In the week just gone I was frantically painting figures for my Pteravore army for a game of Havok Skirmish. I’m not sure if I like the overall effect of the finished force as funnily enough I think it’s a bit too uniform. To explain further here are my Nexus and Karn forces:
Each force has a bit more differentiation, and I’ve only just noticed each force sits on one side opposite sides of the colour wheel – the Karn are predominantly warm coloured and the Nexus cold. This gives them a strong identity. The Pteravore are basically green, or bone. I guess the idea is to make them mostly natural looking but a stronger colour identity for the force and to make them look more alien may have been to make them metallic or black, white and grey with maybe red as a spot colour. One in three Razors from the original sets was an icy blue so I might have to incorporate that into the force when I add something else.
I played a game this afternoon, pitching them against my Karn to see how things worked out. Thinking I may have broken the rules with a simple idea.
In Havok shooting is predominantly done in units. With figures combining their fire power to take out stronger targets. Melee combat is always fought on a one on one basis. Even in multiple combats, figures fight one on one, with any figure that has to engage in multiple combats getting weaker with each new opponent. The Pteravore if you hadn’t guessed, are a melee focused army.
Since there are no limits to unit sizes, I thought if I put all of my Pteravore into one figure units it would create such a mathematical headache for my opponent (unfortunately also me), with how to split their fire that they would struggle to cause the necessary casualties before the Pteravore closed the distance.
Even with the Pteravore being unlucky with the dice, things felt almost impossible for the Karn. Other than my home brewed Pteramites, the Razors and Screamers that make up the backbone of the force all have Strength 3. So, how many dice do you need to roll to have a decent chance of getting three hits, where you score a hit on a 4+ and 6s explode? 5 or 6 dice is your best bet, but the Razor or Screamer still makes a save one third of the time even if you get those hits.
Because of the Screamers I was also able to play with the Psyke rules, which despite my bad rolling for them were devastating. The Karn Heavy Weapons which I tried to screen with the Karn Troopers to stop the big guns getting charged, all had their brains popped by Screamers (and a few fell to flanking Razors). Psyke combat can only be initiated by a few units, it can only happen between figures within 6” of each other and works the same as melee. Both combatants roll a number of dice, most hits wins and the loser makes a save.
I had the same Battle Form problem that I had in my previous game. Having to cook up enough fire power for a 1 in 6 chance of taking it out is a problem. The game really needs rules for anti armour, or more like One Page Rules I’ll play the game with adjusted shooting, so you roll your hits, roll your saves and then Strength will work like wounds.
This time round I noticed a couple of things missing from the rulebook which didn’t come up in my previous game. There are currently no rules for shooting into combat, or rules for shooting through friendly or enemy units. I think these things are really important to have so I’ll have to include my own versions, but I really am keen to stick to the rules as closely as possible.
It would also be cool to include some kind of morale rules as they are also completely missing from the game, and that could factor into the other thing missing – leaders. You have commander figures, for example my Pteravore have their Prime:
But other than being a powerful individual, they don’t have any other effect on their forces. Adding in those support figures really can add a huge amount of tactical depth to a game.
Deathzap 