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To start with, I think it’s important to tell everyone the mechanics we have carried over from our Fleet Battles game. That way everyone can have a handle on some of the terms I will be using in the upcoming article.
Firepower Rating and Halo Dice – As with Halo: Fleet Battles we use Halo Dice along with the Firepower Rating Table to control modifiers and drive the statistics in the game.
As with H: FB, we use Firepower Rating 4 as our starting point with the Rating modifying up and down accordingly. This means that when rolling a Spartan Die, a TWO result counts as two hits, the ONE result counts as one hit, the NEAR MISS result can be re-rolled if you have rolled a TWO, and the SKULL result is a definite miss. Certain weapons will gain a positive bonus to the Firepower Rating whereas Terrain conditions and Scenario effects might cause the Firepower Rating to suffer a penalty.
Tokens – In H: GC we use 3 of the same Tokens as used in the H: FB game – Activated (placed when a Unit Activates or attempts a Reaction), Damage (for when an attack equals or exceeds a value on a Damage Track) and Cooldown (which is used to represent a situation where a weapon or even an entire Unit cannot fire!)
Statistic Profiles – We have used a simple visual presentation mechanic to show people the various statistics used by Units. These cards will be large enough to fit in your hand and should have all pertinent rules (as well as paraphrased notations about Loadouts, etc.) on them, making reference in H: GC even easier.
Commanders and Command Dice – As with H: FB, we use the Command Dice for each Faction to drive the Command and Control side of the game engine. The Command/Attack/Defence symbols allow players to execute orders from their Commander’s Profile Card that can often be the difference between success and failure in battle.
Just like in the Fleet Battles game, we assume these lofty individuals are far removed from the action taking place on the battlefield, but their orders can be issued with immediate effect!
In the beginning, there will be two Generic Commanders – one for each side, after which Named Commanders and Heroes can be fielded to add more narrative depth to games.
Right, that’s the elements that we have carried forwards from Halo: Fleet Battles covered, lets talk about the innovations that you can expect in Halo: Ground Command.
Reaction
The first and most important new part of the game is Reaction Fire. Halo is at its core a First Person Shooter (FPS) where the action is fast and furious, gunfire rains down from all sides, and death is an ever present companion! Of course that can be difficult to translate to a tabletop where we need the structure of Game Turns, Activations, Segments, Actions etc. to allow us to create the structure of the game itself.
To change this, we have created a Reaction Statistic for each and every element in H: GC to allow us to represent a persistent form of Overwatch where every element on the table is assumed to be engaged in the battle at all times.
The Reaction Statistic has two numbers shown as X / Y on their Profile. The X number is used if the Unit hasn’t Activated yet, and the Y number is used if the Unit has Activated. If you want to react to an enemy activation simply roll 2D6, add the results together and try to equal or beat the relevant number… if you do, you get to fire in your opponent’s activation, either at the start of their move or at the end!
Attempting a Reaction is not without risk however as you are only permitted to attempt a single reaction to an enemy activation and whether you succeed or fail you gain an Activation Marker as a result, meaning that you have to choose your Reacting Units carefully! Sometimes it is better to React with a Unit that has already gone, especially if the Unit has a relatively good Y-React number….. Warthogs for example excel at this, creating mini-fire-bases upon which the UNSC can base their advance/defence. Sometimes you might be unwilling to React, as it will affect your ability to surge forwards (since making a Reaction attempt gives your Unit an Activation Marker that effectively halts any chance of taking a Movement Action!)…. This means that the simple rules for Reaction brings the tactics of the FPS to the tabletop.
As you might expect, not everything has the same React X/Y.
A Spartan. the paragon of war for the UNSC, might be capable of multiple feats of arms in a turn, firing in all directions as he/she attempts to defend a wounded soldier, but a ponderous Hunter is far more measured and lumbering, taking time to line up shots and gear themselves for combat. This is represented by the Spartan having a React Score of 5/6, whereas a Hunter Unit is limited to 10/13.
Sharp eyed gamers will notice that the Hunter’s Y-Reaction stat is technically impossible on 2D6! This is intentional (Hunters are pretty slow at reacting once they have acted) ….. but through careful marshalling of Commanders and Orders it IS possible to lower a Unit’s Reaction Stat to a point where the Hunters COULD pull of a once in a blue-moon-reaction…. making the impossible, possible… and cementing them into legend.
How does this change things?
