)[OT] Havok (was: Re: OT: Mage Knight Rebellion

>On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 15:05:05 -0700, krs@geohex.com wrote:
>
>>The game is the
>>brain child of Jordan Weisman of Battletech fame and
>>should be a success.
>
>I wish you success, KR. But I know that around here, NO store is buying
into
>more collectible stuff. Even collectible disk games, which were the
"big
>thing" at GenCon aren't making any kind of impression. Too many stores
got
>burned. If stores aren't buying Star Trek disk games, or any of the
other disk
>games, they aren't likely to get into a "collectible miniatures" game.
>
>I also concur with Rick. Didn't play a demo, but watched a couple. It
looked
>kind of dull. The figures were okay (not badly painted, for machine
painted
>plastic minis) but very "derivative". My friend Sherry was mildly
>amused/disgusted at the big hefty-chested female magic user (we all
know the
>target market for this game). It looked cumbersome with a lot of
figures, and
>boring with a few. Not exactly a deep game.

A couple of years ago, a UK toy company (Bluebird Toys) made a brave
venture into the "kiddie gamer" market with a system called Havok,
consisting of (crudely) prepainted plastic 25/30mm (GW style) figures
sold
3 to a box, complete with game stats etc, plus three or four rather nice
snap-together plastic vehicles for it (a light tank/APC, a heavy tank, a
rather steampunky VTOL etc). There was also a small boxed starter game
with
a selection of figs, rules, card terrain etc - very much "40K lite". The
rules were ultra-simple, but it DID kind of work as a game - it had many
of
the traditional wargaming elements distilled down to their simplest form
for young gamers.
Sadly, it didn't last - there were rumours that GW had a hand in killing
it
(though this may just be industry paranoia, but it WAS very GW-style in
the
design and I could quite see them dropping a lawyer or two on it), and
everything ended up in toyshop clearance bins - I picked a few of the
vehicles up for the bits box at silly prices a few months back. I've
also
got 2 copies of the boxed set (also obtained at clearance prices).
Did the game and the figures ever make it to the US market at all, or
was
it purely a UK thing?

Jon (GZG)
>
>
>Allan Goodall			awg@sympatico.ca
>Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall
>
>"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
>toys into a living room full of drunken men, things
>always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"