Halo Fleet Battles
Overview[edit | edit source]
The Fleet Battles set also comes with some kickass artwork depicting both factions leaders (Shame they didn't have Halo's answer to Creed that is Preston "I turned a Gas Giant into a fucking star just so I can stroke my massive ego" Cole) sitting on their respective armchairs. Although how they are going to balance the UNSC/Covenant (Since Covenant ships can no-sell their UNSC equivalents) is up to debate.
However since its release, they managed to pull it off: 6 Paris-class Heavy Frigates (RIP UNSC Grafton) cost roughly the same points as 2 SDV-class Covenant Corvettes. Likewise, a Marathon-class Heavy Cruiser is only a little over half the points of a CCS-class Covenant Battlecruiser; the MACs are long-range and dangerous, but the Marathon will fold once the CCS gets in range. Thankfully, the UNSC gets the advantage of SMAC Platforms which makes them great at holding the line and acting as giant, immobile, floating Basilisks. This means that the UNSC specializes in lots and lots of missile spam and swarm tactics to compensate general shitty defensive capabilities and shorter range whereas the Covenant act as giant line breakers with their fuck huge ships and massive firepower.
Fan support has led to a resurgence of rules and availability of ships in an unofficial capacity. While Microsoft is very careful with its license, Big M and 343 have been surprisingly supportive of the Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command communities. As long as things aren't getting sold commercially, and assets aren't ripped from games (either official or fan-mods like Sins of the Prophets) you can get a hold of a small fleet. This has mostly meant a painstaking process of re-modeling ships to support 3d printing.
Setting[edit | edit source]
The original starter box was built around the Fall of Reach, even going so far as to recreate a piece of Operation Uppercut in the tutorial missions (it's as awesome as it sounds). Most of the original ships for the game are elements that could have been found during the orbital fight for Reach and you can easily imagine fights during all phases of the Fall. Further expansions opened up ships that would have been fighting all across the Colonies (including ships like the Phoenix-class colony ship, and the Orion-class assault carriers), and late-war Covenant ships like the Blockade Runner.
In short, HFB allows you to recreate a bunch of scenarios from the Halo universe:
- Orbital blockades over embattled colonies
- Deep space engagements of Covenant Punishment fleets
- Spartan Ops attempting to board Covenant flagships
- Small UNSC raids on Covenant supply points
Covenant[edit | edit source]
"WORT WORT WORT!"
- Elite boarding team, Maltha Station
Covenant ships are heavily armored, heavily shielded, with devastating up-close weaponry. Led by the terrifying CAS-class Assault Carrier, the little brother of the CSO-class Supercarriers like the Long Night of Solace, Covenant fleets look to crash into the UNSC lines and tear them apart with plasma weapons. Backed up with artillery like the CPV-class destroyer and the ADP-class escorts, UNSC titanium armor will be melting in no time.
Be careful not to go too overboard on big ships. If the UNSC is able to concentrate fire on just one or two big targets, you're likely to get slagged with MAC rounds before you're able to get close.
Lore-wise, the Covenant also gives you the most choices when it comes to why you're fighting:
- An honorable Elite admiral, leading his fleet for the good of the Covenant and the protection of his home
- A Brute warlord, looking to wipe Humanity from the face of the galaxy for the glory of the Prophets
- An aspirational Prophet, looking to rise through the ranks to lead the Covenant some day
But we all know the Elites are the true heroes of the Covenant.
UNSC[edit | edit source]
“Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to Earth, and we most definitely regret the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!”
— Avery Johnson, commenting on Regret's message.
It doesn't matter how fancy the Covenant's shield systems are, or how advanced their plasma weapons are, heavy lumps of metal accelerated to a significant fraction of c will solve all your problems and meters of ablative titanium armor will take the hits for you. No single ship in Humanity's arsenal will defeat a Covenant fleet on its own, but united they can hold off the Covenant long enough to evacuate the civilians. Be prepared to sacrifice for the good of the species.
Want to be the final line between the Covenant and Earth? Want to blast ugly aliens? Want to prove Sgt. Johnson right? Join the UNSC and point your guns towards the Covenant Menace!
