More Mantic Halo games?
A couple of days ago, Mantic Games and Halo Studios announced an extension of Mantic's licence to use Halo IP for tabletop games:
Mantic Games and Halo Studios today announce a major new chapter for Halo: Flashpoint with a landmark extension of their license partnership, setting up for years of future releases and additional games set in the Halo Universe.
This is very exciting news, and means that we should see plenty more Halo Flashpoint (which isn't much of a surprise). Doubly exciting is the reference to additional games. What games could they be?
Let's speculate.
Halo Firefight
Ah, the double meaning of Firefight when looking at Mantic Games and Halo... In Halo, firefight is a PvM game mode where you face waves of enemies with your friends, trying to hold out to the end. I played so many hours of firefight with my brothers and I would love to see this on the tabletop.
For Mantic, firefight is their larger scale wargame built on their own IP. If Halo Flashpoint expanded into this area, we would likely see larger aliens and vehicles come to the tabletop. Think Hunters, Warthogs, maybe even Scorpions?
Epic Halo
Mantic do an epic scale wargame called Epic Warpath. They recently released a new edition (I believe?) and the models look very neat (I got a free sprue at Salute which I need to snip off and paint up). This sort of game lets you field vast armies, far bigger than is feasible in 25mm games1. A Halo game set at this scale would be epic. Think Scarabs, Elephants, more Scorpions! All of the best vehicles from the Halo Wars games on the table.
I think the existence of Halo Wars means Mantic could try this. This scale of game does feel like an additional step away from the video game, but it would be awesome if they took the gamble.
Board Games
Mantic do bespoke board games for a few different IPs. The Worms one looks particularly good. I don't know what a Halo board game would look like2, but there might be space for something there. Warthog racing? A dungeon crawling game set in one of the campaign levels? They can probably think of better ideas than I can!
Armada
Mantic make a naval combat game, Armada, which I haven't played but I understand had (has?) a cult following. The rules from this could work very nicely for large scale space combat. We have seen plenty of cut scenes of this in the video games, so why not bring it to life on the tabletop.
With Star Wars Armada dead and buried, and Battlefleet Gothic a relic of the past, it is time another game rose to fill that void.
Grifball
This is what I really want.
I love Blood Bowl, and Mantic make their own sport game, Dreadball, which is getting a new release.
So give us Grifball.
This game mode is just begging for a standalone game. It could be an add on to Flashpoint, or have bespoke models armed with bombs, swords and hammers. I could see the new Dreadball stadiums working so well for this without needing to change too much.
What games would you like to see Mantic make? Let me know if you have any ideas and I will add them here!
Quack