Grimdark Future/Tactics/Havoc Brothers

Why play Havocs Brothers?

The Havoc Brothers are the dark mirror to the Battle Brothers. You get most of the same tricks as they do, but you get some better focus on melee.

Pros

• The majority of your army is with great defense
• A high amount of customization when including the specialized Disciplines.
• Your entire army is Fearless.

Cons

• Your forces are expensive.
• Your troops lack Tough, so heavy weapons can very easily wipe out a unit of Brothers.
• You only have one Psychic model. Some forces add more, but you'll be paying a pretty penny for that.
• You lack the variety of weapons the base Brothers do.

Special Rules

• Chosen Veteran: You can take this on a few weapons, though it's very costly. It adds +1 to all attack rolls, making them better at fighting.

• Mutations: When a model with this rule fights in melee, you roll one die and apply one bonus:
  • 1-2: Unit gets AP(+1)
  • 3-4: Unit gets +1 attack
  • 5-6: Enemies get -1 to hit

Psychic Spells

• Dark Sight (4+): One enemy unit within 12" takes -1 to hit with shooting. Vital for protecting your troops from heavy weaponry of any kind.
• Havoc Terror (4+): One enemy unit within 12" takes 2 AP 2 hits.
• Cursed Sludge (5+): An enemy unit within 18" that attempts a charge loses 6" to their charge distance next time they charge. Note that this won't save anyone from a charge if they're too close, but it will prevent any long-range gambits.
• Havoc Trauma (5+): One enemy model within 12" takes a single AP 3 hit. Pretty much all you can ask for when sniping a hero or heavy weapon.
• Warp Passage (6+): One friendly unit within 12" can immediately move 6". This gives you a desperate escape button or possibly an easier charge.
• Demon Fog (6+): Two enemy units within 6" take 8 hits each, making this hell for mobs of grunts.

Unit Analysis

Heroes

• Dark Lord: A Captain with an edgy paintjob. He's heavily customizable to fit out any mix of shooting (which you can milk out with Relentless granting extra shots) or melee, or even give them extra toughness (with the Destroyer Armor granting Tough 6) or mobility with either the bike with Fast and Impact 1 or the jetpack with flight. They can also grab either Havoc Tactics to add +3" to their unit's shooting and charging ranges or War Chant to give Furious and make charging deadlier.

• Dark Champion: Take your Dark Lord, chop off 10 points and Relentless and you get your Champion. They can be useful in plugging up any options that your lord didn't take or dedicate them to be the choppier since they don't have Relentless to incentivize shooting.

• Dark Engineer: Don't be fooled by the name; these guys are your medics for any tough units you drag along, including other Heroes and Destroyers. You should be wary of the limits of the Repair ability, as it only heals a single wound on a single Tough unit within 2" on a 4+.

• Dark Psychic: A costly hero, but they also provide you with psychic casting. Alongside the other upgrade lists, you can also upgrade it to Psychic 2 for extra power.

• Cultist Champion: Your super-cheap hero, though it's at the cost of being your worst. That Tough 3 won't account for much with a 5+ defense and 4+ quality makes him crumble quickly. However, he is valuable as one of your most varied shooters among your heroes.

• Daemon Champion: Insanely expensive, but absolutely powerful. A 2+ on both quality and defense, 6 AP 2 attacks with the daemon sword and Fear make this hero incredibly strong, especially with Tough 6. To top it all off, you can also make them a Psychic with a rating of 1 to 3, which will ratchet up that cost even higher. This guy won't need much in the way of bodyguards, in fact they'll just be a bit of a hinderance compared to the untouchable.

Infantry

• Cultists: Absolutely trash-tier, on level with the conscripts. However, conscripts don't get to pick out a variety of guns, all for cheaper than the havoc brothers.

• Havoc Brothers: The baseline for your force, meaning a walking tank. Your brothers have the widest selection of weapons available, spreading almost any manner of weaponry. Of note among the weapons are the cheap shred rifle, giving short-range A2 Shredding, and the autocannon, which gives long-range anti-infantry.

