Feet First Into Hell Review — Dropping in Hot for Halo: Flashpoint

Halo: Flashpoint — Feet First Into Hell Expansion Set

ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) are the elite fighting force for the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) within the Halo universe. First appearing in Halo 2, ODSTs have become a staple in Halo games ever since, including their own spin-off game in 2009. To commemorate their numerous appearances and styles, Mantic Games’ latest Halo: Flashpoint release is Feet First Into Hell, featuring the ODSTs. This expansion includes 16 ODST miniatures (including the ‘Air Assault’ Bullfrogs from Halo: Reach), New Mombasa map and terrain, ODST-themed dice, and the Limited Edition versions of both Gunnery Sergeant Buck and Captain Dare.

Since this is an expansion set, you will need a starter set and Fireteam Building rules, available in the Mantic Games app or in the  War Games Expansion.

Game Mechanics

Halo: Flashpoint is based on Mantic’s original skirmish game, Deadzone. Like Deadzone, Halo: Flashpoint is predominantly focused on small-team skirmish fighting, where players move their pieces on a cube-based terrain system, eliminating cumbersome range rulers or tape measures and allowing players to focus more on movement and tactics to complete their objectives. 

Halo: Flashpoint plays similarly to a board game version of Halo multiplayer, wherein Spartans duel it out on a small battlefield, picking up better weapons on the field and respawning when they get taken down. One of the greatest features of the game is the respawning mechanics, where pieces that are removed from the board get to come back later. This really removes the sting of losing your plastic soldier on the battlefield.

With the addition of Atriox and the Banished, and now the ODSTs, the game is expanding more into the factions from the campaigns and Firefight. If Halo: Flashpoint is successful, Mantic has expressed interest from the beginning in wanting to produce larger-scale games, where players can include bigger forces and vehicles.

With more expansion packs now available, players can build skirmish teams with weapon loadouts using a points system. This opens up a lot more customization options for players to build teams to their liking for combat, objectives, or a blend thereof. The ODSTs expand the build even further, providing the UNSC players a reinforcement of fresh units and new tactics.

Feet First Into Hell - Miniatures, Cards, and Terrain

Feet First Into Hell adds the first non-Spartan UNSC units to the game. Much like their video game versions, ODSTs are designed to move fast, flank enemies, secure faraway objectives, and pack a punch. Also like their video game counterparts, they don’t have the same survivability as a Spartan or an Elite, so to achieve victory, you got to hit the enemy hard and fast and get out.

Box Packaging

The box comes neatly packaged. Even though the game tokens and terrain come on a punch-out sheet, there is ample storage within the box for everything, including an additional empty plastic tray for the punch-out terrain. I’d recommend getting some small craft ziplock bags to help keep the tokens separate for easy setup, although there aren’t an exorbitant number of tokens. If you already have a storage system for your other Flashpoint minis, these tokens will fit right in.

While it’s purely an aesthetic thing, I love the colors Mantic chose for the dice they included in this set!

ODST Miniatures

As they have been doing with the most recent sets, these soft plastic miniatures are, by default, grey. Unlike really soft plastic pieces, this plastic allows for enough detail to come through, offering opportunities for painting in some fun details on combat knives and backpacks. If you ordered the box set to get Sgt. Buck (aka Nathan Fillion, aka Malcom Reynolds) and Cpt. Dare (aka Tricia Helfer, aka Number Six), these models are made with Mantic’s Mastercraft resin, like Fireteam Phoenix. The resin allows for a lot more detail to come through, and so these two are some truly wonderful models.

ODST Unit & Weapon Cards

There are eight different ODSTs in the box, with two copies of each. These variations cover a wide assortment of ODSTs players come across during the campaign missions in the video games. There are four ‘classes’ within the set: Leader, Special Purpose Trooper, Air Assault ‘Bullfrog’, and Firebreak, and two versions of each of these classes. Within the classes, the starting loadouts and keywords are slightly different, but are all kind of generally the same. So there are a lot of options for how you’d build out your team, specifically focusing on mobility or firepower.

Most notable is the health and shields for the ODSTs; they have one fewer HP, and they don’t start with shields. This, of course, makes sense, but also makes them a little squishy compared to Brutes and Spartans. So don’t make your ODST a Leroy Jenkins here. With these stats, it will also be interesting to see how they design Grunts and Jackals, which are slated for release in the near future. Will they be as squishy? Children don’t cheer when ODSTs get domed by a headshot like they do with Grunts, so we shall see.

Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck and Captain Veronica Dare bring a lot, especially with Dare’s special Order ‘Your Orders Have Changed’, which allows you to change two of your command dice to sides of your choice (after rolling and rerolling). Buck has three weapons for his initial loadout, and also has a pretty snazzy 3+ for his Ranged Attack value. So he really is aiming to misbehave. 

