============ The Ogre Digest, July 4th (Last: June 29th) ============= ===== Ogre Terrain From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Advice on painting miniatures. From: Kevin Walker From: "Andrew Walters" ===== painting infantry miniatures From: "Nicholas Elsden" ===== Ogre on computer From: "TJ Overton" ===== Battlefields Raid From: Inire From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Dealing With A Mark V's Missiles From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com From: "Andrew Walters" ============================== From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Ogre Terrain I have yet to begin on this myself (though I have great plans!) but one piece of advice for which I am thankful to White Rat is to use those big ol' sheets of blue foam available at Home Despot and the like. The prices is the same as plywood, they weigh a lot less (vital to those of us who drag our gear to cons) and can be worked with non-power tools. They will take white glue just fine, so I suspect the sawdust-and-glue will work great, but never, ever spray paint the blue foam unless you've coated it with something else first. Andrew ============================== From: Kevin Walker Subject: Advice on painting miniatures. > From: Armored Core2 > Those of you who use the miniatures (new and old) I'd > be interested in hearing about your experiances > painting your miniatures. Anything from removing > flash, to adding antennae, but especially what paint > schemes you've used(Mine are Combine: Brown & Blasted > PanE: Midnight Purple). I'm varying the color per detachment. Some of the combine units I'm working on are a black with the red striping and numbering while other are going to be blue with white details. Since the game board represents a tactical display (wasn't this mentioned somewhere in the background or rules?) I'm tending to keep the units in basic colors with contrasting details. I have toooooo many historicals that have camouflage schemes that I tire of them (and correctly done the details of the miniatures tend to disappear). On the subject of antennas I use to use piano or brass wire for many of my miniatures, however after drawing blood too many times I'm using altered spare plastic sprues. Taking a piece of left over sprue from other projects I heat it up to near melting, pulling on it to stretch it. You can get a thing piece with a little practice. Next I cut out the thinnest section, trim to the needed length and glue to the figure in question. One note though - they will not stand straight up if they have any length to them. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it's easier to make that bending aerial look or to impart a felling of movement. (snip) > Finally, here's a nifty idea I got from a picture in > the OGRE Miniatures book, namely I took some old > plastic sprues, and a pair of wiresnips and made > little "bases" for my GEVs so it looks like they're > hovering. I varied the angles so they look like > they're turning or accelerating and whatnot. I'm using some grav bases I purchased for my other sci-fi 1/300 scale figures from Ground Zero Games in the UK. They're basically a round base molded with a center post for mounting GEV and GRAV vehicles. I then mount the stand on a rectangular piece of thin plastic, metal or thin plywood (1/32 of an inch) that has a piece of thin magnet on it. All of miniatures then go on a 19x12 cookie sheet which is then stored in a 19x12x3 white mailing box. Kevin Walker sage@bresnanlink.net ===== From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Advice on painting miniatures. I have bunch of my notes on preparing and painting miniatures on my Ogre page at . I add something every few weeks. Andrew ============================== From: "Nicholas Elsden" Subject: painting infantry miniatures In Ogre Digest, June 29th, Yanni asked about painting infantry miniatures (amongst others). I have found that complicated painting schemes (with too much detail in too many shades, or camouflage armour) on 6 or 10mm figures have a 'camouflage' effect when viewed from a few feet away on the wargames table, blending into a dull monotone, obscuring the details that have been painted. In fact, this also applies to the smaller vehicles, as well. *Simple* schemes with one main colour for the powered armour, and one or two discrete areas of one contrasting bright colour, look best (to me, at least), plus say black and/or metallic paint for one or two details (although these are likely to be invisible from a few feet away; it just 'feels' wrong to leave weapons in the armour colour !). Dark or dull base-armour colours exaggerate the phenomonon whereby all figures are going to look black from a distance, but this can be alleviated by dry brushing in lighter tones. This is especially effective if you chose black as the armour colour (my personal favourite). I prefer to use a *very* dark grey (or 'light black') as the base colour, over a white undercoat. You could simply use a black undercoat and dry brush heavily in very dark grey, then again more lightly in light grey on the high spots. A third option would be to start with a medium or dark grey, then wash with black, then dry brush. I then paint in parts of the armour, such as shoulder plates, in a distinctive colour for the unit. This should contrast strongly with the armour colour: a bright colour such as red, yellow, or white will be visible from the greatest distance against black or other dark colours. If you can bear it, an occasional look at 'White Dwarf' is good for inspiration, although GW's schemes for 28m figures are too detailed for OGRE miniatures. If the armour is black, or any dark colour, it may help to paint this area in white first, before going over in the bright colour; this should stop the final tone appearing more dull than the paint colour normally does. Similar concepts apply if you chose a strong colour for the armour, such as red or white (how about Bavarian light-medium sky blue ?). You could use a black undercoat and then 'semi-dry brush' the base armour colour heavily over the top, although the black dulls the tone with lighter colours, requiring several coats. I have found with historical 6mm figures that this works best with models that are quite