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[[File:Astartes vs Spartan.jpg|200px|right|thumb|Hardcorez]]
[[Image:Halocurrentlogo.png|500px|center]]
'''''Halo''''' is a vidyagame series exclusively released for the ECKSBAWKS, ECKSBAWKS 360 and PC. The series was developed by Bungie, though Microsoft has bought the rights to the game. The ''Halo'' universe is pretty  massive, with all sorts of media ranging from video games and graphic novels to action figures and a series of short movies released to DVD. It became famous for being the game that saved ECKSBAWKS from doing an Atari Jaguar by identifying an untapped new market of loud, stupid fratboys, and was the only reason anyone would even want to buy an ECKSBAWKS console. Its storyline is pretty much a copy of any everyday generic sci-fi storyline you can think of, with some bland angsty space-opera bullshit thrown in for good measure and a multiplayer that isn't too original either. It's also famous for its FUCKING cliffhangers and the definitely too many retarded fanboys convinced it's either the Lord of the Rings of sci-fi, the inventor of all vidyagames, the inventor of the FPS genre or all three of the above.


Occasionally it breaks away from this pattern and explores a more fatalistic and human side to the story without having to suck Master Chief's dick or obsess over ancient alien technology every three seconds, and is generally regarded as being about ten times better and more mature for it. Unfortunately, this lasted a grand total of one game before 343 Studios acquired the license and [[Fail|got right back to inserting themselves up the Chief's rectum.]]
'''''Halo''''' [[Marathon|AKA Marathon's more popular brother]] is a vidyagame series exclusively released for the ECKSBAWKS, ECKSBAWKS 360, ECKSBAWKS JUAN, SECKSBAWKS and PC. The series was developed by Bungie, though Microsoft has bought the rights to the game. The ''Halo'' universe is pretty  massive, with all sorts of media ranging from video games and graphic novels to action figures and a series of short movies released to DVD. It became famous for being the game that saved ECKSBAWKS from doing an Atari Jaguar by identifying an untapped new market of loud, stupid fratboys, and was the only reason anyone would even want to buy an ECKSBAWKS console.  


/tg/ isn't big on ''Halo'' and topics pertaining to ''Halo'' will normally be saged, trolled, told to go to /v/, or some combination therein. On /v/ however, ''Halo'' is... still widely hated.  Then again, /v/ hates video games in general.  The hatred of /tg/ comes less from the actual game/gameplay, and more from it being off-topic and a few [[1R0QU012|fanboys]] being retarded asshats.
[[File:The Origin of Where it All began.JPG|400px|right|thumb|Welcome to the beginning of where it all began. Say floating lightbulb, do you have time to listen to the one and true savior, the Precursors?]]


Because of its innovative controls and game mechanics (button for melee and grenades, rechargeable health, refined online console multiplayer, popularizing console FPS controls as the gold standard, having drivable vehicles in a FPS that didn't suck ass, kickass music, an intriguing plot, a limited weapon carrying capacity, etc), Halo has often been seen as part of the Holy Trinity of First Person Shooters, tied with Golden Eye and Half-Life as being one of the most important video games in history; with Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D and Marathon being seen as the 'Original Old Guards of First Person Shooters'.


==Setting==
Occasionally it breaks away from the generic sci-fi pattern and explores a more fatalistic and human side to the story without having to suck Master Chief's dick or obsess over ancient alien technology every three seconds, and is generally regarded as being about ten times better and more mature for it. Unfortunately, within the games, this lasted a grand total of one game before [[343 Industries]] acquired the license. Within the books, there are many wonderful examples otherwise, and the plot of Halo 4 can only be completely understood by reading the books from the series that begins with ''Glasslands''. ''Halo Silentium'' by Greg Bear is also a necessary read to really understand how many times the Forerunners screw up, be it their own society or another species, or the entire galaxy, and the true nature and intent of the Flood. The character development of the Librarian and the Didact also makes this quite a fun read. If you're into books, that is. It should also be noted that Halo is to be commended for abstracting Larry Niven's Ring World, but since no one reads older books that don't have pew pews on the cover, how would a mangled regurgitation of IP be recognized when you pull from obscure sauces.  
The ''Halo'' universe takes place in the 26th century. Mankind, led by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), has developed its own crude faster-than-light drive (the Shaw-Fujikawa Drive) and finally colonized other worlds. At its height, human civilization occupies nearly 800 planets, forming a ring of outer colonies and rings of inner colonies with Earth as its capital. This is not what they're talking about when they say Halo, mind you.


Sometime in the year 2525 (believed to be roughly half past three), an agricultural world in the outer colonies, creatively named ''Harvest'', is attacked by an unknown force. In the succeeding months, all attempts to make contact, or even defend against the alien forces are met with swift destruction. It is not long before more colonies are wiped out.
/tg/ isn't big on ''Halo'' and topics pertaining to ''Halo'' will normally be saged, trolled, told to go to /v/, or some combination therein. On /v/ however, ''Halo'' is... still widely hated.  Then again, /v/ hates video games in general. The hatred of /tg/ comes less from the actual game/gameplay, and more from it being off-topic and a few fanboys being asshats. <s>Though this also may be due to the fact Halo fans have Cortana to fap to while fa/tg/uys are stuck with fapping to the Emprah</s> <span style='color:red;front-size:115%'><strike>{{BLAM|HERESY!}}</strike><span style='color:purple;front-size:115%'>WORT WORT WORT! *GLASSED*


The unknown menace finally identifies itself as the Covenant, a coalition of several alien races bent on destroying humanity. At first they seem to be doing this because that's just what aliens ''do'', but later on it is discovered that the story is somewhat deeper. Apparently humans are the descendants of an ancient super-advanced alien race called the Forerunners.  
Like Warhammer 40k the state of Halo's fluff has been in limbo, while Halo may have fucking spectacular authors on the line of Greg Bear (May he rest in peace) and Eric Nylund (and more recently Troy Denning) it also has its fair share of colossal fuck ups in the line of [[Fail|Brian Reed]] (who some believe to be the series equivalent of The Beast Himself) and [[Rage|Karen Traviss.]] Don't even get us started with the advent of 343i and [[Skub|their mixed bag success]] on the Reclaimer saga as well as Halo's more...questionable marketing campaigns. Ironically, while the more recent games has been bait for [[Rage|flamewars that will send any respectable forum thread into lock down, even off 4chan,]] Halo's transition to tabletop gaming after some [[Fail|failed]] attempts like Halo Actionclix (Which is a shame cause while the game rules sucked, the models was in such high quality that it even outshines some high priced models from [[Forgeworld]]) has been more positively received, what with the fact that hardcore Haloites now need to use their brains and that the new mini models are quite nicely detailed.


This made the Covenant kinda jealous, because it was them who first discovered the Forerunner technology, adapted it to their own, and finally started worshipping the Forerunners. Apparently, knowing that your gods had a favorite, finding out that it isn't you, and finding out that it's instead the species that invented ''truck balls'' upset them just a little. [[Exterminatus| So, back to glassing]]. It's not long before the UNSC military, and humanity itself, finds out that it is being pwned. Clearly the only solution to this would be a ridiculously tiny unit of infantry  (thirty three men to defend eight hundred planets, lolwat?) In clever armour with a name in allcaps. This leads to the Spartan-II program, humanity's last hope.
It is worth noting that Halo ever since its inception of its sequel, Halo 2, has been a proud sponsor of every [[Neckbeards]] elixir of life that is....[[Mountain Dew]], as well as the other sacred food item of Doritos. So don't be surprise when you see Mountain Dew and Doritos advertisement being shoved down your face whenever you want to buy any merchandise from Halo. Trying to say anything bad on these food products made from diabetes, sugar, acid and Ork piss is Halo's equivalent of [[Heresy]], you have been warned.


==The Spartan-II program==
Halo as previously mentioned has a bloody massive universe (multiverse?) encompassing not only games, but also short films (Both live action and animated), music (One of the first vidya games whose soundtrack was good enough to earn multiple awards by itself), tabletop games, merchandises, mega block toys, figurines, nerf guns and even [[Anime|animu.]] Much like [[Warhammer 40,000|40K]] there are 3 major fan wikis: [https://www.halopedia.org/ Halopedia], [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Halo Nation] (combined into Halopedia with the rest transforming into Halo Alpha) and [http://unhalo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Gruntipedia]; and much like 40K they fall into the respective archetypes of 'obsessively detailed fan wiki', 'ad-ridden Wikia knockoff' and '1d4chan with even worse humour and fan rage'. Although Gruntipedia can be excused for being a product of the early 2000s Internet shitposting era, so a time capsule if you will.


<blockquote>''You have been called upon to serve, you will be trained... and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.''  
==Setting==
<br>— Dr. Catherine Halsey, founder of the program, to the young Spartan-II recruits</blockquote>
[[File:Reclaimer Symbol.png|400px|right|thumb|The Forerunner symbol for Reclaimer. This symbol is a special Easter egg to an even older [[Marathon|Bungie game.]] Yes it looks like the [[Tau]] symbol but [[Original character, do not steal|predates it by almost a decade.]] Games Workshop proving once again that they are a bunch of sleazy and ballsy motherfuckers.]]
The ''Halo'' universe takes place in the 26th century. Mankind, led by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), has developed its own crude faster-than-light drive (the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine) and finally colonized other worlds. At its height, human civilization occupies nearly 800 planets, forming a ring of outer colonies and rings of inner colonies with Earth as its capital. This is not what they're talking about when they say Halo, mind you.


The Spartan-II program was originally a super soldier project intended to fight increasing terrorist and rebel threats throughout UNSC space. It was masterminded by genius geneticist Dr. Catherine Halsey, who is the founder and former director of the the project. She and her team visited practically all 800 planets in human space, trying to find children who matched the exact psychological and genetic profile <s>of Big Boss</s> that would accept her newly-developed super soldier treatments. In the end, over 300 children were selected for the program but only 150 were actually abducted due to budget constraints. Those that were abducted were replaced with clones so the families would never know they went missing, since apparently making stable clones is impossible in the future. It is unclear why nobody pointed out this pointlessly angsty backstory would probably result in all of them turning evil like in every other game where this sort of thing is tried, or asked how a fighting force of 150 would be useful to an alliance with five times that number of ''planets''. Some may object in the Warhammer 40K universe there are much more planets then there are Space Marines, and still the Astartes are a very useful force, but  That's because they can deploy in the dozens, hundreds or even thousands.  And they have a specialized armory built to maximize their effectiveness as a fighting force.  Spartans have to make do with the same "shittier than what we have in real life" arsenal that the cannon fodder does, because the UNSC can afford super soldiers and power armor, but not special guns for them (in every single game the best weapons are the ones you scavenge from your alien enemies, fer chrissake).  Fucktards.
Sometime in the year 2525, an agricultural world in the outer colonies, creatively named ''Harvest'', is attacked by an unknown force. In the succeeding months, all attempts to make contact, or even defend against the alien forces are met with swift destruction. It is not long before more colonies are wiped out.


The child-recruits were brought to a secret, heavily fortified military world called Reach. They were trained, given numbers instead of names, beaten, retrained, mindfucked, trained some more, and in general subjected to the kind of treatment someone who's half-watched parts of ''Full Metal Jacket'' thinks of as military training. Finally, the children, now in their late teens, were cleared for biological enhancement. Using the [[Rape|latest experimental treatments]], the 150 were pumped full of drugs that induced their muscles to grow, enriched their blood, and increase their brain processing to the point some of them even knew how to set up a TiVo. They were surgically modified to give them superior eye sight, hearing, and ceramic skeletons. The procedures were so dangerous that over half of the remaining recruits were lost in the surgeries. Only about 33 of the original 150 survived the experimental augmentation procedure program that would've utterly crippled all those without the proper genetics (which makes you wonder how this process was developed to begin with). The result, however, were the Spartan-IIs, who had a laundry list of biologically unlikely abilities. On the other hand, severe psychological issues result in them thinking all objects are exactly the same size for inventory purposes, from a rocket launcher to a pistol. This makes day-to-day life difficult, as they stand confused in front of their dresser trying to figure out whether to drop their car keys or wallet in order to put on their clothes.
The unknown menace finally identifies itself as the [[Setting:Halo/Covenant|Covenant]], a coalition of several alien races bent on destroying humanity. At first they seem to be doing this because that's just what aliens ''do'', but later on it is discovered that the story is somewhat deeper. Apparently, thanks to the revelations of the [[skub|''Reclaimer Saga'']], humans were once an [[Grimdark|ancient, super advanced, totalitarian, bigoted, expansionist, racist, supremacist, violent, militaristic, war-mongering, nightmare of an empire]], like a way less competent junior version of the [[Great Crusade]]. All were fine and dandy when the Flood came out of fucking nowhere (Long story short, they came about when the humans kept forcing their pets to [[Drug|sniff some powder from an ancient, mysterious ship,]] [[FAIL|''what could go wrong?'']]) which forced the humans to take a page out of [[Kryptman]]'s playbook and invade into Forerunner territory as they were trying to save the galaxy from the Flood. The Forerunners not taking into the whole "I destroy your planets and exterminate your civilians out of benign and superficial reasons" promptly kicked the humans in the galactic nuts, stripped of their technology and de-evolved them back into caveman. So in short, Mankind in Halo basically were what [[Eldar]] are in 40k (Without "blasted into a stoneage part). Later, [[rape|the Forerunners ended up getting nommed by the Flood in the most ridiculous OCP way possible]] and found out how they fucked up so bad when one of them found out that the ancient humans once had the solution against the Flood ([[Just As Planned|Later claimed to be just an elaborate hoax to fool the Forerunners by the Flood]], though the one making this claim was also the Flood's [[Big Bad Evil Guy]], who at the time was speaking to a wavering, demoralized Forerunner leader, so about as trustworthy as the [[Chaos Gods]] promising to give an [[A Game of Pretend|unbiased]] view of the [[Emperor]]) that they had to [[Exterminatus|super-irradiate the known galaxy]] just to kill most of the Flood. Oh, and they also named the humans their Reclaimers as their way of saying sorry for turning them into cavemen and telling them to finish their job, [[Troll|fucking Forerunners.]]


Later, the super soldiers were finally given their signature green armor, a prototype powered suit called MJOLNIR (the second choice, as ALLCAPS was already taken). The suit added mechanically unlikely abilities to their biologically unlikely abilities, and [[canon]]ically weighed a metric ton. Despite that it doesn't make people sink into the ground or fall through every staircase in the universe, thus showing ''Halo's'' [[Games Workshop|fluff writers have no fucking clue what they're talking about]].  
This made the Covenant, or more specifically the Prophets kinda jealous, because it was them who first discovered the Forerunner technology, adapted it to their own, and finally started worshiping the Forerunners. Apparently, knowing that your gods had a favorite, finding out that it isn't you, and finding out that it's instead the species that invented ''[[Abbadon|truck nuts]] '' upset them just a little. [[Exterminatus| So, back to glassing]]. It's not long before the UNSC military, and humanity itself, finds out that it is being pwned. <s>Clearly the only solution to this would be a ridiculously tiny unit of infantry with clever armor named in allcaps. This leads to the SPARTAN-II program,</s> (SPARTAN:s were created to fight against human insurrectionists but happened to be extremely effective against the Covenant as well, and active just in time for them to come around too) humanity's last hope <s>(thirty three men and women to defend eight hundred planets, lolwat?)</s>, thirty-three super soldiers, divided into teams 3 or 4, and sent as ''force multipliers'' to assist the UNSC's beleaguered marines and mechanized divisions. Though not as a defensive planetary force (the UNSC having lost a large chunk of those 800 worlds early in the war), but as an offensive special ops unit, [[Alpha Legion|infiltrating behind enemy lines, assassinating commanders, and disrupting the Covenant's supply chain; doing the suicide jobs that others could not, slowing down or in some cases halting Covenant military build-up before it can launch further devastating attacks on the humanity]]. At exceedingly great resource cost and high lost of life, the UNSC together with the Spartans gradually turn the tide of the war (more along the lines of slowly and painfully pushing the Covenant's genocidal murder-boner from balls deep within humanity's asshole to a mere 3/4ths.)


Over the course of the fluff, the Spartans are sent into several missions that even the UNSC elite forces (the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or ODST) can't go in. Basically, the Spartans Get Shit Done. By the time the Covenant starts to attack human worlds, the Spartan-IIs have been in service for nearly a decade and they are quickly redeployed with the new MJOLNIR Mark-V armor, each complete with a reverse-engineered personal shield stolen from the Covenant. Almost all of them then [[FAIL|die]] since in [[Crunch]] (and even in some fluff) their armour provides slightly less protection than lingerie and the shield goes down if a space lizard sneezes on them. The rest of the fluff was apparently played on a secret super-easy difficulty where you defeat every enemy in the game with your penis in the first ten minutes.  
To end the war once and for all, humanity enacts a desperate plan: They would send a specially refitted ship (the ''Pillar of Autumn'') along with Spartan contingent deep behind enemy lines and attempt to capture one of the Prophets (the select group of religious leaders that form the highest caste of the Covenant). But as usual, [[FAIL|it all goes horribly wrong]] [[Derp|before it can even begin]]. The UNSC's fortress-world of '''Reach''', and unofficially the Spartans' homeworld, is discovered by the Covenant. Next to Earth, Reach is the most heavily defended world in Human space. It falls in a matter of days, as the Covenant brings nearly a third of its entire fleet to lay siege over the planet. As Reach's defenses wither away, the Covenant simply brings in more reinforcements. Few escape the doomed Battle of Reach, but one of the ships that manages make it out of the system in time is the ''Pillar of Autumn''. Aboard is a single battle-ready Spartan II (plus another comatose one, but she doesn't count), suspended in cryostasis. Yet, that is where the story truly begins, for the Autumn blindly jumps right into a heavily-guarded star system containing a Halo; a colossal ring-world, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, built millions of years ago by the Forerunners, worshiped by the Covenant as an ancient artifact of unimaginable power, and which would totally never ever turn out to be a super-weapon for super-killing the flood. The Pillar of Autumn's fate and that of the Halo, becomes the setting of the original ''HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED'' game.


Overall, humanity's ass was only saved because the elites noped out of the covenant at the best possible time, the SPARTANS by and large accomplished jack and shit.
And it only gets more nuts from there.


== The Spartan-III Program==
<gallery>
[[File:Stormtrooper vs Ork.jpg|200px|right|thumb|Mr."Totally not a Spartan normal human soldier" showing those losers in Halo how it is done.]]
Image:Tumblr_oehlv6Ulpc1ruienfo2_1280.png|Never knew [http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Eternity_(Earth-616) Eternity from Marvel] payed a visit to Halo...
Late into the war. People relished they were running out of Spartans. So people who not only hated Halsey but hated that whole kidnapping thing started the Spartan IIIs.  So rather than break into homes and steal babies, they rounded up orphans of glassed worlds pumped them full of drugs and sent them out on human wave suicide missions. IIIs had none of the cool armor <s> or weapons</s> what cool weapons? instead they used cheap knock off versions which lacked the shields. Minus the ones you play in Halo Reach. So basically, this entire situation can be blame on not only humans obsession with technology, but the lack of leadership, tactical geniuses and manliness. <s>Apparently, some human soldiers in Warhammer 40k are capable of melee the shit out of the green monster that is larger than they are with a chainsword, but the humans in halo cannot.</s> Like the Guard fare better in melee.
Image:Haloring.jpg|One of the most iconic sci-fi architecture in video game history. One part bonsai garden. One part galactic WMD.
Image:ONI.png|[[1984|We are ONI. We have the power to make you 'disappear'. We have the power to turn the public against you. We have the power to erase you from existence. We will be watching. Always.]]
Image:The_Rookie.jpg|BRODST
</gallery>


The people in change even have the balls to claim the moral high ground compare to Halsey stating that all of the IIIs were volunteers.  Because as we know, 14-year-olds who just watched their world burn totally understand what they're signing up for.
==On /tg/==
While as mentioned that Halo has been proven skubtastic over the years on /tg/, the recent surge in popularity among tabletop has garnered a niche within /tg/ community. That and the fact of a billion fandex for either the Covenant, UNSC or Forerunners as well as fanfiction that ranges from okay to literal bait for fan wars.


Furthermore some of the spartan III's wear a special armor called SPI which turns them invisible, effectively making them Catachan Devils with Predator Cloaking and more bat-shit insane.
It no longer has the ire it once had due to most of the annoying asshats migrating to COD and Battlefield as well as the fact that some of the squeakers that used to inhabit the Halo community has since matured into adults by now. Halo nowadays has been seen as...okay.


