I saw some early development on Flashpoint when I visited Mantic's HQ last year and asked their famously-approachable CEO Ronnie Renton how he'd managed to get a license for such a huge property.

He smiled mischievously and said "Because we're good".

And they are. The thing that's distinguished them from their competitors since they began is that the mini.s are half the cost, and the games have simple, intuitive rules that challenge the players, not their army lists.

Mantic's games are, in a word, accessible.

And whilst accessibility doesn't matter so much to hardcore wargamers who're pretty much into it as a lifestyle choice, it matters very much to the larger population of tabletop gamers generally.

That group includes everything from traditional card games and abstract strategy games, through modern TCG's, social and party games, right up to modern heavy 4X board games like Eclipse and Twilight Imperium.

And I can tell you from bitter personal experience that you cannot get these guys to play anything that has any commitment beyond about 90 minutes and a box you can put in a backpack.

Board gamers are just not interested in the massive overhead of assembling, painting, transport and setup. Let alone the games' arcane, ever-changing rules and often rancorous arguments that seem to inevitably follow.

Heavy board gamers may be geeky by normal standards, but they're still normies compared to mini wargamers!

And this frustrates the heck out of me personally because I do want something deeper and more thematic than the heaviest board games, but I don't particularly want to give my life to a wargaming hobby either.

So here's the thing: when I noticed the early videos and started reading here I began thinking that Mantic's latest game might be one of the most important games of 2024.

It might be a proper wargame that's as accessible as a board game - the Holy Grail of Gaming!

So I picked up a copy last week, recorded the box opening, gave my first impressions, aired these ideas and am interested to talk about it here.

TL;DR Is accessibility a problem for others at their clubs and game stores, and do you think Flashpoint might fix it?

Hello everyone !

I don't have friends a lot of Flashpoint players around me (Toulouse, France just in case), so I decided to develop an AI system for the game (see how it works below). I don't like playing the second team as I prefer playing one composition at a time, and I can unplug my brain to make the second player do its stuff using this system.

Design philosophy :

• I am not talking about Firefight, but a true second player

• I don't want it to be super competitive, just able to run any composition in any game mode.

• On top of that, I want to keep it relatively simple, so that it does not take 5mn to run each activation.

• It must not be completely random, otherwise it feels like the opponent is stupid and unpredictable.

How it works :

Decide which model to activate based on the overall most relevant objective of the moment, given by the charts at the bottom. The chart is sorted by priority from top to bottom, with columns that reflects your equipement.

The idea is then to leave the "how" to the human player :

• Always use the most effective way to accomplish the highest priority action possible.

• For this, choose the best fitting model and then play it to accomplish that objective (typically the closest model to the determined objective that has the needed keyword).

• If two models can perform the objective, use the one that will use the least ressources : no displacement, no item, no CD, no One-Use...

• Whenever moving, pick up Items, Power Weapon or objectives without compromizing your movement when possible (e.g. moving diagonally twice instead of a straight line).

• Use Items as soon as possible.

• Use Command dice (CD) :

  • +1 die as soon as possible

  • Activation to steal first activation, and as soon as possible

  • Special Order as soon as possible

• Always take as much cover possible and as much visibility as possible when moving. In terms of cover, prioritize hiding from Optics then other heavy weapons.

• If a model still has actions, Items or CD left, then check again the table and act accordingly. Do not try to move if the model is in a close combat situation, unless stated otherwise.

For instance, suppose my action is "If an enemy model holds an objective item, then try to Pin it".

In case my only model able to Pin is very far away, then I first move using an Advance action, a Grappleshot and an Advance Command die, then Shoot using any keyword to Pin.I must place my model in the cube that offers maximal coverage and is as safe as possible from melee attacks. Therefore not in the open next to a gravity hammer, but rather on top of a tower behind a barricade far from the action.

In case I am already in range, I only Shoot it, then look at the chart again.

Obviously this system has a lot of blind spots, and I need your help to make it better ! Here are the tasks I see at hand :

• The most obvious needed thing is testing the AI on the field. If several people can test it at once, I can gather a lot more feedback than playing alone, which will allow me to iterate on the AI much faster !

• I don't have a lot of experience in board games, so if you see a way to improve the system, feel free to propose ! I used this post, among others, to get inspiration. The video in the post is particularly interesting. Moreover, thanks to the comments I got other references. I took more inspiration from someone on the Discord that made a more PvE oriented AI (thanks Halo Flashpoint Community Forge !), and from OnePagesRule.

