Havok Reinforcements Completed

As shown off in my last post, here are my finished Havok reinforcements, for the Nexus:

It’s been an interesting project recreating these figures using Wargames Atlantic’s fantastic range of plastic figures, and then painting them has also presented its own challenges, in trying to mimic a more modern pre-painted style (toysoldier2000?).

The Storm Troopers above, actually strayed quite far from their Blue Bird Toys equivalent (pictured here from the Havok wikia):

I didn’t want to do them in grey, and I didn’t have any helmets with raised visors, and of course the guns with shields are a fairly unique design, so I pretty much only included the red on their helmets and kept them dark.

With my Commandos I went with a more Red Devils scheme, as I thought the Devils were more striking. I’ve also very intentionally been keeping things simple in order to mimic that preprinted style of the original figures. Just a few basic colours to keep the whole thing high in contrast and striking.

I’m especially happy with my Tribunes as I thought they were a unit that would be particularly difficult to replicate. I didn’t have any skirts available or robot legs. However with the robot arms available in the Bulldogs kit and the bald heads from the Cannon Fodder kit, I wasn’t too far off.

And for the Karn Empire:

It’s good to now be able to field one of my favourite Havok units that were extremely difficult to get hold of back in the late 90s. However with the Suma-Kai in limited supply in game, I needed to make better use of the Space Nam kit and so I came up with:

Which are basically even heavier weapons, than my previous Heavy Weapons unit, and…

My head canon here, is that the Karn have tried genetically engineering with some Pteravore DNA, hoping that will help them take on the aliens.

I managed an 800 point game this afternoon, putting all my newly painted figures to the test and it was a decent amount of fun, I did notice something beginning to creep in however.

With all the units being variations on the same theme – all infantry with slightly different stat lines, the game dragged a little.

Being a somewhat regular Bolt Action player, I recognise how important those mortar shots are for the fun factor, or similarly how 40k used to have different shooting sequences for different types of weapon. They help break the game up, stop things getting samey. However Havok is so simple that can’t happen. So that’s something to think about moving forwards.

I’ve also decided I’m not a fan of playing Havok by using strength as wounds, and having the shooting sequence be a roll to hit, roll to save, as it’s all very much a clone of One Page Rules. Not that One Page Rules is bad, it’s not, it’s great! However I’m not painting and playing Havok games to have the OPR experience. So I’ll need a different solution to the strength problem.

I’ve just acquired a Mantic Sturnhammer, which despite its name won’t be my Hammer:

The Hammer is the big blue tank:

I’ve got Mantic’s Wolverine in mind for that. Although because it matches the aesthetic of the Iron Ancestors I’m using as Battle Forms, it would make sense for me to use the Sturnhammer as a Karn tank. The Karn Empire never had a tank in the game, so I’ll get to home brew another unit!

There’s certainly more Havok to come!