Bringing the Banished Garrison to Life

With Halo: Flashpoint's second faction decided as The Banished from well before our initial announcement of the game, we always knew they were going to really make their presence felt once Brutes entered the fray.

From launch the full-colour, easy-assembly UNSC buildings from the starter set had also been extremely well-received. Battling with the Banished among and through their own structures felt like an obvious and exciting next step for the terrain range - and so the process begun...

Today, we're going to take a look at a little of what goes into bringing a new location to life on the tabletop. Enjoy!

Design Inspiration - Straight From The Screen

The UNSC outposts seen initially (based on the architecture of Livefire) were naturally very 'boxy' in shape, which made them a perfect and natural fit for the grid that Halo: Flashpoint is played on.

Banished outposts are a little different from that though. Corners are 'cut off' from certain structures, there are ramps, and objects jut out at unusual angles...

You'll see these kind of forms in the pre-fabricated military installations the Banished deploy onto target worlds. In Halo Infinite, these are fortified locations such as the Horn of Abolition or the Forge of Teash.

In order to get some of the more precise reference images we needed for our graphic designer, a hands-on recce was required.

We've had great support from the team at Halo Studios, though a fast and fun way to check specific angles/tiny details outside of these assets was simply visiting Banished Outposts in the game - avoiding getting shot to bits by Brutes while finding an example of the precise feature we wanted for a screenshot!

Testing, Testing - Early Mockups

Next up, the studio get to work playing around with lots of shapes. They need to be distinct, and yet still fit the grid pattern that serves as the basis for shooting and moving in Halo: Flashpoint.

Lots of different things get tried, and they eventually start to hone choices down to shapes that really capture the feel of what we're after.

There's a lot of work involved in working out how to make these easy to assemble, and to go together smoothly with the kind of high-quality thick punchboard you'll have already seen in Halo: Flashpoint.

At this stage, we also (of course!) get some miniatures on the table. We're already considering cover, line of sight and more...quite possibly with sound effects...

Printed Samples & Experimenting

Then our selected shapes and pieces go across to our graphic designer, along with our reference screenshots and a bunch of fantastic assets from the Halo Studios team, all to help really nail the look and feel of the location.

Once that artwork has been done, we'll print everything onto MDF at the appropriate thickness to test everything out. This is also another chance to check that we definitely can get all of the pieces we need onto punchboards that will fit in the final box size/footprint (below). You'll notice a common theme here - the team check stuff. And then they check it again. And again!

Eventually, print samples come back from the factory to look over. These are very exciting because it's when the set becomes real with the correct materials and feel.

We'll test build those as well (checking them again), and if they make the grade then they're ready to go into full production for the awesome and fast-growing Halo: Flashpoint community all around the world!

The Final Set & Notes From The Team

And here we are - a Banished Garrison in all of its glory, in wonderful full-colour, easy-assembly card punchboard.

Now that you've had a sneak peek into the process leading up to this point, a couple of final cool features for you from the studio team:

(1) The Banished Garrison includes our first building with a visible interior, and our artist had some fun with the lighting print/effects on this one. You can just see it in the below picture on the right hand side.

(2) The board that comes in Rise of the Banished, which compliments this set, is inspired by the interior of the Warship Gbraakon - which you fight through at the beginning of Halo Infinite.  Want your Banished structures to look more 'outdoor'? Just add them onto one of the existing game mats, such as the Field Outpost gaming mat - maybe where the Banished have overrun a former UNSC position...

(3) The set includes buildings that provide cover elements into side-adjacent cubes or provide platforms that overhang the neighbouring cube. All of this adds extra detail and visual interest, especially when you add in the ramps, barriers and scatter crate elements also found in this set!

Where To Get The Banished Garrison First

You guessed it - it's coming included within the huge faction set: Rise of the Banished.

Find your copy right here, all ready for when it ships in the second half of  July, and Halo: Flashpoint steps out into a brutal and brave new world...

NOTE: If you're in the US, then we recommend placing your Rise of the Banished pre-order before 1st June when the Dollar MSRP of this set will be increasing to $139. We know we've said it a lot (and still will do a couple of times more!) - simply because we want you all to have a fair chance to jump in at the current price if you can.