I was away recently, for a couple of days, and ended up walking into a Local Friendly Gaming Store (LFGS) that had a surprisingly decent range of wargaming products on the shelves. Not just Games workshop, but also quite a bit of Warlord Games (Shout out for the surprisingly dinky boxes for units and tanks – very shelf-space efficient and other companies should take note).
There were also a couple of Halo Flashpoint starter sets available, at sale prices equivalent to a decent online deal.
On the basis that I was going to have to tote it around on my travels, I bought the slimline Recon Edition, and opened it shortly afterwards on a 3 hr train ride.
I had the idea that I might actually assemble and play it on a train table, but as it turned out, the 3x3’ mat was too big for the vestigial table we had. The models come assembled (not on sprue), and the scenery is pushfit, so in principle it possibly would have worked if I could have grasped the rules in the first hour or two. My son was watching HALO Flashpoint intro videos, and I was reading the rulebook for the first hour.
Strictly assessing the rules, as someone who has never played Deadzone…
….Yes, these are really impressive rules.
As my son said, they’re just intuitive… The cube movement… The short and long actions (made him think of turn-based online games like X COM)… Even the info-dump that are the various stat cards and weapon cards are immediately comprehensible to anyone who has played video games. Even the concept found in the 'Slayer’ scenario, which has - for a short game - victory achieved by being the first to kill four opponents.
Looking forward to a first game at the weekend.