for operational analysis by ONI.
Black-Box is a fourth-generation AI construct used to monitor affairs at the highest levels of human government for Serin Osman, head of ONI.