Havok in 2025?

Havok was a wargame produced by Blubird Toys in the late 90s. It was extremely short lived, dying before all of the units were released. I can’t imagine their intention was to rival 40k at the time, but maybe just exist as a slightly cheaper pocket money option.

All the miniatures came pre-assembled (bar vehicles which required some light assembly) and sort of pre-painted. I did have the ‘Skirmish’ starter set. However everything has been lost to time. So here is a picture from the rulebook so you have an idea of what the minis looked like:

I attempted proxying some of the units and playing a game years back, just before the inception of this blog, however that little experiment (and reading through the rules again) I think helped me figure out why the game tanked, at least as far as the rules are concerned… I’m sure there were far more important reasons. Pre-painted figures might be a boon to some, but I’m the sort of person that enjoys building and painting models in my spare time, so it’s actually a drawback for me.

Havok at its core is both extremely simple, but also very complicated. It’s got a solid core, but nothing to expand it.

Here’s an example… when a figure or group of figures shoots you check their Firepower stat, and that’s the number of combat dice you roll per figure. So five guys with Firepower 2 get 10 dice. Easy enough. Here’s where range comes into effect however.

As the rulebook says above, at short range (which I think is roughly 0-6”) your guys get 1 extra die each. At long range (from 12-24”) you get 1 less, and at extreme range (24”+) you get 2 less. Cover also reduces each guy’s dice by 1. If a figure’s dice drop to 0 they can’t take the shot.

Of course you’re having to imagine 9 year old me dealing with all of this. Because so far it doesn’t seem too bad, however with the way the rules work, your figures are only ever going to actually use their listed Firepower stat at the odd range of 6-12”.

Third Edition 40k emerged during Havok’s demise, and one of the main goals of Third was to streamline the game. So to compare the two, for 40k 3rd edition a weapon has a range and number of attacks, and a figure a ballistic skill. Provided the weapon is within range you can shoot, and you roll a number of dice equal to the weapons attacks against the figures ballistic skill (well a number on a table when compared to their ballistic skill). But if you were a Space Marine player you got used to having all of your guys hit on a 3+ very quickly.

So while Havok’s aim may have been to simplify and streamline, it’s actually as complicated. The big difference is 40k 3rd edition had more stats for a weapon and special rules to modify and give personality to weaponry and figures whereas Havok had none. A tank’s main gun, a machine gun and a powerful energy weapon or flamethrower will all have the same or a similar profile, just a high Firepower stat.

Once you’ve figured out how many dice to roll (and these are special dice), you score a hit on a skull, and a hit and you get to roll an extra die for an explosion (which is basically 4+ to hit with exploding 6s). The special dice mean the rules writers are locked in to adding or subtracting dice to simulate cover and range etc, because modifiers can’t be used. I think they missed a trick here and a smarter solution would have been to use standard D6s and then apply modifiers to a basic hit roll. From 0-6” could be a hit on a 3+, 6-12” 4+, 12-24” 5+ and 24” and beyond a 6. You could keep the exploding 6s if you want. The standard rules multiplication of dice means weaker units can get completely obliterated by a single units shooting, which on the whole makes weaker units pointless.

To add to the pointlessness of weaker units, the next step in shooting is to divide the number of hits scored by the target’s Strength stat (ignoring remainders). Higher Strength units simply cannot be taken out by lower Firepower units (you may be thinking well of course, I wouldn’t want my French Partisan to destroy a Panther, but unfortunately in Havok’s case we’re not talking those kinds of extremes).

For example:

Our Nexus Trooper with his piddly Firepower of 1, either needs to get within 6” of a Karn Trooper to get two dice or roll an Explosion and then a Skull to stand a chance of killing him (which I believe works out to a 1 in 12).

The Karn Trooper will still get a saving throw too (on a 1 or 2 as you roll equal to or lower than your armour stat to save).

The Karn Trooper needs to roll a single skull, at which point the Nexus Trooper needs to save on a 1, or he’s dead. Well, Karn Troopers are double the points, but I believe if you do the math, statistically (as far as shooting is concerned) they’re around 9 times better than a Nexus Trooper.

I might treat Strength like wounds when I get around to playing, so that Nexus Trooper can kill the Karn Trooper over a couple of turns, instead of having to kill him in one go.

I think these problems can be solved if you play big games, which are what the Rulebook thinks you’re going to do:

However no one could buy things en masse. In fact one of the UK’s main retailers for the game Argos would only provide figure packs at random. Imagine trying to buy Warhammer figures when you’re collecting a Space Marine army, but the guy in the shop will only give you a random box from any faction.

So it’s a problem to fix. The other problem is figures. I don’t want to go scouting eBay and pay too much for this side project, and with the plastic offerings available these days, you don’t really need too.

Wargames Atlantic’s Cannon Fodder set me up with the parts to get my Nexus army started.

I used the cap wearing heads and backpacks for these.

For these I used the helmeted heads, and chopped the ends of the guns off.

For my Assault Troopers, I used the helmeted heads and the big energy weapons.

I’ve got a bit more figuring out to do. Finding proxies for other things might be a bit tricky. I’ve got a box of Wargames Atlantic’s Iron Core coming my way to get the ball rolling on my Karn army.

I hope to get a little skirmish game in soon.