==The Spartan-IV program==
One thing of note is a massive backlash even for the casual TG fan about the changing Halo artstyle. While this might get dismissed by many since style changes are extremely common in franchises and often hated regardless of context, Halo 5 (and ESPECIALLY Halo Infinite) have pretty much dedicated themselves to turn unique and interesting designs (especially for human stuff) into the most generic run of the mill boring pieces of hardware not out of place in a COD game. Basically style change is like redecorating your house, and 343 is just slathering everything in beige. Bringing up the style change is seen as MASSIVE skub between those who loath it and those who, from the previous assumptions, assume it's just fanboys complaining.
[[File:Spartan_4th_in_nutshell.jpeg‎|200px|right|thumb|spartan IV in a nutshell]]
In Halo 4, it has revealed the child soldier program is no longer enable, because that old cougar Halsey is fed up with child kidnapping and abusing crap. The new Spartan IV program is similar to the original Spartan program, <s>'''[[noblebright|which only requires typical adult volunteer who weren't beaten to shit since childhood, nor kidnapped. The Spartans will be training in a X-men training simulation, where they fight each other in a safe environment.]]'''</s> {{BLAM|This is Colonel Schaeffer speaking, and I am, truly, disapprove with the Spartan IV program, which it should've continue the use of child soldier with even harsh training in the REAL environment. And I}}<s>'''-but Sir, you don't work in the UNS-'''</s>{{BLAM|'''*BLAM* QUIET YOU INCOMPETENT SCRUB!!! I CAN BE IN CHARGE OF ANY HUMAN MILITARY IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME!!!!}}  But anyways, the new program basically ruined the meaning of the title "Spartan", might as well replaced their name with "Captain America IN SPEHSS", since Captain America was a normal (if scrawny and useless) human who was injected with steroids and exposed to "bullshit" rays.


Then again, the real life Spartans were destroyed by a small volunteer army (despite outnumbering the force 10 to 1) from Thebes. The Spartans' own harsh training methods meant they couldn't replace their losses in time for Thebes to show up, free their slaves, as the slaves were the only one thing keeping Sparta running (as all the free men were warriors) Spartans quickly fell and became a run down shadow of its former glory to a point where no one ever invaded it because it was so worthless it wasn't worth the effort.
==The TV Show==
Eight years after being announced, Paramount+ has released their own spin on the Halo series in TV form, likely in part out of envy for Disney having their [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|own streaming show set in a beloved space setting]]. Unlike the various books and comics that preceded it, which are supposed to exist in the same universe as the video games everyone knows, the show is in its own canon, officially called the "Silver Timeline" in reference to Master Chief leading a SPARTAN team called "Silver Team". Was drawing concern and derision even before release (as that's how these things tend to go nowadays), and has only continued its status as [[Skub|grade-A skub]] from there. Among the things folks have taken issue with are:
* The writers admitting that they didn't look at any of the games, leading to the sense that they didn't respect/know the source material enough. One such example is that they turned Oban, a UNSC research facility, into a garbage planet with child slaves in order to drive home their “UNSC is eeeeeeevil” plot line. To be fair, the UNSC got up to some dirty stuff in the main timeline, but this harsher portrayal even extends to the fan-favorite Jacob Keyes, who is much more of an authoritarian jerk than he is in canon. Basically, there's the sense that the show is overdoing it as far as highlighting the UNSC's flaws.
* The very same showrunners quit after Season 1 wrapped, long before the show even aired. That's never a good sign.
* CGI and special effects of questionable quality; clearly unfinished props/effects have made it into the final cut without any editors noticing.
* That it's not a straight adaptation of the video games or novels; fans would’ve made allowances for changes here and there, and the Halo universe is big enough that one can tell original stories while still being true to the lore. Some have taken to it as its own thing, but others feel its a generic sci-fi story with the Halo brand slapped on top (worth noting that this view isn't just held by salty neckbeards either; some critics have also found the show's tone and writing to be somewhat derivative, taking more cues from The Expanse than from Halo. Even Halo Co-Creator Marcus Lehto complained the show was nothing like what he made.). For starters, they've already spoiled the big twist about the Halo rings being weapons (which the Covenant shouldn't know, much less the UNSC) long before Reach has even fallen. Seems that the directors have chosen to discard the drama of the world and the war, in favor of manufactured interpersonal drama and political intrigue. Because that's what people got into Halo for.
* Master Chief shows his face in the very first episode, which for most Halo neckbeards is pure [[Heresy]]; then they somehow manage to top it by showing us [[wat|his naked ass.]] Hence, he has since earned the nickname Master Cheeks, which is particularly apt when the showrunners decided to give him a sex scene with Covenant Lady because reasons.
* Humans working for the Covenant, which completely undermines the Covenant’s motivations in starting the war with humanity; regardless of whatever justifications the show gives, the whole reason for the Covenant's ''genocide'' of humanity is to cover up the fact that forerunner tech marks humans as Forerunners, so having a human in their capital would make said cover up damn near impossible. The show's given justification is that only a few humans (of which the Covenant's Blessed One is one), can access and interact with Forerunner tech, so her status is more valuable. Needless to say, [[Rage|many Halo fans were still not impressed]]
* Giving Master Chief a young teenage girl sidekick with zero connection to the original lore; some feared that she is set up to replace Master Chief in his own show. A somewhat less cynical interpretation is that she's meant to be the Baby Yoda/Grogu to Master Chief's Mando. Instead, she's been given her own storyline involving the insurrection, which was just a footnote in Halo lore by the time of the covenant war. Fans aren't on board with her character as she lacks charisma and the insurrection plot is basically just a retread of The Expanse more than anything that feels like authentic Halo, and of the various plot threads its the one that has the least reason to be in the show and could have probably been removed without changing much.
* Related to the above, you may be wondering why Cortana isn’t initially with Master Chief. They decided to completely change her into a fully-grown clone of Halsey that Halsey kills to make Cortana rather than just a brain scanned AI, give her some tacked on existential angst, and rewrite AIs so that they control SPARTANs outright instead of being assistants. Chief and Cortana's relationship is also far from what it was in the games, with Chief being annoyed at Cortana rather than the two sharing a close bond; Chief even outright cuckholds her in front of her eyes with the covenant spy. I guess Master Cheeks prefers 3D to 2D. Season 1 ends with Chief apparently dead, with Cortana basically taking over his body. So it wasn't Kwan who ended up replacing John - the big twist is it was Cortana.
* Forerunner Keystones have an awful tendency of being incredibly convenient to whatever the plot demands at the time, whether its allowing a character to escape, revealing character backstories, or becoming the big macguffin revealing where to find the Halo rings. What's next, turning Cortana into a real girl?
* While the fight scenes so far have been alright...there haven't been that many of them. You can count the number of fights Master Chief has been in on one hand. The fights themselves also have a problem with consistency in terms of power balance; we first see the Elites as nigh-invulnerable to small arms fire and a minigun, but in the same scene when Master Chief shows up, that same minigun takes down Elites quite easily, no problem.
* Sgt. Johnson is a complete No-Show. Which is really strange, given that the show has already chosen to race-swap a number of characters while ignoring the most popular and well-loved black character in the whole series.


So grimdark training isn't really needed to make badass soldiers. Also the fact that, well those GrimDark Spartans FAILED.  The IIs were expensive as all fuck, took forever to train, had high "drop out" rates.  And while kicked a tons of ass there were so few it didn't really mattered.  The IIIs were glorified cannon fodder, much like real world child solders and often had 100% casualty rates and missions only really delayed the Covenant.
Not all of the fan buzz has been negative (it definitely hasn't done any worse for itself than the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy did in terms of backlash), and some things have gone over well enough:


The IVs are what the Spartan II were designed to be only cheaper and easier to make.
*Pablo Schreiber's performance as Master Chief has been (mostly) well received. It helps that he is apparently playing his way through the franchise to learn his role.
*Spotty special effects aside, action scenes convey that the SPARTANs are one-man army badasses and also don't hold back on the blood and gore
*Jen Taylor is voicing Cortana again
*The new SPARTANs. It helps that two of them (Soren and Vannak) feel in some ways ''more'' like the game/book Master Chief than the Silver Timeline one does.  


==UNSC Marines==
The series has basically become ''[[Star Wars|The Rise of Skywalker]]'' of video game adaptations, [[Fail|which is one hell of a feat]]. Dumpster fire does not cut it out, it is more akin to the Firebombing of Tokyo in terms of how much the adaptation shat on the franchise. This is like, [[CS Goto|CS Goto's levels of horrid fan-fic]]; the Shyamalana-ding-dong of [[Cringe|cringy adaptations]] if you will. The most hardened of Halo fans would understandably get a brain aneurysm if they hear this within ear shot, but more casual or oldschool fans just found the adaptation to range from "So bad its good" to "So boring its meh". Either way, it no doubt helps Paramount+ that this show is its own canon, making it easier to ignore if you're not a fan, and giving them more freedom to <s>muck up the lore</s> do their own thing with the franchise.


These are your everyday cannon-fodder from the UNSC who in fluff meet fates similar of the mobile infantry in the first ''Starship Troopers'' movie or your typical [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Guardsman]] (Except they don't have non-super human combat monster such as [[Yarrick]] or Tactical Genius such as [[Creed|CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDD!!!]], and they rely everything on Spartan). In crunch, they vary from scripted death-by-anything to being able to laugh off multiple Fuel Rod Gun hits. <s>'''[[Tau|They are also suck in melee against anything, as shown in crunch, they are unable to kill a grunt in melee.]]'''</s> {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!* WHO IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR MOCKING MY FINE SOLDIER'S ABILITIES??!!'''}}<s>'''but sir these are not you soldi-'''</s>{{BLAM|'''*BLAM!* QUIET!! EVERY SOLDIERS ARE EMPEROR'S CURRENCY!!! AND THAT MEANS THEY ARE UNDER MY COMMAND!!!'''}} But anyway, in contrast with the guardsman, they are not expendable, Since most of the planets humans colonize in Halo were glassed, so does many civilians, were shoved in the ass by energy sword and blasted by plasma fire. But hey, that happens to the humans in Warhammer 40k everyday, so welcome to the club I guess? Besides, the humans in Warhammer 40k are living in way worse condition compared to the humans in halo, which some of them that had survived since childhood, are badass with a strong will, and that should tells us how competent those motherfuckers on Cadia really are. But the UNSC does has some non-super human elite, like the ODST, which they got their own shitty spin off 60$ game. Not to mention that badass motherfucker from [[derp|Halo Wars]], [[awesome|who is capable of took down the largest elite that dual-wields energy swords.]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfrOAqPdrrQ awesome ensure.]
==Codex: The Covenant==
[[File:1185489032.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Surprisingly, [[Games Workshop|Halo Actionclix]] figures make good Tabletop conversions for the [[Codex - The Covenant|Covenant]], here seen a Scarab that looks like it could fit comfortably in the [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Apocalypse Game-type.]]]]
A bunch of people decided that the Covenant's tech and machines are pretty nice in a WH40K setting So "[[Codex - The Covenant]]" was made to implement them into the tabletop game.


''''''UNSC marines vs guardsman'''
Furthermore on the context on Halo; The Convenant is a [[Imperium of Man|militarized theocracy]] made up of different alien species, with each belonging to its own caste, and all of them are all sorts of killy in a variety of ways. Their MO is to track down the remnants of the Forerunner's legacy in their quest to ascend to Godhood, and destroy anyone who stands in their way. While we can't vouch for how they'd fair against other alien factions, they're certainly lethal against the [[Imperial Guard|average human soldier]]. From the top down;


This is a matter of great [[skub]], but [http://archive.foolz.us/tg/thread/22514935/#22514935 this archived thread should show the basic factors in play.]
* Prophets: [[Ecclesiarchy|The theocrats who call all the shots]]. While generally too frail for combat, they're the [[Just as Planned|master manipulators]] and [[Adeptus Mechanicus|horde all the forerunner technology]]. They're also indirectly responsible for virtually all deaths in the war against the UNSC, since they started the war as basically a giant cover-up and means to stay in power. They also like to play the different races against each other for their own ends. If you see one on the battlefield, expect to see '''lots''' of heavily-armed bodyguards and some really strong personal defense systems to boot.
* Elites: Space [[Lizardmen]] with Lightsabers that shout WORT WORT WORT. Come from a proud warrior race and were the first race to be subjugated by the Prophets. They still form the top of the military hierarchy and are quite dangerous, wielding personal shields and many of the best weapons that the Covenant has to offer, as well as having many brilliant tacticians at their disposal.
* Hunters: Colonies of [[Dune|Killer Death Worms]] inside of suits of armor and armed with nuclear radiation cannons. Its not an exaggeration to call these guys living tanks. These same worms are also used to power Scarabs and other super-heavy walkers.
* Brutes: [[Star Wars|Killer Wookies]] with Metal Shanks that go OMNOMNOM. Also a proud warrior race but far more zealous and unthinking than the Elites, they fight in packs and go berserk when you kill one of their pack-mates. Unlike the Elites who care about giving their opponents an honorable death, Brutes simply kill for the pleasure of it. They like to use their own weapons that have [[Choppy]] bayonets while being more [[Dakka]] and Boomy than your average plasma rifle. In the Covenant's final years, the prophets decided to replace the Elites with the Brutes because the Elites were too independent and started asking too many questions after the Halo rings were discovered.
* Jackals: [[Kroot|Space Pirate Turkeys that also go OMNOMNOM]]. Just barely above cannon fodder, they're typically deployed as light infantry or sniper support. They're the least zealous race and act more as mercenaries in different capacities.
* Grunts: [[Star Wars|Hairless Ewoks]] strapped to methane-filled tanks. The smallest and weakest race, and usually the most cowardly, as they tend to panic once their squad leader is killed. It's not unheard of though for some to go kamikaze and run at you with primed grenades. They tend to be the butt of a lot of jokes, until you realize just how badly the Covenant oppresses them and how they really don't want to be there.
* Drones: [[Tyranids|Flying bug-people that attack in large numbers.]] Not very intelligent, but they comply with the Covenant as they've been raised to think of the prophets as their hive queen.
* Engineers: Biomechanical floating [[/d/|tentacle monsters]]. Created by the forerunners to maintain their tech before they were enslaved by the Covenant. Engineers are fairly docile, but they're forced to wear suicide vests to prevent their capture.


==The Covenant==
==Codex: The Banished==
The Covenant are a coalition of religious alien civilizations. They venerate and worship the [[4chan|Forerunners]] and are known to utilize some Forerunner technology for their own means, giving them a colossal fleet of ships that outmatches the UNSC Navy. They are composed of the following:
Hey! You know how the Covenant has proven to be popular among WH40K/Halo conversions? Now we have a new Codex to represent the Covenant's worst foe. Akin to the [[Heretic|Heretics]] that plague the IoM. [[Codex - The Banished]] offers a different take on how the Brutes can be played with its own unique heroes, vehicles and units.


*Grunts: Ewoks wearing giant seashells with technicolour blood. Typically shout "he's unstoppable!" in their helium voice and then die. Since the UNSC marines are bunch of incompetent faggot pansy, these grunt are somehow very effective in terms of being expendable. Breath methane, and sometimes explode when shot under the pressure of their own fail.
To give a short and nice summary on what the Banished are, they are a large group of separatist forces lead by a Brute Warlord called Atriox; whereas most Brutes channeled their extreme violence in service to their dogmatic faith, while undermining their Elite rivals on the sly, Atriox was far less subtle about his hatred for the Covenant and its caste system. Unlike other separatist and heretical forces that plagued the Covenant Empire, the Banished stood their ground and weathered Covenant attacks until they amassed enough troops and equipment to rival and even stop the Covenant military in their tracks. In Halo Canon, they successfully outlasted both the Covenant and its various remnant factions, gathering troops and wargear with careful deliberation, much unlike the various demagogues and megalomaniacs who seized power in the political vacuum like Jul 'Mdama. And while they use most of the Covenants existing arsenal, much of it is heavily modified to suit the Brute's needs (and aesthetics), including a complete refit of Covenant Scarabs into offensive powerhouses. They are the only few polities capable of standing up to the Covenant and the only one capable of driving off an entire Covenant armada. Atriox's tactical and cunning brilliance has sowed intimidation and respect to not only the Covenant but to the Covenant's loyalist Brutes. Atriox's leadership despite the size of his army is not to be underestimated.


*Jackals: Irritating bastard-creatures with space shields who like to spam grenades and camp like they were playing Call of Doody,only with particle rifles. Basically [[Kroot]], but with more piracy and fewer genetic shenanigans. Notably only going along with the Covenant [[Heresy|because of pragmatism instead of faith]], and therefore better than the other races. Never entrusted with boarding missions because of the fear they [[Just as planned|might steal the ship and generate some lulz]].
==Halo Actionclix==
A while back during its heyday, Actionclix made a deal with Microsoft and Bungie at the time to create an Actionclix game based on the Haloverse. While the models were extremely well detailed and well crafted, its high pricing for the models and its overall clusterfuck of its rules has made Halo Actionclix a [[Skub|somewhat lackluster experience.]]


*Elites: De-tailed lizardmen IIIIIINNNN SPAAAAAACE! They have the same shields as a Spartan, and are a bit tougher than the lower-ranked enemies. Some are ''Arbiters'', equipped with laser swords with which they Arbitrarily kill you. Eventually join the humans due to the plot.  How the fuck they eat and drink without a bottom jaw is never explained.
This led to a initial surge in popularity with the idea of future tabletop games based around the universe (Read below on Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command), however like Halo Risk. The initial popularity died down quickly once the rules was read since you know, during that era (Halo 3), the main target audience was kids and teenagers who have zero to little clue on how to play an Actionclix game.


*Hunters: Some odd combination of worm/alien/giant thingy. They stand nearly 10 feet tall, but are actually a hive collection of worm-like aliens fusing together to form 1 giant thing, and usually come in pairs. A single hunter is armored from head to toe in overlapping tank-class plate armor, vulnerable only to fire from heavy weapons and [[What|badly-balanced OP handguns]]. They are armed with powerful <s>Noob Tubes</s> Fuel Rod Guns that can take out anything up to light armored vehicles in fluff and can deal anything up to minor damage to NPC Marines in the game.  Basically terminators that don't get shit done, with slightly interesting fluff and a vaguely samurai-esque warrior poet feel to their culture on the extremely rare occasions it gets a mention. Their species can also made into a gigantic quadruped walking tank known as Scarab, and as seen from [[Derp|Halo Legends]] become as big as [[What|Titans]]...why the Covenant never employ the bigger ones is [[Herp|beyond anybodies guess]].
This has in turn, force Halo Actionclix to have a relatively short lifespan and the models have thus turned into a collectors item for display and collecting dust.


*Drones: Bee people with guns!  And that's...pretty much it.  They're apparently good engineers and don't feel fear, but they die like grunts and their queens shit out eggs by the thousands. They're annoying fuckers who are a pain to hit, swarm around in the dozens, and zap you to death with elite guns. ...Vespids?
==Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command==
[[File:HFBB01-2.jpg|300px|left|thumb|Halo Fleet Battles starter package. Yes we know, that is a whole lot of ships.]]
With the introduction of Halo Fleet Battles which is essentially Halo's take on [[Battlefleet Gothic]], that is centered around the Fall of Reach which is like the biggest naval combat within the Covenant-UNSC fluff, some fa/tg/uys has apparently lost their collective shit due to the fact that this is the first time that Halo is getting a tabletop treatment (The Risk and Actionclix games although the models are nice, does not really count). Similar to most tabletop miniatures, the models coming with Halo Fleet Battles and its contemporary ground units comes unpainted which means you have to paint all the neely-willy details yourself, that and the fact that it comes with its own rulebook and stats has garnered /tg/'s approval. In fact, some has already decided to convert the models and place it within Battlefleet Gothic itself (Although how you will be able to adjust the rules to make it fair is going to be a nightmare). All models are [[Finecast]][[Skub|, make that of what you will.]]


