====== The Ogre Digest, October 2nd (Last: September 29th) ======== ===== Targeting the articulation joint From: "Wray Odom" ===== Re: Ogre: Thoughts From: "nvdoyle" ===== Four treaded tanks From: "Alan and Carmel Brain" ===== Opinions on a game mechanic From: Andrew Walters ===== Opinions on a game mechanic From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" ============================== From: "Wray Odom" Subject: Targeting the articulation joint I was wondering about something. All the large Ogre's are shown with a wasp waist that is supposed to be fully articulating in all three axes. It seems to me that this would be a significant weak point in the armor. Has anyone ever discussed the possibility of exploiting this weakness? If you can break this joint and separate the two sections the inards become quite easy to destroy. ===== [Sounds like a critical hit to me. -HJC] ============================== From: "nvdoyle" Subject: Re: Ogre: Thoughts Battlesuit... Don't mind that sound, it's just my head pounding against the wall. The wall's used to it by now. So, digging out my Battlesuit stuff, I find that it still doesn't have alternating activation, but - the active player has to give a pause between movement counts, to allow for reaction fire. And a unit can fire anywhere along it's move. I don't see why it wouldn't work for a mixed combat (I rarely play any other kind). It would take somewhat longer, but a good deal of the movement would be done out of range of any attack threat (barring lasers :). This brings up another idea: Missile interception fire. The D of a unit represents it's passive and active defenses (armor, stealthing, point-defense whatevers). What about using their main weapons as an active defense? If a missile attack (Ogre Missile, MSL, HWZ (all types), maybe HWINF) is either targeting a unit or hex within their range, or passing through their range circle, allow the missile units to roll to shoot down the attack. Off the top of my head, compare the Atk of the interceptors to the Atk (as Def) of the firing shot. NE is NE, D cuts the Atk Str in half, X intercepts completely... ===== [For the reverse (active defenses as weapons, especially for infantry) try Grav Armor -HJC] ============================== From: "Alan and Carmel Brain" Subject: Four treaded tanks Have a look at this one - straight out of the OGREverse http://history.vif2.ru/tanks/is4/last_is279_1.jpg ===== [For the backstory see http://history.vif2.ru/is4.html -HJC] ============================== From: Andrew Walters Subject: Opinions on a game mechanic >From: "Paul Chapman" Yes, a tremendous amount of importance falls one one die roll, as when someone gets a 1:1 on a SHVY. Exciting, but you won't play it too many times. >--the side with the fewest remaining armor points controls the > Ogre. (again, un-random, and requires more bookkeeping, but nice and > fair) This may make the game long, and could cause strange behavior - I "forget" to retreat a couple of GEVs and opt not to fire on some infantry so that I can get control of the Ogre. Heck, I'd fire on a few of my own units to get control of the Ogre. My first thought was similar to Henry's, a "dice-deck" solution. I have two problems with Henry's solution: First, if the Ogre just drives on one unit you can't use it, its just randomly killing a unit each turn. This isn't Ogre like, and you couldn't use it to take out an enemy concentration, so its *too* random. Its never really on anyone's side. Second, a game of Ogre is typically eight to sixteen turns, you're not even going to through a third of the deck, maybe less than a quarter, so you could easily draw nine reds in twelve draws, which would be a little scary. So I would suggest putting twelve unused counters in a cup, six of each color. Draw one each turn - that player gets complete control, and the counter stays out. To maintain uncertainty, you probably want to toss all the counters back in when there are only two left. Andrew Walters ===== From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" Subject: Opinions on a game mechanic At the start of the game, "highest roll gets it," --you only roll for control if you are not currently controlling the Ogre. You take control on a 5 or better, and get ***+2*** for every round the other guy has had control. ***You only get +1 if you scored damage on the OGRE or automatic control if the controlling player scores damage, even if by spillover.*** (bookkeeping heavy, and still the potential of trouble with lousy die rolls) ============================== [Temporarily running low on things to carp about, I went over to the miniatures page http://www.sjgames.com/miniatures/ogre/ and looking over the expansion sets I've been noticing a few things. Each of the Combine units seems to be a very cohesive unit that I could easily see deploying as is. Combine set five would need some infantry or escort armor to keep from being overrun, but given such an escort the units included in this set work nicely together. But the Paneuropean sets seem to be either all of the same thing or mixed units tossed together without thought as to how they would support each other. Paneuropean set two has Light and Heavy Tanks in equal numbers. Obviously the Heavy Tanks are intended to be the main force with the Light Tanks as escorts but the woods the Heavy Tanks love will halve the speed of the Light Tanks. Paneuropean set three is even worse as the Missile Tanks have a third the speed in woods as the Superheavies and don't add enough range or firepower to be worth holding back to protect. And then Paneuropean set six combines fixed and mobile howitzers with no screening forces and the only two Paneuropean sets with infantry for this screen are Deluxe GEV (with less infantry than Deluxe Ogre) and set five. ("Oops, they overran the howitzers, well at least we can pull a quick withdraw on these GEV-PCs.") On top of this the only Combine set at less than 60 VPs for twenty bucks is the one with the laser towers while both of the Paneuropean sets with Heavy or Superheavy tanks are less than 60 VPs. If only the tanks in Paneuropean set three carried their full load of six squads of infantry then the set would be boosted to a full 60 VPs, the Paneuropean infantry drought would be lessened and the infantry could be dropped off to screen the fire base of Missile Tanks, freeing the Superheavy Tanks (with their Light Tank escorts) to be the mobile attack force. -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.