• Havoc Support: These brothers lack the option for Veteran Training, but you do get Relentless (gaining an extra attack for every 6 you roll to hit while shooting) and the option to pick any heavy weapon you want.

• Possessed Brothers: You want dedicated murderous melee prowess? You'll be looking up these guys. Possessed have Fast (with an option for flight) and more attacks in melee, but have absolutely no shooting power. Their other major feature is their mutations, which you roll up for each model whenever they fight (-1 AP, +1 attack or enemies take -1 to hit them). Though very expensive, you'll be getting your mileage out of them.

• Mutated Possessed: Possessed except better. Though fewer, these guys now drown enemies with 8 attacks each and Tough 3 lets them tank a few blows. In exchange, however, they'll never be fly. Hope you'll get some use out of that extra 80 points.

• Talon Raptors: If you don't want to go all-in on assault, then the raptors give you havoc brothers with jetpacks. While they can take most of the lighter weapons from the base brothers, you can also strap every one of them with energy claws if you feel so inclined.

• Havoc Destroyers: Destroyers are your big slabs of meat with Tough 3 as well as heavy weapons platforms. Sure, you could just give them all energy claws, but they also can switch their twin assault rifles for assault rifles with a special weapon as an attachment or for a heavy flamethrower or reaper cannon for some more mob-wiping.

• Mutated Destroyers: Take a Destroyer and make them even more uncomfortably swole. Alongside being Tough 6 now, mutated destroyers also take Slow, random mutations, and come with AP 2 claws by default. Fortunately their shooting aspects aren't totally shot as they can grab special guns with 24" A2 AP 2 Rending.

• Havoc Bikers: Cheaper than Battle Brothers, but also in a smaller unit size. Each comes with Fast and Impact 1, so melee is a viable option. If you're going for shooty, you can give an extra attack to your assault rifles or upgrade some of them with more interesting guns.

• Daemon Spawn: A big freaky monster for melee purposes. It's not very strong with Tough 6 but a 4+ Defense, though mutations gives it a chance to get protection. It's more focused on getting stuck in and smashing with Strider and Fear to compliment its A3 AP 1 claws.

Vehicles

• Havoc APC: A nimble yet tough tank with a 2+ defense and Tough 6 to protect its cargo of 11 models. For a mere 5 points you can add Strider to it so you can cover more ground. Though it has Impact 6 (with an option to make it Impact 12 with the spiked ram) and a storm rifle, combat is not something you should be blowing this on.

• Havoc Tank: Tough 12 and a 2+ Defense means that this thing won't be going anywhere, which it should for the price point. It comes with one autocannon, but you can give it one of a variety of heavy cannons to add to the punch. If you're looking for just extra guns, you only have heavy machine guns or laser cannons and both ramp up the cost considerably.

• Havoc Heavy Tank: The Battle Tank now has a heavy machine gun and two laser cannons as well as a transport capacity of 11, Tough 18 and an obscene price tag. That's where the similarities end however, as this tank can't carry a heavy cannon. Indeed, its only other weapon option is getting either another twin assault rifle or an assault rifle with an add-on.

• Infernal Brute: Big and tough, but it's not fast and lacks Impact. What it has, especially in comparison to the base brothers attack walker, is a variety of melee weapons. Indeed, alongside some of the basic guns the walker could grab (including a flamethrower or twin assault rifle on the fists), you can also grab either a hammer for Deadly 3 or a free flail for 4 AP 1 attacks. This beast will absolutely want protection on the field since it lacks any sort of delivery mechanism. However, you can be perfectly happy with giving it heavy guns and sending it off, since not many other vehicles have such a variety of guns.

• Infernal Stalker: A big mean beast with a bit more flexibility between punching and shooting. This is especially prevalent in melee, where it has four different weapons and especially the high-AP maul-cutter and the high-quantity chainsaw-glaive. It has a short-ranged bane flamethrower (or an autocannon), which is offset by the stalker having Strider. This thing is tailor-made to mess up anything in close combat, which gives it a good advantage against anything it comes against.

• Havoc Fiend: The mega-tank. Not only is it Tough 12 and 2+ Defense, but it also comes with Regeneration, giving you a second shot to just nope out of any damage. By default it comes with some powerful melee weapons, but you could also replace everything with ecto-cannons or forge cannons, turning it into a mid-range artillery platform.