*Engineers: Flying ball sacks made out of nanomachines (son!), who are nonviolent technophiles who go around randomly fixing anybody's shit and churning out kit. Made by the forerunners who were lazy fucks, sometimes used as unwilling suicide bombers.
Both Fleet Battles and Ground Command are made by [[Spartan Games]]. Overall, Spartan Games are much more reasonably priced than the models made from [[Games Workshop]]. Seriously for the Covenant set you are getting 6 Highly-detailed Plastic Ship Models, 1 Formation Base Sprue (4 Bases in all), 1 Ship Overlay Sheet (6 Ship Overlays), 2 Token Sheets, 1 Statistics Sheet and 1 Assembly Guide for (US)$35.94 whereas the UNSC gets 2 Epoch Heavy Carriers, 6 Paris Class Frigates, 2 heavy sprue, 1 flight stand base, 1 overlay sheet and 1 assembly guide for $32.5, that is like cheaper than GeeDub's [[Rage|$66.55 pricing for only 5 Terminator models.]] [[Tl;dr]] [[What|you can literally buy two entire Covenant or UNSC fleets for the price of a single Termie Squad.]] Whether these tabletop games may boost Spartan Games to become GeeDubs rival is unknown. But what is known is the fact that Halo is owned by Microsoft which is a company that dwarfs GeeDubs in both money and influence. [[Games Workshop#GW The Bully|So in a rare hypothesis that GeeDubs think their high and mighty and goes on their copyright abuse that forced other smaller model companies to close down and have set their cross hairs on Spartan Games and more specifically the Halo license]]...as the old saying goes...[[Rape|there is always a bigger fish.]] Seriously, it could be seen from Spartan Games perspective as a blessing of sorts as unlike poor [[ChapterHouse Studios]] who ''was'' sued by GW, the backing of Microsoft puts some immunity for Spartan Games. That and Microsoft in all honesty, has the power and influence to [[Lulz|bully the bully]] if Games Workshop decides to get uppity when Spartan Games release the models for the Covenant Prophets which look similar to the Tau Ethereal; that or Microsoft can just tell them to [[Anal Circumference|fuck off and bite the pillow.]]


*Brutes: Slightly intelligent [[Furry|Yeti/Cave Troll/Gorilla-like creatures]]... IIIIIINNN SPAAAAACE! Reputedly, they are the only race in the Covenant that had developed super advanced technology through constant warfare - namely, nukes - then became a space-faring race, then nuked their own civilization back to the stone age, only to claw their way back up to space-faring again...[[FAIL|and learned nothing from the experience]]. They later replace the Elites as the go-to force of the Covenant, and bodyguards of the Prophets, forcing the Elites into exile. This makes sense somehow. They bolt blades onto all of their weapons to make it easier to get choppy, have pistols that fire eight-inch steel spikes and hammers that manipulate gravity for no reason other than dickishness, [[Derp|somehow]] hadn't developed shotguns until they encountered humanity and stole the idea from them, and have a tendency to start ripping people in half once they get bored of shooting. TL;DR they are the copypasta of the Mangalores from The Fifth Element.
Unfortunately, as of August 2017, Spartan Games have officially announced its closure and shutdown. Because of this, the state of Fleet Battles and Ground Command is in limbo and that any further purchases of their models is only available either from eBay or second hand manufacturers. However, 343i did say they will look towards the care of this, so all hope is not lost!


*[[Troll|The Prophets]]: They form the leadership cadre of the Covenant, claiming that they alone know the [[Lulz|true purpose the Forerunners had for them]], leading the Covenant in a spiritual-militaristic philosophy called "The Great Journey." It was the Prophets whom discovered that Humanity was the genetic descendants of the Forerunners, and declared humans as a threat to The Great Journey.
===Fleet Battles===
[[File:Assault-carrier-1920x1080-55e25a886cb649a0a7f165d855056bb2.jpg|400px|left|thumb|A CAS Assault Carrier plays hide and seek with a vastly out-gunned UNSC battlegroup.]]


[[Adeptus Mechanicus|The Covenant actually think that tinkering with the advanced technology they dug up from the olden days is]] [[Heresy|HERESY]], meaning most of their stuff kinda sucks and they don't know much more about how it works than humans do.
Main Article: [[Halo_Fleet_Battles|Halo Fleet Battles]]


Battles with the Covenant by the humans have often resulted in catastrophic losses on the human side. On the ground, UNSC Marines, armored divisions, and Spartans can hold their own against their foe, but it is a different story in space. Naval engagements almost always results in the obliteration of all human ships. The weapons of the Covenant ships are able to melt right through the meter-thick battle-plating of human warships. The only chance the human Navy has are nukes and massive slow-firing coilguns called MACs (Magnetic Accelerator Cannons) that fling 600-ton rounds, able to break Covenant ships in half.  
The Fleet Battles set comes with some kickass artwork depicting both factions leaders (Shame they didn't have Halo's answer to [[Creed]] that is [[Awesome|Preston "''I turned a Gas Giant into a fucking star just so I can stroke my massive ego''" Cole]]) sitting on their respective armchairs. Although how they are going to balance the UNSC/Covenant (Since Covenant ships can no-sell their UNSC equivalents) is up to [[Skub|debate.]] UNSC ships are balanced by being the long-range, combined fire monsters they are in fluff (if you can get enough of them together); but they crumple once their Titanium armor has been burned off. Also the UNSC gets the advantage of SMAC Platforms which makes them great at holding the line and acting as giant, immobile, floating [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisks]]. This means that the UNSC specializes in [[Dakka|lots and lots of missile spam]] [[Tyranids|and swarm tactics]] to compensate general shitty defensive capabilities and shorter range whereas the Covenant act as giant line breakers with their fuck huge ships and [[MOAR DAKKA|massive firepower.]]


In addition for the new fluff in halo 4, the covenant is no longer control by those [[Witch Hunters|lazy old man with OP machine chairs]]. Many of those aliens who still believe in the prophet formed a [[heresy|renegade]] faction known as "shadow covenant", and they want to discover more forerunner artifacts and weaponry in order to out pwn those incompetent, captain America rejects.
Fight the Fall of Reach in the starter set, or start adding extra ships in to fight battles from the Human-Covenant War.  Since the closure of Spartan Games, no one wanted to pick up the license... probably because it was Microsoft-priced.  Instead, the community is keeping it alive with fan-expansions and accessories. Because of the extraordinarily low chances that a miniatures company picks the license up again, 343 Studios has done the surprisingly gracious move of helping out the fans by giving a blessing to the whole process.  It doesn't make things easier or provide any resources, but at least keeps Microsoft from swooping in as long as the community protects the IP.


They are still more awesome then the Ultrasmurfs though, at least in some cases [[Get shit done|they get shit done.]]
Maybe with the updated rules for Dystopian Wars from their new owners, we'll get to see a fan-update to the ruleset and balance.


==The Flood==
===Ground Command===
[[File:Covenant_Attack_Blog_1.jpg|400px|left|thumb|A typical skirmish in Ground Command.]]
For the battles centered around the ground, Ground Command seems to be more feasibly plausible in fluff terms. What we know is that both factions are going to be incredibly dropship focused, meaning that the implementation and usage of dropships like the Pelican and Phantom are going to be crucial for tactical victory. Models for both factions are small enough to be converted into other tabletop games, although the UNSC personnel (who are meant to be regular humans) are a tad bit taller than a Space Marine.


The other antagonists are "The Flood". A race of silly bouncing potatoes that exist only to infest other lifeforms and OMNOMNOMNOM them. They are more or less a viral form of the ''Star Trek'' Borg, and make you sprout gross stuff and serve their hive mind if they touch you. They were the ancient enemy of the Forerunners and why the Forerunners built the Halo devices. Battles with The Flood destroyed the Forerunner civilization, as The Flood could infest their own people and technology to use against them.
In terms of detailed gameplay, movement phase is similar to Fleet Battles. However Ground Command also has two key gaming spaces: Pre-Game and In-Game. The former refers to the Strategic/RTS part of the game and latter to the Action/FPS part of the game. Essentially, Pre-Game allows players to flex their RTS muscles, building their Forces strategically to complete their chosen missions. In general play, all scenarios are encouraged to be rolled PRIOR to Forces being chosen, so players can go away and plot their enemy’s eventual demise. This gives the game a planned-outcome-feel since players have had time to reflect on the mission to hand and have brought the right tools for the job.  


Previous to the Flood - Forerunner war, an advanced AI named [[Horus|Mendicant]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29 Bias] was interrogating a creatively named being, The Captive. This captive later turned out to be a [[Nurgle|Gravemind]] and convinced Mendicant Bias to join [[Chaos|The Flood]]. Originally designed to operate Forerunner defenses, and in emergencies their fleet, [[Horus Heresy|Mendicant Bias]] assaulted the [[Terra|Forerunner homeworld]] using said fleet. In response to this the Forerunners created a second AI, Offensive Bias, to lead the remnants of their fleets against [[Chaos|The Flood]], seeing as an AI fleet-master worked so well the first time.
Choosing a Force is a simple process that uses the Build Rating (BR) and Maximum Force Value (MFV) methods that was introduced in Halo: Fleet Battles. Like H:FB, Ground Command also use the ideas of Standard and Specialist Battle Groups. The former will be used multiple times by players, whereas the latter will be limited in their use, commonly limited to only one per force. Battle Groups have Units that are call Requisites which in turn gain access to Optional Units. Requisites MUST be taken for a Battle Group to be considered game legal. These vary from Battle Group to Battle Group. For example, an ODST Battle Group MUST take ODST Units as Requisites, whereas a UNSC Army Mechanized Battle Group MUST take Riflemen Units. Requisites are, however, deliberately kept to the bare minimum needed to represent the nature of their Battle Group to uphold flexibility allowing players to find new and innovative combinations to field.  


Finally, with all their massive fleets defeated and all their soldiers massacred, the Forerunners committed mass suicide on a galactic scale to prevent more of their people and other fledgling civilizations from falling prey to The Flood, depriving The Flood of its essential hosts and food sources. The Flood finally died off due to starvation and were defeated...sorta. Small pockets of them where kept in stasis by the Forerunners in installations across the galaxy, which is fucking stupid because they are just going to goddamn escape.  
Once Requisites have been taken, players have a number of Optional Build Rating points to spend in each of the following categories: Infantry Units, Armored Units and Air Units. The points available will vary depending on the Battle Group chosen, giving certain Battle Groups greater access to some types of Unit, or may even skip using a Unit type altogether. For example, a Covenant Spectral Host Battle Group (Elite Ghost Units optional Air Support) allows a Covenant player to not have any Infantry and instead field lots of fast attack Ghosts with Elite drivers. This is a Specialist Battle Group and is limited to one per force. It is static in its requisites but can have access to a Flyer if a player wants to spend the BR and Points to add it their Force.


This shows the Forerunners were completely incompetent and if The Flood hadn't come along they'd probably have been eaten by a swarm of space rats or fallen down some space stairs eventually anyway.
A UNSC Standard Armored Battle Group only has Armored Units as Requisites. A player can still add some Infantry if they want, or even add Flyer Units, or they could just spend all of their points on Armour and as this is a Standard Battle Group a player can take several in their Force if they so choose. All of this leads to an incredibly flexible force building mechanic that gives the game great longevity. There will be literally thousands of combinations available, giving players the chance to execute their plans in a prepared way. The Build Rating of a model (Element as it is called in the game) and a Unit (a collection of Elements) is what translates to Victory Points. It is a simple method and allows games to be won by destroying Units of Infantry, destroying Armored models, shooting down Flyers, capturing Objectives, killing Characters and etc.  


== Prometheans ==
In terms of building a terrain and setting, Ground Command's terrain  is placed using mutual consent to encourage the construction of fair and reasonable battlefields. The rules of Terrain are binary to make it simple to use and fast to play with – for example, you can or you can’t move through it; you can or you can’t shoot through it, or a combination of both. This makes Terrain nice and simple to play with, but still gives players a strategic view of the battlefield and allows for a planned route of advancement. Terrain ranges from simple Supply Drops to large structures like the Covenant Stealth Pylon.


In Halo 4, some [[Necron|machine living being]] called Promethean's was introduced as the new enemy for the new game. They have awesome weapons and blade that are capable of turning living beings into digital dusts. They are also capable of warping by blend themselves within time and space, making them similar to [[Aspect Warrior|Warp spiders]] in many ways(even appearances). These creatures were once ancient humans, but were transformed by the dick known as [[Apollo Diomedes|the Didact]] in order to combat the flood. However, the councils found out and kick banned him into orbit. The rest of the surviving Prometheans then serves [[Apollo Diomedes|the Didact]] in halo 4 to turn those poor bastard living in Pheonix into digital dust with their awesome death star. Sadly, Master Chief single-handed killed off every Promethean [[Heresy|by shooting them with any xeno weaponry he can find on the ground]], and defeated [[Apollo Diomedes|the Didact]] in a very lame boss sequence with Cortana's help ([[RAGE|wtf? Cortana can split herself into three and grab a living being?]]) and push [[Apollo Diomedes|the Didact]] down to the energy pit. And the game ends just like that. Now let's wait for halo 5.
Similar to Fleet Battles, Ground Command has commanders for the players to choose from and is played similarly to its space counterpart. So in summary:


Editor's note: Apollo and the Didact shares the same VA, Keith Szarabajka.
*Forces are made up of Battle Groups, which can be of varying types: UNSC Mechanized Battle Groups, Hunting Host Battle Groups, Armored Battle Groups, and so on.
*Inside each Battle Group are Requisite Units that must be taken, then Build Rating limits are set to allow players to add in Optional Units later.
*Forces can and should be made up of multiple Battle Groups.
*In narrative play, all Forces should be chosen after the Scenario is determined, allowing players to tailor their lists to fight out the mission.
*Terrain is placed by mutual consent and is designed for simple use and quick gameplay. There is a table generator included if mutual consent proves difficult.
*In Halo: Ground Command players have access to Generic Force Commanders that cost considerably less than narrative named Commanders. These Generic Force Commanders have Standard Orders and a Factional Order. They are the only Commander available in competitive play.


==The Halos==
These is just the Pre-Game. Now it is the In-Game phase. As with Halo: Fleet Battles, the '''Halo Dice''' is used in conjunction with the Firepower Rating Table to control modifiers and drive the statistics in the game. Both games start with players using a default of Firepower Rating 4 with the Rating modifying up and down accordingly. This means that when rolling Halo Dice, a result of 2 (or Spartan Exploding 6 for example) counts as two hits, a result of 1 result counts as one hit, a Miss result can be re-rolled if you have rolled any 2s, and the Skull result is a definite miss. Some weapons will provide a positive bonus to the Firepower Rating whereas Terrain conditions and Scenario effects generally cause the Firepower Rating to suffer a negative penalty. The faces of the Dice in Ground Command are Fail, Miss, Success and Exploding. Than there are the '''Tokens'''. In Ground Command there are three available tokens, these are: Activated (placed when a Unit Activates or attempts a Reaction), Damage (for when an attack equals or exceeds a value on a Damage Track) and Cooldown (which is used to represent a situation where a weapon or even an entire Unit cannot fire). There is also the '''Statistic Profiles''' which are used as a simple visual presentation mechanic to show players the various statistics used by Units on their statistic cards. These cards will be large enough to fit in your hand and will have all pertinent rules (as well as paraphrased notations about Loadouts) on them, making Unit reference in Halo: Ground Command quick and very simple. Also like Fleet Battles, Ground Command issues '''Command Dice''' for commanders on the battlefield to drive the Command & Control side of the game. The Command/Attack/Defense symbols allow players to execute orders from their Force Commander’s Data Sheet that can often be the difference between success and failure in battle.


The actual Halos are artificial "ringworlds" stolen from a book by Larry Niven, which are covered in illogical geography, annoying copy-paste buildings because the level designers were feeling lazy, and together form a superweapon that kills all complex life in the galaxy. This was created by the Forerunners to defeat The Flood, the ancient super-race apparently not really understanding that if you destroy all sentient life to defeat a race that will destroy all sentient life it ''still counts as losing''.
Then there is the '''Reaction Fire''' which is how Ground Command tries to translate the FPS element into tabletop. In order for it to work, Ground Command have created a Reaction Statistic for every Element in order to allow the game to represent a persistent form of overwatch where every Unit on the table is assumed to be engaged in the battle at all times. The Reaction Statistic has two numbers shown as X / Y on a Unit’s Profile. The X number is used if a Unit has not yet been Activated, and the Y number is used if a Unit has already been Activated. If a player wants to react to an enemy Unit’s activation, the player makes a 2D6 dice roll, adds or subtracts any modifiers and hopes they match or exceed the relevant number, if they do, they get to fire in their opponent’s activation, either at the start of a Unit’s movement or at the end.  


==Battletech and Halo==
Attempting a Reaction is not without risk, however, as you are only permitted to attempt a single reaction to an enemy Unit’s activation and whether you succeed or fail the reacting Unit gains an Activation Marker as a result. This means a player has to choose wisely which Unit will be used to React to the enemy. Sometimes it is better to React with a Unit that has already gone, especially if the Unit has a good Y-React number. For example, UNSC Warthogs excel at this, creating mobile mini-fire-bases upon which the UNSC can base their advance/defense tactics. It may also be the case that a player is unwilling to React, as it will affect their ability to surge forwards (since making a Reaction attempt gives a Unit an Activation Marker that effectively halts any chance of performing a Movement Action). In a massed battle game, where you could literally have hundreds of miniatures on the tabletop and large numbers of Armor and Flyers, you suddenly have the intensity of an FPS, where no Unit is ever truly safe. This means that even if your opponent has already activated a Unit, the Unit isn’t actually out of the game.


Taking full advantage of the resurgence of mech combat in video games and the currently crippled state of [[Battletech]]'s videogame franchise, Halo 4 now includes a Shadowcat lookalike.  Fear the coming "Halo did that mech first" cries from thirteen-year-olds everywhere.
As you might expect, not everything has the same React X/Y. A Spartan who are the elites for the UNSC, might be capable of multiple feats of arms in a turn, firing in all directions as he/she attempts to defend a wounded soldier. A ponderous pair of Hunters are, however, far more measured and lumbering, taking time to line up shots and gear themselves for combat. This is represented by the Spartan having a React Score of 5/6, whereas a Hunter Unit is limited to 10/13.  


In terms of weapons. Ground Command issue '''Small Arms'''. They are not, however, always the same in the game. For example Small Arms, when in the hands of Grunts, have one set of Small Arms Stats, and a different set of stats when used by Elites. This makes the game flow smoothly and gives each faction diversity without the minutiae of looking directly into the hands of each and every model. That is not to say that all weapons are in this category. Certain Units can upgrade one or more of their bases to be specific Fire Teams, like Grunts wielding Fuel Rod Cannons, UNSC Troopers manning HMGs, etc.


==Warhammer 40k and Halo comparison==
This brings us on to '''Weapon Loadouts'''. The majority of weapons in the game, including Small Arms, normally have at least one Loadout. A Loadout is a custom rule that enhances a weapon. It could be as simple as Suppression (+1) in the case of UNSC Small Arms or Point Blank in the case of Covenant Small Arms, to more complex Loadouts such as Devastating, Pinpoint, Indirect Fire, and so on. Each of these Loadouts is summarized on a Unit’s Statistic Card and detailed in the core rulebook for ease of reference. The variation of the Weapon Loadouts thus leads us to '''The Weapon Spread'''. Here each and every weapon, if you are willing to shoot it long enough can technically destroy anything in-game when it comes to Halo. This means that the game has to come up with a new system for weapons that allows for this incredible flexibility. So the Weapon Spread System is designed to do exactly that. The Weapon Spread divides the Attack Dice available to a Weapon into three distinct categories, each citing the weapon’s effectiveness against a specific target.


[[Image:40kHalo.jpg|thumb|center|500px|A TL;DR section in a nutshell.]]
*Anti-Personnel (AP) refers to a weapon’s ability to damage Infantry targets.
*Anti-Tank (AT) refers to a weapons ability to damage Armoured targets.
*Anti-Air (AA) refers to a weapons ability to damage Flying targets.


==Spartan vs. Space Marine==
When firing, Ground Command uses a combination mechanic (the same as in Halo: Fleet Battles) so a Unit of 4 Bases of Grunts shooting at a Unit of UNSC Riflemen in the open (always a bad thing for the UNSC) would roll 2+2+2+2 = 8x Halo Dice using Firepower Rating 5 (the best they can get!). From this roll the Grunts would expect to get about 6 Hits, which should, on average, kill 2 Bases of UNSC Riflemen. In terms of '''Melee''',  each element rolls a number of Halo Dice equal to their Melee Statistic, but unlike Ranged Attacks, all players are looking to do is roll Skulls – all other results are ignored. Roll a Skull and you automatically do a point of Damage (or in the case of Melee vs Vehicles, 2x Skulls for a point of Damage). Heroic Saves can be attempted after that, but essentially that’s as complicated as Melee gets. If each side rolls the same number of Skulls in a round of Melee, the survivors keep fighting until someone wins – or until both sides are wiped out. Once one side is declared the winner, the loser is pushed back, leaving both sides free to React as normal. Lastly, like Fleet Battles, there is the '''End phase''' in which it is used to tally up scored Victory Points for the Game Turn. Victory Points (VPs) are generated by destroying enemy Units, where their Build Rating directly translates to VPs. VPs can also be scored according to the conditions stated in any particular scenario you might be playing. For example, the Assassination Mission from the core rulebook gives bonus VPs points for taking out anything with the Commanding Presence Loadout, whilst the Take and Hold Scenario gives additional VPs for holding Placed Objectives (usually Buildings of importance on the battlefield). The Scenarios all last a certain number of Game Turns, after which the person who has scored the most Victory Points wins.


