Along with forum member Quickdraw's help, I ran a large game of Halo: Fleet Battles at KoboldCon 2019 in Colorado Springs yesterday.
I opted for a variation on the "Firefight" scenario that Spartan released in one of the updates for the game. In my scenario, a
Punic-class supercarrier and a CAS assault carrier (Quickdraw's model) are parked on either side of a Forerunner station complex, and have called for reinforcements. I built four battlegroups for each side and assigned them specific orders and deployment instructions.
I wasn't sure how the game would play out, but my goal was for all the players (half of whom had never played the game) to roll lots of dice and blow up lots of ships. And, that's about what we got!
The UNSC players were able to deliver two Spartans to the CAS...after a couple of "stalemate" boarding results, the Spartans were able to cause a critical core breach in the forward section of the massive vessel, and then moved on to the mid-section, where they caused a second critical core breach a few turns later--although one of them was killed in the process. I had this image in my mind of the two Spartans going through the CAS like Captain America on the
Lemurian Star in "Winter Soldier".
Meanwhile, the remaining Covenant ships (two CPVs, a supported CCS, and a few SDV corvettes) worked the
Punic over from stem to stern, eventually wrecking the forward and rear sections of the supercarrier.
We all had a good time and it was good to see the two massive ships on the table. They acted mostly as objectives and scenery, as they didn't move, but they were able to get a few shots off at the opposing forces.
Thanks to Quickdraw for the use of his CAS and for helping me run the game, and to Dakkar and others for participating.