• Spider Walker: The spider walker, while well-rounded, lacks the punch of the other units. While it has Strider to make it more mobile, all of its weapons are AP 2. While by no means bad, do know that it is the same price as a naked havoc fiend, which can already do heavy melee carnage.

• Crab Walker: Another walker very capable of artillery thanks to its battle cannon. On top of that, you can also buy an additional heavy ranged weapon in exchange for one of its three fists (yes, it has three. Don't ask.) and more missiles in place of its flail. Even if you keep all the melee weapons, you're taking a mobile artillery platform more than capable of defending itself and capable of tanking blows thanks to Regeneration.

• Forge Dragon: Your lone aircraft is plenty durable thanks to regeneration, but its role is tightly constrained to two roles: burninating all the peoples with its stock flamer or dogfighting and anti-vehicle with the forge cannon.

Disciplines

Disciples of War

The Disciples of War are bluntly simple with their passions: ripping things up in close quarters. Furious is now available to the infantry (5 for most, destroyers cost 10) and Talon Raptors can even grab the extra-furious known as Frenzy.

Rules

• Frenzy: Furious +1. Models with this rule (Talon Raptors and Frenzy Brothers) can make two extra attacks when making a charge.

Unit Analysis

• Lord of War: Your Dark Champion-alike comes with Furious and can grab the extra-cruel heavy cleaver with Deadly 3. He lacks the Havoc Tactics or War Chant option, but gives you something well-worth the bonus: Blessing of War adds +1 to all melee attacks for the entire unit, which makes all of your choppy troops happy. Even better, this can synergize perfectly well with Havoc Tactics.

• Berserkers: Havoc Brothers with Furious. If you feel kind, you can pick up energy swords for any of them to punch through armor. However, this comes at the cost of abandoning any pretense of shooting beyond pistols (or the odd plasma pistol).
• Fury Brothers: When you abandon all pretense of range and just want to kill. What's troubling is that they only have CCWs and Frenzy to swing with, meaning that you'll need something to support them or else see the investment go up in smoke.
• Slaughter Brothers: See those berserkers? They now have heavy cleavers. These guys are clearly your elites, as these things are meant to drown drown small units with Deadly.

Disciples of Change

The Disciples of Change give you quite a few venues to getting psychic casting done. They also have the means of giving a lot of their units stealth, though it can become very costly depending on the unit. Stacked with their spells, this gives you some widespread ways to protect your forces from whatever can try to hit them.

Psychic Spells

• Breath of Change (4+): Friendly unit within 12" can now charge 3", giving you the means to control the flow of battle a bit.
• Inferno (4+): Enemy unit within 12" takes 2 AP 2 hits. Somewhat equivalent to havoc blast, though it hits the entire unit.
• Cursed Mutations (5+): Enemy unit within 18" takes -1 to hit, which can help since you have more squishy models.
• Fire Storm (5+): Enemy unit within 12" must take a dangerous terrain test.
• Blessed Mutation (6+): Friendly units within 12" gain a Regeneration save that passes on a 4+, a great save.
• Bolt of Change (6+): Enemy unit within 12" take an AP 4 hit with Deadly 3. Rest assured that whoever you target, they will DIE.

Units

• Lord of Change: The Lord of Change isn't much different from the basic champion. What he gets, however, is the Blessing of Change, which gives his unit a protective aura. All enemies now take -1 to shoot them, giving you an easier time with combat.
• Sorcerer of Change: This psychic isn't very different from his base counterpart aside from Stealth...except he can take a mount, gaining Fast, Strider and Impact (1).
• Birdman Sorcerer: Treat the birdmen as slightly stronger cultists. They're still much weaker than the brothers and this is the case with the sorcerer as well. His melee prospects are practically pointless with only a hexed staff, but he can become a stronger psychic for cheaper than any other. Keep him safe.