===TL:DR part 1===
Last but not least, we cannot forget Flyers which are crucial for tactical victory in Ground Command. In Ground Command all flying vehicles are separated into two categories: Hover Flyers and Air Support Mission Flyers.


If we're going to try to make any kind of comparison, here, then the FIRST thing we have to look at is what the primary sources (i.e. word-of-God from the creators, in this case Bungie and GW) actually say about the capabilities of the two forces. Right? Right. Both Black Library and the various Halo novels are usually sub-contracted out, and both are pretty inconsistent; the Halo novels tend to be a bit better than BL, but they're certainly not perfect.
'''Hover Flyers''' are treated in the same way as any other battlefield Unit, moving shooting, reacting in the same way as any other model. They are targeted using a weapon’s Anti-Air (AA) Statistic and tend to be fast moving and pretty aggressive in their use. Examples of these include Banshees or Falcons, which may be seen operating in Units with more than one model, or be individuals, depending on their Build Rating and the Battle Group they are part of.


So we did that already. We went through the official sources; the codex, the official Halo sourcebooks, etc. We did that pages ago. Not everything can be compared directly, so really we could only get solid information on the physical improvements that went into the SPARTANs and Space Marines bodies, and a little bit about the different armors. And guess what they told us?
'''Air Support Mission Flyers''' tend to be far larger than their standard Hover counterparts, dominating the sky with their bulk and durability. These Flyers are simply too large to remain on the table turn to turn, and instead resolve their movement, the execution of their chosen mission and extraction in a simple strafing method. Examples of these flyers include the UNSC Pelican and Covenant Phantom.


They told us that SPARTANs have a lot of really, really cool stuff; bioenhancements that make them inhumanly strong, fast and perceptive, built-in AIs, automatic high-performance first aid systems, powerful high-tech equipment. They're damn good soldiers, easily capable of taking on a very large number of humans and winning.
When using an Air Support Mission Flyers, players activate the model in the same way as any other Unit, declaring a Mission type for the Flyer. This Mission will have an attached Victory Points cost, which is given to the enemy directly after the Mission is announced. This give-and-take aspect to Air Support Mission Flyers makes the taking of these large models very balanced – you get a huge reward, but your opponent gets a strategic bonus if you saturate the battlefield with too many. This means that protracted use of aerial assets will cause a drain on the player’s chances of winning an outright victory, but execution of these Missions will often be vital for continued success in the combat operation. So balancing if, when and how you bring in your Air Support Mission Flyers is a skill that will take time for players to develop. There are a variety of Missions available to Flyers of this type. Combat Drop Missions allow players to bring in reserves. Supply Drop Missions allow the placement of a Supply Drop Marker that increases the Reaction Statistics of all friendly ground models within range. Ground Attack Missions allow you to target ground Units with increased effect. Reinforcement Missions allow you to bring a damaged Unit of Infantry (and in some cases Armor) back up to full strength, and Air Patrols allow you to place your Flyer ‘on-station’, ready to intercept enemy flyers when they activate.


And they also told us that Space Marines have all that and much, much more. This is the problem that the "SPARTANs are superstrong!" and "SPARTANs never miss!" and "SPARTANs are ninjas!" arguments are failing to understand; there is NOTHING, literally nothing at all, that tells us that SPARTANs are any better in any of these fields than Space Marines are, and a whole hell of a lot that tells us they're WORSE in most of them. This is a strictly comparative point, not an objective one; you can argue that Space Marines are as weak as you want, but that doesn't change the fact that SPARTANs, according to their own source materials, are weaker.
==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Super Carrier.JPG|Yes that is an actual model of a Covenant CSO-class Super Carrier. [[Anal Circumference|No it will not be a good pain.]]
Image:Feleethalo_1.jpg|There will be more ship designs coming soon.
Image:DSC09153.jpg|Covenant minis for Ground Command.
Image:DSC09156.jpg|UNSC minis for Ground Command.
Image:Halo.jpg|That's right, Halo's dropships are as big as a [[Thunderhawk]] [[Reasonable Marines|while being more sensibly designed and having more firepower to boot.]]
Image:
</gallery>


I'm just gonna quote myself here; yes, these are two long posts. You still might want to read them, since basically everything that anyone has said in this entire thread is dealt with in them. We're making a comparison, people; the answer to "Pssh, Space Marines just have plot armor, they aren't that good" is "Read the sources; they're a hell of a lot better than SPARTANs".
Mythic: the fan made Halo tabletop RPG also exists... for whatever that is worth


There is one ability which SPARTANS receive from their biological implants and Space Marines don't, directly; improved reflex action speed, due to faster neurotransmission. That is, indeed, an important advantage; although it should be noted that even in this area Space Marines aren't clearly behind, as they receive years of intense hypno-therapy and chemical conditioning which is designed to give them this very ability, along with many others. But let's leave that aside and focus only on the physical implants for now.
==Spartan stats==
For those who wanted to put a Spartan in tabletop for some reason, here are the rules.
''Note: The Rules assigned here are based off of 6th and 7th Edition Warhammer 40k, this has not been updated for 9th Edition, nor for lore accuracy with the universe itself.''


Space Marine biological improvements give them a host of OTHER advantages, which more than compensate. Here's a list, leaving out those that SPARTANS also possess, such as super-dense muscle, hardened bones, and enhanced eyesight; we'll assume that SPARTAN biotech and Space Marine biotech are equally efficient for the purpose of this discussion, so those enhancements that they both have we won't count on either side. Furthermore, we won't bother to mention those enhancements which Space Marines possess, but are not directly relevant to a combat scenario. The particular implant which provides each enhancement is also listed.
'''WS''' 4 / '''BS''' 4 / '''S''' 4 / '''T''' 3 / '''W''' 1 / '''I''' 4 / '''A''' 1 / '''Ld''' 8 / '''Sv''' 3+/6++


*Growth of (ceramically-reinforced) bone tissue into dense, interlocking plates, which provide a bulletproof layer of secondary armor over vital organs. Yes, it is explicitly called "bulletproof". (Ossmodula)
;Composition
*Increased blood supply and redundant circulatory organs, both increasing a Space Marine's strength and speed by supplying far more oxygen and nutrients to his muscles than a human (or SPARTAN) can, and allowing him to survive normally catastrophic damage to his original heart. (Secondary heart)
3 Spartans
*Increased oxygen-carrying efficiency of blood, allowing a Space Marine to draw more energy from a given amount of oxygen than normal. (Haemastamen)
<br>1 Spartan - Squad Leader (Ld 9)
*Increased oxygen capacity due to additional lung volume, allowing Space Marines to function in environments too oxygen-poor for humans to survive. (Multi-lung)
*The ability to absorb oxygen from toxic environments without injury. This includes the ability to breathe and function normally underwater.(Multi-lung)
*The ability to form scar tissue within seconds after suffering an injury, preventing blood loss and infection from wounds. (Larraman's Organ)
*The ability to perform continuous combat operations without sleep for a much longer time than normal before performance begins to erode, and to maintain conscious situational awareness even while sleeping. (Catalepsean Node)
*Immunity to toxins whether aerosol, contact/injected or ingested, as well as the ability to go briefly unconscious and carry out a rapid emergency detoxification of the body if something extremely dangerous has managed to bypass all the layers of defense. (Preomnor, Multi-lung, Oolitic Kidney)
*Chemical regulation of all bodily functions, maintaining the peak efficiency of both implanted and natural organs. (Oolitic Kidney)
*Improved hearing, including the ability to selectively filter out or enhance particular sounds, and immunity to nausea or disorientation from inner-ear disturbance. This includes immunity to the disorienting effects of explosions and other rapid changes in pressure. (Lyman's Ear)
*Ability to track by smell and taste like a bloodhound. (Neuroglottis)
*Protection against extreme temperatures and low-pressure environments, including limited protection even from vacuum. (Mucranoid, Melanochrome to some extent)
*Direct neural connection to the machine-spirit of their personal suit of power armor, essentially allowing them to react and move much more quickly and flexibly than is possible without such a connection. This is why Astartes power armor is personal; only one Space Marine can connect to a given suit in this manner, and it must be individually adapted to that particular Space Marine. (Black Carapace)


;Unit Type
Infantry


So in short; SPARTAN-IIs are, probably, faster to react than Space Marines are. That isn't certain because of the aforementioned hypnotherapy and mental conditioning, but let's assume they do. Assume that SPARTAN-II nervous signals just move faster through their bodies than those of Space Marines do; this gives them an edge in reaction times. How big an edge, we don't know, but let's assume it's pretty damn big; they're STILL going to get wrecked. That is the only advantage they possess, and the Space Marines have everything else they have plus a hell of a lot more.
;Wargear
* MJOLNIR Armor
* MA5D Assault Rifle
* Combat Knife
* Frag Grenades (Offensive)


A SPARTAN has reinforced bones; a Space Marine has reinforced bones AND has grown them into a suit of bullet-proof plate armor around his internal organs, which makes him much more resistant to injury.
;Special Rules
* '''''At All Costs''''' - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Spartans gain the ''Stubborn'' rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.
* '''''Shoot First, Ask Later''''' - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Spartans gain the ''Hit & Run'' rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.


A SPARTAN has enhanced musculature; a Space Marine has enhanced musculature AND more efficient oxygen transfer AND more oxygen circulating overall, so unless you want to argue that the SPARTAN augmentation is by itself more effective than all of those put together (which you can't, since Space Marine and SPARTAN muscle enhancement work identically) a Space Marine is much stronger than a SPARTAN, and faster as well.
;Options:
* May Include up to 4 additional Spartan- for ''13 points per Model''
* Any model in the squad may take an Onboard AI for ''3 points per Model''
* For every 4 models in a squad, one model may replace their MA5C Rifle with one of the following:
** M45 Tactical Shotgun (Shotgun)...............................''6 points per Model''
** SRS99-S5 AM (Sniper Rifle)..................''10 points per Model''
** M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)........''15 points per Model'' 
** M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points per model
* Each Spartan squad must choose to be one of the following:
** Spartan Is - Squad gain the ''Eternal Warrior'' and ''Feel No Pain'' USRs for 10pts per model. Role a d6 for each model, on results of 5+ the model also gains the ''Crazed'' special rule.
** Spartan IIs - Squad gain +1 Ballistic Skill and the ''Split Fire'' USR for 4 points per model. The squad may choose to become an '''Elite''' Choice.
** Spartan IIIs - Squad gain the ''Stealth'' and ''Infiltrate'' USRs for 3 points per model.
** Spartan IVs - Squad gain the ''Hatred'' and ''Fleet'' USRs for 3 points per model.  


A SPARTAN has enhanced eyesight; a Space Marine has enhanced eyesight AND improved hearing (over which can exercise conscious control to the point of selectively focusing on certain sounds) AND can find his enemies by smell alone, which means that he's nearly always going to be the ambusher rather than the ambushee.


In addition to all this a Space Marine can function normally in environments where a SPARTAN would quickly die; maneuver and remain indefinitely in places that a SPARTAN cannot either see into or fight in (such as deep underwater); fight without sleep, unimpaired, for an extended period (permitting him to keep the SPARTAN under continuous pressure until he started to make mistakes due to fatigue); and survive injuries that would kill a SPARTAN immediately, including flat-out ignoring any wound less serious than a smashed bone or vital organ trauma. A SPARTAN is less physically capable than a Space Marine in every aspect of warfare, and on top of that the average Space Marine will have literally decades of experience over any SPARTAN-II.


None of this is 'fanwank'. I haven't made any of this up, it comes straight from the Codex and official materials. I don't play Space Marines, and I don't particularly like it that they're so over the top and Mary Sue-ish, but I do mind your claim that noting the fact that Space Marines are ludicrously powerful even in comparison to other sci-fi supersoldiers somehow removes my objectivity.
;SPARTAN ARMORY


===TL:DR part 2===
* '''MJOLNIR Armor''' - Created parallel to the Spartan-II Program, the MJOLNIR Armor is a sealed system, capable of extravehicular activity or operations in toxic atmosphere. Weighing over half a metric ton, the armor's shell is constructed in overlapping layers of Titanium-A plating and highly durable ballistic alloys of remarkable strength. It has even been augmented with a refractive coating capable of dispersing a limited amount of energy weapon strikes. The Spartan gains a ''3+ Armor Save''.
** MJOLNIR armor is equipped with a full-body recharging energy shield that was reverse-engineered from captured alien technology. The shield itself is utterly transparent and does not hinder sight in any way but briefly flashes a greenish-gold color when hit. The Spartans gain a ''6+ Invulnerable Save''.


'''Improved lactate recovery versus better oxygenation'''; SPARTANs lose out, and the reason is twofold; first, that it's not clear that lactate even hinders muscle contraction; and second, that even if it is a hindrance, preventing muscle fibers from going anaerobic (through increased oxygenation), or even slowing down the process, is a much more efficient way of increasing effective strength and endurance.  
* '''Onboard AI''' - All MJOLNIR Mk V models or better feature a complex crystalline matrix within their neural interface, which Cortana likened in structure to the computer systems of the ''Pillar of Autumn''.  An AI construct increases tactical awareness, provides an indispensable guide, serving almost as a co-pilot and navigator, and multiplies the Spartan's already phenomenal reflexes.  A Spartan equipped with an Onboard AI increases their Initiative value by 1.


This is a case where Bungie actually tripped themselves up, because they put a little too much real science in their pseudoscience; since the Halo games have come out there's been further research on muscle fatigue, and it's been discovered that lactate both hinders muscular activity (by lowering the sensitivity of certain contractile tissues to a particular calcium ion) and also aids muscular activity by increasing the amount of calcium which is present, as well as neutralizing the limiting effects of potassium buildup! That being so, even if we assume for the sake of argument that the net result is a hindrance, the benefit is still at least partially counteracting itself, and it certainly won't be very efficient.
* '''MA5D Assault Rifle''' - The MA5C has an attached electronics suite that provides information on rounds remaining in the magazine, compass heading, and capable of wireless up-link with MJOLNIR systems for improved accuracy. Made of Titanium Alloy and Polymers, the rifle performs well in a variety of environments. Having a rate of fire of 650 rounds a minute, and chambering the old-school M118 7.62x51mm NATO Armor Piercing, Full Metal Jacket Rounds with a 36-round detachable box magazine. Though lacking strength and stopping power, these rounds are designed to pierce most conventional ballistic body armor.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 18" / '''Strength''' 3 / '''AP''' 6 / '''Type''' Assault 3


Space Marines use a much more straightforward and efficient method; they simply pour more oxygen into the muscular tissue to allow it to respire freely even while working hard. For one thing, that by itself prevents the production of practically all of the byproducts of muscular exertion, since they can only be produced in an anaerobic environment; and for another, aerobic respiration is about nineteen times more efficient than anaerobic. That means that the SPARTAN MEI proteins cut in too late; they slow down lactate buildup, yes, but by the time lactate buildup is occurring at any speed your muscle fibers have already run out of oxygen, and as a consequence are now requiring nineteen times as much energy input to do the same amount of work. The Space Marine implants, by contrast, are going to work much more efficiently simply because they're preventing an anaerobic environment from ever occurring in the muscle tissue; that means that a Space Marine is going to be using a lot less energy to exert the same amount of force as a SPARTAN, which translates to greater strength, greater speed, and greater endurance.
* '''M45 Tactical Shotgun''' - is a pump-action, magazine-fed, dual tubular non-detachable type weapon. It uses the Soellkraft 8-Gauge Magnum Shotgun Shell, a large round capable of phenomenal stopping power and made possible to fire with little recoil due to the gun's magnetorheological recoil dampening system, allowing it to be fired by anyone.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 12" / '''Strength''' 4 / '''AP''' - / '''Type''' Assault 2 Rending


In short, the SPARTAN enhancement is cutting in after deterioration has started and then slowing down the rate at which it multiplies; the Space Marine enhancement begins working sooner and prevents deterioration from ever occurring, or at least begins counteracting it at an earlier point in the process. This means that, even if a SPARTAN and a Space Marine have exactly the same peak strength and speed, a Space Marine is going to remain at peak functionality for far longer, and when he does begin to suffer from fatigue the effects are going to appear more slowly, than the SPARTAN will.  
* '''Sniper Rifle SRS99-S5 AM''' - aka the "SR System 99-S5 Anti-Matériel", an upgrade from the S2s, it is a semi-automatic UNSC sniper rifle that fires 14.5 x 114mm APFSDS (Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot, with a tungsten or depleted uranium core) from a 4-round magazine. It is fitted with a variable-magnification Oracle scope that allows for 5x and 10x magnification. When looking through it, the scope shows a target's distance and elevation. Designed originally as an anti-materiel rifle, it has proven effective against the highly durable armor of the Covenant and hardlight construction of the Prometheans.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 48" / '''Strength''' X/ '''AP''' 4  (''When firing at vehicles, the rifle adds D6 to its Armor penetration value'') / '''Type''' Heavy 1, Sniper, Anti Material.
Anti Material: Shots fired from this weapon rend on a 4+.


'''Functioning in a low-oxygen environment'''; Fair enough, in most cases it wouldn't matter. Do note, however, that in combination with the ability to breathe in a poisonous atmosphere this means that in some circumstances SPARTANs would be sharply time-limited (by the amount of breathable air their armor contains) while Space Marines would not; for instance, if SPARTANS and Space Marines were fighting on a polluted industrial world or in the aftermath of a virus-bombing the Space Marines could safely breathe the air, and the SPARTANs couldn't. This is a decided increase in tactical flexibility for a space-going military force, and it is a great benefit in general; but I agree, assuming we're talking about the two forces meeting on an Earth-like world, it's not very important.
* '''M41 Rocket Launcher''' - aka the "M41 SSR" fires the M19 102mm HEAP (High Explosive Armor Piercing) shaped charge rockets. The launcher sports a 2x scope and can fire rockets over long distances with devastating accuracy, and its two launch tubes allow the wielder to fire two rockets before needing to reload. The rocket launcher spreads a huge amount of damage over a large area. It is capable of taking out entire groups of infantry at any range and is effective against most vehicles.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 48" / '''Strength''' 7 / '''AP''' 3 / '''Type''' Heavy 2, Blast


'''Immunity to toxins''': In a face-to-face combat situation, effectively all this does is render chemical and biological weapons ineffective. Mustard gas won't bother Space Marines much, for instance, even if you can manage to get it inside their armor. But since the SPARTANs have never demonstrated the use of that kind of weapon, I agree, that can be left out of this comparison.
* '''M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle''' - The Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (abbreviated AV M6 G/GNR) also known as the ''Spartan Laser'', is the UNSC's first man-portable, shoulder-fired direct energy weapon. Firing a chemical laser after a short charge period, a well placed shot can destroy even heavy vehicles with ease. Infantry-level targets are simply obliterated.
**  It has the following stats: '''Range''' 36" / '''Strength''' 9 / '''AP''' 2 / '''Type''' Heavy 1, Ignores Cover


'''Larraman's Organ versus biofoam injectors''': Here I'm going to disagree again, though only conditionally.  
-Targeting beam: The Spartan Laser projects an obvious laser target, any enemy units that can, may choose to fire Overwatch at the firers unit as if it was the assault phase.


Biofoam injectors are specifically called out as a temporary, emergency measure; they hold things in place temporarily and stop bleeding. In a brief engagement, I agree; they're just as good as Larraman cells are as a short-term solution, so if a Space Marine and a SPARTAN are just going to fight for an hour and then part ways, this is a wash.  
Spartans may take the '''M831 Troop Transport''' (M831 TT) or '''M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle''' (M12 LRV) as their dedicated transport.


