UKTC Halo: Flashpoint Event Report

Cleric here, with a run-down of the first large scale Halo Flashpoint tournament, at the Nottingham GT, hosted by the incredible team at UKTC.

On January 11^th and 12^th, we put on the very first larger scale Halo Flashpoint event, inviting players to join us as we kick off Organised play and bring Halo Flashpoint to the competitive circuit.  Since launching last November, Halo Flashpoint has become a regular game for many game stores worldwide, with casual games being played every week, but at its heart, there beats a very good competitive game.  We entertained over 40 gamers over the two days, with many participants playing both days.

The Tournament Pack

For this event to run as smoothly as possible, I designed a Tournament pack that showed you how to build your team, picking from your models so that you had 4 models, and no more than 2 of any single profile card.  Players then played through a set list of Scenarios:

• Strongholds

  • This played as per the Rulebook, but with a fixed position for the VP counters which added up to 18 to win the round.

• Slayer

  • This was exactly as per the rulebook, up to 10 VP to win.

• Oddball: Reloaded

  • The first of our custom scenarios. Throughout playing and play-testing, we have found that oddball can be incredibly fun and provide a good casual game.  It’s not always that friendly for a competitive game though, so to make it a little less one sided, the Oddball respawns in it's start position from the beginning of Round 2 onwards.  This means you can never hide the ball in the corner, or just use Master Chief to run rings around your opponent!

• Capture The Flag

  • Again, we modified this one slightly to make the Flag an equipped weapon. This then has a profile, which means you cannot carry a pickup weapon and the flag, and you can’t shoot whilst holding the flag.  What it does introduce though is the ability to grab the flag, and drop it in your cube, for your team to come and take it further on its journey.  This changed the mode up entirely, and allows for a faster, and more aggressive game mode. Each flag capture was bumped to 3 VP instead of 1, and in future I can see this bumping even more to 6VP (Allowing for it reach the 18 point consistency mark for all the Scenarios in the OP setting)

Custom Map Pack

Modifying  scenarios alone will not provide you entirely with a fair playground though, so to match those scenarios, we gave out a preconfigured map for each one.  This allowed us to play to the strength of the missions, but also negate any negatives of them to provide an even level for both teams.  The Map pack can be found here.

To recreate these maps, all you will need is the base terrain from two Recon sets, or two of the new UNSC base terrain packs.

If you'd like to recreate these maps, our Pre-order is still live for the terrain pack needed for these; you will need 1 x Recon (Or Spartan) Set, plus one of the new UNSC Base Terrain Sets.

Achievements!

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle of how to bring Halo to the competitive scene was to look at the system used to measure success in the game itself, and to feel like you are playing a true adaption of the video game, we introduced Achievements.  They act as a secondary mission to always give you something to fight for, even in a game where you feel you can’t win, you can always improve your overall event result by trying to always get stuck in.

Every round was measured by adding the Victory Points scored in a game, then adding achievements, then a win loss modifier.  For this event, as it was the first, we used the new OP Kit which comes with these sheets and scoring system built in, and this was:

• Scenario – from 9-18 points
• Win + 5, Draw + 2, Loss +1
• Up to 12 Achievement points

This score combined was then the Tournament Points awarded per round.

This is an innovative and new scoring system to judge overall performance of the event, as opposed to simply win or lose, which as a game system is very difficult to do – Halo is not only a new system to the competitive scene, it brings with it a new scoring method too!

The Winners

We saw a good mix of lists, from Banished Elites, the standard four Recon Spartans, and many teams utilising as many combinations as people could think up, including the legendary character himself, Master Chief.

Our Top 3 for Saturday were:

*(Due to a calculation error, James was awarded 4th place on the day, but after correcting that he was in fact 3rd)

And for Sunday:

A special well done to Isaac, who managed to come in 1^st place both days, and for Dylan who remained the only player to be unbeaten over both days combined!

From Left to Right, Isaac, Dylan, Haydn, and some Cleric bloke...

Sunday saw a much closer finish and showed the importance of trying to grab as many Achievements as you can whilst also trying to win the game – it came down to just 1 point between 1^st and 2^nd place!  The advantage of “stress testing” a new system like this is all the feedback you can build up from the event and afterwards, and thanks to everyone who commented and gave advice or opinions whilst playing.  That feedback allows us to continually develop and come up with a great system that brings Halo Flashpoint to the world.

Future Tweaks

In future, the system will modify the win score to the following:

• Scenario – 18 points (Configured Scenarios that are worth 18 points to win)
• Win + 10, Draw + 5, Loss +2
• Up to 12 Achievement points (In reality, you will normally only get up to 10)

This score combined was then the Tournament Points awarded per round, and in theory offer a maximum of 40 points to a player.  This will place some emphasis on Achievements, but they will still only award roughly 25% of your score.  This focus on Primary Scenario and Secondary Achievements will no doubt grow as new Organised Packs are released.

Points Make Prizes

Prizes included Acrylic Game tokens, Exclusive Trophy Sculpts, UKTC Medals and Pin Badges,  Neoprene gaming mats, and even our own Rum!

Speaking of the world… North America is up next with Adepticon, which is already starting to sell out and has multiple Halo Events already filled!  It’s going to be an incredible experience for everyone.

Final Results in Full

Saturday Final Results:

Sunday Final Results:

And finally, a very big thank you for our in person Spartan 011 - Mark Elster: