If you, much like the other millions of gamers, are hyped up for Halo 3, and deservingly so, then chances are you might have heard of the Halo ActionClix. The Halo ActionClix are a brand new table-top game, looking to bring the virtual battlefield of the UNSC versus the Covenant to your kitchen table. If you are unfamiliar with the -clix family, they are a group of collectible table-top miniatures produced by WizKids. If you've heard of HeroClix, which are WizKid's comic book based miniatures, the Halo ActionClix are basically HeroClix with Halo characters. Both games are very similar in play, but the Halo ActionClix are significantly different in that... Ok, they're not that different. Besides being from different factions, I wouldn't be surprised if people had HeroClix vs. ActionClix battles because of their similarities. That doesn't mean they don't have their differences, and quite frankly, they don't need to.

The first thing I noticed when I gleefully opened up my package of the little soldiers was that the character models of the Spartans were very well done. WizKids never ceases to amaze me with the job they do in putting detail into their miniatures. I’m almost positive if one of the Spartan soldiers threw a miniature Spartan at a group of enemies, they’d go for the miniature instead because of its likeness to the real thing. Probably not, but that’s how good the Spartans look. In the first booster pack that I purchased, I received four characters. Two were regular Spartans, a red one and a blue one, a regular marine, and a Master Chief with a bent sniper rifle. Unlike the Spartans, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the paint job of the marine, but that’s what the guy gets for not studying hard enough in school to be a Spartan. Along with the figures was a map, punch-out tokens, and cards which were specific to the figures I received. The cards were good quality, glossy prints, which held the important information of the character’s special abilities, as well as all the information that is held on the character’s base.

The cards are a great addition to the game because they give you all the information you need for only the characters you’re using, unlike with HeroClix, where they have color coded abilities in which you must look through the manual to see which ability it is. If you can remember all of the abilities with their corresponding colors, congratulations, you are a greater man than I. But I cannot, so the cards make the gameplay much easier. One nit-pick I have with the cards is the character pictures on them. It looks like they took pictures of the miniatures with an old disposable camera, scanned the pictures then cut the picture of the miniature and pasted it onto the card using Photoshop. Some of them are pretty blurry and low quality, and they’re not exactly complementing of the figurines.

Back to the miniature models; my collection is mostly comprised of UNSC units (Master Chief, Spartans, Marines) but I do have some of the Covenant. The Elites look fantastic as well do the Brutes, and the Grunts are nicely made too. The promo pack I received for pre-ordering Halo 3 at Target contained an Arbiter and a Master Chief and they were probably the best looking ones I’ve seen yet. There’s such wonderful detail for little figures. In addition, the Flood characters, while I haven’t seen any in person, look pretty damn crazy. If people were looking to collect these more so than to play with them, I wouldn’t blame them.

If you’re familiar with the HeroClix rules, you’ll catch on to ActionClix right away. Each character has a value for speed, attack, defense, and damage. The speed, as you guessed, determines how many spaces the unit can move. When attacking, you roll two 6-sided dice and add that number to your character’s attack value. If the outcome is greater than the defender’s defense value, it’s a successful hit and does the damage indicated by the damage value. The damage value indicates how many clicks it causes if it successfully hits. The health of the figure is determined by how many clicks of damage it can take. What that means, is that every time a unit takes damage, you turn its dial to the right for each point of damage. When the dial indicates that the unit is dead… well that’s self explanatory.

The combat system is pretty basic, and nothing too complicated, which is good because it has a learning curve where you can pick the figures up and play with them almost immediately. Each figure has special abilities which can only be utilized during a certain level of their health meter. This means that every time a unit takes damage and spins around their dial, they might wind up with new abilities. Abilities are color coded and can affect all of the values, whether it’s positively or negatively. The abilities can be found on their character cards, along with any bonuses the weapon the character is carrying. Characters can also throw grenades, given they have any, which you can tell by them having a grenade icon on their character card. When a character throws a grenade, they throw it at a target square, and the grenade hits that space plus all 8 spaces touching it, damaging any characters within the vicinity friendly or not. Once again, there is nothing here that differentiates it from HeroClix too much.

The one aspect of Halo ActionClix that makes it unique is the ability to change characters’ weapons. If you have a Master Chief that has pistols in the game and you have another Master Chief in your reserves (side-line) that has a battle rifle, you can replace the one on field with the one with a battle rifle. I think this is definitely a cool aspect of the game and definitely adds some strategy to the game, because you might be fighting someone close range who has pistols, and then they pull out a shotgun and blast your ass. Plus, this means you’ll probably be using all of your characters that you get in the booster packs, other than selecting a few to play with and putting the rest away on your bookshelf to gather dust, a la HeroClix.

Other neat features that are in Halo ActionClix are the use of vehicles, Portable Plasma Cannons, and spawn points. Halo would not be the same without the vehicles, and the same goes for the ActionClix. I don’t have any as of now, but according to about.com, “Halo ActionClix vehicles are on a special larger Clix base and use unique game mechanics. The vehicles are more powerful than single figures: they have new attack options and they become wreckage on the battlefield when destroyed.” Separate vehicle packs are being sold such as the Warthog sets while others are coming soon such as the Banshee pack. There’s even a Scarab, which is the biggest Clix figure ever produced, and it looks awesome. It comes at the hefty $250 dollar price tag, but to the elite few that are hardcore about their game playing/collecting, it would be well worth it for this highly detailed, gargantuan two foot beast. The PPCs are stationary weaponry on the field that is placed by the players. If a character goes to the square that the PPC is located, they get to use that as a weapon instead of their normal weapons. Much like in the game, when a character kills the character using the PPC they have a chance to destroy it as well, and when it’s gone it’s gone for the rest of the game. Each player selects a square on the map for a spawn point, and it’s exactly what it sounds like; your characters start at this location. Also, much like the game, when a character dies it is not out of the game. It is taken off the playing field and can later be respawned at the spawn point or replaced with a character of equal or lesser point value. This is why the Halo ActionClix game is so great; because it stays completely true to the Halo video game in almost every aspect.

I can honestly say that I look forward to the future of the Halo ActionClix. I’m enjoying them from day one and I am sure they will keep my interest in the future. While I’m pretty sure only a select few amount of Halo gamers will also be interested in the Halo ActionClix, I’m sure they will do fairly well, especially now that Bungie is going into the RTS genre with Halo Wars (which looks fantastic, but that’s something to discuss another time). It’s not going to sway the hardcore HeroClix players to start playing ActionClix instead, but for the newbies who are Halo players and unfamiliar with table-tops might just find this game to be their portal to a new world.

(Review and TC Web Site: http://hungrywolfsites.com/teamchink/Reviews/TabletopRPGBoar...)