[COMMERCIAL] Halo: Ground Command announced

[zemjw]

Spartan games have announced Halo: Ground Command - link

1:100 (15mm), so not really my scale

Shipping date Summer 2016, don't see anything about price

[DivisMal]

Well, its 15mm so Im pretty much interested well as long as they will be reasonably priced and compatible in size with Khurasan, Critical Mass and the like.

[nic-e]

I swear to god spartan hate money.
If they'd gone with 28mm they'd be able to retire on the profits from master chief miniatures alone,but they went with a scale that alot of people won't invest in.
(they also make no effort to keep their games stocked up/supported.)

[manic _miner]

 Beasts of War have an interview about the new game and lots of pictures of miniatures.They are still working on what will be in the box set.
 The Warthog shown on the BoW interview looks great.There will be three weapon varients too.
 I am sure they will look at doing the larger scale miniatures in the future.Going with 15mm means that they can do lots of the larger vehicles from the game Universe.

[Elbows]

I swear to god spartan hate money.
If they'd gone with 28mm they'd be able to retire on the profits from master chief miniatures alone,but they went with a scale that alot of people won't invest in.
(they also make no effort to keep their games stocked up/supported.)

To make it worse, when showing off 15mm sculpts, they showed a handful of "three ups" on the Beasts of War video which were essentially 28mm.  I think a big problem here lies with the IP itself.  A lot of companies/game developers/film studios etc. don't know/understand wargaming.  Thus, a game must be released (at least initially) as a large box, fully inclusive with rules etc.

The idea of "hey can we just produce a line of miniatures for your IP?" probably doesn't resonate with a company, or interest them.  If you asked 303 Studios (or Microsoft, or whatever) if you could simply produce a line of collectible miniatures for wargaming, you'd probably get little to no positive response.  Thus you end up with large boxed games, and as such, very unlikely to do a quality 28mm line-up of figures.

PS: Regarding the game...meh, don't do 15mm and can't stand the HALO franchise, but good luck to `em.

[Etranger]

1:100 interests me. It also fits scalewise with the FOW fanciers & isn't going to directly compete with GW, Warlord etc.

[nic-e]

To make it worse, when showing off 15mm sculpts, they showed a handful of "three ups" on the Beasts of War video which were essentially 28mm.  I think a big problem here lies with the IP itself.  A lot of companies/game developers/film studios etc. don't know/understand wargaming.  Thus, a game must be released (at least initially) as a large box, fully inclusive with rules etc.

The idea of "hey can we just produce a line of miniatures for your IP?" probably doesn't resonate with a company, or interest them.  If you asked 303 Studios (or Microsoft, or whatever) if you could simply produce a line of collectible miniatures for wargaming, you'd probably get little to no positive response.  Thus you end up with large boxed games, and as such, very unlikely to do a quality 28mm line-up of figures.

PS: Regarding the game...meh, don't do 15mm and can't stand the HALO franchise, but good luck to `em.

Spartan kind of strike me as the anti GW, in the sense that they focus on expanding and getting loads of cool games out without any sense of how to run a stable reliable business! They almost need someone removed from the hbby altogether to go in and sit them down and say "do this for 6 months, then do the other thing. Do what people want and what will sell" So that their games don't drop off the face of the earth after 20 minutes.

If the mini's are good i may pick some up tho.

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

Huh, would have thought for sure this would be 28mm, since I would guess most people's interest in gaming Halo ground combat is something that vaguely resembles the video games, which (for the most part, there was that one RTS if I remember correctly) would look very much like a small-to-medium scale skirmish game, I'd think.  Sure, 15mm lets them more easily do a lot of ground vehicles, but those were never really the focal point of Halo ground combat, or at least it didn't seem that way to me.

The minis (renders, 3-ups, and actual 15mm models) looked pretty good, though, and I'm sure there's appeal for large-scale Halo ground combat.  I have to admit, I'm tempted just from watching the video, and it's not something I'd have thought I'd be too interested in.