However, I think if Space Marines and SPARTANs were to be heavily engaged with each other for any length of time, the comparison would rapidly get worse for the SPARTANs. The difference is that Larraman's Organ does NOT provide temporary first aid, it allows for a rapid and permanent healing process to begin at once. Biofoam is a first-aid measure that you use to stabilize somebody before medevac can get there. It's specifically called out as such, in fact. Biofoam breaks down and becomes useless after a few hours; if you haven't gotten surgical treatment by that time you're just as badly off as you were originally, unless you apply ANOTHER dose of biofoam.
==Dedicated Transports==
* M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle - 40 points
* M831 Troop Transport - 30 points


Larraman's Organ, by contrast, simply supercharges the body's natural healing process. It literally creates instant scar tissue; as long as a bone isn't broken or a vital organ isn't badly traumatized, the wound is basically healed by the Larraman cells. The seal created by Larraman cells is biologically identical to the Space Marine's own flesh; if a Space Marine suffers a flesh wound, even a deep and damaging one, Larraman's Organ scars it over and within seconds, it's as if the injury is weeks old. No, it isn't an immediate, full repair, but it goes much further than simply filling the gash with anti-bacterial foam. A SPARTAN who suffers a severe flesh wound has to get surgical aid within a few hours, or the foam will degrade and he'll be just as badly wounded as ever; a Space Marine who suffers a severe flesh wound will recover rapidly and without help, not even needing a re-application of Larraman cells. This is what I meant when I said Space Marines are capable of "flat-out ignoring any wound less serious than a smashed bone or vital organ trauma".
'''Armour (Front)''' 10 / '''Armour (Side)''' 10 / '''Armour (Rear)''' 10 / '''HP''' 2


Over a campaign of days, weeks or months, the Space Marines would gain a definite advantage in this area. Either a SPARTAN or a Space Marine will need medical treatment for a very serious wound, but the Space Marines will recover much more easily from any wound that isn't life-threatening. They are going to recover rapidly and without outside aid; a SPARTAN who suffers a flesh wound, by contrast, is going to need specialized help (which will aggravate the wound again; surgery is always traumatic to at least some extent) and will have a longer recovery time afterwards before he's back to full effectiveness. So over any extended time period Larraman's Organ is far more effective as field medicine than biofoam is, and the advantage will continue to build upon itself as long as the fighting lasts.
;Unit Type
Vehicle (Fast, Open-Topped, Transport)


And as a final point, Space Marine armor also includes first-aid provisions, which I would assume are designed to function in conjunction with Larraman's Organ, probably by providing reinforcement to wounds too big or too serious (either chunks of missing flesh or shattered bones) for the Organ to repair alone, and likely also injecting copious amounts of stimulants. If nothing else, biological regeneration + technological medical help > technological medical help alone.
;Wargear
* M46 Light Anti-Aircraft Gun (M12 LRV)
* None (M831 TT)


'''Speed, agility and reaction time''': I don't think either agility or speed is necessarily in favor of the SPARTANs.
;Transport Capacity
* Four (M12 LRV)
* Eight (M831 TT)


Speed-wise, as I pointed out above, the differences between Space Marine and SPARTAN muscle enhancements indicate that Space Marines have both greater muscular power AND longer endurance; a SPARTAN might beat a Space Marine in a sprint (though there isn't any evidence of that), but a long pursuit would certainly be won by the Space Marine, as he would be able to maintain high speed longer and with shorter rest periods. In combination with the effects of the Catalepsean Node, this means that Space Marines actually have significantly greater tactical mobility than SPARTANs.  
The ubiquitous M12 and its troop transport variant the M831, are the UNSC's primary multi-role ground vehicles. They are used anywhere from scouting and reconnaissance to fast vehicle transport, forming an integral part of the UNSC's armored vehicle fleet for fifty years. It is a highly mobile, all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering, all-weather vehicle, capable of traversing all but the most dangerous of terrain. The M831 features a rear bed with an expanded seating compartment, while the M12 features a rear mounted anti-aircraft gun (the M46 LAAG) that can also be used against infantry.


In regards to agility and reaction time, as I pointed out, it's explicitly noted that Space Marines receive years of hypno-therapy and medical treatment designed to not only radically reduce their reaction time but also allow them a high degree of conscious control over their metabolisms and nervous systems. How that compares in effectiveness to the biotech modification that SPARTANs receive to their neural system, we simply don't know, but to discount it entirely doesn't seem reasonable. Furthermore, the connection provided by the Black Carapace to power armor is just as powerful as the Spartan Neural Interface (as it's described in almost exactly the same way), and all Astartes power armor apparently contains its own machine spirit/AI, which due to the Black Carapace can essentially read the Space Marine's mind and react with no delay at all to his desires. All this means that power armor does not slow the Space Marine down in the slightest; rather the 'muscles' of the armor will make him both faster and stronger, just as MJOLNIR armor does for SPARTANs.
'''M46 LAAG''' - The M46 Light Anti-Aircraft Gun (LAAG) is a tripled-barreled, electric-powered, linkless, belt-fed weapon. The LAAG fires the 12.7x99mm (.50 cal) armor penetrating rounds and can fire at a rate of 1200 rounds per minute.
*  It has the following stats: '''Range''' 48" / '''Strength''' 5 / '''AP''' 5 / '''Type''' Heavy 4, Skyfire


MJOLNIR armor does seem to provide more flexibility and a wider range of motion; however, it necessarily accomplishes that by incorporating less actual armor, and so almost certainly provides less protection over certain areas. The chest and upper arms are the specific areas I'm thinking of, since for Space Marines they're protected by that very thick barrel-chest and MASSIVE PAULDRONS OF DOOM, which also serve double-duty by partially blocking line of fire to the Space Marines head from some angles.


'''Ossified ribcage''': You say that "but anything that has punched through its armour isn't going to be stopped by bone, no matter how hard", but I don't think that's true. The extra layer of bone will render some kinds of weapons entirely ineffective and force specific tactical decisions in order to penetrate it; and do please remember that this isn't bone as we know it. This is bone with the empty, latticework spaces filled with a ceramic armor compound, of the kind we use on main battle tanks.
- The M12 may choose to replace its M46 LAAG with a ''M68 Gauss Cannon'' for 35 points


Consider; the type of weapons that go through armor well are not actually the type of weapons that are very effective at killing people. If you want to cause a lot of damage to a person you use a fat, blunt, relatively slow round, which will shatter, tumble or simply expand inside the body and thus widen the channel it carves through flesh. That's why hollow-point rounds, which 'mushroom' after penetration, are sometimes called 'cop-killer' bullets; they're the most efficient way to cause the most damage possible to a human body.  
'''M68 Gauss Cannon''' - Officially known as the M68 Asynchronous Linear-Induction Motor, this heavy weapon fires 25mm hypersonic speed projectiles via asynchronous magnetic acceleration. The kinetic energy of which is enough to pierce even the heaviest of armor plating or completely obliterate unprotected matter.


The kind of bullet that punches through armor, by contrast, is a narrow, sharply-pointed round fired at the highest practical velocity. That's how you punch through a hard surface. However, that kind of bullet has a tendency to travel right through a person without actually doing much harm; it flies in a straight line, often without tumbling or being significantly deflected, and cuts a small, neat hole in one side and out the other. Low-caliber, high-velocity modern rifles often have this problem. They can get through modern body armor, but they don't have the stopping power to reliably disable the target.
*  It has the following stats: '''Range''' 60" / '''Strength''' 8 / '''AP''' 1 / '''Type''' Heavy 1


The extra layer of armor that a Space Marine's ribcage forms thus creates a very difficult problem. If you're shooting at the center of mass, you first have to punch through the thickest part of the armor; that's going to take a round with very good penetration. You then have to punch through the ribs as well, which means you need a VERY high-velocity, small, needle-pointed round. . . but that bullet probably won't do lethal damage. And a Space Marine, even more than a human, is not going to be stopped by anything short of very serious trauma. Furthermore, even if you DO manage to punch a shot through and destroy some important organ, the Space Marine is still functional, because all those implants don't merely increase his physical performance, they also provide redundant copies of every vital organ that's behind that bone shield.
==Independent Character==


What all this means, in combination with the flesh-wound neutralizing effects of Larraman's Organ, is that in order for the basic ballistic weapons of the SPARTANs to inflict any serious damage at all they basically have to hit the groin or the head. Yes, SPARTANs are great shots, but their effective target area has now been radically reduced in size and limited to some of the most erratically-moving parts of the body; not to mention, Space Marines are extremely good shots themselves. The Space Marine can be fairly confident that wherever he's placing his bolter shells, they will do damage, even though against MJOLNIR armor it may well require multiple hits; effectively, this makes a Space Marine much less likely to be severely injured or killed by a SPARTAN than the SPARTAN is to be injured or killed by him.  
HQ: '''Sergeant Major Avery Johnson''' - 130 points.




So, in conclusion: Halo is trying to use pseudo-science to sound at least barely plausible to modern listeners, while 40k just goes ahead and flat-out tells us that Space Marines are t3h best!!!!1!
'''WS''' 3 / '''BS''' 4 / '''S''' 3 / '''T''' 3 / '''W''' 3 / '''I''' 4 / '''A''' 3 / '''Ld''' 10 / '''Sv''' 4+


When you compare the two, a SPARTAN is a very tough, very fast, very skilled soldier with tremendous strength and extremely high-tech weaponry and armor, allowing him to accomplish things that no normal human could ever do and live through things that would kill any normal human.
;Unit Type
Infantry (Independent Character)


A Space Marine is all that, with a bag of chips. He possesses superior strength, speed, and endurance, is nearly unkillable and capable of recovering rapidly from practically anything that '''DOES''' have a chance at killing him, not to mention he's been brainwashed and tortured for years until he's a psychotic killing machine that cares nothing for fear or pain. He has conscious control over his normally-unconscious bodily functions; which means, among other things, that he can flood his own system with adrenaline at will. On top of everything else, he can also go for up to two weeks without sleeping at all, and if he wants to sleep he can do so while simultaneously standing guard. He's the classic super-soldier but turned up to eleven, and then he tore the knob off and ate it, because he can do '''THAT''' too.
;Wargear
 
* ODST Battle Armor
In conclusion of the conclusion: the setting with with a thirty seven thousand year tech advantage wins. [[derp|Who could have possibly fucking predicted this?]]
* M45 Tactical Shotgun
 
* Combat Knife
yet Spartans, unlike Astartes can have [[Female Space Marines]]
* Frag Grenades (Offensive)


==Spartan stats ==
;Warlord Trait
Inspiring Presence (''See'' 7th Edition Corerule Book)


The majority of arguments in favor of the Spartans neglect to let the opposition use an Independent Character; they consistently use [[Mary Sue|Master Chief]] as the base of comparison to your average Space Marine. Which is at least a 125-150pt character against a 16pt Marine. The below is an attempt by a [[writefag]] to make a set of stats for a basic Spartan soldier. As you can see, the dipshit horribly fumbled by giving them a statline statistically identical to a marines, and better weapons at a relatively low cost.
;Special Rules
* '''''Spartan I''''' - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson has the ''Eternal Warrior'' and ''Feel No Pain'' USRs.
* '''''At All Costs''''' - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Sergeant Major Johnson gains the ''Stubborn'' USR.
* '''''Shoot First, Ask Later''''' - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Sergeant Major Johnson gains the ''Hit & Run'' USR.
* '''''Move Like You Got A Purpose''''' - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson and all models in his unit have the ''Crusader'' USR.
* '''''H.E.-Spewing Divine Intervention''''' - Once per turn, Sergeant Major Avery Johnson can call down an strategic artillery strike from off the field. It is treated as a shooting attack with the following profile:
** '''Range''' Infinite / '''Strength''' 8 / '''AP''' 4 / '''Type''' Ordnance 1, Barrage, Blast


'''WS''' 3 / '''BS''' 4 / '''S''' 4 / '''T''' 3 / '''W''' 1 / '''I''' 4 / '''A''' 1 / '''Ld''' 8 / '''Sv''' 4+/6++
May replace his primary weapon (M45 Shotgun) with of one special weapons from the following list:
* MA5D (Assault Rifle)........................................''Free
* BR85HB (Battle Rifle)...............................''6 points
* SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................''10 points 
* M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................''15 points
* M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....''35 points


'''Composition'''


3 Spartan-IIs
-----------------
<br>1 Spartan-II Squad Leader
HQ: '''Master Chief Petty Officer John-117''' - 175 points.


'''Unit Type'''


Infantry
'''WS''' 5 / '''BS''' 6 / '''S''' 4 / '''T''' 3 / '''W''' 4 / '''I''' 5 / '''A''' 4 / '''Ld''' 10 / '''Sv''' 3+/6++


'''Wargear'''
;Unit Type
Infantry (Independent Character)


;Wargear
* MJOLNIR Armor
* MJOLNIR Armor
* MA5C Assault Rifle
* BR85HB Battle Rifle
* Combat Knife
* Combat Knife
* Frag Grenades (Offensive)
* Frag Grenades (Offensive)
* Cortana (Counts as On Board AI)


'''Special Rules'''
;Warlord Trait
* '''''At All Costs''''' - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Spartans gain the ''Stubborn'' rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.
Target Priority (''See'' 7th Edition Corerule Book)
* '''''Shoot First, Ask Later''''' - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Spartans gain the ''Hit & Run'' rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.
* '''''Interface Targeting''''' - Spartan wireless interface targeting systems merge flawlessly with UNSC weapons, giving a degree of precision and accuracy that is almost superhuman. The Spartan gain +1 to his Ballistic Skill (BS) when wielding weapons from the Spartan Armory, already incorporated above in their stat line.


'''Options:'''
;Special Rules
* May Include up to 4 additional Spartan-IIs for ''14 points per Model''
* '''''Spartan II''''' - The Master Chief has the ''Split Fire'' USR.
* Any model in the squad may take an Onboard AI for ''3 points per Model''
* '''''At All Costs''''' - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. The Master Chief gains the ''Stubborn'' USR.
* For every 4 models in a squad, one model may replace their MA5C Rifle with one of the following:
* '''''Shoot First, Ask Later''''' - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. The Master Chief gains the ''Hit & Run'' USR.
** M90 CAWS (Shotgun)...............................''6 points per Model''
* '''''Heroes Never Die''''' - The Master Chief gains the ''It Will Not Die'' and ''Eternal Warrior'' USRs, in addition he may fire heavy weapons at full ballistic skill even if the unit moves but unlike the Relentless universal special rule he may only ever fire one weapon per turn.
** SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle)..................''10 points per Model''  
* '''''He May Not Be The Strongest''''' - The Master Chief and all models in his unit gain the ''Fearless'' USR, and the Master Chief may re-roll failed saving throws of any kind.
** M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)........''15 points per Model''


May replace his primary weapon (BR85HB Battle Rifle) with of one special weapons from the following list:
* MA5D (Assault Rifle)........................................''Free
* M45 Tactical Shotgun(Shotgun)...............................''6 points
* SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................''10 points 
* M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................''15 points
* M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points 


'''SPARTAN ARMORY'''
- '''BR85HB''' - a.k.a. the BR85HB Service Rifle is a gas-operated, magazine-fed battle rifle. It is a select-fire weapon optimized for long-range firing of three-round bursts, though it is capable of semi-automatic and fully automatic fire. It chambers the large 9.5x40mm M634 Experimental High-Powered Semi-Armor-Piercing round, abbreviated as M634 X-HP-SAP.
----
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 24" / '''Strength''' 3 / '''AP''' 6 / '''Type''' Assault 2, Shred


* '''MJOLNIR Armor''' - Created parallel to the Spartan-II Program, the MJOLNIR Armor is a sealed system, capable of extravehicular activity or operations in toxic atmosphere. Weighing over half a metric ton, the armor's shell is constructed in overlapping layers of Titanium-A plating and highly durable ballistic alloys of remarkable strength. It has even been augmented with a refractive coating capable of dispersing a limited amount of energy weapon strikes. The Spartan gains a ''4+ Armor Save''.
** MJOLNIR armor is equipped with a full-body recharging energy shield that was reverse-engineered from captured alien technology. The shield itself is utterly transparent and does not hinder sight in any way but briefly flashes a greenish-gold color when hit. The Spartan-II gains a ''6+ Invulnerable Save''.


* '''Onboard AI''' - All MJOLNIR Mk V models or better feature a complex crystalline matrix within their neural interface, which Cortana likened in structure to the computer systems of the ''Pillar of Autumn''.  An AI construct increases tactical awareness, provides an indispensable guide, serving almost as a co-pilot and navigator, and multiplies the Spartan's already phenomenal reflexes.  A Spartan equipped with an Onboard AI increases their Initiative value by 1.
Due to being at the forefront of many battles against various alien species, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 may take exotic and advanced weaponry not usually issued to UNSC military forces, he may select a secondary special weapon from an extended list:


* '''MA5C Assault Rifle''' - The MA5C has an attached electronics suite that provides information on rounds remaining in the magazine, compass heading, and capable of wireless up-link with MJOLNIR systems for improved accuracy. Made of Titanium Alloy and Polymers, the rifle performs well in a variety of environments. Having a rate of fire of 650 rounds a minute, and chambering the old-school M118 7.62x51mm NATO Armor Piercing, Full Metal Jacket Rounds, the MA5C is fully capable of a withering barrage whilst even in motion or on a charge. Though lacking strength and stopping power, these rounds are designed to pierce most conventional ballistic body armor.
* Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon (Suppressor)............40 Points
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 24" / '''Strength''' 3 / '''AP''' - / '''Type''' Rapid Fire
* Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon (Light Rifle)...........40 Points
* Z-750 Special Application Sniper Rifle (Binary Rifle)..............45 Points
* Z-390 High-Explosive Munitions Rifle (Incinerator Cannon).......55 Points


* '''M90 Shotgun''' - is a pump-action, magazine-fed, dual tubular non-detachable type weapon. It uses the Soellkraft 8-Gauge Magnum Shotgun Shell, a large round capable of phenomenal stopping power.
- '''Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon''' - a.k.a. the Suppressor, it is a fully automatic weapon employing a conventional coil set architecture that fires bolts of hard light in rapid succession. It is well-known for its high rate of fire and effectiveness against all organic matter.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 12" / '''Strength''' 4 / '''AP''' - / '''Type''' Assault 2
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 18" / '''Strength''' 4 / '''AP''' 4 / '''Type''' Assault 6


* '''Sniper Rifle S99D-S2 AM''' - aka the "SR System 99D-S2 Anti-Matériel", it is a semi-automatic UNSC sniper rifle that fires 14.5 x 114mm APFSDS (Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot, with a tungsten or depleted uranium core) from a 4-round magazine. As a sniper rifle, it is fitted with a variable-magnification optic that shows real time images in infrared vision when not looking through it. When looking through it, the scope shows a target's distance and elevation. The rifle is so powerful it even can be used effectively to fire at light armored vehicles.
- '''Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon''' - a.k.a. the Light Rifle, it is a scoped, mid-range to long-range weapon using the diffused combination of particle acceleration and hardened photonic matter that fires a three-shot burst of luminescent orange hardlight rounds, perfect for taking down shielded or heavily armored targets.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 36" / '''Strength''' X/ '''AP''' 6  (''When firing at vehicles, the rifle adds D3 to its Armor penetration value'') / '''Type''' Heavy 1, Sniper
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 30" / '''Strength''' 4 / '''AP''' 4 / '''Type''' Assault 2, Rending


* '''M41 Rocket Launcher''' - aka the "M41 SSR" fires 102mm HEAP (High Explosive Armor Piercing) shaped charge rockets. The launcher sports a 2x scope and can fire rockets over long distances with devastating accuracy, and its two launch tubes allow the wielder to fire two rockets before needing to reload. The rocket launcher spreads a huge amount of damage over a large area. It is capable of taking out entire groups of infantry at any range and is effective against most vehicles.
- '''Z-750 Special Application Sniper Rifle''' (Binary Rifle) a.k.a. the Binary Rifle, it is equipped with twin, core-mounted particle accelerators which fire ionized particle beams containing jacketed antimatter particles. The incredible power and accuracy of this weapon make it highly lethal, allowing it to neutralize most targets with a single shot, disintegrating the body of the target.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 42" / '''Strength''' 7 / '''AP''' 3 / '''Type''' Heavy 1
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 48" / '''Strength''' 7 / '''AP''' 2 / '''Type''' Heavy 1, Fleshbane


* '''M6D Handgun''' - This is a ''laser''. You point it at people and they die.
- '''Z-390 High-Explosive Munitions Rifle''' (Incineration Cannon) a.k.a the Incineration Cannon, this ultra-heavy shoulder-mounted cannon fires antimatter-infused streams of concentrated explosive particles that cause incredible damage on impact, obliterating infantry and even light vehicles with even a glancing blow.
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 36" / '''Strength''' 4 / '''AP''' 4 / '''Type''' Heavy 2
** It has the following stats: '''Range''' 36" / '''Strength''' 9 / '''AP''' 1 / '''Type''' Heavy 1, Blast, Ionizing.
''Ionizing'': If a model suffers a wound from a weapon with the Ionizing special rule and before Feel No Pain rolls are made, the bearer rolls a d6, on a result of 4+ the model suffers Instant Death with no saves of any kind allowed including Feel No Pain, In addition Necron reanimation protocols may not be used on models which were removed from play by this special rule.


