Halo Flashpoint: Master Chief

One bit of painting I have managed over the last couple of weeks is to complete all the models I got for Halo Flashpoint, I now just need to paint up the terrain and objective pieces I got.

These are repeats of models I've already painted so it would allow you to field multiples of the same model and weapon combination, which as we will see could be useful. For these I steered away from the metallic paints and went with the GW contrasts instead.

One model which is different is that of the Master Chief, one of the original Spartans he's normally the hero of any Halo video game I believe.

He has his own special ability which is to be able to use multiple command dice during his activation, normally you can only use one of fire, fight, or move per model each turn. As he gives an extra 3 command dice in addition to the base 2 you could be doing a lot of fighting or shooting each turn with him. Looking at his stats you can see that he's a prime candidate for a ranged weapon pickup during the game and no slouch in melee either with his energy sword.

Whilst he takes up two spaces in your roster you could pair him with two Mk. VII's who each bring 1 extra command dice to give you a potential of 7 command dice each turn. You wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that I suspect.

Embracing Tomorrow

3D printing has slowly been building in popularity in the wargames community as the technology has become easier to use and cheaper over the last few years. The power to produce your own miniatures or terrain has seduced many to dip their toes into what essentially a whole new hobby.

This last week I had a rush of blood to the head (and wallet) and joined the ranks of the 3D printing community. As we already have a resin printer in the family I opted to get a filament printer instead, these are more suited to  making terrain or other large pieces rather than the finer prints produced by resin printers. The printer I opted for is the well regarded Bambu Lab A1 which happened to be on sale and was delivered the next day after ordering on a Sunday. The only small issue was the filament itself which came via a separate delivery a couple of days later. This gave me ample time to put the printer together, a process which took around 45 minutes and was extremely straight forwards.

With it working by heating up a long string of plastic the A1 doesn't have the toxic materials associated with resin printing, but you still want the window open whilst the print jobs are going on.

The reviews I read all pointed out how the A1 was pretty much a plug and play printer with the software working out everything for you so the first things I printed where a tray to catch the waste filament (grey tray on the left of the printer) and then some rocks for our desert campaign.

I left the rocks on the default height setting which lead to some noticeable layering on the top which I've covered with some sand effect paste. If I wanted I could have gone back and reprinted them with a lower layer height, this just adds time onto the print job as it builds the piece up. But as it's unlikely you will be spending much time studying the rock formations (unless the battle is going very badly) I doubt I will. You don't need to do any prep before painting so I stuck them on a base and hit them with the various yellows I've been using so far.

Whilst waiting for the filament I'd also picked up some designs for dirt road sections so I printed out one of the straight sections so see how that looked. This section (and the rocks) needed resizing and again this was very simple to perform in the printer software. 

Now I know this works ok I'll need to print out a load more to create a proper road network. The files include a little clip to join the sections together so they don't get easily knocked apart.

One feature of the A1 bundle I purchased (and it's software) was the ability to load multiple filament spools onto it's holder system and then swap between them as the layers go down. Whilst waiting I also picked up some files for terrain designed to fit in the 3" cubes of a Deadzone / Halo table and thought I'd give this feature a try as well. With the way the filament layers go down it's much better to have a horizontal line of colour than a vertical one as it only has one nozzle and needs to extrude waste filament between changing colours. 

I did have one failure during the print process but fortunately it was almost complete so I still had a useable item. The A1 comes with a built in camera so you can watch (and cancel/pause) your printing from your PC or smartphone. Very handy for keeping an eye on things.

It also come with built in layer settings, with the standard layer height (on the left below) being 0.20mm. You can go down to 0.12mm (on the right) and even 0.08mm, and up to 0.28mm for the fastest and roughest prints.

As things had been going so well I thought I'd throw something hard at it and grabbed a free Stuka file which I scaled up and used the auto-angle and auto-supports buttons to let the software work it all out and then hit print. Five hours later I had a perfectly respectable Stuka to put out on the table to be blown up by the SAS.

All in all I've been very impressed with how easy this has all been. I have more roads to print off and another Stuka or two and then I want to start thinking about a special project to work towards. I've had in my mind for a while a Stalingrad game based on the Deadzone rules, the issue has always been getting the terrain, until now that is.

Halo Flashpoint: This is Sparta!

Having complete one fireteam before Christmas I've taken the chance to paint up another one so we can actually have a game if required. As each fireteam is only 3 or 4 models strong then it's a quick job to get one done.