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
For more detailed rules, Fleet Battles is a point based system like most games on tabletop. In this case the point based system allow players to build their fleets and the basic building block is the ‘Element’, an Element is a 60mm x 60mm base which represents a unit of ships and these elements are grouped together into battlegroups. A player's fleet may contain as many battlegroups as he/she wish so long as it adds up to the available point limit. However as mentioned, UNSC players must have more ships to overcompensate their vulnerability so the price of each UNSC ship is vastly cheaper than the Covenant. The rules for creating battlegroups is simple, each battlegroup must contain 1 capital ship element and 1 support ship element as a minimum. Each element also has a build rating which when added together cannot be greater than 6.In this example the Covenant Battlecruiser has a build rating of 3 whilst each Heavy Corvette element has a build rating of 1 which means the total build rating for that battlegroup is 6.
As well as having a build rating each element also has a points cost and this is used to create the overall fleet. As well as using points to buy ship elements, each fleet must have a commander which have their own points cost as well as special optional units such as Spartans or Covenant Zealots (both of which are used in boarding actions). Once players have created their fleet it’s time to work out the number of boarding craft and small craft each battlegroup can generate at the start of the battle. The number of boarding craft available to a battlegroup (plus any special boarders) are placed onto the base of an element in the battlegroup and in the game they launch from this element.
Wings are worked out in a similar way with each battlegroup being able to generate a number of wing tokens. Setting up a table is self explanatory, however to set up the 'Wings' players must make sure that all battlegroups are placed so that the players can put their ‘Wings’ on the table up to 8” in front of the battlegroups. These ‘Wings’ are small interceptors and bombers that are represented by tokens and fight their own battles during the game. Bombers can be used to inflict damage on larger ships whilst interceptors are used to try and negate that threat. Wings can also be placed on friendly element bases to represent close support and are useful if bombers or boarders break through the forward defenses. Once all battlegroups are placed its time to start the game.
In terms of of playing and turn sequence. Fleet battles is broken up into several consecutive sequences. First is the Orders phase which is the phase in which your commanders (The dudes in busts) order your fleet around. Each commander in your fleet has a card which explains the orders that commander can give during a turn, these orders are represented by use of 5 special dice which are rolled during this turn and placed on the commander’s card. The order dice have 3 symbols which are Command, Attack and Defense. The orders card shows the number of each dice symbol that is required to carry out an order and also tells you when that order can be played. Orders dice are also used to work out initiative for the turn, with each player rolling a d6 and adding +1 for each command dice symbol on the commander’s card.
The next sequence is the Wing phase which is split into sections, Move and Attack with all movement being carried out before combat is worked out. Wings are represented on the table as a stack of tokens that are either interceptors or bombers (not a mix of both) and players alternate moving each wing. The stats cards give the movement value for each type of wing and movement for them is free flow with no movement restrictions. If 2 enemy wings move into contact they become locked and any wings still in contact at the end of the Wing Movement phase take part in combat.
However it is possible to unlock bombers by moving a stack of friendly interceptors into base contact with the locking unit. An example given is shown here:
- Player 1 activates a wing of bombers and moves them across the table
- Player 2 seeing the threat moves a wing of interceptors into base contact with the bombers locking them
- Player 1 then counters this by moving his own stack of interceptors into base contact with the locking unit, this allows the bombers to move a few inches away from the combat
- And so on.
Once all movement is completed the Attack phase is started and players work through resolving the combat for each stack of locked wings. Essentially, each wing token generates a number of attack dice and these are rolled to work out a number of hits. Each token can take a number of hits before it’s removed from play and wing combat is simultaneous. If wings remain in base contact at the end of the phase then they count as locked in the following turn. Wings that are removed from play go into a scrap pile and some elements can launch new waves in the end phase of the turn, this means Wings are always in play and players have to continual guard against bombers. On the other hand there are Bombing Runs which is what happens if a wing of bombers is able to get through to an element in a battlegroup during the movement phase and it’s not locked by interceptors then it can carry out a bombing run against the element. Elements do have to ability to fight off these attacks using their point defenses but these attacks if successful can be devastating as they take affect before the Battlegroup phase of the turn. These attacks use the standard combat mechanics.
