Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Truth be told, I wish I had more friends who liked to play tactical miniatures games. In the meantime, I love having two children living here in the house with me.
Halo: Flashpoint (2024, Mantic Games) is a reimplementation of the core ruleset used for the Deadzone series, except now, we’ve got a game featuring your friend and mine, Master Chief. Well, sort of. Mantic sent the Recon Edition set of minis for the system, and it initially looked like Chief was one of the good guys set to fight against the baddies from the video games, such as the Covenant or the Flood. In reality, Halo: Flashpoint—at least in the Recon box—is a two-player-only skirmish game featuring teams of four Spartans going at it in the video game multiplayer modes you know and love, such as Slayer, Capture the Flag, and Oddball.
And that’s all I needed to get my eight-year-old to engage with the system. We love playing two-player Halo on our Xbox (The Master Chief Collection), so when I told him that Halo: Flashpoint had arrived, he not only helped rip open the box, he built all the terrain included in the game and played with the minis by himself for a little while before we set up for our first game.
Energy Shields
Halo: Flashpoint’s main selling point is the ease with which new players can integrate into the system. Save for games like Core Space and Arcadia Quest when COVID first began a few years ago, I haven’t actually done a ton of PvP combat games that use a “line of sight” system, rulers, hefty terrain components, and (usually) terrible, dense rulebooks.
Halo: Flashpoint does the work, though. The rulebook is really well written. It has polish. It is easy to find all of the edge case rules quickly…in part, because there really aren’t any edge-case rules. The Recon Edition comes with a double-sided map that includes one side that is so beginner-friendly that all of that mode’s rules are listed in large text blocks in a ring around the outside of the arena. Markings on the beginner map even show you the best position for the terrain to be used in that format, shrunk to be played as a 2v2 Slayer contest that plays in less than 30 minutes.
Accessibility gets even easier when understanding movement. Halo: Flashpoint uses a cube system that makes it very easy to tell where players can move or not move. Scaling structures, taking cover, and the “True Line of Sight” mechanic means everything is very straightforward. If you want to use one of your actions to move, you do it, and you pick up any items lying around on the ground along the way. If you can see the entire model you are targeting, you have a “Clear Shot”, and get to roll extra attack dice. Using eight-sided dice, rolled 8s are critical—Headshots, in the game’s parlance—and that grants the active player a reroll to possibly stack additional damage onto an opponent.
In one of my games, I rolled an eight five straight times. It was glorious, but more importantly, it was easy to understand. Halo: Flashpoint feels like the Czech Games Edition arena shooter Adrenaline in this way—models are definitely gonna die here, and that’s a good thing, to make it feel more like an actual multiplayer experience in Halo.
There are no rulers needed for this system, and the rules for tabletop hobbyists are easy to grasp. My eight-year-old picked up the system quickly also, which means there’s a better chance the game gets to the table more often. I also showed Halo: Flashpoint to Meeple Mountain contributor Kev Brantley (himself a big Halo fan) and he picked up the system just as quickly as my son.
Baby’s First Tactical Minis Game
Halo: Flashpoint is a very smooth entry point for players looking to get into miniatures gaming. A major shoutout goes to the people behind the writing of this rulebook; I’m still shocked by how good it was, not just for a tactical minis game, but just as a way to describe the system fully and completely without ever being a snow job. I would trust even those new to the hobby to be able to understand this system, and engage with it in any way that feels comfortable.
While I wish my favorite modes from the video games were included—Strongholds, SWAT (pistols, headshots only, no shields), Shotty Snipers, Big Team Battle—something tells me other Halo: Flashpoint boxes have what I need. And look, I love the fact that Oddball is here, and I love the idea that the Oddball is still a lethal hand-to-hand combat weapon.
Halo: Flashpoint, as a production, is good, but not great. The miniatures are not world-class, especially in a stretch where it feels like tabletop miniature sculpts are getting better and better every year. (Oathsworn, this is not.) The insert does the job, and the terrain is very easy to build…but it is simple stuff, in many ways reminding my son and I of some of the low-res images from games like the first or second Halo games in terms of their simplicity. For comparison, I thought even the basic terrain included in Core Space’s base box was exceptional, with lots of flavor and depth to the scenery.
Halo: Flashpoint has walls, crates, and towers. It’s all pretty basic. (This might just be the case in the Recon box, so that might scale up for players who bought the nicer boxes of goodies.) The team at Mantic clearly focused on refining the system, and I think I’m going to use the basic side of the map (the beginner side) for my plays with my son until further notice, while using the 8×8 side of the map for games with adults who want a little more meat on the bone. Respawns can slow the full game down, so that can easily be houseruled into something that keeps playtime under an hour.
Halo: Flashpoint is solid. I’m looking forward to exploring more of the system…now I just need to find more players who like these kinds of games!
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