• Change Brothers: Your havoc brothers now have AP 1 on their rifles, giving them anti-infantry power. Your only options are a flamethrower for anyone, a single minigun for more firepower or a pistol (plain with AP 1 or flamethrower) + energy sword. You can also make one of the models psychic, giving you one of several casting vectors.
• Change Destroyers: These Destroyers will appreciate the protection alongside their innate tankiness. If the twin assault rifles aren't cutting it (because they sadly lack AP), you can instead buy a heavy flamethrower or reaper minigun. You could also buy a missile rack like the battle brothers if you want real long-range options. This unit also lets you get a psychic caster.
• Birdmen: Your cultists but not as utterly weak. That said, they can't do much else besides chopping, especially if you replace their pistols with an extra CCW.
• Birdmen Disc Riders: Your cavalry is much more mobile than any bike, though at the cost of power. Though you could lean into the Impact provided by the mount by buying hexed spears, you could instead buy them hexed bows so they can actually shoot at range while your more durable forces close in.

Disciples of Plague

The Disciples of Plague are a thematic opposite to the Disciples of Change. Where one focuses on avoiding getting hit at all with Stealth spam, Plague focuses on taking all blows with Regeneration being freely available while being able to give it back with Poison. This does come at a cost however, as Regeneration makes all units that take it very expensive.

Special Rules

• Reaper: Any models with the reaper scythe can, instead of their normal attacks, make a single attack with Deadly 3. This gives you the power to trade-off when fighting heavy units or heroes.

• Undead: Your plague walkers and zombies are immune to morale, which is good because these guys will fold up faster than paper. However, in place of such a check, you need to roll a d6 for each model left and a 1 instantly kills one without regeneration saves.

Psychic Spells

• Blessed Plague (4+): Friendly unit within 12" gets stealth the next time they get shot at. Now you have protection before AND after you get shot.
• Muscular Atrophy (4+): Enemy unit within 6" must take dangerous terrain test.
• Toxic Blades (5+): Friendly unit within 12" gets +2 to the AP of all melee weapons for the next fight phase, making them super dangerous on heavy armor.
• Deadly Poison (5+): Enemy unit within 12" takes an AP 4 hit with Deadly 3, making it a big sniping power.
• Poison Wind (6+): Friendly unit within 12" immediately moves 6". Pretty much Havoc Warp.
• Rot Wave (6+): Enemy unit within 12" takes 4 AP 2 hits, making this better for most small units.

Units

• Lord of Plague: This particular champion gets spoiled for choices considering how many melee weapons are available to you, including the Reaper Scythe. Many of them are also poisoned, which gives you the chance to deal a bit more damage. Instead of Havoc Tactics or War Chant, this unit can buy Blessing of Plague, which gives a unit +1 to all regeneration rolls. You'll absolutely be wanting this on your tough boys.
• Plague Bringer: Strangely limited to merely a plasma pistol and an A2 AP 1 Poison plague bell. Your only option is a good one: Ring the Bell gives the attached unit fast. Yeah, notice how most of your units actually don't suffer slow. Now you can enjoy surprising people with mobile sacks of putrid flesh coming up to stab them with filthy shivs.
• Plague Sprayer: Your shooty hero. His only claim to fame is his foul spray, which is like a flamethrower but with AP 2. He won't be much to command the army, so you'll want another hero to pull that role.

• Plague Zombies: Unsurprisingly a little tougher than cultists. They're also slow, which limits their mobility without a plague bringer using his special ability.
• Plague Walkers: For the same price as zombies, you can have literally naked cultists who move at normal speed. Pick what you're more willing to sacrifice: bodies or speed.
• Plague Brothers: These guys pack a surprisingly well-rounded armory between some poisoned flamethrowers and missile launchers. If you feel like ignoring shooting, you could instead sacrifice their assault weapons for one of the more specialized plague weapons, which give you some additional pain to support the already-poisoned CCW.
• Plague Destroyers: Destroyers are already hardy, so making them also have Regeneration makes them insanely powerful. Fortunately they can also pick up the plague flame thrower and launcher, but you could take the heavy plague flail if you need something in heavy melee. If you need more, just pick up...
• Plague Bodyguard Destroyers: Truly dangerous bastards, each with Reaper Scythes and short-ranged flame thrower pistols. These are the guys you want to nail heavies like monsters and tanks, hordes and squads with equal measure. Interestingly enough, these guys are even cheaper than the basic destroyer.

