Players: 2-6
Time: 60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Havoc comes with a large deck of 134 cards, some victory counters, and a rulebook.

The Cards: The cards in Havoc are all printed full-color on medium-weight, glossy cardstock. The deck includes: 108 regular cards (6 suits numbered 1-18 each), 12 Dogs of War (multisuit 0s), 2 double-sided Havoc/Peace cards, 9 battle cards, and 3 reference cards.

The cards all have an attractive asthetic to them. Most of the cards contain artwork from the Morgan Crusader Bible (1250), which is quite good looking and period appropriate. A few other contain knotwork instead. These, combined with some good fonts, give everything a nice & colorful period look.

The main deck consists of 120 cards, including the regular cards and the Dogs of War. The suits are differentiated by both color and icon, making them very easy to tell apart, while all of the numbers are large and easy to read.

The Peace and Havoc cards just remind you what phase of the game you're in.

The Battle cards lay out the progress of the game through 9 historic battles in the Hundred Years War. Each has some historical info (including a full summary on the back), as well as victory point listings and reminders of what to do after the battle is over. These offer good utility to the game.

Finally the 3 reference cards list the ordering of hands. These aren't quite standard Poker hands because you can have up to 6 cards. They're utterly indispensible, and I wish there were 6, one per player, instead of 3.

Overall, the cards are attractive and easy to use.

Victory Counters: Sometimes second and third (or worse) finishers get victory points from a battle. To mark these victory chits are given out. These are printed on medium weight cardstock. I'd have prefered heavier, but they're not actually flimsy, just thin. Each one lists a battle and the victory point value. They're laid out in the same attractive way as the battle cards.

Rulebook: a black and white rulebook, with rules in both English and German. The rules are mostly easy to follow, with a couple of glitches that I was able to make best (and correct) guesses about after I finished reading. There's a very useful play example, but only a few illustrative illustrations.

Box: The box is a slightly flimsy cardstock box, but it's a flip-top box rather than the tuckboxes that most card games come in, which is a huge improvement because it's easy to get to all the cards. There's a nice (illustrated!) triple tray inside which helpfully keeps all the cards separated.

Overall the quality of the components is fair, while the beauty & utility are very good. As such it earns a high "4" out of "5" rating for Style. Extremely good.

The Gameplay

The object of Havoc is to gain victory points through ascendance through the play of Poker-like hands in a series of nine battles of the Hundred Years War.

Setup: The deck is tuned to match the number of players in the game. In a 2-player game, just the cards 1-8 in each suit are used, and in a 6-player game, the cards 1-18 in each suit are used. The number of Dogs of War (0s) is also modified based on the number of players.

Each player is given an initial hand of 7 cards and 1 Dog of War. An initial recruit area of 3 recruits is setup, and then the remaining Dogs of War are mixed into the main deck.

The cards for the 9 battles, along with associated Victory Point (VP) chips are laid out.

One player is selected as the initial Peacekeeper and given the Havoc/Peace card.

Preparing for War: Through the main part of the game, the players are constantly preparing for the next battle. They'll start out prepping for the first fight, the Battle of Sluys (June 24, 1340).

On a player's turn they can either cry "Havoc", starting the next battle, or else "recruit". When you recruit you draw two cards (from some combination of the face-up recruit cards and the draw deck) and then you discard one of them.

Using Dogs. In any recruit turn a player can also use the special Dogs of War cards if he has one or more in his hands.

He can discard one Dog of War to take an extra card from the draw deck or recruit area.

He can discard two Dogs of War to "loot the dead", taking a card from the discard pile.

Avoiding a War: There's a catch, however; the relentless movement of history keeps players from avoiding battles forever. There's a maximum of two or three rounds of recruiting before each battle (depending on the number of players), marked by the Peacekeeper slowly rotating the Peace card.

If no one calls Havoc before those rounds are up, then a Year of Peace occurs. Everyone except the Peacekeeper must discard a card and the current battle is discarded.

Fighting a War: More often a war is fought. Starting with the player who called Havoc each player either plays two (or more) cards as their initial Battle Hand or else passes. (Peaceable rulers are rewarded with a one card draw.)

Play then continues around the table with each player adding one or more card to their Battle Hand each turn or else passing (completing their Battle Hand). Over a few rounds a player may play up to six cards in his Battle Hand and also up to two Dogs of War cards outside the Battle Hand.

Evaluating the Battle Hands. The player Battle Hands are now evaluated. They're like Poker hands, except that they go up to six cards, and thus there are a few more possibilities. There are 17 possible hands, in order:

1. 6 Card Straight Flush
2. 6 of a Kind
3. 5 Card Straight Flush
4. 5 of a Kind
5. "Big House" (4x + 2x)
6. 4 of a Kind
7. "Trios" (3x + 3x)
8. 6 Card Flush
9. Full House
10. 6 Card Straight
11. 5 Card Flush
12. 3 Pair
13. 5 Card Straight
14. 3 of a Kind
15. 2 Pair
16. 1 Pair
17. High Single Card

The winner of a battle gets the Battle card, which earns him 5-11 Victory Points. Some battles give points to the second and third place finishers too. They may earn 2-6 Victory Points. The final battle, Castillon (July 17, 1453) awards points to the first five finishers, from "8" to second place to "1" for fifth. All of these non-first place finishers get chits to represent their points.