deeply 'engraved', such as the British Irregular or Scotia models; although these look rather poor unpainted, they come out quite well after this. Depending on the results of the 'semi-dry brushing', you may want to dry bruch in a much lighter tone across the highlights. On black, I like to use metallics to pick out weapons, nozzles on jet packs, and other details. This is a particularly good way to use that old jar of copper-coloured paint that you bought years ago, and hardly ever use. A friend has got very good results using silver for the big 'bubble' visors on the old Scotia power-armoured infantry, representing either light glinting off plexiglass, or perhaps the same treatment as 'mirror-shades'. It is worth rembering that you will mostly be viewing your own figures from the rear, so selfishly paint something interesting (and visible) on this side of the figures, as well as the front for your opponent to appreciate ! The base colour should be chosen to contrast strongly with the tone of the figures. In fact, for OGRE, you can reverse the process, and chose the armour colour to strongly contrast with the base colour ! I like to base small figures before painting, and include small grit etc. with the sand that I use for base texture. If you use a black undercoat, then you can use the same technique as for the armour, again with the option of a second level of dry-brushing to pick up raised areas on the sand and grit, or whatever base texture you prefer. Nick Elsden ============================== From: "TJ Overton" Subject: Ogre on computer It's been something like a year since Steve poked in here to say they might have something in the works. Anyone heard anything since, or have they been so busy with all the new "goodies" to bother with it? TJ Overton ============================== From: Inire Subject: Battlefields Raid > From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" > I played the Battlefields version of Raid on Sunday. I crushed my > opponent. I couldn't believe that 8 Supers could be wasted so badly. > I'm CERTAIN they were in the hands of a sleepy commander. *Kirk is very gentle in his appraisal; I do think that the 8 SHVY situation would work, but I was playing for the 2nd time in, oh, 5 years. ;-> and the time before that was 30 minutes prior and he clobbered me then, too! ;-D I'll get him next time, I will... Jeff "My dice hate me!" Miller ICQ# 57242517 "The idea of verifying facts about the world through controlled repetition seems alien to just about everyone with the _possible_ exception of Fr Inire, and he's a bug-eyed space monster. . ." -Jim Henley, on the URTH list ===== From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Battlefields Raid How did you so easily take out eight SHVYs? Were they handled badly? Were the dice malicious? Do you have a secret that we would pay money for? Are you sure you'd take MHWZ+6xHVY for 8 SHVY? Maybe you mean MHWZ+12xHVY? Andrew ============================== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: Dealing With A Mark V's Missiles << [The important point here is flanks, not rear. GEVs do not have infinite movement speed and an Ogre can easily move forwards past the strike range of a GEV force hiding entirely behind it. >> Quite correct. The GEVs have to rebound to the sides and slightly (1hex) ahead of the OGRE. This means the Ogre has to move sideways to bring it's secondaries to bear on the hovers, extending the time under the fire of the HWTZ. If the Ogre charges, you should be able to run up to alongside of him, fire, and run away again. Early attacks against treads could be useful, but my first target are the MBs. This prolongs the use of your hovers and other units. Ad Astra! Stan Leghorn ===== From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Dealing With A Mark V's Missiles I've prattled about Ogre Missiles before; to summarize, I'd say kill the Mains, take your lumps from the missiles, get behind/beside the Ogre and shoot the treads. It takes as much firepower to eliminate all the missiles as to take out eighteen tread points, and you *must* shoot all the tread points to survive. The missiles are likely going to take out five armor units, but maybe less. The only time I'd start shooting at a Mark V's missiles is if it had just one or two and was about to enter missile range. Do a range-time calculation considering one missile to be as tough to destroy as three tread points, but remember its only destroying the *last* missile that shortens the Ogre's range from five to two. The treads vs missiles decision shouldn't be hard. If he's a couple hexes away from missile range and has six missiles, he's won unless you can bring twenty strength points against the missiles right then. ===== [With an all hover force against the Mk-V the important point is to apply agility to prevent the full use of the secondary batteries. Taking a note from that dratted formula and counting one-shot or AP weapons at one third, the attack strengths for a Mark V add up like this: 2 Mains: 8 points 6 Secondaries: 18 points 6 Missiles: 12 points 12 AP: 4 points So you can see that if the secondaries get to strike then they're almost half the total firepower of the Ogre. But the reason to kill the mains before the treads is that main batteries increase the Ogre's effective mobility, especially against GEVs! As an example, suppose a ring of GEVs strike at an Ogre in hex 1217 and one of the GEVs withdraws to hex 0715 and another goes to hex 0718. If the Ogre has move two, but both main batteries then it can move to hex 1016 and target both GEVs at 2-1 odds. However if the Ogre has move three and only secondary batteries available it can only attack one of the GEVs and the rest of it's secondaries are wasted. Also, it only takes an average of 12 GEV shots to remove both secondaries, vs 30 shots to scrape off a point of movement. As additional "secondary protection", only use the 3-1 infantry counters when your grunts are adjacent to the beast and split them up into 2-1s and 1-1s at all other times. To recap: First you kill the mains, then you kill the treads and then you win. -HJC] Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com Archives at http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2001, by Steve Jackson Games.