Halo Flashpoint Combat Evolved : For the Nostalgia Gods

Boards Getting Closer

The boards need a nudge to get them closer to looking like the game. More grass green, more coverage, and let’s tie the board edges together better.

Stippppppppppple …

Ok. Better! The grass green is a bit shockingly green, but gosh darn it if it doesn’t harken to the Halo game more.

Final things needed will be to blacken the edges and add an attachment point to hang these on the wall. Later. Let’s get into some terrain element planning now. It’s ideas time.

Terrain Element Inspiration

I think pictures are worth all the words I could speak about the game level “Halo”, so plucking images straight from a play through, here are the terrain features and elements that stand out to me.

Terrain Elements

1. Beacon (the focal feature)
2. Supporting Structure
3. Pipes
4. Antennas (two types)
5. Trees
6. Gumdrop Rocks

I think a couple additional things might be good to remember to add/capture …

A fallen tree is an excellent element, even if I’m pulling from a later level. (Cheat code enabled!)

Gotta have purple blood splatter. Yesssssss.

The bridge style from the internals of the beacon is very applicable to Deadzone style bridges that span structures. Let’s make some!

Thoughts On How To Go About This

One thing is very clear: the structures cannot be to actual in game scale. The focal point beacon would take up an entire board in itself. While that could be cool, I think we need to fudge this so that it looks and feels right but isn’t 1 to 1.

As I look and think about what could be used to make these elements it becomes clear we can apply another design constraint to ourself, which I think amps up the theme fit. Let’s make all this as we might of in the 90s/early-00s and let’s make it with an eye toward being beginner build friendly.

The Halo Flashpoint starter boxes are an amazing starting experience where you can simply unbox and play. Let’s keep an eye toward this terrain project being the first terrain set a new player might want to make if they are expanding outside the contents of the box.

Summary:

1. Scale adjusted structures to fit boards, 40mm tall Spartans, and not 1:1 with the video game
2. Design constrain: Make this terrain a “next steps” after unboxing and playing with Recon/Spartan edition starter boxes.
   1. No fancy bespoke terrain making tools required
   2. Materials all cheap and easily found: foam core boards, dollar store evergreen plastic trees, pva glue, sand, paint, brushes, cereal boxes, etc.

Next Steps:

Let’s go tackle a mock up of the beacon structure. We can use it to right size all other elements to. Time to build something rough, slapdash, and horribly wonderful. Here we go …