Halo: Flashpoint has many strengths – great miniatures, easy to learn rules, and plenty of strategic depth, with tons of gameplay variety right there in the affordable starter set. For board game players who are intrigued by miniature wargaming but are put off by the cash, craft skills, or space that the hobby normally calls for, this is a perfect gateway game.
Board games may not be cheap, but they offer a complete gameplay experience in one box, and the best board games can provide dozens, even hundreds of hours of entertainment thanks to strategic depth and tactical variety. That’s not true for most miniature wargames: while you can pick up a Warhammer 40k starter set for a similar price to a board game, it will only give you a taster of the hobby.
In contrast Halo Flashpoint‘s basic Recon edition starter set has everything you need to play, including two teams of Spartans, cardboard terrain, dice, rules, and tokens, for $75 (£60). The Spartans come pre-assembled, and the two teams are color coded in classic Red vs Blue.
Games of Flashpoint use a two foot square game mat, closer in size to a big strategy board game than a table filling miniature game. The mat is divided into four inch squares which are used for measuring distances for weapon ranges and movement instead of the sometimes fiddly tape measures usually found in wargames.
Nevertheless, this is definitely a miniature game. The position of your Spartans in 3D space and what they can “see” matters, giving them cover or hiding them from the enemy entirely. While board games are stuffed with great big plastic miniatures these days, there’s a real joy to having them exist on a miniature battlefield that only miniature wargames provide, and Halo Flashpoint absolutely conveys that fun.
The basic Recon edition of Flashpoint comes with a red and a blue team of Spartans, each with identical weapon loadouts. For most miniature games, which get their variety from the asymmetry between opposing forces, that would be a problem. But Flashpoint has borrowed some great ideas from the Halo videogames that give it oodles of variety even when played with symmetrical forces.
The five game missions are inspired by classic multiplayer modes. As well as a basic kill-scoring Slayer mode, there’s a scrabble for a single, movable objective in Oddball, a lethal relay race in Capture the Flag, the land-grabbing Strongholds mode, and goody collecting Stockpile.
They each call for different strategies, and when combined with variable terrain layouts, there’s huge replayability. Then there are the weapon pickups and single-use power-ups that spawn throughout a match, adding yet more variability.
There’s also a respawn system: your slain units quickly return to battle, something that you rarely see in other miniature games. With no way to annihilate the enemy force, players must focus on the objective, keeping the scenario sharp in your mind. Few other wargames are this abstract, usually because they have an element of simulation to them – but Flashpoint is prioritising fun.
We have one disappointment with the Flashpoint starter set: it doesn’t contain any rules for games with more than two players. During each of our test games, our playtesters commented on how much fun multiplayer would be. We’re inclined to agree – while it would push the game towards chaos and away from tactics, it would absolutely be a hoot.
As we have a whole guide devoted to board games for couples, being two player only isn’t strictly a failing, and house rules wouldn’t be too hard to whip up. But rules for playing this game in big groups would help it to appeal to even more traditional board game audiences, and it’s a small shame that they’re missing.
If you’d like to try a board game from the same publisher that is almost entirely strategy free but chaotically entertaining, check out our Worms: The Board Game review.
Source: Wargamer