I've stuck with a metallics theme for the first Spartan team but mixed up the colours rather than making them uniform. Spartans are super-soldiers created to combat Earth's enemies and have advanced through several different phases with different armour patterns as well. 

The Spartans I've painted up are all wearing the same pattern armour (MK VII I believe) and form a balanced fireteam. 

In the orange armour we have the MK VII who carries a decent ranged weapon which he shoots with on a 4+. He also fights on a 4+ and the Spartan knife is excellent and slicing through armour (AP2) and shields (ESD1) so he's pretty dangerous up close as well. His main benefit is the extra Tactician dice he adds to the standard pool of 2. The more dice you have the more extra things you can do.

The Deadeye is dressed to kill in the gold armour and as a sniper type he benefits from a 3+ shoot, his fight is only 5+ though. His biggest plus though is the Fast Transition ability which allows him to shoot another ranged weapon (once picked up) in the same shoot action, twice the bullets for twice the killing.

Someone who is happy to get in close is the Brawler, in his green armour. Fighting on a 3+ with the normal combat knife is pretty tasty but there are more powerful melee weapons in the game for him to grab.

Lastly we have the Zvezda who at speed 1/3 is a bit slower than the other Spartans (2/3) but he does have Scout to get an extra move in before the game starts and he has the best save (4+) of the team so could be a bit more tanky than the others.

I have another copy of these models and also a second variant with the same Spartan archetypes carrying different weapons. So I'll paint up the other variant next.

Halo Flashpoint: Sangheili Elites

 Because it's good to have a least a couple of new games on the go I've also started painting up Mantic's latest game, Halo: Flashpoint. This is Mantic's entry into the growing field of low model count skirmish games using large models (40mm+) based on popular IP's. I'm thinking of Marvel Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint as prime examples. These games are more aimed at people who love the IP but don't necessarily have a background in wargaming. My personal interest was piqued by the fact the rules are based on my favourite set, Mantic's Deadzone rules. I've never played Halo and don't really know much about it's setting as I was busy shooting people in Planetside on the PC when Halo was released on consoles. 

The games comes in a couple of versions and I went for the bigger box as you got a greater variety of models including some non-humans to play with. The human forces are made up of genetically modified warriors called Spartans. The aliens in the box are called Sangheili and I believe they are the main enemy in the games for the Spartans. Each fireteam is (currently) made up of 3 or 4 models with the biggest difference from Deadzone being that when they die the models can respawn into the battle. This is a mechanism straight from any PC/console game and means that you can only really gain a temporary numbers advantage rather than the snow-ball effect losing models can have in Deadzone. 

The Sangheili Mercenaries are a complete fireteam of four elites so I've started off the painting with them. This will allow me to field a complete team with only having to paint a few models.

In the box you get a nice stat card for each model, these have been produced to a high standard and give you all the information you need about each unit and it's various keywords and weapons. One thing I have noticed is that compared to Deadzone the weapon ranges tend to be shorter and the movement speeds quicker so I think you can expect to be in melee more often.

That won't be a bad thing for the Sangheili as you can see they have a Fight of 4+ so they are perfectly able to handle themselves in a brawl. Each of them is also armed with a one-use grenade (which comes back when you respawn) so you certainly want to make sure you use that every life. Like Deadzone, Flashpoint uses command dice but you only start with two in your initial pool. At present the Sangheili have no models that add to this pool so they will always be starved of dice and get no re-rolls. Command dice are very much part of the 'special sauce' that makes Deadzone so it will be interesting to see how this lack impacts the amount of fun you have playing the Elites.

The team itself looks to be reasonably well balanced between melee and shooting with the energy sword looking to be a top melee weapon and the ranged weapons having a decent spread of abilities. One thing Flashpoint does have is random weapon spawns so you can add a second weapon onto a model, having 4+ for melee and shooting will help the Sangheili make good use of any weapon that they pick up.

If like me you have no knowledge of the history of Halo then flipping the unit cards over gives you a nice little bit of information on the unit and the weapon it comes equipped with. I'm hopeful that Mantic plan to add Halo to the Companion so we get the appropriate keywords printed out with the list in the future. 

The models themselves are good quality pre-built plastic miniatures of the sort you'd get in a high end board game. You can see they are aimed more at the non-wargaming community and offer a quick to table experience. You also get some rather nice cardboard terrain in the box which slots together very easily to make up your board. Of course I also have plenty of Deadzone terrain to add onto the table but with the shorter weapon ranges I think you could go a bit lighter on the terrain in Flashpoint.

Well that's the first team done, I'll probably try to do another team over Christmas in between starting the DAK forces for WW2.