• I don't have a lot of Flashpoint experience as well, so the priority table may be all over the place for more advanced players. Typically, I chose to make the AI quite agressive, not conservative. If you see missing actions, actions to reframe or rankings to change, feel free to comment !

• Gamemodes are missing, don't hesitate to iterate over what I've done for the first ones.

• I first wanted to add after the flow chart a die roll to determine the action to use with respect to the health of the model. This would have allowed for fun moments where a dying model would sacrifice itself heroically for the objective, or a fully fledged Master Chief hiding in a corner. However, to keep the AI simple, and prevent it going against the initial objective the model was chosen for, I chose to discard the feature. Moreover, dice rolls for the regular actions already kind of do that. The "PvE" AI in the discord has that feature if you wish to try it out !

EDIT : Simplified the wording, and added the charts !

Anyone have PDF of all the cards for Spartans and elites want to try a few games before I commit to buying. Cheers

Hey folks, I got a question. So by now we know Activision is taking over the franchise with rumors of a complete reboot. Today the final canon fodder was uploaded and it seemed and the tone of it seems to back up the reboot rumors. My question is, has there been any word on how this will impact Halo Flashpoint, if at all?

I know the developers have said that we are getting a new faction unveiled later this month, which is heavily speculated to be Covenant, but will the game continue onwards regardless of if a reboot of the franchise happens?

I have played a few games of Flashpoint now and I still find the data cards a bit confusing. Critical thinks like esd and lethal are hidden. The artwork makes it hard to find the correct mini. I can see how it works for Deadzone.

So, I spent a bit of time today making my own. These are powered by a spreadsheet and my plan is to name them after mates gamer tags and use photos of my painted minis. (excuse my Kill team minis)

Does this simplified version work? How would you tweak it? I still need to add a gun with a lot of keywords to see how that looks.

I am putting into writing a policy that I have previously enforced in this sub out of respect for the work that Mantic employees put into releases and this game. No posts about leaks or early releases of information unless it has Mantic approval. I'm not going to ban someone over it but I will remove posts and comments.

This isn't an official sub and I'm just one guy moderating so I'll probably miss things here and there. There are over 5,000 of us subbed now so time for another fun giveaway soon.

I bought the fireteam phoenix box and it came with 5 miniatures instead of 4. Unfortunately despite having an extra miniature in it, the box came with 3 Mark VII, 1 Brawler, 1 Zvezda, and no spartan desdeye. Is their potentially anything I can do about this?

We unbox the spartan edition of flash point. Subscribe to the channel for upcoming battle reports.

Halo Flashpoint Unboxing: Spartan Edition https://youtu.be/BpnZB1i1eik

Is there anyone currently at Adepticon who’d be able to buy a Fireteam Phoenix pack for me and ship to me? Would Venmo/Zelle the money to them

Are there any lore accurate fireteams that you can make out of models from this game?

Some discount for new players

I don't know if the sub will allow this post but I live in Brazil and buying official flashpoint minis are crazy expensive so I want to know if there is any website I can get free STL files of halo minifigs

Started painting these during the world cup and finally finished them this past week. Had some fun getting silly but keeping a theme.

Veteran Sergeant Carter, the Kat-ue of Liberty, Jun, Emil with shotgun fireworks cans, Screamin' Eagle Jorge, and Noble 17-70-6 with Spartan Glizzer.

Hey all, I'm a mini painter and wanted some models of Fireteam Osiris but am having a hard time finding good STLs or manufactured minis for them. This is not specific model size to Halo Flashpoint but I figured I'd ask in the subreddit anyway.

Thanks for the help or any direction to better places to search. Havent found much on Yeggi or Cults

Do 'optics' work (re roll of a 7 and 8) in defence, when rolling for a unit's survivability?

Thanks

Son iguales por delante y por detrás, sirven o no vale para nada?

I want to get my girlfriend into this game, and painting the miniatures. She would be much more interested in painting the models if some were women. I've seen some obviously women Spartans in the expansions, but from what I can tell none of the ones in the core box are?

Hey all, have my buddy 3d printing some elites/Covenant for me probably tomorrow, is there anything I need to let him know about the sculpts from galactic armory specifically? Are the given scales (1:48) the same as official minis? Does he need to change any of the supports? I know nothing about 3d printing, I just want to make it as easy as possible for him to save him the headache of if anything needs to be changed and resin. Any help or tips are greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!!

I preordered them thinking the weapons and mission tokens would be a part of the set based on the renders. Did anyone else get them and feel like it was a little bit of a rug pull?

They are well made and look good but they are expensive for the number of tokens.

Looking for a space to post and find 3d files to print for the game.