Halo: Flashpoint gets full reveal, showcasing ruleset for first time

Since its reveal in early January, Halo fans have been eager for more information on Halo: Flashpoint, a new miniatures game from Mantic Games. On Friday, during the annual AdeptiCon wargaming convention in Schaumburg, Illinois, the British team delivered the goods. Not only do we know what the final products will look like, both painted and unpainted, but we also know quite a lot about how it all will play.

Halo: Flashpoint is a skirmish game, a miniatures wargaming genre that’s incredibly hot right now. Just like titles such as Star Wars: Shatterpoint, Cyberpunk: Combat Zone, and Warhammer 40:000: Kill Team, Flashpoint will only require a handful of miniatures to play. But unlike those other games, it won’t require a ruler. That’s because it uses the novel cube-based system at the core of another Mantic title: a skirmish game called Deadzone.

In Deadzone, which has free quickstart rules on Mantic’s website, cubes are used to measure out both movement and shooting. Meanwhile, cover is determined by true line-of-sight — meaning that all you need to do is get down to eye level with your miniature to properly see what it sees.

“The [24-inch-square] arena board is divided into an eight-by-eight grid,” explained Dan Mapleston, Mantic’s strategic marketing manager, in an email. “But as the game is played on more than just floor level, we refer to each space as a cube (rather than a square) to also allow for moving up and down between levels, or sniping at enemies below you.”

All units are given a movement range measured in cubes, and players just count the cubes they need to move through to get to where they want to go. Once inside the final cube, players can tweak the precise location of their mini however they like. Maybe you want to tuck it behind a smaller piece of cover or poke its head out to maintain visual contact with the enemy. In that way, it works a lot like a modern real-time strategy video game, where the player directs a unit’s movement while individual AI-controlled soldiers within that unit adjust themselves into a final position.

“It’s a system that’s super intuitive once people understand it,” Mapleston said. It should also scale well with even the most elaborate terrain, which could help Flashpoint feel just as fast and fluid as the classic video game’s multiplayer modes.

Combat also sounds particularly lethal. The d8-based system uses an exploding dice mechanic, meaning that rolling an eight adds additional dice — and additional damage — to the roll. Mantic has thus dubbed it the “Headshots” mechanic.

Two editions of the game go up for pre-order today, but pricing was not shared ahead of publishing. The Recon Edition includes eight pre-assembled miniatures in red and blue plastic plus a smattering of terrain. The Spartan Edition, meanwhile, offers 16 Spartans, four Banished Elite models in gray, and various “component upgrades.” The game launches formally this fall.