I remember watching that refugee ship from Halo Wars being destroyed just as it got fed up of waiting with hundreds of Covenant fighting in their position, and at first I couldn't help but think I just had thousands of people die to my poor command decisions. Even then, I thought I could do pretty well as a fleet commander. What was there to it as UNSC? Hammer together, move like water, reorganize swiftly.

A few experiments of mine consisted in testing equal amounts of points between Covenant and UNSC ships. 250, 300, and finally 500. Being a Fleet Commander in the Halo universe is the worst job.

It is true to to the canon in this way: You have to strike with as much force in unison as you can as UNSC, and the Covenant tear through things as if they were made of paper. If you think you can pull the same strategies as the Covenant when you're UNSC and expect to win, you're only going to see the horrors of warfare.

Besides, in here? Everything counts. Boarding ships, command dice, initiative, exploding dice, terrain, even that lone stat you dismiss as a useless, unwinnable situation could become the chekhov's gun of that part of the story that changes its course in 180 degrees.

My first experiment were 250 and 300, playing with myself (har har), picking up whatever advantages I could see from either side. Corvettes can resist well from time to time, but united strikes can kill them if you're smart on your approach. But the CCS Class Battlecruisers? They resist far too much, and delaying on destroying them will only mean defeat. You have to kill them as swiftly as possible, and try to have as few targets as possible, going for one-on-one. For all intents and purposes, the Covenant dominated the UNSC.

Eventually, I realized the flaws of my experiments: UNSC were meant to fight at a distance, and doing what they had actually been doing in the war: Running. What's more, Stanford's strategies rely a lot more on boarding rather than naval strategies, which makes pelicans and Spartans even more important for victory. I was also playing on a tiny board, much less than what the manual states a game should be in (4' by 4'), so the UNSC were essentially lambs to the slaughter in this condition. They need space to move, escape, and hurt the enemy.

Due to this, I hope they release a more fleet-focused Fleet Commander card in the future, most likely Preston Cole's, as he's more focused around spaceship strategies than boarding as Stanforth is. I think it'd be fun playing as him.

On one hand, I think I understand peoples' fears on exploding dice that are around Spartan Games' games, which makes things enormously random, and many youtube players have commented on the same difficulty on making interesting games to show without having to make things seem cheap. On the other... well, I've learned through D&D as both a player and a very long time GM:

NEVER TRUST THE DICE.

So in my last experiment for the day, I had a 500 vs. 500 match, randomly rolled blockade, UNSC in the offensive. Capital ships were accompanied CCS Class Battlecruisers and accompanied UNSC Marathon Cruisers. Two other Marathon cruisers and four elements of frigates, and also a lone CCS class battlecruiser and two corvette elements.

Things seemed to go well in the first turn. In spite of the Covenant getting to attack first and hitting the UNSC's capital ship and erasing the titanium armor, the UNSC decided not to risk the Covenant capital ship they had in front of them, so they fired in an unison... damaged it, left a pair of vulnerable token due to both the MAC gun barrage and a successful crit, but the ship resisted, so they launched a hail of missiles from a distance, using the distance advantage...

The Capital ship of the Covenant was destroyed in the volley. In my mind, I could hear the numerous crews inside of the frigates and cruisers cheering in a thunderous unison upon seeing the behemoth torn apart by the power of the combined MAC guns and rains of missiles. Tactically, the UNSC had the upper hand now as their forces were divided, and couldn't operate with coherency with distance. For a moment, it seemed the UNSC would win a shot at this.

It didn't last.

The opposite wing of the Covenant decided to attack the UNSC flanks, ferociously destroying an element of frigates, and marathon after marathon... eventually destroying the UNSC's capital ship as well, leaving only one marathon cruiser and a handful of Frigate elements to fend off for themselves. The order came to form up, forming a single battlegroup, but things were dark.

UNSC got to kill the other corvettes, and got to seriously damage the other accompanying the other CCS class battlecruiser, but the covenant attacked in the back, furiously performing coordinated strikes, cutting through ships once the titanium coating failed, destroying ship after ship, until they got to aim at the aft of the UNSC ships.

Things turned desperate, to say the least. The Covenant in this game are absolutely deadly if they get up close with UNSC ships, and the fewer space the UNSC has to maneuver and less distance they have, they get turned into mincemeat. Eventually, I decided the only thing that could be done, more as a "what-the-hell" strategy. I deployed the remaining two pelicans onto the CCS, and made all ships hard burn away from the enemy. In the first turn, the pelican boarders and the CCS were put on a standstill, and I didn't hold much hope they'd survive. They had the UNSC ships with their afts straight for the Covenant to shoot at, and destroy the damaged ships.

It seemed that the enemy would move in pursuit, but the dice had new plans. Standforth's dice had accumulated three thunders. Eventually the order came through.

"Take it to them!"

The two pelican crews moved forward as if in a psychotic frenzy, cut through the enemy as if the long-held-back fury against their alien enemies, shooting and killing them from inside the ship. Four security dice plus an extra two and two due to Standforth's special order. Eight dice against four of the Covenant. UNSC wins, boarding dice get rolled, totals added... thirteen.

Critical core breach.

Just an inch away from the 8'' blast radius, the surviving UNSC vessels can only watch as the Covenant ship and its cohorts are vaporized, alongside the Pelican crews that sacrificed their lives to destroy the Covenant. And finally, after almost an hour of violence, the battlefield remained still.

Three surviving frigate elements, alongside a single remaining Marathon Cruiser. All of them damaged, little holding them back from a defeat taken in a swift moment.

Four Covenant ships against five lost from the UNSC. By all rights, it should have been a big victory in comparison to everything that had happened. And yet even as I went on to make delicious ceviche when I stopped my task of being a fleet commander for a moment, I kept thinking about all of those lives I lost from the side of the UNSC and the heroism of those Marines/ODST that infiltrated the ship, and blew up the ship's generator, making the battle a victory for the humans. Although a costly one. This is too close to canon for my dreams to ever be a fleet commander.

I can't wait to play this game with somebody else. I want to improve my strategy with the UNSC.