The Dogs of War deserve a bit of additional discussion. They're each a "0" of any suit. If you play them as part of a Battle Hand, they can thus be very useful for Flushes, but could also be the bottom of a Straight, or a pair (or triplet) all their own. However Dogs also have a special power at the end of a Battle, and thus players will sometimes want to play them "outside the battle" so that they can use the power without having to incorporate the Dogs into their hands.

Using Dogs. After victory is determined players may now use their Dogs of Wars on the table, whether they were in the Battle or not. They may use 1 dog to take a card from the table (or the recruit area) or 2 to take someone from the discard area.

Then all played cards are discarded.

Ending a Battle. After each battle the player who called Havoc gets 1 or more cards. Other players may get cards as well. This is all clearly noted on each Battle card.

Then the player who called Havoc becomes the Peacekeeper for the new year.

Ending the Game: After the eighth battle, Formigny (April 15, 1450), is fought (or discarded), the recruiting phases end. Now players each draw a couple cards, and can exchange Dogs for additional cards if they want. Then the final battle at Castillon immediately occurs, with each player dropping down their best possible hand.

After Castillon the player with the most points wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Havoc: The Hundred Years War is clearly a Poker derivative. However calling it simply a Poker variant sells it short. The game uses Poker ranking with a card drafting system and some bluffing, as players lay out their cards one by one, perhaps trying to imply their hand is something that it isn't, in the hope of forcing other players out of a battle prematurely. As such Havoc expands some basic Poker ideas into a much more complete strategy game.

Poker-style bidding has been used in a number of auction games over the years. In these games players lay out cards (or money), usually one at a time. Slowly players drop out as they decide that they can't win, but everyone loses everything they put in up to that point (just as you lose everything you bid in Poker).

Condotierre is the one of these games which bears the most similarity to Havoc. It has somewhat similar issues of card management and bluffing (though not card drafting). Reiner Knizia's Taj Mahal and Beowulf are other entrants to this category of play, as is Stefan Dorra's For Sale.

However, though all of these games use Poker-style bidding, none of them actually use Poker hands like Havoc does; instead they all bid though simple enumeration.

The Game Design

Havoc: The Hundred Years War is overall an interesting & well-designed card game. Its extension of Poker to include card drafting and other mechanics makes for a more varied and more strategic game than the old classic.

The strategic element is worth briefly dwelling on because it offers a lot of variety. You have to constantly decide whether to push ahead in a battle, or just sit back and save your resources for later conflicts. As with a majority-control game you can decide whether to go for a couple of first places or a larger smattering of seconds. This is all made richer and more interesting by the inclusion of bluffing, as I mentioned earlier.

There's some interesting tactics too, centered on when to call "Havoc!", when to recruit cards, when to try and keep good cards from other players and when to purposefully feed them. (In our review game one player purposefully created a nice pair in the recruit area to encourage players to draw rather than call Havoc. This tactic worked and caused the 8th battle to be discarded for a Year of Peace. The player in question had a weak hand at the time, but as a result of his machinations he was weak only for the 9th and final battle, rather than for the last two. He won by a single point and would probably have lost that advantage if there had been an eighth battle.)

It's worth mentioning again that Havoc isn't just Poker, but instead Poker with enough additional elements to make it truly enjoyable to a heavier strategy gamer.

There are some sharp edges in Havoc. This is pretty common for a first-time game from an indy company, and if anything I'm impressed that they're relatively few.

I find the 6-card Poker hands a little over complex. I personally would have preferred a 5-card Poker hand. As it was all the players had to pretty frequently consult the informational cards to remember the 17 ranks (or at least the non-standard ones).We'd probably get it after a few more games.

Beyond that I thought that the Dogs of War offered the one element of non-elegance in the game. The different ways that they work (and the fact that you can put them outside of the Battle) confused most of the players (and indeed confused me after reading the rules until I really sat down and looked at how it was all supposed to work).

Still, on the whole Havoc is a well-designed, strategic, and elegant game: it earns a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Havoc: The Hundred Years War is a first-time publication from newcomers KC Humphrey and Sunriver Games and it's a great start. It takes basic Poker mechanics and used them to build up a more strategic card game with lots of different decisions & paths to victory. If you play card games, and especially if you like Poker, you shold give this a shot. And, in any case, you should keep Sunriver Games on your RADAR for their future publications.

Havoc is currently available for purchase exclusive from funagain.com.