Halo: Salvos, or Salvos & Sacraments to be more compliant

17 Mar, 2026

I've been agonizing over how to do more Halo wargaming/kriegspiel stuff for a while, but I think I've finally had a tighter idea so I don't agonize about the Infinite ways I could go about it.

A solo space/ground warfare game about a Covenant fleet arriving at a UNSC world, with varying difficulties as directions for rolling on tables to set up the situation. What space and ground forces you have, the situation of the planet, basic features, maybe a very basic point based dice drop map for the purposes of ground combat/orbital bombardment, etc.

Range likely would not be too in depth. In space, the UNSC are either far enough away where closer range Covenant weapons can't reach them, or they are. The space section would likely be about managing alternating MAC gun salvos as effectively as possible to keep up the pressure, maybe with some sort of dice placement with thresholds (like Mythic Bastionland) going along with as well for things like a very powerful MAC strike or salvo allowing a SHIVA nuke to pass through shields that weren't entirely destroyed, among other things.

A stupid table for certain weapons against shields vs armor might be amusing, but that depends on how abstracted this is. Here's my sorry excuse for a table regarding UNSC ships so far.

Ground battles I'm not sure about yet, but they'd certainly be intertwined with space battles. If you're lucky enough to roll a Orbital Defense Platform (Super MAC stations), perhaps something the non-player enemy (The Covenant) can do is to slip forces past to attack the ground based power station. UNSC ships could no doubt provide significant ground support with Archer missiles, or God forbid, MAC rounds in atmosphere, but that would likely require pulling a frigate away from the space battle that will define how tenable the battle down dirtside really is. Evacuation of civilians is likely to be important as well, and maybe Spartans could be a rare result to roll as far as what ground forces you gain? Maybe there's a random event table with good or bad things as this is ongoing?

With a Covenant victory in space, a "why hasn't the Covenant glassed the planet yet?" table would probably make sense, as to let the game go on a bit longer. Likely some sort of Forerunner artifact table and the nature of them, something UNSC forces can take advantage of if aware of it maybe? Obviously without this leverage the world will be glassed mercilessly, and spaceship support may be used anyways in places the Covenant knows for sure are not home to any Forerunner relics.

This is for sure the embryo of an idea rather than having firm ideas for how this will mechanically work, but I think the scope may be clear enough where this project is neither a pipe dream or impossible. I'll see once I finish it in a few years + 2 weeks. Filing the serial numbers off will probably be required as well, but c'est la vie.

Hope you enjoyed my rant.