MS_Paints is one of the best hobby channels on YouTube. A strong statement to begin with I’ll admit, but the combination of excellent skills, fantastic videography and a tone that is actually genuinely funny. I’ve been watching piles of his videos over the years and then end of last year, he released a video covering the new Halo skirmish game from Mantic, Halo Flashpoint. It’s a pretty great video!

Now I have mixed opinions about Halo – as a teenager, I had an Xbox 360 and played the tail end of the good Halo Games (Halo 3, Reach and the best one in the form of ODST) but I was always much more of a Call of Duty or Gears of War player, or disappearing into the ArmA hole for tactical shenanigans. As much as I like the human side of Halo, with the ODST troopers and many of the guns being iconic pieces of sci-fi for me, I feel that the more alien side has always felt much less interesting. A lot of this got weaker as Halo went from Bungie to 343, with Halo 4 and 5 being incredibly weak entries while Halo Infinite was fun for multiplayer (and added the Commando rifle which is very much my vibe when it comes to weapon design), it didn’t keep my attention for long. As you can tell from this, I’m far from the target market for the game, especially as it is focused on the Halo Infinite era.

Despite the positive vibe around the game from MS_Paints and others, I wasn’t looking to add another game to the selection – I have plenty going on. So for this reason, I kind of put it to one side as “Huh that’s neat” and went back to thinking about M4’s and operators. Except then the Creative Regular Opponent mentioned he’d got his hands on a copy of it, raved about it for roughly 20 minutes and then suddenly we were planning to play it at our first Regular Opponent’s game session of 2025.

We were playing the Halo Flashpoint Recon edition, the entry-level box that includes 8 spartans (2 teams of 4), a paper mat, some thick cardboard terrain and all the dice, cards and tokens you’d need. The setup was incredibly quick – the Creative Regular Opponent had everything out and gaming in 15 minutes. Component quality is very nice – the terrain feels quality, while the figures capture the look and feel of the suits from the latest game (Halo Infinite). The Creative Regular Opponent has already painted up the two sets inspired by Red vs Blue (one of the fundamental parts of internet culture around Halo) and apparently they were remarkably quick to paint.

Our first game was a 2 v 2 using the rear of the play sheet. This actually includes quick reference for both sides and every part of the game. There was a little bit of shuffling around to double-check specifics (and the lack of a separate quick reference sheet is one of the game’s few weak points.) I’ll go over the rules properly some other time but let’s just say they are a very solid set. It’s developed from Mantic’s Deadzone game, so it has a foundation with plenty of playtime under its belt.

However, what I can say is that we picked up the concepts pretty quickly – working with a dice pool system and a rarely modified target value means you’re not spending time working out a list of modifiers, you instead focus on thinking about your tactics and how best to set yourself up for success.

Game 2 saw myself up against the Dastardly Regular Opponent in a mirror match of Slayer. The goal was first to three kills, with dead Spartans able to re-spawn from the markers around the edge. Each side had one of each of the Spartans, such as the armoured but scouty Zvezda, the shotgun-equipped Brawler, the DMR-armed Deadshot and the MK VII Tactician with the classic assault rifle. The other big change is that we added the power weapons, giving us a chance to upgrade our firepower with additional weapons – I managed to get my hands on the mini-missile spewing Hydra and the Covenant Carbine with its ability to knockback while my opponent eventually got his hands on the classic Battle Rifle. The weapon system is fun and manages to perfectly capture the frantic rush to grab power weapons in a Halo game.

And frankly, we had a fantastic time playing through the game. An early push by myself was punished by my opponent seizing the high ground and getting those bonuses to significantly damage my Zvezda. However, moving across the board aggressively meant I was able to secure the first two power weapons to drop, giving me a major firepower advantage (and was able to punt my opponent off the high point with Knockback). A close-quarters brawl meant that we were able to stay pretty close in terms of VP. However, thanks to some earlier damage and then a respawning Brawler, I was able to sweep in and hit the 3rd kill before my opponent had the chance to grab victory.

Overall, we left the evening having had a great time both catching up after Christmas and also getting a chance to play a new game that we picked up and played two games of in an evening. And someone may have decided to spend some money by ordering from Leodis to be collected the following day.

Let’s talk quickly about where Halo Flashpoint fits into my hobby. I don’t see myself going too deep with the game – this is not where I’ll be hunting down every set to complete my collection. However, the main advantage of the game is that it’s quick to get up and play, lightweight enough to get anyone interested, and has a core rules loop that doesn’t take a huge amount of time to understand and then make use of. This means it’s ideal for those times when you want to get a game on the table ASAP while still being something more than just rolling dice and seeing pretty numbers without much thought. I dislike the term “Beer and Pretzels Gaming” because it can often be used to cover up bad game design, but Halo Flashpoint is something you can play with a couple of beverages and still have interesting choices to make.

Or it lets you play games over a lunch break at work. I’ve already introduced it to my Corporate Regular Opponent with the demo game and once we’ve finished Undaunted, we’ll be adding Flashpoint to the rotation of gaming options. I’m actually tempted to try and play this game with my Dad – the systems should be simple enough to pick up and I’ve grown up from my last experience of trying to get him into games (which was cheating horribly at Warhammer 3rd edition as a literal child). When I go away on holiday in February, I’ll throw this into the bag as well.

Now, who do I talk to about getting a Gears of War miniatures game…

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