• Plague Hauler: While the quality of this tank isn't quite strong and is about as durable as an APC, you haul around a gun for any occasion. Need long-range? You got an anti-tank launcher. Need to nail tanks? Well, you've also got a heavy fusion rifle. Enemies too close? Toxic spurt gives you a blast.
• Plague Drone: A surprisingly zippy thing made for mulching mobs up close. At default, you have your rather modest bloat probe and your choice of either bloat spitters (for double flamethrowing fun) or the meat grinder (so you can be even deadlier in melee). If neither of those suits your needs, you can instead buy a plague launcher to make good ranged anti-mob. Since this unit has Fast and Strider, you can reasonably pick up any of these roles without an issue.
• Mortar Tank: Unlike the other vehicles, this one's actually as accurate as your default tanks. And you'll need it because you have a mortar for long-range bombardments. As a reminder, this weapon is inaccurate, so you probably shouldn't be moving while firing it. Besides that, you have a basic machine gun (which you can swap for a rot machine gun for shorter range but AP 1). You can also equip bloat spitters or cannons depending on what you don't want to be close to this thing when it shoots.

Disciples of Lust

Lust is all about speed. All of your troops are able to get Fast, though your non-hero units are paying out the nose for the opportunity.

Special Rules

• Lust Speed: Fast v1.5. Bikers and Possessed get +3" to advance, but rush and charge actions get +6". Yeah, you know what you want.

Psychic Spells

• Twisted Esctasy (4+): Enemy unit within 12" suffers -1 to shoot on their next turn. Important since you're only protected by a mere 2+ save for the most part.
• Seizure (4+): Enemy unit (range indeterminate) takes an AP 2 Deadly 3 hit. Another psychic sniping spell.
• Pleasure (5+): Friendly unit within 12" gets Regeneration whenever they suffer wounds next. Awesome.
• Pain (5+): Enemy unit within 12" takes 3 AP 2 hits. Not much, but it can soften up a bigger unit.
• Frenzy (6+): Friendly unit within 12" immediately charges 6" and gets +1 to hit them that turn. Most spells just settle for moving you into combat, but this makes sure the charge actually takes.
• Overload (6+): Enemy unit within 6" take a single wound for each model, making it way deadlier for hordes.

Units

• Lord of Lust: These particular champions get access to the noise rifles, giving you some volume of fire, and the lust whip for a bunch of melee attacks at AP 1. Their alternative to War Chant or Havoc Tactics is the Blessing of Lust, giving an entire unit the benefit of Lust Speed.

• Noise Brothers: Each of these guys can buy a noise rifle, ramping up the firing rate considerably. If you need alternatives, you only have either the noise amplifier, the flamethrower based on noise, or the noise autocannon.
• Agony Brothers: Take the war berserkers and replace their murderboners for a speed habit. They're not only fast, but also act as an annoyance for anyone tied up in melee, since they make enemies take a -1 to hit in combat. This makes them very annoying to leave alone, which might be enough to justify buying them.
• Endless Brothers: In case you wanted a gunline with Relentless, the endless brothers can help satisfy. Though they have short-ranged carbines, each one still fires twice.

Army Building

Tactics

Grimdark Future Tactics Articles
General:	General Tactics
Alien Hives:	Alien Hives - Soul-Snatcher Cults
Aliens:	Dwarf Guilds - Eternal Dynasty - Jackals - Orc Marauders Robot Legions - Saurian Starhost - TAO Coalition
Battle Brothers:	Battle Brothers - Custodian Brothers - Prime Brothers
Elves:	Dark Elf Raiders - Elven Jesters - High Elf Fleets
Havoc:	Havoc Brothers - Machine Cult Defilers - Wormhole Daemons
Humans:	Battle Sisters - Feudal Guard - Gangs of Hive City Human Defense Force - Human Inquisition - Infected Colonies Machine Cult - Titan Lords - Rebel Guerillas
Ratmen:	Ratmen Clans - Vile Rattus Cult