[Rhelyk]

The "28mm or nothing" comments make me sad, 15mm is such a good scale for wargaming

http://cdn.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/halospartan4.jpg

There's more pictures out there, just google image search "Halo Ground Combat"

Personally, I'm super excited about it being 15mm and plan to buy the heck out if the models, it's the perfect scale for mixing infantry and vehicles. It's the scale 40k should have been for the last couple editions, still gets you great detail on the infantry and vehicles but you can field a good amount of both without dropping a thousand dollars while still playable on an average table. It's a little bit of a niche scale, but there's actually a pretty decent following for 15mm scifi wargaming. 28mm means skirmish games to me, which are great (I adore Infinity), but for Halo I want to see units clash, squadrons of warhogs and tanks. I already have some knock-off generic spartans from various companies in 15mm, but it's going to be great getting actual Warthogs and Scorpions and Marines without having to convert. Glad this is set on Reach, with all the Spartan IIIs running around and Master Chief still in cryo sleep. Halo's setting is high on my top 10 universes, but I'm sick to death of Master Chief and Cortana. Halo IV or V would have been nice: Spartan IVs and Prometheans and Covenant remnants still running around, but I'll take Reach. More than two factions always help a game, but we'll see. I'll probably just use the figs to play Gruntz unless the actual rules are especially good, will have to give it a few trial games to see.

Large engagements may not have been the focus of the video games, but even from the first Halo they were always there as a backdrop. The small slice of the action feel is a necessity of it being an FPS. I'm actually very glad that it WON'T play just like the video games. A game where one person plays a single Spartan rampaging through the hundreds of Covenant models wouldn't be very interesting for the Covenant player. The Haloclix made by Wizkidz could have been great, but they tried too hard to recreate the multiplayer deathmatch experience and failed utterly. Good figs too, though you usually have to strip the gloopy paint to see it, but the game was horrible.

[Inso]

If 15mm is your thing then great ... You will be one of the lucky ones who get to play the HALO franchise at your chosen scale.

I am a 28mm collector because I can't paint tiny miniatures and need them bigger to actually see them ... so I don't do 15mm out of necessity and can understand why people want them in 28mm (something the 28mm crowd has been screaming for for years).

The other thing about 28mm is there are a lot of WH40k players out there who would leap on HALO stuff at 28mm... so you have a ready made customer base (and they are used to paying premium money for miniatures)... so there would likely be a higher revenue stream.

On the flip side... can you imagine how big a Pelican Dropship would be in 28mm?! ... so 15mm makes perfect sense.

It's horses for courses and no matter what scale was used, those who don't do the scale will be disappointed and will likely express their disappointment on the forums... nothing to be sad about, it's just what it is

I'm looking to get a Pelican Dropship at 15mm and convert it into a 28mm Dwarf/Squat/Grymn dropship so for me, the scale isn't too much of an issue (as long as I can reasonably convert the thing ). I've just always liked the Pelican dropship ... and my HALO Grymn need a ride :

[manic _miner]

 Your Grymn cant be much bigger than 15mm Inso and you have done a great job on them .

 I think the scale issue is a hard one to go for.Lots of people will want large scale battles at the 15mm scale as it is cheaper.Then you have others who would want the 28mm scale one's.I can see the benefit of both scales and i do hope that Spartan get the go ahead to do them in 28mm too.Not sure what price the vehicles would be in that scale though.

 Will be interesting to see what buildings will be with the set.Makes me wonder if they will be like the Planetfall one's.

[JoeRugby]

Wished that this was "28mm" as that's all I collect, but understand as others have said why it makes sense to be 15mm.

Maybe we'll get a skirmish game in the future at "28mm" (I'm hoping dropzone commander does this as well) but a bit sad I won't be able to get some "28mm" ODST or Elites

[rwwin]

Gaming reasons were probably only part of the reason for going 15mm.  Spartan needed to differentiate themselves from the clix halo figures that are still floating around.

I feel everyone's pain.  I'd buy the hell out of these too if they were 28mm/32mm.  For better or worse, that's the only scale I'm into now.

[Redmao]

That would make them about the same scale as the McFarlane Micro Ops sets from a few years ago which ain't so bad.
The vehicles, figures and terrain pieces were cool, so I can only have hope for the upcoming game.

[DivisMal]

The "28mm or nothing" comments make me sad, 15mm is such a good scale for wargaming
(...)

Personally, I'm super excited about it being 15mm and plan to buy the heck out if the models, it's the perfect scale for mixing infantry and vehicles. It's the scale 40k should have been for the last couple editions, still gets you great detail on the infantry and vehicles but you can field a good amount of both without dropping a thousand dollars while still playable on an average table.

So true! I personally love playing 40k in 15mm, it really gives you a reasonable price limit and great games on average dining tables. Thus I m pretty excited of the Halo game. Hopefully it will push also other companies into investing in that scale!