== A note on firepower ==
Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 may choose to switch between firing his primary weapon or secondary weapon in every shooting phase; only one of the weapons can be fired per turn.


Halo tards will often try to bullshit you with retardedly massive numbers for their weapons.  Don't fall for this, that 1.17 teraton number they like to throw out?  Bullcrap contradicted by later sourcebooks and the games themselves.  The actual number for ship based MACs is 64 kilotons, or not that much more than three hiroshima bombs put together, while super MACs are calced to be 51.6 gigaton range.  Covenant weapons are also firmly in the megaton range to around gigatons depending on the atrocious calcs of Halo. In the games, their firepower drops way, way down to being less impressive than modern artillery and fighters with 70mm autocannons (aka as big as your average warhammer autocannon) taking out covenant capital ships.


40k space ships on the other hand have firepower comfortably calculated into the high gigaton to holy shit teraton range for most guns, while nova cannons can bring multiple petatons of pain and cyclonic torpedoes can go into the exa and zettatons. On the ground Halo is actually largely inferior to modern day earth, with a shitty oversized tank that falls apart to .50 caliber machine gun, is slower than a modern abrams, has a 90mm popgun (And has the muzzle velocity of a nerf gun in it's most recent Halo 4 incarnation), and looks retarded, a derpy Jeep which is about the size of a WW2 medium tank, can only seat two people and conveniently lacks any kind of protective roof or a retardedly undergunned gunship with two piddly autocannons and piss small missiles that an RPG-7 would outdo, heck it's so undergunned that having two marines hang on the sides(!?!) of a hornet noticeably improves it's firepower.
-----------------
HQ: '''Agent Jameson Locke''' - 165 points.


The UNSC Marines are comparable to Imperial PDF at best (and that's being reaaallly fucking generous); with their main standard issue front line weapon being a stupidly-oversize-assault-rifle-yet-too-small-to-be-an-LMG that fires the same type of 7.62mm (No seriously look on their wiki and compare it to the other wiki's 7.62mm page it's practically the same fucking bullet) round that modern NATO and Western armies use for sniper rifles and squad level machine guns. While great, it wouldn't even go through an Imperial Guardsmen's Flak Armor which, while is little more than paper mache in it's own respective universe is the capable of stopping the equivalent of a .50BMG round compared to a more realistic standard.


Compared to the Body Armor that the UNSC Marines wear which is still very vulnerable to ballistic weapons (Even in Halo's own Fluff and Graphic Novels it sucks when shot at by an assault rifle) and does almost jack-diddly-shit against a foe's plasma weapons that can only cause 3rd to 5th degree burns (lol it's stated in the books srsly) instead of the "OMGWTF!!! JIMMY'S A PILE OF ASHES NOW!!!!!" vaporization effect that an Imperial plasma gun has on a man sized target. UNSC marines are just shitty overall.
'''WS''' 5 / '''BS''' 5 / '''S''' 4 / '''T''' 3 / '''W''' 4 / '''I''' 6 / '''A''' 4 / '''Ld''' 10 / '''Sv''' 3+/6++


Covenant vehicle design is even worse, with the Scorpion tank doing so well because the Wraith is even shittier, it doesn't even have a fucking turret (it does, in Halo 2, 3, ODST, Reach, Wars and 4) and that blob it shoots is slow as shit and super god damned obvious, Covenant plasma weapons fire bolts at water balloon speeds even their infantry small arms can be dodged at close range, they're that fucking slow, the "elites" repeatedly missed a single Spartan during a cut scene at point blank fucking range, the command structure is determined by how many kills you get, the Covenant's tactics themselves are so bad that a 19th century style infantry square stopped a vehicle charge dead in it's tracks.
;Unit Type
Infantry (Independent Character)


As for the claims of Halo air superiority. Vendettas would blast any of them out of the sky due to how ridiculously powerful lascannons are, the Longsword is still a ludicrously oversized piece of shit (it's the size of a ''B fucking 2'') without any shields and would be fodder for any decent Star Fury pilot, the Vampire is ridiculously undergunned for it's size (only three weapons?  Two of which are tiny turrets?  Lame), the pelican while nice by modern standards, is nothing compared to a Thunderhawk and would lose in a dogfight to a Vendetta, the Necron Doom Scythe can devastate cities in a single sweep while the Night-scythe is the best airborne transport ever and the Nightshroud ruins your day with anti-matter, Eldar fliers may as well be able to tap dance in the sky, Chaos not only has planes but literal, actual Daemons, the Barracuda, Tigershark, and Manta are  death incarnate, and the Tyranid fliers come in swarms so thick that even a planet full of Orks can fire into them all day and they'll still blot out the sun.
;Wargear
 
* MJOLNIR Armor
==Codex: The Covenant==
* MA5D
 
* Combat Knife
As we know, the Covenant is pretty [[Derp|incompetent]], but their tech and machines are pretty nice in a WH40K setting (Ignoring the statements above, look at the vehicles from Halo Wars), just like the Ancients from Stargate, the Covenant has pretty nifty tech but just can't seem to use it well. So this [[Codex - The Covenant|Codex]] is what would happen if the Covenant was actually lead competently.
* Frag Grenades (Offensive)
* On Board AI


== See Also ==
;Warlord Trait
Divide to Conquer (''See'' 7th Edition Corerule Book)


;Special Rules
* '''''Spartan IV''''' - Agent Jameson Locke has the ''Hatred'' and ''Fleet'' USRs.
* '''''At All Costs''''' - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Agent Jameson Locke gains the ''Stubborn'' USR.
* '''''Shoot First, Ask Later''''' - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Agent Jameson Locke gains the ''Hit & Run'' USR.
* '''''Execute Battle Plan''''' - Agent Jameson Locke and all models in his unit have Outflank.
* '''''Target Identified''''' - Agent Jameson Locke and all models in his unit have the ''Precision Shot'' USR.


May replace his primary weapon (MA5D assault rifle) with of one special weapons from the following list:
* BR85HB (Battle Rifle)........................................''Free
* SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................''6 points 
* M45 Tactical Shotgun(Shotgun)...............................''10 points
* M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................''15 points
* M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points
* Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920 (Rail Gun).............35 points


* [[1R0QU012]]
- '''Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920''' - A.k.a the ARC-920, it is a compact-channel linear accelerator that fires the powerful M645 FTP-HE (16x65mm ferric-tungsten high-explosive round) at incredible velocity. The charge time is approximately two seconds and can be fired with only a partial charge at the cost of lesser damage.


[http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/377773.page The CC Debate], in which rage ensues
It has the following stats: '''Range''' 48" / '''Strength''' 6 / '''AP''' 1 / '''Type''' Assault 1, Shred

Latest revision as of 19:56, 24 June 2023

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.


Halo AKA Marathon's more popular brother is a vidyagame series exclusively released for the ECKSBAWKS, ECKSBAWKS 360, ECKSBAWKS JUAN, SECKSBAWKS and PC. The series was developed by Bungie, though Microsoft has bought the rights to the game. The Halo universe is pretty massive, with all sorts of media ranging from video games and graphic novels to action figures and a series of short movies released to DVD. It became famous for being the game that saved ECKSBAWKS from doing an Atari Jaguar by identifying an untapped new market of loud, stupid fratboys, and was the only reason anyone would even want to buy an ECKSBAWKS console.

Welcome to the beginning of where it all began. Say floating lightbulb, do you have time to listen to the one and true savior, the Precursors?

Because of its innovative controls and game mechanics (button for melee and grenades, rechargeable health, refined online console multiplayer, popularizing console FPS controls as the gold standard, having drivable vehicles in a FPS that didn't suck ass, kickass music, an intriguing plot, a limited weapon carrying capacity, etc), Halo has often been seen as part of the Holy Trinity of First Person Shooters, tied with Golden Eye and Half-Life as being one of the most important video games in history; with Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D and Marathon being seen as the 'Original Old Guards of First Person Shooters'.

Occasionally it breaks away from the generic sci-fi pattern and explores a more fatalistic and human side to the story without having to suck Master Chief's dick or obsess over ancient alien technology every three seconds, and is generally regarded as being about ten times better and more mature for it. Unfortunately, within the games, this lasted a grand total of one game before 343 Industries acquired the license. Within the books, there are many wonderful examples otherwise, and the plot of Halo 4 can only be completely understood by reading the books from the series that begins with Glasslands. Halo Silentium by Greg Bear is also a necessary read to really understand how many times the Forerunners screw up, be it their own society or another species, or the entire galaxy, and the true nature and intent of the Flood. The character development of the Librarian and the Didact also makes this quite a fun read. If you're into books, that is. It should also be noted that Halo is to be commended for abstracting Larry Niven's Ring World, but since no one reads older books that don't have pew pews on the cover, how would a mangled regurgitation of IP be recognized when you pull from obscure sauces.

/tg/ isn't big on Halo and topics pertaining to Halo will normally be saged, trolled, told to go to /v/, or some combination therein. On /v/ however, Halo is... still widely hated. Then again, /v/ hates video games in general. The hatred of /tg/ comes less from the actual game/gameplay, and more from it being off-topic and a few fanboys being asshats. Though this also may be due to the fact Halo fans have Cortana to fap to while fa/tg/uys are stuck with fapping to the Emprah HERESY!WORT WORT WORT! *GLASSED*

Like Warhammer 40k the state of Halo's fluff has been in limbo, while Halo may have fucking spectacular authors on the line of Greg Bear (May he rest in peace) and Eric Nylund (and more recently Troy Denning) it also has its fair share of colossal fuck ups in the line of Brian Reed (who some believe to be the series equivalent of The Beast Himself) and Karen Traviss. Don't even get us started with the advent of 343i and their mixed bag success on the Reclaimer saga as well as Halo's more...questionable marketing campaigns. Ironically, while the more recent games has been bait for flamewars that will send any respectable forum thread into lock down, even off 4chan, Halo's transition to tabletop gaming after some failed attempts like Halo Actionclix (Which is a shame cause while the game rules sucked, the models was in such high quality that it even outshines some high priced models from Forgeworld) has been more positively received, what with the fact that hardcore Haloites now need to use their brains and that the new mini models are quite nicely detailed.

It is worth noting that Halo ever since its inception of its sequel, Halo 2, has been a proud sponsor of every Neckbeards elixir of life that is....Mountain Dew, as well as the other sacred food item of Doritos. So don't be surprise when you see Mountain Dew and Doritos advertisement being shoved down your face whenever you want to buy any merchandise from Halo. Trying to say anything bad on these food products made from diabetes, sugar, acid and Ork piss is Halo's equivalent of Heresy, you have been warned.

Halo as previously mentioned has a bloody massive universe (multiverse?) encompassing not only games, but also short films (Both live action and animated), music (One of the first vidya games whose soundtrack was good enough to earn multiple awards by itself), tabletop games, merchandises, mega block toys, figurines, nerf guns and even animu. Much like 40K there are 3 major fan wikis: Halopedia, Halo Nation (combined into Halopedia with the rest transforming into Halo Alpha) and Gruntipedia; and much like 40K they fall into the respective archetypes of 'obsessively detailed fan wiki', 'ad-ridden Wikia knockoff' and '1d4chan with even worse humour and fan rage'. Although Gruntipedia can be excused for being a product of the early 2000s Internet shitposting era, so a time capsule if you will.

Setting[edit]

The Forerunner symbol for Reclaimer. This symbol is a special Easter egg to an even older Bungie game. Yes it looks like the Tau symbol but predates it by almost a decade. Games Workshop proving once again that they are a bunch of sleazy and ballsy motherfuckers.

The Halo universe takes place in the 26th century. Mankind, led by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), has developed its own crude faster-than-light drive (the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine) and finally colonized other worlds. At its height, human civilization occupies nearly 800 planets, forming a ring of outer colonies and rings of inner colonies with Earth as its capital. This is not what they're talking about when they say Halo, mind you.

Sometime in the year 2525, an agricultural world in the outer colonies, creatively named Harvest, is attacked by an unknown force. In the succeeding months, all attempts to make contact, or even defend against the alien forces are met with swift destruction. It is not long before more colonies are wiped out.

The unknown menace finally identifies itself as the Covenant, a coalition of several alien races bent on destroying humanity. At first they seem to be doing this because that's just what aliens do, but later on it is discovered that the story is somewhat deeper. Apparently, thanks to the revelations of the Reclaimer Saga, humans were once an ancient, super advanced, totalitarian, bigoted, expansionist, racist, supremacist, violent, militaristic, war-mongering, nightmare of an empire, like a way less competent junior version of the Great Crusade. All were fine and dandy when the Flood came out of fucking nowhere (Long story short, they came about when the humans kept forcing their pets to sniff some powder from an ancient, mysterious ship, what could go wrong?) which forced the humans to take a page out of Kryptman's playbook and invade into Forerunner territory as they were trying to save the galaxy from the Flood. The Forerunners not taking into the whole "I destroy your planets and exterminate your civilians out of benign and superficial reasons" promptly kicked the humans in the galactic nuts, stripped of their technology and de-evolved them back into caveman. So in short, Mankind in Halo basically were what Eldar are in 40k (Without "blasted into a stoneage part). Later, the Forerunners ended up getting nommed by the Flood in the most ridiculous OCP way possible and found out how they fucked up so bad when one of them found out that the ancient humans once had the solution against the Flood (Later claimed to be just an elaborate hoax to fool the Forerunners by the Flood, though the one making this claim was also the Flood's Big Bad Evil Guy, who at the time was speaking to a wavering, demoralized Forerunner leader, so about as trustworthy as the Chaos Gods promising to give an unbiased view of the Emperor) that they had to super-irradiate the known galaxy just to kill most of the Flood. Oh, and they also named the humans their Reclaimers as their way of saying sorry for turning them into cavemen and telling them to finish their job, fucking Forerunners.

This made the Covenant, or more specifically the Prophets kinda jealous, because it was them who first discovered the Forerunner technology, adapted it to their own, and finally started worshiping the Forerunners. Apparently, knowing that your gods had a favorite, finding out that it isn't you, and finding out that it's instead the species that invented truck nuts upset them just a little. So, back to glassing. It's not long before the UNSC military, and humanity itself, finds out that it is being pwned. Clearly the only solution to this would be a ridiculously tiny unit of infantry with clever armor named in allcaps. This leads to the SPARTAN-II program, (SPARTAN:s were created to fight against human insurrectionists but happened to be extremely effective against the Covenant as well, and active just in time for them to come around too) humanity's last hope (thirty three men and women to defend eight hundred planets, lolwat?), thirty-three super soldiers, divided into teams 3 or 4, and sent as force multipliers to assist the UNSC's beleaguered marines and mechanized divisions. Though not as a defensive planetary force (the UNSC having lost a large chunk of those 800 worlds early in the war), but as an offensive special ops unit, infiltrating behind enemy lines, assassinating commanders, and disrupting the Covenant's supply chain; doing the suicide jobs that others could not, slowing down or in some cases halting Covenant military build-up before it can launch further devastating attacks on the humanity. At exceedingly great resource cost and high lost of life, the UNSC together with the Spartans gradually turn the tide of the war (more along the lines of slowly and painfully pushing the Covenant's genocidal murder-boner from balls deep within humanity's asshole to a mere 3/4ths.)

To end the war once and for all, humanity enacts a desperate plan: They would send a specially refitted ship (the Pillar of Autumn) along with Spartan contingent deep behind enemy lines and attempt to capture one of the Prophets (the select group of religious leaders that form the highest caste of the Covenant). But as usual, it all goes horribly wrong before it can even begin. The UNSC's fortress-world of Reach, and unofficially the Spartans' homeworld, is discovered by the Covenant. Next to Earth, Reach is the most heavily defended world in Human space. It falls in a matter of days, as the Covenant brings nearly a third of its entire fleet to lay siege over the planet. As Reach's defenses wither away, the Covenant simply brings in more reinforcements. Few escape the doomed Battle of Reach, but one of the ships that manages make it out of the system in time is the Pillar of Autumn. Aboard is a single battle-ready Spartan II (plus another comatose one, but she doesn't count), suspended in cryostasis. Yet, that is where the story truly begins, for the Autumn blindly jumps right into a heavily-guarded star system containing a Halo; a colossal ring-world, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, built millions of years ago by the Forerunners, worshiped by the Covenant as an ancient artifact of unimaginable power, and which would totally never ever turn out to be a super-weapon for super-killing the flood. The Pillar of Autumn's fate and that of the Halo, becomes the setting of the original HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED game.

And it only gets more nuts from there.

On /tg/[edit]

While as mentioned that Halo has been proven skubtastic over the years on /tg/, the recent surge in popularity among tabletop has garnered a niche within /tg/ community. That and the fact of a billion fandex for either the Covenant, UNSC or Forerunners as well as fanfiction that ranges from okay to literal bait for fan wars.

It no longer has the ire it once had due to most of the annoying asshats migrating to COD and Battlefield as well as the fact that some of the squeakers that used to inhabit the Halo community has since matured into adults by now. Halo nowadays has been seen as...okay.

One thing of note is a massive backlash even for the casual TG fan about the changing Halo artstyle. While this might get dismissed by many since style changes are extremely common in franchises and often hated regardless of context, Halo 5 (and ESPECIALLY Halo Infinite) have pretty much dedicated themselves to turn unique and interesting designs (especially for human stuff) into the most generic run of the mill boring pieces of hardware not out of place in a COD game. Basically style change is like redecorating your house, and 343 is just slathering everything in beige. Bringing up the style change is seen as MASSIVE skub between those who loath it and those who, from the previous assumptions, assume it's just fanboys complaining.

The TV Show[edit]

Eight years after being announced, Paramount+ has released their own spin on the Halo series in TV form, likely in part out of envy for Disney having their own streaming show set in a beloved space setting. Unlike the various books and comics that preceded it, which are supposed to exist in the same universe as the video games everyone knows, the show is in its own canon, officially called the "Silver Timeline" in reference to Master Chief leading a SPARTAN team called "Silver Team". Was drawing concern and derision even before release (as that's how these things tend to go nowadays), and has only continued its status as grade-A skub from there. Among the things folks have taken issue with are:

  • The writers admitting that they didn't look at any of the games, leading to the sense that they didn't respect/know the source material enough. One such example is that they turned Oban, a UNSC research facility, into a garbage planet with child slaves in order to drive home their “UNSC is eeeeeeevil” plot line. To be fair, the UNSC got up to some dirty stuff in the main timeline, but this harsher portrayal even extends to the fan-favorite Jacob Keyes, who is much more of an authoritarian jerk than he is in canon. Basically, there's the sense that the show is overdoing it as far as highlighting the UNSC's flaws.
  • The very same showrunners quit after Season 1 wrapped, long before the show even aired. That's never a good sign.
  • CGI and special effects of questionable quality; clearly unfinished props/effects have made it into the final cut without any editors noticing.
  • That it's not a straight adaptation of the video games or novels; fans would’ve made allowances for changes here and there, and the Halo universe is big enough that one can tell original stories while still being true to the lore. Some have taken to it as its own thing, but others feel its a generic sci-fi story with the Halo brand slapped on top (worth noting that this view isn't just held by salty neckbeards either; some critics have also found the show's tone and writing to be somewhat derivative, taking more cues from The Expanse than from Halo. Even Halo Co-Creator Marcus Lehto complained the show was nothing like what he made.). For starters, they've already spoiled the big twist about the Halo rings being weapons (which the Covenant shouldn't know, much less the UNSC) long before Reach has even fallen. Seems that the directors have chosen to discard the drama of the world and the war, in favor of manufactured interpersonal drama and political intrigue. Because that's what people got into Halo for.
  • Master Chief shows his face in the very first episode, which for most Halo neckbeards is pure Heresy; then they somehow manage to top it by showing us his naked ass. Hence, he has since earned the nickname Master Cheeks, which is particularly apt when the showrunners decided to give him a sex scene with Covenant Lady because reasons.
  • Humans working for the Covenant, which completely undermines the Covenant’s motivations in starting the war with humanity; regardless of whatever justifications the show gives, the whole reason for the Covenant's genocide of humanity is to cover up the fact that forerunner tech marks humans as Forerunners, so having a human in their capital would make said cover up damn near impossible. The show's given justification is that only a few humans (of which the Covenant's Blessed One is one), can access and interact with Forerunner tech, so her status is more valuable. Needless to say, many Halo fans were still not impressed
  • Giving Master Chief a young teenage girl sidekick with zero connection to the original lore; some feared that she is set up to replace Master Chief in his own show. A somewhat less cynical interpretation is that she's meant to be the Baby Yoda/Grogu to Master Chief's Mando. Instead, she's been given her own storyline involving the insurrection, which was just a footnote in Halo lore by the time of the covenant war. Fans aren't on board with her character as she lacks charisma and the insurrection plot is basically just a retread of The Expanse more than anything that feels like authentic Halo, and of the various plot threads its the one that has the least reason to be in the show and could have probably been removed without changing much.
  • Related to the above, you may be wondering why Cortana isn’t initially with Master Chief. They decided to completely change her into a fully-grown clone of Halsey that Halsey kills to make Cortana rather than just a brain scanned AI, give her some tacked on existential angst, and rewrite AIs so that they control SPARTANs outright instead of being assistants. Chief and Cortana's relationship is also far from what it was in the games, with Chief being annoyed at Cortana rather than the two sharing a close bond; Chief even outright cuckholds her in front of her eyes with the covenant spy. I guess Master Cheeks prefers 3D to 2D. Season 1 ends with Chief apparently dead, with Cortana basically taking over his body. So it wasn't Kwan who ended up replacing John - the big twist is it was Cortana.
  • Forerunner Keystones have an awful tendency of being incredibly convenient to whatever the plot demands at the time, whether its allowing a character to escape, revealing character backstories, or becoming the big macguffin revealing where to find the Halo rings. What's next, turning Cortana into a real girl?
  • While the fight scenes so far have been alright...there haven't been that many of them. You can count the number of fights Master Chief has been in on one hand. The fights themselves also have a problem with consistency in terms of power balance; we first see the Elites as nigh-invulnerable to small arms fire and a minigun, but in the same scene when Master Chief shows up, that same minigun takes down Elites quite easily, no problem.
  • Sgt. Johnson is a complete No-Show. Which is really strange, given that the show has already chosen to race-swap a number of characters while ignoring the most popular and well-loved black character in the whole series.