Think about the other wargames you have played. Each attempt to be cinematic, trying to bring you into the action, but how many truly achieve that lofty goal? All are stymied by the need for Game Turns, Activations, Segments etc.…. With Reaction Fire, everything is technically in the game and can respond…. Assuming you can roll high enough on 2D6 of course!
In a FPS you don’t hang around waiting for your opponent to move, shoot or charge before you get your turn, and then find yourself taking off your models before they got a chance to do anything! ... And in Halo: Ground Command you don’t have to… Instead you have the chance to blast them to smithereens with SMGs, Plasma Rifles and Rocket Launchers, holding out against impossible odds!
YOU CAN’T GET MORE HALO THAT THAT!
Multi-Use Weapons
Let’s talk weapons! In Halo there are a plethora of cool and exciting weapons with which you can blast your enemy into little bits. To represent ALL of these weapons would have been an impossible task, requiring players to buy so many different models, identified by a single weapon that gameplay would have been slow and cumbersome. Instead we have chosen to create a general term – Small Arms, into which we are able to merge a multitude of weapons within a Faction – Plasma Pistols, Needlers, etc. all merge into Small Arms when in the hands of Grunts, and a different set of Small Arms Stats when in the hands of Elites. This makes the game flow much better and gives each faction diversity without the minutiae of looking directly into the hands of each and every model.
That is not to say that all weapons are in this category. Certain Units can upgrade one or more of their bases to be specific Fire Teams, like Grunts wielding Fuel Rod Cannons, UNSC Troopers manning HMGs, etc.
This brings us on to Weapon Loadouts. Every weapon in the game (including Small Arms has at least one Loadout. These can be as simple as Suppression (+1) in the case of UNSC Small Arms or Point Blank in the case of Covenant Small Arms, to Loadouts such as Devastating, Pinpoint, Indirect Fire, and many others. Each of these Loadouts is summarised on their respective Stat-Profiles for ease of reference.
The Weapon Spread
This is an important innovation that becomes apparent the more you play the Halo Video Games. Each and every weapon, if you are willing to shoot long enough and have enough ammo can technically destroy anything in-game when it comes to Halo. This meant that we had to come up with a new system for weapons that allows for this incredible flexibility. So we designed the Weapon Spread System to do exactly that.
The Weapon Spread divides the Attack Dice available to a Weapon into three distinct categories, each citing the weapon’s effectiveness against specific targets.
Anti-Personnel (AP) refers to a weapon’s ability to damage Infantry Targets. Anti-Tank (AT) refers to a weapons ability to damage armoured targets (including Hunters!) and finally Anti-Air (AA) refers to a weapons ability to damage (yes…. you guessed it!) Aerial Targets, be they Hover flyers or flyers on an Aerial Sortie.
So a UNSC Trooper might be armed with Small Arms with the following profile (apologies for the crude layout…. I can’t upload the actual stat cards yet and trying to put a set of tables into the forum interface is next to impossible…. But you should get the idea of what I’m talking about…)
UNSC TROOPERS
Weapon - Small Arms
Short 10"
Long 20"
AP 3
AT 1
AA 2
Loadout = Suppression (+1) - Add +1 to any enemy Suppression Test triggered by this weapon.
Whereas a lowly Grunt might be armed with Small Arms with the following profile:
GRUNT WARRIORS
Weapon - Small Arms
Short 12"
Long -
AP 2
AT 2
AA 2
Loadout = Point Blank (This weapon adds +1 to its Firepower Rating at Short Range)
The UNSC Trooper can shoot further and is much better at engaging Infantry targets (but isn’t too shabby at shooting at Aerial Targets either!). The UNSC use a lot of bullets to attempt to suppress the Covenant, so even their Small Arms get a Loadout to facilitate this by use of the Suppression (+1) Loadout!
The Grunts are normally armed with a collection of pistol-weapons in the video games, and so it is reasonable to give them a shorter range, but the commonality approach to their weapons makes the Grunt pretty effective in large numbers against all targets. This is especially true when looking at their Point Blank Loadout which greatly increases their effectiveness at short range…. which is handy cos they only have a Short Range…. :P
When firing, we use a combination mechanic (the same as in Halo: Fleet Battles) so if I have 4 bases of Grunts shooting at a Unit of UNSC Troopers in the open (always a bad thing for the UNSC!), I would roll 2+2+2+2 = 8x Halo Dice using Firepower Rating 5 (the best I can get!)…. Probably expecting to get about 6 Hits….. It’s really that simple.
