How the Havoc Attack Helicopter Kills Tanks in WARDOGS

Armor rules the ground in WARDOGS right up until a Havoc shows up. The heaviest combat helicopter on the vendor board exists almost entirely to delete tanks, artillery and anything else expensive that a team has parked inside a Control Zone. It is also the single priciest thing you can buy, and it is gated by a rule that keeps it out of the opening minutes of a match.

Quick answer: Buy the Havoc for $18,000 from the AIR tab of the vehicle vendor, load 122mm HE rockets, 30mm cannon rounds and flares at the garage vendor, then wait for a team to hit 20 points before it can spawn. Rockets crack the tank, cannon fire finishes it.

Havoc cost and unlock requirements in WARDOGS

The Havoc sits at $18,000 in the Combat category of the AIR tab. That is 180% of the $10,000 you start an account with, and because cash carries over between matches, a Havoc lost in the first sortie is a hole you feel for several games afterwards. Losing it once and rebuying it inside the same match means budgeting $36,000 of air support.

Vehicle gating runs on three separate tracks. Driver Level unlocks land transport, Pilot Level applies to aircraft, and Wardog Level covers tanks and artillery. Grinding one does nothing for the others. Prices and gates all sat in test builds through the Closed Alpha and Closed Beta, so expect tuning as the game moves through Early Access.

When attack helicopters can spawn (the 20-point rule)

No attack helicopter can be spawned until one of the teams reaches 20 points. The reason is straightforward. The opening phase of a match is when squads are building FOBs, moving the whole team toward the Control Zone, and putting up SAM sites and CIWS emplacements, which are the natural counters to aircraft. Letting a Havoc into that window would end the match before anyone had a defense up.

Tanks and artillery carry no equivalent restriction. They can roll straight for the zone from the start, which is why the early game so often turns into infantry scrambling to answer armor with launchers instead of setting up their own positions. The counter to that armor is precisely the aircraft nobody is allowed to fly yet, and that asymmetry is the loudest balance complaint to come out of the beta.

Note: the 20-point threshold is a pre-release value. No official change to it has been confirmed.

Havoc loadout for anti-armor work

Buying the airframe is only half the transaction. Ammunition, countermeasures and repair tools are bought separately at the garage and equipment vendors, and a Havoc that launches with an empty rocket pod is $18,000 of very loud sightseeing.

How the Havoc kills tanks

Tank hunting starts on the tactical map, not in the air. Enemy armor gets marked, the crew picks a heading, and the pilot flies in with terrain between the helicopter and the target for as long as possible. The gunner works from a thermal turret optic, which makes vehicles and infantry trivially easy to pick out of tree lines, courtyards and rooftops.

The kill itself is a two-stage job. Rockets from the pylons go in first, aimed by lining the aircraft up on the target rather than a free-floating reticle, then 30mm follows up on whatever survives. The 30mm is explosive and accurate enough to be fired through building windows, so the same pass that kills a tank also clears the infantry escorting it.

Ridge lines and hill positions are where tank crews like to sit, because elevation gives them reach across the whole valley. It also puts them in the open with no cover overhead. Church sectors, FOB perimeters and towers work the same way, with orbiting cannon fire clearing armor, spawn vehicles and squads trying to hold a roof.

What shoots the Havoc down

Because loadouts are bought per life with no class restrictions, anyone who dies can respawn carrying anti-air or anti-armor gear. The Havoc is never facing a fixed number of threats. It faces however many the other two teams decide to pay for.

Fuel is the quiet one. Flight time is finite, the gauge drops into a red critical state, and running dry forces an autorotation landing wherever you happen to be. Watch it the way you watch ammunition.

Repairing and refueling the Havoc mid-match

Taking missile damage does not have to end the sortie. Put the helicopter down somewhere out of line of sight — a stream bed, a fold in the terrain, an empty field — and have both crew members work the hull with light drills. Two people repairing is roughly twice as fast as one, which matters when you are grounded and audible.

Fuel works the same way. You either fly home and refuel at base or have a teammate bring jerry cans out to you. The vehicle interaction menu also handles starting the engine, locking seats for your squad, and recovering an overturned or stuck airframe, so a bad landing is not automatically a write-off.

You know a rebuy has gone through when the replacement airframe appears on the pad with a yellow marker over it and the vendor deducts the cash. Rearm before you lift, because a fresh Havoc does not come loaded.

Havoc compared to the cheaper combat helicopters

Four armed helicopters are documented from pre-release builds, and the Havoc sits well above the rest of them on price. If your goal is specifically killing armor, nothing cheaper does the job as reliably; if your goal is moving a squad, the air transport options cost less than half as much.

For scale on the ground side, an L2A6 main battle tank runs $14,000 at Wardog Level 35 and an SPH-2 artillery vehicle is $10,000 at Wardog Level 55. A Havoc that kills two tanks has more than paid for itself; one that gets clipped by a CIWS on its first pass has cost your team more than the armor it was sent to hunt.

Treat the Havoc as a tempo purchase rather than a permanent fixture. It is worth the money when your team is rotating faster than the enemy can react and enemy armor is exposed in the open. It is a waste when it is hovering over a contested zone waiting for someone to buy a launcher — and in a game with no class locks, someone always will.