ODST Special Orders

The box also includes two special orders for the regular ODSTs: ODST Special Order and UNSC Fireteam Special Order. Special Orders are included in the team build and provide additional abilities for them. 

The ODST Special Order ‘Hot Drop’ acts exactly like you’d expect it to; you can drop units on the board during respawning and the start of the game. Of course, when you respawn, there’s a chance you don’t pass your Ranged test and end up where you don’t want to. UNSC Fireteam Special Order ‘Supply Drop’ is a great way to give your pieces better access to item tokens without needing them to run all of the map. It’s a special delivery… from orbit.

While the weapon upgrades are limited in this set, the Spartan and Recon Edition boxes provide a ton of weapons, not to mention the arsenal included in the War Games Expansion. It’s fun to see the missile pods and flamethrowers included, especially if you remember the holdout on the rooftops of New Mombasa in Halo 3: ODST. 

All of these stats look great on paper, appropriately themed to the pieces. They’re humans, with some abilities that look like they require a player to know the pieces and the combat situation, so keep their units alive as long as possible. Pushing your attack with these pieces and taking advantage of flanking movements seems to be the right way to go. They are Helljumpers, after all.

New Mombasa Terrain

As someone who prints and builds plastic terrain kits for their miniature war games, I would be lying if I said I was skeptical about the quality of the cardboard terrain included. I’ve played other games where the cardboard terrain was flimsy at best, where pieces were either warped or would fray easily. In general, I feel like cheap terrain heavily detracts from the play experience of the game. However, the terrain is one of the shining features for this expansion, as it is for all of the other boxes.

Designed to be from the iconic open-world landscape from Halo 3: ODST that the Rookie wanders in and through, this terrain does a fantastic job of not only capturing the feel but also providing some unique terrain options for the players. The barricade provides a large obstacle for movement, but is perfect for cover. The bridge adds a nice little aesthetic for moving between elevated positions. The tower, the centerpiece of the terrain set, provides a wonderful elevated position for firing, but with just enough space to make those camping snipers wary of sharing space with a beam sword or gravity hammer.

Like the terrain, the board is solid and weighty, and helps tie everything all together. This is such a cool map, and so I hope they make a neoprene version of it in the future. 

The included terrain adds a lot of value to the price, and there's enough of it to give players plenty of arrangement options, especially with the terrain from the Spartan and Recon boxes.

Impressions

I’ve enjoyed playing the few games of Halo: Flashpoint that I’ve had so far. It’s fast-paced, has simple turn orders, and the respawning feature reduces the “feels bad” of when you lose a piece to bad rolls or being outplayed. While I always enjoy multiplayer (Blood Gulch forever!) and being a super cool Spartan, the ODSTs have always been the Halo heroes in my book. Halo 3: ODST is a game that not everyone loves, but I appreciated its uniquely mellow approach to combat and exploration, with that melancholy saxophone playing somewhere off in the distance, not to mention the fact that the entire game really does play like an allegory to Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno. 

Seeing the ODSTs in Halo: Flashpoint gives me great hope for more UNSC units to be added (let’s go, Sgt. Johnson and Arbiter!) as well as expansion of product and board space for larger games. Mantic is taking the strategic approach to product releases to help prevent a flood (ha) of releases that can easily burn out players and collectors. I, for one, really support this and want to see Mantic succeed, so I absolutely support buying their product.

I’ve been able to enjoy this game with non-miniature game players just as much as miniature game players; it’s a wonderful gateway game to this sector of the tabletop arena. Grunts, Jackals, and (most likely) Noble Six are coming to the game soon, and I am excited to have my ODSTs stand side-by-side with UNSC forces and toe-to-toe with the Covenant.

I make no excuses for playing the Halo 3: ODST soundtrack or the song from the ODST trailer, Light of Aidan's "Lament" in the background while playing the game. If you haven't seen the Halo 3: ODST live-action trailer ‘We are ODST,’ then you need to put down whatever else you’re doing and give it a watch. If you’ve already seen it, then put down whatever you're doing and still give it a watch.

If you haven't had a chance to pick up Feet First Into Hell, or aren't quite ready to jump feet first into the game, Mantic just announced pre-orders for some new expansions, which are derivations of the Feet First Into Hell Expansion. Desperate Measures Expansion Pack, which is just 8 ODST miniatures plus cards and tokens, New Mombasa Terrain Set, and Buck and Dare are all new, separate expansions and expected to ship sometime in February 2026. You can check out their pre-orders here:

Halo: Flashpoint - UNSC - Mantic Games

Fantasy, Sci-fi and Roleplaying Games

Mantic Games

Have you played Halo: Flashpoint yet? What is your favorite team, and why is it the ODSTs? Let us know! Don’t forget to follow GamingTrend for more Halo and Halo: Flashpoint board and video game news and reviews.