Melee
As I mentioned before, Halo is at its core a First Person Shooter, which means shooting takes precedence over hand to hand combat. But its not true to say that melee doesn’t exist…. There are few truer gaming-pleasures than eviscerating an Elite with his own energy sword….or clubbing a Grunt to the ground with your Assault Rifle….
In the Halo: Ground Command melee system, each element rolls a number of Halo Dice equal to their Melee Statistic, and unlike ranged combat, all players are looking to do is roll SKULLs!....all other results are ignored.
Roll a SKULL, and you automatically do a point of Damage (or in the case of melee vs vehicles, roll 2x SKULLs for a point of Damage!). Heroic Saves can be attempted after that, but essentially that’s as complicated as Melee gets. If each side rolls the same number of SKULLs in a round of melee, the survivors keep fighting until someone wins…or until both sides are wiped out. There is no quarter asked for or given in Halo! Once one side is declared the winner, the loser is pushed back 3", leaving both sides free to React as normal.
Hardened Fighter (Value) – This is the most important Loadout in H: GC. Through this Loadout, certain Units can re-roll a number of Melee Dice equal to the Value listed in their parentheses. This means something really scary like a Covenant Zealot with 8 Melee Dice and Hardened Fighter (6) may re-roll up to 6 of their Melee Dice that failed to roll a SKULL…. Which means you simply don’t mess with a Zealot Mano-a-Mano. Unless you are a Spartan of course…. Spartans can actually re-roll ALL their failed Melee Dice as they have a Hardened Fighter value that is equal to their actual Melee stat!
End Phase
In the End phase we simply tally up scored Victory Points for the turn. Victory Points are scored by destroying enemy Units, where their Build Rating directly translates to VP.
VP can also be scored according to the conditions stated in any particular scenario you might be playing. The Assassination Mission for example gives you bonus points for taking out anything with the Commanding Presence Loadout. Take and Hold gives additional points for holding placed Objectives (usually Buildings of importance on the battlefield), and so on…..
The scenarios all last a certain number of Game Turns, after which the person who has scored the most Victory Points has won.
Air Missions and Flyer
Finally, I really should talk about flyers in Halo. All flying vehicles are separated into Hover Flyers and Aerial Sortie Flyers.
Hover Flyers are treated in the same way as any other battlefield element, moving shooting, reacting (although only against other aerial targets) in the same way as any other model. They are targeted using a weapon’s Anti-Air (AA) Statistic and tend to be fast moving and pretty aggressive in their use. Examples of these tend to be Banshees or Falcons, which may operate in Units with more than one model, or be individuals, depending on their Build Rating.
Aerial Sortie Flyers tend to be far larger than their standard Flyer counterparts, dominating the air with their bulk and durability. These flyers are simply too large to remain on the table turn to turn, and instead resolve their movement, execution of their mission and extraction in a simple strafing method. Examples of these flyers include the UNSC Pelican or Covenant Phantom.
When using an Aerial Sortie Flyer, players activate the model in the same way as any other, nominating a Mission for the Flyer. This Mission will have an attached Victory Points cost, which is given to the enemy directly after the Mission is announced. This give-and-take element to Aerial Sortie Flyers makes the taking of these large models very balanced – you get a huge reward, but your opponent gets a strategic bonus if you saturate the battlefield with too many.
This means that protracted use of aerial assets will cause a drain on the player’s chances of winning an outright victory, but execution of these Missions will often be vital for continued success in the combat operation. So balancing if, when and how you bring in your Sortie Flyers is a skill that will take time to develop.
There are a variety of Missions available to Flyers of this type ranging from simple Combat Drop Missions where players can bring in reserves into the battlefield right into the fighting, Supply Drop Missions that allow the placement of a Supply Drop Marker that will increase the Reaction Statistics of all friendly ground models within range, Ground Attack Missions that allow you to target ground elements with increased effect, Reinforcement Missions that allow you to bring a damaged Unit of Infantry (and in rare cases Armour) up to full strength, and Air Patrols that allow you to place your Flyer ‘on-station’, ready to intercept enemy flyers when they activate…..
The aerial aspect of the Halo: Ground Command game is really interesting, flexible and allows players to use their combined arms thinking to translate onto the tabletop with great effect.
Conclusion
With existing rules like the Firepower Ratings, Halo Dice, Command Dice, and new steps forwards with Reaction, innovative Weapons Mechanics, the Weapons Spread, streamlined and bloody Melee, a fast and effective Victory Points system and of course Aerial rules that are simple, tactical and effective, Halo: Ground Command is really coming at you full on! |
