Iron Havocs - The Heaviest of Support

Hi all,

I wanted to share some pictures of my Iron Havocs which I’ve recently finished and have field-tested in a few games, most recently against Darien’s Sons of Horus 1^st Company. I’m pretty pleased with how the models have turned out, and finishing them up has put me at 3500 points of painted Iron Warriors. They were painted in the same way as the rest of my army and went together over a couple of days of intensive hobby.

  

As they’re Iron Havocs and not just a Heavy Support Squad, I wanted them to look different enough my Tactical Squads (who run around in Mark III plate), but needed them to have enough similarities that they retained a unified feeling with the rest of the list. In the end, I decided to build them from Mark II armour, but with a fair few Iron Warrior specific heads in the squad, and Mark III shoulder pads so that they still looked bulky. The Sergeant was given the same helmet as my Tactical Sergeants to retain some uniformity across the army.

  

When it came to arming the squad, Darien pointed out that Missile Launchers are a perfect choice for the unit, being just a few points and coming with Frag, Krak and Flak Missiles as standard; but then I saw the Ryza Pattern Las Cannon Set and the decision was made. It was only afterwards when I started using them in games that I realised that 10 BS5 Tank Hunting Las Cannons with -1 to enemy Cover Saves was somewhat… antisocial! In many ways this is counterbalanced by the fact that they are just as squishy as regular Tactical Marines and if they move, they’re down to Snap Shots. This makes their deployment absolutely key, as each turn you spend repositioning is a turn of shooting effectively wasted.

I’ve predominately deployed my Iron Havocs against Darien and Ahmose who are my most regular opponents; they always seem to have an impact on the game. If I deploy first, I’ve found that people tend to deploy as far away from them as possible, which limits their shooting, but sometimes that can be useful for me as it buys a considerable amount of board control. They always attract a lot of attention, and often people will put a lot of effort into killing them off!

They performed well in my game against Darien recently; he designed a custom scenario for us to play and we made use of the massive 12’x6’ bridge board at Warhammer World. He’ll be posting a write up for the game soon.

I’ll most likely be taking my Havocs (maybe not all 10!) to the Throne of Skulls next month; I’ll let you know how it goes!

Cheers

Ikthelion