Not all of the fan buzz has been negative (it definitely hasn't done any worse for itself than the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy did in terms of backlash), and some things have gone over well enough:

  • Pablo Schreiber's performance as Master Chief has been (mostly) well received. It helps that he is apparently playing his way through the franchise to learn his role.
  • Spotty special effects aside, action scenes convey that the SPARTANs are one-man army badasses and also don't hold back on the blood and gore
  • Jen Taylor is voicing Cortana again
  • The new SPARTANs. It helps that two of them (Soren and Vannak) feel in some ways more like the game/book Master Chief than the Silver Timeline one does.

The series has basically become The Rise of Skywalker of video game adaptations, which is one hell of a feat. Dumpster fire does not cut it out, it is more akin to the Firebombing of Tokyo in terms of how much the adaptation shat on the franchise. This is like, CS Goto's levels of horrid fan-fic; the Shyamalana-ding-dong of cringy adaptations if you will. The most hardened of Halo fans would understandably get a brain aneurysm if they hear this within ear shot, but more casual or oldschool fans just found the adaptation to range from "So bad its good" to "So boring its meh". Either way, it no doubt helps Paramount+ that this show is its own canon, making it easier to ignore if you're not a fan, and giving them more freedom to muck up the lore do their own thing with the franchise.

Codex: The Covenant[edit]

Surprisingly, Halo Actionclix figures make good Tabletop conversions for the Covenant, here seen a Scarab that looks like it could fit comfortably in the Apocalypse Game-type.

A bunch of people decided that the Covenant's tech and machines are pretty nice in a WH40K setting So "Codex - The Covenant" was made to implement them into the tabletop game.

Furthermore on the context on Halo; The Convenant is a militarized theocracy made up of different alien species, with each belonging to its own caste, and all of them are all sorts of killy in a variety of ways. Their MO is to track down the remnants of the Forerunner's legacy in their quest to ascend to Godhood, and destroy anyone who stands in their way. While we can't vouch for how they'd fair against other alien factions, they're certainly lethal against the average human soldier. From the top down;

  • Prophets: The theocrats who call all the shots. While generally too frail for combat, they're the master manipulators and horde all the forerunner technology. They're also indirectly responsible for virtually all deaths in the war against the UNSC, since they started the war as basically a giant cover-up and means to stay in power. They also like to play the different races against each other for their own ends. If you see one on the battlefield, expect to see lots of heavily-armed bodyguards and some really strong personal defense systems to boot.
  • Elites: Space Lizardmen with Lightsabers that shout WORT WORT WORT. Come from a proud warrior race and were the first race to be subjugated by the Prophets. They still form the top of the military hierarchy and are quite dangerous, wielding personal shields and many of the best weapons that the Covenant has to offer, as well as having many brilliant tacticians at their disposal.
  • Hunters: Colonies of Killer Death Worms inside of suits of armor and armed with nuclear radiation cannons. Its not an exaggeration to call these guys living tanks. These same worms are also used to power Scarabs and other super-heavy walkers.
  • Brutes: Killer Wookies with Metal Shanks that go OMNOMNOM. Also a proud warrior race but far more zealous and unthinking than the Elites, they fight in packs and go berserk when you kill one of their pack-mates. Unlike the Elites who care about giving their opponents an honorable death, Brutes simply kill for the pleasure of it. They like to use their own weapons that have Choppy bayonets while being more Dakka and Boomy than your average plasma rifle. In the Covenant's final years, the prophets decided to replace the Elites with the Brutes because the Elites were too independent and started asking too many questions after the Halo rings were discovered.
  • Jackals: Space Pirate Turkeys that also go OMNOMNOM. Just barely above cannon fodder, they're typically deployed as light infantry or sniper support. They're the least zealous race and act more as mercenaries in different capacities.
  • Grunts: Hairless Ewoks strapped to methane-filled tanks. The smallest and weakest race, and usually the most cowardly, as they tend to panic once their squad leader is killed. It's not unheard of though for some to go kamikaze and run at you with primed grenades. They tend to be the butt of a lot of jokes, until you realize just how badly the Covenant oppresses them and how they really don't want to be there.
  • Drones: Flying bug-people that attack in large numbers. Not very intelligent, but they comply with the Covenant as they've been raised to think of the prophets as their hive queen.
  • Engineers: Biomechanical floating tentacle monsters. Created by the forerunners to maintain their tech before they were enslaved by the Covenant. Engineers are fairly docile, but they're forced to wear suicide vests to prevent their capture.

Codex: The Banished[edit]

Hey! You know how the Covenant has proven to be popular among WH40K/Halo conversions? Now we have a new Codex to represent the Covenant's worst foe. Akin to the Heretics that plague the IoM. Codex - The Banished offers a different take on how the Brutes can be played with its own unique heroes, vehicles and units.

To give a short and nice summary on what the Banished are, they are a large group of separatist forces lead by a Brute Warlord called Atriox; whereas most Brutes channeled their extreme violence in service to their dogmatic faith, while undermining their Elite rivals on the sly, Atriox was far less subtle about his hatred for the Covenant and its caste system. Unlike other separatist and heretical forces that plagued the Covenant Empire, the Banished stood their ground and weathered Covenant attacks until they amassed enough troops and equipment to rival and even stop the Covenant military in their tracks. In Halo Canon, they successfully outlasted both the Covenant and its various remnant factions, gathering troops and wargear with careful deliberation, much unlike the various demagogues and megalomaniacs who seized power in the political vacuum like Jul 'Mdama. And while they use most of the Covenants existing arsenal, much of it is heavily modified to suit the Brute's needs (and aesthetics), including a complete refit of Covenant Scarabs into offensive powerhouses. They are the only few polities capable of standing up to the Covenant and the only one capable of driving off an entire Covenant armada. Atriox's tactical and cunning brilliance has sowed intimidation and respect to not only the Covenant but to the Covenant's loyalist Brutes. Atriox's leadership despite the size of his army is not to be underestimated.

Halo Actionclix[edit]

A while back during its heyday, Actionclix made a deal with Microsoft and Bungie at the time to create an Actionclix game based on the Haloverse. While the models were extremely well detailed and well crafted, its high pricing for the models and its overall clusterfuck of its rules has made Halo Actionclix a somewhat lackluster experience.

This led to a initial surge in popularity with the idea of future tabletop games based around the universe (Read below on Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command), however like Halo Risk. The initial popularity died down quickly once the rules was read since you know, during that era (Halo 3), the main target audience was kids and teenagers who have zero to little clue on how to play an Actionclix game.

This has in turn, force Halo Actionclix to have a relatively short lifespan and the models have thus turned into a collectors item for display and collecting dust.

Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command[edit]

Halo Fleet Battles starter package. Yes we know, that is a whole lot of ships.

With the introduction of Halo Fleet Battles which is essentially Halo's take on Battlefleet Gothic, that is centered around the Fall of Reach which is like the biggest naval combat within the Covenant-UNSC fluff, some fa/tg/uys has apparently lost their collective shit due to the fact that this is the first time that Halo is getting a tabletop treatment (The Risk and Actionclix games although the models are nice, does not really count). Similar to most tabletop miniatures, the models coming with Halo Fleet Battles and its contemporary ground units comes unpainted which means you have to paint all the neely-willy details yourself, that and the fact that it comes with its own rulebook and stats has garnered /tg/'s approval. In fact, some has already decided to convert the models and place it within Battlefleet Gothic itself (Although how you will be able to adjust the rules to make it fair is going to be a nightmare). All models are Finecast, make that of what you will.

Both Fleet Battles and Ground Command are made by Spartan Games. Overall, Spartan Games are much more reasonably priced than the models made from Games Workshop. Seriously for the Covenant set you are getting 6 Highly-detailed Plastic Ship Models, 1 Formation Base Sprue (4 Bases in all), 1 Ship Overlay Sheet (6 Ship Overlays), 2 Token Sheets, 1 Statistics Sheet and 1 Assembly Guide for (US)$35.94 whereas the UNSC gets 2 Epoch Heavy Carriers, 6 Paris Class Frigates, 2 heavy sprue, 1 flight stand base, 1 overlay sheet and 1 assembly guide for $32.5, that is like cheaper than GeeDub's $66.55 pricing for only 5 Terminator models. Tl;dr you can literally buy two entire Covenant or UNSC fleets for the price of a single Termie Squad. Whether these tabletop games may boost Spartan Games to become GeeDubs rival is unknown. But what is known is the fact that Halo is owned by Microsoft which is a company that dwarfs GeeDubs in both money and influence. So in a rare hypothesis that GeeDubs think their high and mighty and goes on their copyright abuse that forced other smaller model companies to close down and have set their cross hairs on Spartan Games and more specifically the Halo license...as the old saying goes...there is always a bigger fish. Seriously, it could be seen from Spartan Games perspective as a blessing of sorts as unlike poor ChapterHouse Studios who was sued by GW, the backing of Microsoft puts some immunity for Spartan Games. That and Microsoft in all honesty, has the power and influence to bully the bully if Games Workshop decides to get uppity when Spartan Games release the models for the Covenant Prophets which look similar to the Tau Ethereal; that or Microsoft can just tell them to fuck off and bite the pillow.

Unfortunately, as of August 2017, Spartan Games have officially announced its closure and shutdown. Because of this, the state of Fleet Battles and Ground Command is in limbo and that any further purchases of their models is only available either from eBay or second hand manufacturers. However, 343i did say they will look towards the care of this, so all hope is not lost!

Fleet Battles[edit]

A CAS Assault Carrier plays hide and seek with a vastly out-gunned UNSC battlegroup.

Main Article: Halo Fleet Battles

The Fleet Battles set comes with some kickass artwork depicting both factions leaders (Shame they didn't have Halo's answer to Creed that is Preston "I turned a Gas Giant into a fucking star just so I can stroke my massive ego" Cole) sitting on their respective armchairs. Although how they are going to balance the UNSC/Covenant (Since Covenant ships can no-sell their UNSC equivalents) is up to debate. UNSC ships are balanced by being the long-range, combined fire monsters they are in fluff (if you can get enough of them together); but they crumple once their Titanium armor has been burned off. Also the UNSC gets the advantage of SMAC Platforms which makes them great at holding the line and acting as giant, immobile, floating Basilisks. This means that the UNSC specializes in lots and lots of missile spam and swarm tactics to compensate general shitty defensive capabilities and shorter range whereas the Covenant act as giant line breakers with their fuck huge ships and massive firepower.

Fight the Fall of Reach in the starter set, or start adding extra ships in to fight battles from the Human-Covenant War. Since the closure of Spartan Games, no one wanted to pick up the license... probably because it was Microsoft-priced. Instead, the community is keeping it alive with fan-expansions and accessories. Because of the extraordinarily low chances that a miniatures company picks the license up again, 343 Studios has done the surprisingly gracious move of helping out the fans by giving a blessing to the whole process. It doesn't make things easier or provide any resources, but at least keeps Microsoft from swooping in as long as the community protects the IP.

Maybe with the updated rules for Dystopian Wars from their new owners, we'll get to see a fan-update to the ruleset and balance.

Ground Command[edit]

A typical skirmish in Ground Command.

For the battles centered around the ground, Ground Command seems to be more feasibly plausible in fluff terms. What we know is that both factions are going to be incredibly dropship focused, meaning that the implementation and usage of dropships like the Pelican and Phantom are going to be crucial for tactical victory. Models for both factions are small enough to be converted into other tabletop games, although the UNSC personnel (who are meant to be regular humans) are a tad bit taller than a Space Marine.

In terms of detailed gameplay, movement phase is similar to Fleet Battles. However Ground Command also has two key gaming spaces: Pre-Game and In-Game. The former refers to the Strategic/RTS part of the game and latter to the Action/FPS part of the game. Essentially, Pre-Game allows players to flex their RTS muscles, building their Forces strategically to complete their chosen missions. In general play, all scenarios are encouraged to be rolled PRIOR to Forces being chosen, so players can go away and plot their enemy’s eventual demise. This gives the game a planned-outcome-feel since players have had time to reflect on the mission to hand and have brought the right tools for the job.

Choosing a Force is a simple process that uses the Build Rating (BR) and Maximum Force Value (MFV) methods that was introduced in Halo: Fleet Battles. Like H:FB, Ground Command also use the ideas of Standard and Specialist Battle Groups. The former will be used multiple times by players, whereas the latter will be limited in their use, commonly limited to only one per force. Battle Groups have Units that are call Requisites which in turn gain access to Optional Units. Requisites MUST be taken for a Battle Group to be considered game legal. These vary from Battle Group to Battle Group. For example, an ODST Battle Group MUST take ODST Units as Requisites, whereas a UNSC Army Mechanized Battle Group MUST take Riflemen Units. Requisites are, however, deliberately kept to the bare minimum needed to represent the nature of their Battle Group to uphold flexibility allowing players to find new and innovative combinations to field.

Once Requisites have been taken, players have a number of Optional Build Rating points to spend in each of the following categories: Infantry Units, Armored Units and Air Units. The points available will vary depending on the Battle Group chosen, giving certain Battle Groups greater access to some types of Unit, or may even skip using a Unit type altogether. For example, a Covenant Spectral Host Battle Group (Elite Ghost Units optional Air Support) allows a Covenant player to not have any Infantry and instead field lots of fast attack Ghosts with Elite drivers. This is a Specialist Battle Group and is limited to one per force. It is static in its requisites but can have access to a Flyer if a player wants to spend the BR and Points to add it their Force.

A UNSC Standard Armored Battle Group only has Armored Units as Requisites. A player can still add some Infantry if they want, or even add Flyer Units, or they could just spend all of their points on Armour and as this is a Standard Battle Group a player can take several in their Force if they so choose. All of this leads to an incredibly flexible force building mechanic that gives the game great longevity. There will be literally thousands of combinations available, giving players the chance to execute their plans in a prepared way. The Build Rating of a model (Element as it is called in the game) and a Unit (a collection of Elements) is what translates to Victory Points. It is a simple method and allows games to be won by destroying Units of Infantry, destroying Armored models, shooting down Flyers, capturing Objectives, killing Characters and etc.

In terms of building a terrain and setting, Ground Command's terrain is placed using mutual consent to encourage the construction of fair and reasonable battlefields. The rules of Terrain are binary to make it simple to use and fast to play with – for example, you can or you can’t move through it; you can or you can’t shoot through it, or a combination of both. This makes Terrain nice and simple to play with, but still gives players a strategic view of the battlefield and allows for a planned route of advancement. Terrain ranges from simple Supply Drops to large structures like the Covenant Stealth Pylon.

Similar to Fleet Battles, Ground Command has commanders for the players to choose from and is played similarly to its space counterpart. So in summary:

  • Forces are made up of Battle Groups, which can be of varying types: UNSC Mechanized Battle Groups, Hunting Host Battle Groups, Armored Battle Groups, and so on.
  • Inside each Battle Group are Requisite Units that must be taken, then Build Rating limits are set to allow players to add in Optional Units later.
  • Forces can and should be made up of multiple Battle Groups.
  • In narrative play, all Forces should be chosen after the Scenario is determined, allowing players to tailor their lists to fight out the mission.
  • Terrain is placed by mutual consent and is designed for simple use and quick gameplay. There is a table generator included if mutual consent proves difficult.
  • In Halo: Ground Command players have access to Generic Force Commanders that cost considerably less than narrative named Commanders. These Generic Force Commanders have Standard Orders and a Factional Order. They are the only Commander available in competitive play.

These is just the Pre-Game. Now it is the In-Game phase. As with Halo: Fleet Battles, the Halo Dice is used in conjunction with the Firepower Rating Table to control modifiers and drive the statistics in the game. Both games start with players using a default of Firepower Rating 4 with the Rating modifying up and down accordingly. This means that when rolling Halo Dice, a result of 2 (or Spartan Exploding 6 for example) counts as two hits, a result of 1 result counts as one hit, a Miss result can be re-rolled if you have rolled any 2s, and the Skull result is a definite miss. Some weapons will provide a positive bonus to the Firepower Rating whereas Terrain conditions and Scenario effects generally cause the Firepower Rating to suffer a negative penalty. The faces of the Dice in Ground Command are Fail, Miss, Success and Exploding. Than there are the Tokens. In Ground Command there are three available tokens, these are: Activated (placed when a Unit Activates or attempts a Reaction), Damage (for when an attack equals or exceeds a value on a Damage Track) and Cooldown (which is used to represent a situation where a weapon or even an entire Unit cannot fire). There is also the Statistic Profiles which are used as a simple visual presentation mechanic to show players the various statistics used by Units on their statistic cards. These cards will be large enough to fit in your hand and will have all pertinent rules (as well as paraphrased notations about Loadouts) on them, making Unit reference in Halo: Ground Command quick and very simple. Also like Fleet Battles, Ground Command issues Command Dice for commanders on the battlefield to drive the Command & Control side of the game. The Command/Attack/Defense symbols allow players to execute orders from their Force Commander’s Data Sheet that can often be the difference between success and failure in battle.

Then there is the Reaction Fire which is how Ground Command tries to translate the FPS element into tabletop. In order for it to work, Ground Command have created a Reaction Statistic for every Element in order to allow the game to represent a persistent form of overwatch where every Unit on the table is assumed to be engaged in the battle at all times. The Reaction Statistic has two numbers shown as X / Y on a Unit’s Profile. The X number is used if a Unit has not yet been Activated, and the Y number is used if a Unit has already been Activated. If a player wants to react to an enemy Unit’s activation, the player makes a 2D6 dice roll, adds or subtracts any modifiers and hopes they match or exceed the relevant number, if they do, they get to fire in their opponent’s activation, either at the start of a Unit’s movement or at the end.

Attempting a Reaction is not without risk, however, as you are only permitted to attempt a single reaction to an enemy Unit’s activation and whether you succeed or fail the reacting Unit gains an Activation Marker as a result. This means a player has to choose wisely which Unit will be used to React to the enemy. Sometimes it is better to React with a Unit that has already gone, especially if the Unit has a good Y-React number. For example, UNSC Warthogs excel at this, creating mobile mini-fire-bases upon which the UNSC can base their advance/defense tactics. It may also be the case that a player is unwilling to React, as it will affect their ability to surge forwards (since making a Reaction attempt gives a Unit an Activation Marker that effectively halts any chance of performing a Movement Action). In a massed battle game, where you could literally have hundreds of miniatures on the tabletop and large numbers of Armor and Flyers, you suddenly have the intensity of an FPS, where no Unit is ever truly safe. This means that even if your opponent has already activated a Unit, the Unit isn’t actually out of the game.

As you might expect, not everything has the same React X/Y. A Spartan who are the elites for the UNSC, might be capable of multiple feats of arms in a turn, firing in all directions as he/she attempts to defend a wounded soldier. A ponderous pair of Hunters are, however, far more measured and lumbering, taking time to line up shots and gear themselves for combat. This is represented by the Spartan having a React Score of 5/6, whereas a Hunter Unit is limited to 10/13.

