Spartan-079

Wow it’s been a while since I posted anything on here, and to be fair not much has happened. 

I have however been working away at the Halo: Ground Command starter set that I picked up before Christmas.  The change in scale (15mm rather than 32mm) has been a refreshing change, meaning normal infantry only need a base coat, wash, and dry brush to produce good results. 

The move over to a different scale, also means that 90% of my terrain is no good. So with an hour so each week I have started to make some new terrain, and revitalise my old realm of battle boards. It is making a nice change to make stuff from scratch rather than buying kits. 

Hopefully i can get some pictures on here at some stage.

Spartan – 117

Where does time fly?

Around a year ago I picked up a copy of Halo: Fleet Battles and played a few games; however as with most things it was packed away and semi forgotten.

However the other week I was struck down with a nasty cold that has lead to an ear infection meaning I have been off work even longer. This in turn lead me to playing Halo: Reach on the Xbox 360. Now for some time I have been toying with the idea of picking up an Xbox One, but for one reason or another I have not.

Until the other day, when I took the plunge and picked one up along with the Master Chief collection and Halo 5.

But what has this got to do with my blog?

Well I also picked up a copy of Halo: Ground Command miniatures game from Spartan Games. Now normally when I get a new game I take lots of pictures of the contents fresh from the box, well not this time. When It arrived I dived inside and started making the models.

Once the filler has dried on the bases I can take some pictures.

Spartan – 117.

Way back in 2001 Halo: Combat Evolved burst on to original Xbox console and since then it has been followed with another 9 games as well as books, comics, action figures, etc.

And now it has a wargame, in the form of Halo Fleet Battles: The Fall Of Reach by Spartan Games.

Now It has been around for a few months, after being previewed at Salute 2015. And I must confess I have been sitting on the fence for sometime over weather I wanted to get involved with it.

However Spartan  offered up a rather tasty Black Friday deal offering up

A fleet box, commander pack, core upgrade, large upgrade, a dice pack, and £10 off a carrier box. All for £95.00 (saving £59.00).

In the end I picked up both the UNSC and Covenant deals, however Spartan received lots of orders and are struggling to keep up with demand. And I have been told that my order should be sent out next week.

I decided however to pick up the Fall Of Reach boxed set, so lets have a look at what you get in the box.

The nice shiny outer box (inside is a plane white box).

As you can see in the first picture you get 2 sheets of card terrain and 4 sheets of various tokens. The card terrain is very thin along the lines of photo paper, and the tokens could have been compressed into just 2 sheets rather than 4.

Underneath we have the various dice that are used (I have not read the rules yet so I am unsure what they are used for)

Next we have the rule book (128 pages) and the campaign book (36 pages)

Next we have the Formation and commander cards. The Covenant have 12 formations and 1 commander card. While the USNC have 18 formations and 1 commander card.

Lastly we have 3 reference cards.

Now we move on to the models

First up in the left picture are 2 Marathon Heavy Cruisers and 12 Paris Frigates. The Marathons are made up of 9 pieces, while the Paris are single piece models. The picture on the right has 1 Epoch Heavy Carrier and 3 more Paris Frigates, the Epoch comprises of 8 pieces. The detailing on the models are excellent.

Next we have the Covenant ships,in the left picture we have 1 CCS Battle Cruiser and 6 SDV Heavy Corvettes. The CCS is made up of 4 pieces while the SDV’s are made from 2 pieces. The other sprue on the right has the 1 ORS Heavy Cruiser and 2 more SDV’s, the ORS is made up of 7 pieces. And again the details are excellent.

Lastly we have the bases, which are 60mm x 60mm clear acrylic.

To be fair it looks like a really good game which concentrates on the actions of groups of ships rather than individual ships, like BFG and Full Thrust.