Halo Flashpoint is about to get a whole new range of models for the Banished, the Covenant splinter group who are the main antagonists in Halo Infinite. Models for massive Brute warriors will be available in a new box set, Rise of the Banished, which comes with everything players need to start playing the miniature wargame – as well as a special edition model of the hulking Warmaster Atriox.
Halo Flashpoint impressed me a lot in 2024, offering the kinetic and chaotic fun of Halo multiplayer in miniature game form. It packs in all the three dimensional strategy of a miniature wargame to a one-box package that rivals the best board games for value and replayability. However, at release it was very light on miniatures for anything other than Spartans.
Rise of the Banished is set to correct that. Announced by publisher Mantic Games on Wednesday and already available for pre-order from its website, the new set will come with eight Jiralhanae (Brute) models, four Saneheili (Elite) mercenaries, cardboard terrain to build a Banished Garrison, a play board, dice, rules booklet, and all the cards and tokens needed to play. The set costs $125 (£100), and Mantic aims to deliver it in July.
This set will also come with a limited edition sculpt of Warmaster Atriox, the antagonist of both Halo Wars 2 and Halo Infinite, plus cards to use him in game. A regular sculpt will be available later as a regular retail release. If you last played the series on Xbox 360, Atriox is the huge gorilla with the glowing hammer in the cinematic above.
The Saneheili figures are already available in the Spartan edition starter set, the bigger (and far from essential) deluxe version of the initial base set. These models haven’t been available separately so far, but we’re willing to bet they will be after Rise of the Banished is available.
There are other species connected to the Banished, like the Unggoy (Grunts) or Mgalekgolo (Hunters). Across various releases Mantic has already issued models for sixteen different Spartan loadouts for Flashpoint – it seems perfectly likely that the entire Banished cross-species alliance could be released in miniature form just to balance things out.
With Adepticon starting today, we expect to see many more great wargames announcements. Classic miniature game Battletech has just announced Battletech Gothic, a new, grimdark version of its scifi mech battler that seems to be shooting for the Warhammer 40k market.
If you haven’t heard about Halo: Flashpoint before now, we’ve got a couple of great features about it based on the testing we did when it launched – one on everything it does better than Warhammer 40k, and the other on why it’s a great pick for board gamers who want to move over into the world of wargaming.
Source: Wargamer
