Halo: Fleet Battle - The Fall of Reach

[Barthheart]

A few weeks ago a friend and I got together for a Saturday afternoon of trying out Halo: Fleet Battles - The Fall of Reach miniatures games.
He had bought a 2 player core set that comes with enough pieces to have a 1000 point/side battle.

Here we are set to do battle. I'm playing the Covenant forces, he's go the UNSC forces at the other end of the table.



The play space for this size of battle is a 4'x4' area gridded off into 2'x2' sections. You score points at the end of each turn for having the only forces in a grid section as well as for killing enemy ships.

The ship units are setup onto bases and these are called elements. Each element has different attack and defence ratings as well as movement based on the size of the element.

Here's a my line up for this battle. The elements are further grouped into Battle groups. This allows all elements in a battle group to combine their fire into larger attacks.



Here's the evil UNSC battle line. The UNCS elements are cost fewer points but are also generally weaker than the Covenant forces.
For 1000 points the UNSC can build 4 battle groups while the Covenant only has 3. The Covenant have more powerful weapons with longer range.



The large models have some great details on them. The largest Covenant ship in this pack comes in about 10 pieces that you need to snap together.




The game is played using a measuring tape for movement and weapon ranges and bucket of dice for combat. Each side moves a single battle group and then fires their weapons. This alternates until all battel groups have moved.
There are mechanics for initiative and each side has a commander with special dice that give tactical bonuses to attack and defence.
There is also what amounts to a separate mini game going on that involves fighters and bombers from both sides. These move before the battle groups and can be used to damage the other players larger ships.




Different weapons have different amount of dice for damage and battle groups can combine the same types weapons into single large attacks.
The dice are custom with hits, misses and specials.

The rule book is small in dimension, about 6"x8", and has about 100 pages. But there are lots of examples and background history so it's not too bad.
I found the language to be a little verbose at times and some of the organization seemed off to me. But it's easy enough to play after a couple of readings.

Playing the game takes awhile though. There's a lot to consider when it comes to combat and you have multiple types of systems in both primary and secondary banks each with firing arcs and their own special damage types.
It can take 15 minutes to complete a single battle group move and fire sequence.




We only got 2 full turns in in the 4.5 hours we played. This was with a fair amount of rules looks up as our first outing.
Based on how fast I was losing ships, however, it was probably only going to be a 4 or 5 turn game. But that still a long time.

Was it fun? Yes... I think it would be more fun if we knew what we were doing and the pace picked up a bit.
It really reminded me of playing a minis sea battle type game. I used to play AH's Bismarck ship battles out on my basement floor.
This had the same feel of maneuver and multiple types of firing that Bismarck had.

We'll definitely try it again... but I think we won't be buying any more stuff until we're sure we like it. This stuff isn't cheap!

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

What happens if you manage to get your fleet all the way over to your opponent's beer bottle?

[Barthheart]

He owes you a case.

[Arctic Blast]

He owes you a case.

Now THAT is a house rule that I can get behind!

[Nefaro]

The pics I've seen of this always look cool.  Well.. except perhaps the odd Hot Pink  Plastic color choice for some of the models.