The third sequence is the Battlegroup phase. Here is where the real fun and the real meat of the game begins. Once the Wing phase is completed its time to activate the battlegroups, player alternate and activate a battlegroup at a time, the player with initiative gets to decide who activates first. Once a player decides which battlegroup to activate the elements are moved and then combat is carried out, also during this phase boarding actions are initialized. In terms of movement phase, movement is simple with each element having a movement value, elements can turn up to 45 degrees at the beginning and/or end of the movement dependent on their type. For example an element of UNSC Paris frigates can turn at the beginning and at the end of a movement whilst a large Epoch carrier can only make a single turn at the end of its movement. There are some special rules for movement that each faction can use and in the future some commanders of heroes might allow for other special rules to be used in game. One golden rule is elements must move a minimum of half their movement during a turn and no, you can’t reverse. Also during movement elements can launch boarding craft at enemy ships, these use similar rules to Wings and if they get into base contact with an enemy element the craft is assumed to be boarded. Like bombers they can be shot down by point defense or attached interceptors. When the battlegroups end their movement phase, this is where the combat phase appear. Each element have primary and in some cases secondary weapons and they are fired in turn, if different elements in a battlegroup share a weapon type they can combine their fire. Before any firing is carried out players have to declare what they are firing at and with what weapons for the whole battlegroup, then you work through the firing doing all primary weapons before moving onto the secondary ones. Each weapon type has a range a firing arc and an attack value. So simply check the range (you can pre-measure) check you are in arc and then total up the attack dice you’ll be rolling. Range is measured from the center to center of elements and firing arc is worked by looking at the overlay card on each elements stand. Most ship's primary weapon has its primary arc which is designated by the outer light blue circle on the card, whilst the secondary weapons arc is shown by the inner purple segment of the circle. Once you’ve work out if a weapon can fire you then add up the attack dice. So for example if 4 elements of the Heavy Corvettes are firing their plasma cannons (4 dice per element) at a single target they would generate 16 attack dice. Or you could split the fire and allocate 8 dice at 2 enemy elements and so on, but the important thing is you have to decide what you are going to fire at before any firing is carried out.
The Dice that dominate Fleet Battles are called Combat Dice. These are special dices that speed up combat, these dice have 4 different facings which are:
- Really bad Miss
- Miss
- 1 success
- 2 successes
However, the actual effects of the dice are determined by the firepower rating of the shot and that’s determined by a nice little sliding scale. There are 5 different firepower ratings the higher the rating the better the effects of the shooting. For example at firepower rating 4 (which is the default) all hits count and you can reroll a dice with a Miss facing for each 2 success facing you have already rolled. But at firepower rating 2, any 2 success rolls count as a single success and no rerolls are allowed. The firepower rating you shoot at depends on a number of things, like the range of the shot, if any terrain is in the way etc. Once you’ve worked out the number of hits you’ve made, your opponent tries to nullify some (or all) of those hits by rolling a number of combat dice again using the firepower rating and counting successes. The number of dice rolled to save is dependent on any shields the ship may have. The defended successes are removed from the attacking successes to give you a final hit number, you then work out if you scored enough successes to cause a damage point. Each element has a damage track and this is the number of successes needed to cause a damage point, once a ship has taken 3 damage points it’s removed from the table. Other weapons like torpedoes use similar mechanics although torpedoes are vulnerable to point defense like bombers and boarding craft. Once you’ve finished all attacks for the active battlegroup, the opposing player picks a battlegroups and carries out movement and attacks, until all battlegroups have been activated, then you move onto phase 4.
The fourth sequence is called the Boarding resolution phase. This phase only happens if at the end of the battlegroup phase some elements have enemy boarding craft attached to them. The mechanics are nice and simple as you would expect.
- Attacker rolls combat dice
- Defender rolls combat dice
- Work out who rolled higher
- Roll on the boarding result table
Step 1 the attacker works out the number of combat dice available, this is done by counting up the security detail number on each token in the boarding action and then rolls dice using the firepower rating for that unit.
Step 2 the defender does the same using the security detail number for the element plus any friendly boarders he has on board.
Step 3 is deciding who scored highest and what the difference is as that will affect what happens in step 4.
Step 4 roll on the Boarding results table, each player rolls a d6 and the results are added together along with a modifier depending on what happened in step 3 and the results are applied.
The results on the boarding table go from ‘Vainglorious Assault’ where the boarding action fails and all board craft are expelled into space to ‘Critical Core Breach’ where the element is removed from play and other elements around it also takes hits.
The fifth and final stage is appropriately named as the End phase. In the End phase, players can try and repair damage, work out if anyone has won the game and generally tidy up ready for the next turn.