In terms of weapons. Ground Command issue Small Arms. They are not, however, always the same in the game. For example Small Arms, when in the hands of Grunts, have one set of Small Arms Stats, and a different set of stats when used by Elites. This makes the game flow smoothly and gives each faction diversity without the minutiae of looking directly into the hands of each and every model. That is not to say that all weapons are in this category. Certain Units can upgrade one or more of their bases to be specific Fire Teams, like Grunts wielding Fuel Rod Cannons, UNSC Troopers manning HMGs, etc.

This brings us on to Weapon Loadouts. The majority of weapons in the game, including Small Arms, normally have at least one Loadout. A Loadout is a custom rule that enhances a weapon. It could be as simple as Suppression (+1) in the case of UNSC Small Arms or Point Blank in the case of Covenant Small Arms, to more complex Loadouts such as Devastating, Pinpoint, Indirect Fire, and so on. Each of these Loadouts is summarized on a Unit’s Statistic Card and detailed in the core rulebook for ease of reference. The variation of the Weapon Loadouts thus leads us to The Weapon Spread. Here each and every weapon, if you are willing to shoot it long enough can technically destroy anything in-game when it comes to Halo. This means that the game has to come up with a new system for weapons that allows for this incredible flexibility. So the Weapon Spread System is designed to do exactly that. The Weapon Spread divides the Attack Dice available to a Weapon into three distinct categories, each citing the weapon’s effectiveness against a specific target.

  • Anti-Personnel (AP) refers to a weapon’s ability to damage Infantry targets.
  • Anti-Tank (AT) refers to a weapons ability to damage Armoured targets.
  • Anti-Air (AA) refers to a weapons ability to damage Flying targets.

When firing, Ground Command uses a combination mechanic (the same as in Halo: Fleet Battles) so a Unit of 4 Bases of Grunts shooting at a Unit of UNSC Riflemen in the open (always a bad thing for the UNSC) would roll 2+2+2+2 = 8x Halo Dice using Firepower Rating 5 (the best they can get!). From this roll the Grunts would expect to get about 6 Hits, which should, on average, kill 2 Bases of UNSC Riflemen. In terms of Melee, each element rolls a number of Halo Dice equal to their Melee Statistic, but unlike Ranged Attacks, all players are looking to do is roll Skulls – all other results are ignored. Roll a Skull and you automatically do a point of Damage (or in the case of Melee vs Vehicles, 2x Skulls for a point of Damage). Heroic Saves can be attempted after that, but essentially that’s as complicated as Melee gets. If each side rolls the same number of Skulls in a round of Melee, the survivors keep fighting until someone wins – or until both sides are wiped out. Once one side is declared the winner, the loser is pushed back, leaving both sides free to React as normal. Lastly, like Fleet Battles, there is the End phase in which it is used to tally up scored Victory Points for the Game Turn. Victory Points (VPs) are generated by destroying enemy Units, where their Build Rating directly translates to VPs. VPs can also be scored according to the conditions stated in any particular scenario you might be playing. For example, the Assassination Mission from the core rulebook gives bonus VPs points for taking out anything with the Commanding Presence Loadout, whilst the Take and Hold Scenario gives additional VPs for holding Placed Objectives (usually Buildings of importance on the battlefield). The Scenarios all last a certain number of Game Turns, after which the person who has scored the most Victory Points wins.

Last but not least, we cannot forget Flyers which are crucial for tactical victory in Ground Command. In Ground Command all flying vehicles are separated into two categories: Hover Flyers and Air Support Mission Flyers.

Hover Flyers are treated in the same way as any other battlefield Unit, moving shooting, reacting in the same way as any other model. They are targeted using a weapon’s Anti-Air (AA) Statistic and tend to be fast moving and pretty aggressive in their use. Examples of these include Banshees or Falcons, which may be seen operating in Units with more than one model, or be individuals, depending on their Build Rating and the Battle Group they are part of.

Air Support Mission Flyers tend to be far larger than their standard Hover counterparts, dominating the sky with their bulk and durability. These Flyers are simply too large to remain on the table turn to turn, and instead resolve their movement, the execution of their chosen mission and extraction in a simple strafing method. Examples of these flyers include the UNSC Pelican and Covenant Phantom.

When using an Air Support Mission Flyers, players activate the model in the same way as any other Unit, declaring a Mission type for the Flyer. This Mission will have an attached Victory Points cost, which is given to the enemy directly after the Mission is announced. This give-and-take aspect to Air Support Mission Flyers makes the taking of these large models very balanced – you get a huge reward, but your opponent gets a strategic bonus if you saturate the battlefield with too many. This means that protracted use of aerial assets will cause a drain on the player’s chances of winning an outright victory, but execution of these Missions will often be vital for continued success in the combat operation. So balancing if, when and how you bring in your Air Support Mission Flyers is a skill that will take time for players to develop. There are a variety of Missions available to Flyers of this type. Combat Drop Missions allow players to bring in reserves. Supply Drop Missions allow the placement of a Supply Drop Marker that increases the Reaction Statistics of all friendly ground models within range. Ground Attack Missions allow you to target ground Units with increased effect. Reinforcement Missions allow you to bring a damaged Unit of Infantry (and in some cases Armor) back up to full strength, and Air Patrols allow you to place your Flyer ‘on-station’, ready to intercept enemy flyers when they activate.

Gallery[edit]

Mythic: the fan made Halo tabletop RPG also exists... for whatever that is worth

Spartan stats[edit]

For those who wanted to put a Spartan in tabletop for some reason, here are the rules. Note: The Rules assigned here are based off of 6th and 7th Edition Warhammer 40k, this has not been updated for 9th Edition, nor for lore accuracy with the universe itself.

WS 4 / BS 4 / S 4 / T 3 / W 1 / I 4 / A 1 / Ld 8 / Sv 3+/6++

Composition

3 Spartans
1 Spartan - Squad Leader (Ld 9)

Unit Type

Infantry

Wargear
  • MJOLNIR Armor
  • MA5D Assault Rifle
  • Combat Knife
  • Frag Grenades (Offensive)
Special Rules
  • At All Costs - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Spartans gain the Stubborn rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.
  • Shoot First, Ask Later - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Spartans gain the Hit & Run rule from the Warhammer 40k Core Rulebook.
Options
  • May Include up to 4 additional Spartan- for 13 points per Model
  • Any model in the squad may take an Onboard AI for 3 points per Model
  • For every 4 models in a squad, one model may replace their MA5C Rifle with one of the following:
    • M45 Tactical Shotgun (Shotgun)...............................6 points per Model
    • SRS99-S5 AM (Sniper Rifle)..................10 points per Model
    • M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)........15 points per Model
    • M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points per model
  • Each Spartan squad must choose to be one of the following:
    • Spartan Is - Squad gain the Eternal Warrior and Feel No Pain USRs for 10pts per model. Role a d6 for each model, on results of 5+ the model also gains the Crazed special rule.
    • Spartan IIs - Squad gain +1 Ballistic Skill and the Split Fire USR for 4 points per model. The squad may choose to become an Elite Choice.
    • Spartan IIIs - Squad gain the Stealth and Infiltrate USRs for 3 points per model.
    • Spartan IVs - Squad gain the Hatred and Fleet USRs for 3 points per model.


SPARTAN ARMORY
  • MJOLNIR Armor - Created parallel to the Spartan-II Program, the MJOLNIR Armor is a sealed system, capable of extravehicular activity or operations in toxic atmosphere. Weighing over half a metric ton, the armor's shell is constructed in overlapping layers of Titanium-A plating and highly durable ballistic alloys of remarkable strength. It has even been augmented with a refractive coating capable of dispersing a limited amount of energy weapon strikes. The Spartan gains a 3+ Armor Save.
    • MJOLNIR armor is equipped with a full-body recharging energy shield that was reverse-engineered from captured alien technology. The shield itself is utterly transparent and does not hinder sight in any way but briefly flashes a greenish-gold color when hit. The Spartans gain a 6+ Invulnerable Save.
  • Onboard AI - All MJOLNIR Mk V models or better feature a complex crystalline matrix within their neural interface, which Cortana likened in structure to the computer systems of the Pillar of Autumn. An AI construct increases tactical awareness, provides an indispensable guide, serving almost as a co-pilot and navigator, and multiplies the Spartan's already phenomenal reflexes. A Spartan equipped with an Onboard AI increases their Initiative value by 1.
  • MA5D Assault Rifle - The MA5C has an attached electronics suite that provides information on rounds remaining in the magazine, compass heading, and capable of wireless up-link with MJOLNIR systems for improved accuracy. Made of Titanium Alloy and Polymers, the rifle performs well in a variety of environments. Having a rate of fire of 650 rounds a minute, and chambering the old-school M118 7.62x51mm NATO Armor Piercing, Full Metal Jacket Rounds with a 36-round detachable box magazine. Though lacking strength and stopping power, these rounds are designed to pierce most conventional ballistic body armor.
    • It has the following stats: Range 18" / Strength 3 / AP 6 / Type Assault 3
  • M45 Tactical Shotgun - is a pump-action, magazine-fed, dual tubular non-detachable type weapon. It uses the Soellkraft 8-Gauge Magnum Shotgun Shell, a large round capable of phenomenal stopping power and made possible to fire with little recoil due to the gun's magnetorheological recoil dampening system, allowing it to be fired by anyone.
    • It has the following stats: Range 12" / Strength 4 / AP - / Type Assault 2 Rending
  • Sniper Rifle SRS99-S5 AM - aka the "SR System 99-S5 Anti-Matériel", an upgrade from the S2s, it is a semi-automatic UNSC sniper rifle that fires 14.5 x 114mm APFSDS (Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot, with a tungsten or depleted uranium core) from a 4-round magazine. It is fitted with a variable-magnification Oracle scope that allows for 5x and 10x magnification. When looking through it, the scope shows a target's distance and elevation. Designed originally as an anti-materiel rifle, it has proven effective against the highly durable armor of the Covenant and hardlight construction of the Prometheans.
    • It has the following stats: Range 48" / Strength X/ AP 4 (When firing at vehicles, the rifle adds D6 to its Armor penetration value) / Type Heavy 1, Sniper, Anti Material.

Anti Material: Shots fired from this weapon rend on a 4+.

  • M41 Rocket Launcher - aka the "M41 SSR" fires the M19 102mm HEAP (High Explosive Armor Piercing) shaped charge rockets. The launcher sports a 2x scope and can fire rockets over long distances with devastating accuracy, and its two launch tubes allow the wielder to fire two rockets before needing to reload. The rocket launcher spreads a huge amount of damage over a large area. It is capable of taking out entire groups of infantry at any range and is effective against most vehicles.
    • It has the following stats: Range 48" / Strength 7 / AP 3 / Type Heavy 2, Blast
  • M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle - The Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (abbreviated AV M6 G/GNR) also known as the Spartan Laser, is the UNSC's first man-portable, shoulder-fired direct energy weapon. Firing a chemical laser after a short charge period, a well placed shot can destroy even heavy vehicles with ease. Infantry-level targets are simply obliterated.
    • It has the following stats: Range 36" / Strength 9 / AP 2 / Type Heavy 1, Ignores Cover

-Targeting beam: The Spartan Laser projects an obvious laser target, any enemy units that can, may choose to fire Overwatch at the firers unit as if it was the assault phase.

Spartans may take the M831 Troop Transport (M831 TT) or M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle (M12 LRV) as their dedicated transport.

Dedicated Transports[edit]

  • M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle - 40 points
  • M831 Troop Transport - 30 points

Armour (Front) 10 / Armour (Side) 10 / Armour (Rear) 10 / HP 2

Unit Type

Vehicle (Fast, Open-Topped, Transport)

Wargear
  • M46 Light Anti-Aircraft Gun (M12 LRV)
  • None (M831 TT)
Transport Capacity
  • Four (M12 LRV)
  • Eight (M831 TT)

The ubiquitous M12 and its troop transport variant the M831, are the UNSC's primary multi-role ground vehicles. They are used anywhere from scouting and reconnaissance to fast vehicle transport, forming an integral part of the UNSC's armored vehicle fleet for fifty years. It is a highly mobile, all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering, all-weather vehicle, capable of traversing all but the most dangerous of terrain. The M831 features a rear bed with an expanded seating compartment, while the M12 features a rear mounted anti-aircraft gun (the M46 LAAG) that can also be used against infantry.

M46 LAAG - The M46 Light Anti-Aircraft Gun (LAAG) is a tripled-barreled, electric-powered, linkless, belt-fed weapon. The LAAG fires the 12.7x99mm (.50 cal) armor penetrating rounds and can fire at a rate of 1200 rounds per minute.

  • It has the following stats: Range 48" / Strength 5 / AP 5 / Type Heavy 4, Skyfire


- The M12 may choose to replace its M46 LAAG with a M68 Gauss Cannon for 35 points

M68 Gauss Cannon - Officially known as the M68 Asynchronous Linear-Induction Motor, this heavy weapon fires 25mm hypersonic speed projectiles via asynchronous magnetic acceleration. The kinetic energy of which is enough to pierce even the heaviest of armor plating or completely obliterate unprotected matter.

  • It has the following stats: Range 60" / Strength 8 / AP 1 / Type Heavy 1

Independent Character[edit]

HQ: Sergeant Major Avery Johnson - 130 points.


WS 3 / BS 4 / S 3 / T 3 / W 3 / I 4 / A 3 / Ld 10 / Sv 4+

Unit Type

Infantry (Independent Character)

Wargear
  • ODST Battle Armor
  • M45 Tactical Shotgun
  • Combat Knife
  • Frag Grenades (Offensive)
Warlord Trait

Inspiring Presence (See 7th Edition Corerule Book)

Special Rules
  • Spartan I - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson has the Eternal Warrior and Feel No Pain USRs.
  • At All Costs - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Sergeant Major Johnson gains the Stubborn USR.
  • Shoot First, Ask Later - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Sergeant Major Johnson gains the Hit & Run USR.
  • Move Like You Got A Purpose - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson and all models in his unit have the Crusader USR.
  • H.E.-Spewing Divine Intervention - Once per turn, Sergeant Major Avery Johnson can call down an strategic artillery strike from off the field. It is treated as a shooting attack with the following profile:
    • Range Infinite / Strength 8 / AP 4 / Type Ordnance 1, Barrage, Blast

May replace his primary weapon (M45 Shotgun) with of one special weapons from the following list:

  • MA5D (Assault Rifle)........................................Free
  • BR85HB (Battle Rifle)...............................6 points
  • SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................10 points
  • M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................15 points
  • M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points


HQ: Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 - 175 points.


WS 5 / BS 6 / S 4 / T 3 / W 4 / I 5 / A 4 / Ld 10 / Sv 3+/6++

Unit Type

Infantry (Independent Character)

Wargear
  • MJOLNIR Armor
  • BR85HB Battle Rifle
  • Combat Knife
  • Frag Grenades (Offensive)
  • Cortana (Counts as On Board AI)
Warlord Trait

Target Priority (See 7th Edition Corerule Book)

Special Rules
  • Spartan II - The Master Chief has the Split Fire USR.
  • At All Costs - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. The Master Chief gains the Stubborn USR.
  • Shoot First, Ask Later - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. The Master Chief gains the Hit & Run USR.
  • Heroes Never Die - The Master Chief gains the It Will Not Die and Eternal Warrior USRs, in addition he may fire heavy weapons at full ballistic skill even if the unit moves but unlike the Relentless universal special rule he may only ever fire one weapon per turn.
  • He May Not Be The Strongest - The Master Chief and all models in his unit gain the Fearless USR, and the Master Chief may re-roll failed saving throws of any kind.

May replace his primary weapon (BR85HB Battle Rifle) with of one special weapons from the following list:

  • MA5D (Assault Rifle)........................................Free
  • M45 Tactical Shotgun(Shotgun)...............................6 points
  • SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................10 points
  • M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................15 points
  • M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points

- BR85HB - a.k.a. the BR85HB Service Rifle is a gas-operated, magazine-fed battle rifle. It is a select-fire weapon optimized for long-range firing of three-round bursts, though it is capable of semi-automatic and fully automatic fire. It chambers the large 9.5x40mm M634 Experimental High-Powered Semi-Armor-Piercing round, abbreviated as M634 X-HP-SAP.

    • It has the following stats: Range 24" / Strength 3 / AP 6 / Type Assault 2, Shred


Due to being at the forefront of many battles against various alien species, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 may take exotic and advanced weaponry not usually issued to UNSC military forces, he may select a secondary special weapon from an extended list:

  • Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon (Suppressor)............40 Points
  • Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon (Light Rifle)...........40 Points
  • Z-750 Special Application Sniper Rifle (Binary Rifle)..............45 Points
  • Z-390 High-Explosive Munitions Rifle (Incinerator Cannon).......55 Points

- Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon - a.k.a. the Suppressor, it is a fully automatic weapon employing a conventional coil set architecture that fires bolts of hard light in rapid succession. It is well-known for its high rate of fire and effectiveness against all organic matter.

    • It has the following stats: Range 18" / Strength 4 / AP 4 / Type Assault 6

- Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon - a.k.a. the Light Rifle, it is a scoped, mid-range to long-range weapon using the diffused combination of particle acceleration and hardened photonic matter that fires a three-shot burst of luminescent orange hardlight rounds, perfect for taking down shielded or heavily armored targets.

    • It has the following stats: Range 30" / Strength 4 / AP 4 / Type Assault 2, Rending

- Z-750 Special Application Sniper Rifle (Binary Rifle) a.k.a. the Binary Rifle, it is equipped with twin, core-mounted particle accelerators which fire ionized particle beams containing jacketed antimatter particles. The incredible power and accuracy of this weapon make it highly lethal, allowing it to neutralize most targets with a single shot, disintegrating the body of the target.

    • It has the following stats: Range 48" / Strength 7 / AP 2 / Type Heavy 1, Fleshbane

- Z-390 High-Explosive Munitions Rifle (Incineration Cannon) a.k.a the Incineration Cannon, this ultra-heavy shoulder-mounted cannon fires antimatter-infused streams of concentrated explosive particles that cause incredible damage on impact, obliterating infantry and even light vehicles with even a glancing blow.

    • It has the following stats: Range 36" / Strength 9 / AP 1 / Type Heavy 1, Blast, Ionizing.

Ionizing: If a model suffers a wound from a weapon with the Ionizing special rule and before Feel No Pain rolls are made, the bearer rolls a d6, on a result of 4+ the model suffers Instant Death with no saves of any kind allowed including Feel No Pain, In addition Necron reanimation protocols may not be used on models which were removed from play by this special rule.

Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 may choose to switch between firing his primary weapon or secondary weapon in every shooting phase; only one of the weapons can be fired per turn.


HQ: Agent Jameson Locke - 165 points.


WS 5 / BS 5 / S 4 / T 3 / W 4 / I 6 / A 4 / Ld 10 / Sv 3+/6++

Unit Type

Infantry (Independent Character)

Wargear
  • MJOLNIR Armor
  • MA5D
  • Combat Knife
  • Frag Grenades (Offensive)
  • On Board AI
Warlord Trait

Divide to Conquer (See 7th Edition Corerule Book)

Special Rules
  • Spartan IV - Agent Jameson Locke has the Hatred and Fleet USRs.
  • At All Costs - As per their tactical doctrines, Spartans are combat veterans of independent action and deep infiltration missions. Agent Jameson Locke gains the Stubborn USR.
  • Shoot First, Ask Later - Spartans specialize in ranged tactics, and prefer not to engage powerful enemies head-on. Spartans will more often than not disengage from melee combat to use their ranged weapons instead. Agent Jameson Locke gains the Hit & Run USR.
  • Execute Battle Plan - Agent Jameson Locke and all models in his unit have Outflank.
  • Target Identified - Agent Jameson Locke and all models in his unit have the Precision Shot USR.

May replace his primary weapon (MA5D assault rifle) with of one special weapons from the following list:

  • BR85HB (Battle Rifle)........................................Free
  • SRS99D-S2 AM (Sniper Rifle).......................6 points
  • M45 Tactical Shotgun(Shotgun)...............................10 points
  • M41 SSR MAV/AW (Missile Launcher)...................15 points
  • M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle (Spartan Laser)....35 points
  • Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920 (Rail Gun).............35 points

- Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920 - A.k.a the ARC-920, it is a compact-channel linear accelerator that fires the powerful M645 FTP-HE (16x65mm ferric-tungsten high-explosive round) at incredible velocity. The charge time is approximately two seconds and can be fired with only a partial charge at the cost of lesser damage.

It has the following stats: Range 48" / Strength 6 / AP 1 / Type Assault 1, Shred

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