So, I was at the local game store a few weeks ago playing Armada, and I got to thinking: "You know what would be cool? If my second favorite sci-fi franchise had a fleet battling game". Lo and behold, I was browsing the games and I saw Halo: Fleet Battles sitting on the shelf. Thankfully, I withheld my terrible impulse buying and went home to see some reviews of the product. The reviews are helpful, but I like hearing from other tabletop gamers about their experiences and opinions too.

I got into Star Wars Armada because I really enjoy the capital ships of Star Wars duking it out in massive space battles. Halo has some really cool ship designs (especially on the Covenant's side, which I'd probably always play as) which I'd love to play with in such huge space battles. However, Fleet Battles is made by Spartan Games, and so it uses a very different game system.

So I want to know if anyone here on the Armada forums has played Fleet Battles and if they think it's worth the buy from someone who really enjoys playing Armada. Is the game too complex for someone used to the Armada game system? Does the game give the same sense of epic capital ship combat that Armada tends to?

I have both, I do not think it is too complex. For the most part I found the rules to be fairly simple. I do not know if it gives the same sense of epic capital ship combat. What I get from Armada is a very small naval engagement with no more than a squadrons of ships, with HFB I can field an actual fleet of ships. Ships die fast in HFB and so do not think of them as ships in Armada. Overall I think I like HFB better, but no one in my area plays, so I have to provide everything if I want someone to play. If you have a store that stocks it that is a great thing to help there. Hope this helps.

You have to assemble the models just in case that may be an issue.

Okay I played 2 games. The core box I got is the 80 pounds version. There is a cheaper starter box for 50 pounds coming or out already I forgot which.

The game is pretty fun with massive dice rolls. The ship combat is the highlight however there are Wing (squadron) elements with some boarding elements. I didn't get much swing with the bombers and fighters and the dogfighting often got my interceptors killed shooting down bombers. XD

Other than that, the bases are flimsy which is annoying. That is my only big gripe about the game.

Can you give a quick summary of the basic mechanics?

You first assemble your fleet. Each base is called an element, multiple elements form a battlegroup which consist of a minimum of one capital element and a non capital element. The elements are composed of up to 6 build rating. Various ships have such a rating. Each battlegroup brings a combined hanger value of wings represents by stacks of tokens 2-5 amount. Your weapons fire in a group by similar name for your battle group.

For a turn you first roll order dice for unique effects later ina turn depending on your commander. After which you role initiative which is rolled every round. Following the order dice phase is the wing phase where two or more players take turns activating wings. After that you move your battle groups taking turns again. Depending on the element you can turn, move, turn or other combinations of when you turn depending on the element size. When you attack you gather dice as a group per primary and secondary weaponry. You roll all MAC dice in one singular attack or all plasma lances in a singular attack from multiple elements. Once that is done, you do boarding craft if your in range. After which you do some light repairs and start over again teh turn.

It looks like at the time of this post that GameNerdz has it on sale. Though no Main core set, the ensign 2 player pack is a mini version without the large capital ships. Only medium sized ones. Just 55$ with free shipping.

Also I believe they are going to errata a lot of the overlays since they don't quite have the balance right with some ships. Like the Valiant being inferior to a Supported Marathon with more cost. So keep that in mind.