====== OGRE Digest, December 27th (Last: December 25th) ======== ===== Ceasefire Collapse From: David Morse ===== Aim for the tower? From: "Chris French" ===== Suggested _OGRE_ units From: "Chris French" ===== Basic Scenario defense: 10 GEV, 1 HWZ? From: stephan beal ===== lads&howitzers From: "Louis Wardlaw IV" ===== terrain for nuked map From: "Louis Wardlaw IV" ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Ceasefire Collapse > A very large map with a spacing rule for command posts (say at least 20 > hexes apart) would give a real advantage to offensive tactics, but I'm > beginning to suspect that most players do not see how to leverage the > innate advantage to attack that the GEV rules have. When I was in college, the way we played was on a huge map (Air and Armor, IIRC). We each got "metroplexes" or something, and you could schedule production, whatever you wanted from inf-1 to Mark V. In such a scenario GEVs ruled the battlefield (it was a little more open than standard GEV terrain, but not much). We eventually made GEVs and LGEVs cost about 20% more than the other armor units, since their ability to reform and outflank, not to mention run away, totally ruled. That game was all about attack, and defense, and it really mattered. If you lost your production centers then you fell behind on the exponential economic bloom and were totally toast without the ability to produce reinforcements. ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Aim for the tower? > Evil Stevie didn't have a real clear vision of what an Ogre would look > like at that point, other than being big and mean and just because Europe > does something usually does not indicate that it is a good idea, no? I've seen Formula One racing -- NASCAR and IRL forever! :) Still, instead of a big, easy-to-shoot tower, why not extrapolate from _Battlesuit_ (finally found my copy!), and say that OGREs have an essentially infinite supply of Recon Drones? The same could be applied to other armor and infantry units, and stop the GURPS-munchkins altogether. (And no, drones cannot be tar- geted independently -- they're too small and fast for that. :) ) > It would be a little difficult to apply the fuzzy rule to the original > OGRE game, but once you've got HWI, GEV-PCs and LGEVs it doesn't hurt that > much. (Insert fuzzy munchkin comment here. ;-) ) Only after you explain the "fuzzy rule". Is this some sort of cap on number of one type of unit available? And what's an HWI? > A very large map with a spacing rule for command posts (say at least > 20 hexes apart) would give a real advantage to offensive tactics, but I'm > beginning to suspect that most players do not see how to leverage the > innate advantage to attack that the GEV rules have. I allow one turn of overrun combat, and then allow tanks to start ramming, in place of overrun. BTW: Here's a thought for the Basic _OGRE_ game. OGREs typically are sent in to soften up a section of enemy line for later exploitation by conventional forces. Survival of the CP allows an attacked force to call for help, and coordinate what rein- forcements do arrive. In game terms: Play a round of the standard "kill the CP" game. Once the game is finished, roll 1d6 for each armor and infantry unit the defense has, both destroyed and survived. If the CP was destroyed, that unit may be replaced by any equivalent unit type (i.e., 6-pt. armor for 6-pt. armor, or INF squad for INF squad) on a 1d6 result of 1-2; if the CP survived, the unit may be replaced on a result of 3-6. Note that the defense may end up with more armor and infantry units than it started with (a force with 30 infantry squads, 18 6-pt. armor units, and 1 12-pt. armor unit would roll 49 times, 30 INF, 18 6-pt. armor, 1 12-pt. armor). The second-round attacking force gets a combined-arms (armor and INF) force equal in point value to that of the OGRE employed in the first round. CF ===== [The Fuzzy rule is in Ogre Scenario Book 1, http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/scenariobooks/ and limits each side to no more than one fourth of its force in identical units, which would seem to prohibit taking any Ogres at all... -HJC] ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Suggested _OGRE_ units Been fiddling with the Cobb Formula; came up with the following: MEDIUM TANK Attack 3; Defense 3; Range 2; Move 3; Move Mode TNK; 4.5 pts. Filling the gap between the Heavy and Light Tanks, this unit was developed as a slightly cheaper place-holder for shot-up HVY platoons. It can keep pace with its bretheren, unlike the MSL; and it takes a HVY gun hit at 1-1 odds, rather than the LT's 2-1. Other than that, it has no spectacular virtues or vices. MORTAR Attack 5; Defense 2; Range 4; Move 0; Move Mode NA; 6 pts. A cheaper iteration of the Howitzer. Range and Attack suffer, but Defense is improved, and two may be bought for the cost of one HWZ. MOBILE MORTAR Attack 5; Defense 1; Range 3; Move 3; Move Mode TNK; 6 pts. Take a Medium Tank chassis, strip off the turret and most of the armor, and crowbar a Mortar into the hull. This unit is best em- ployed either behind an advancing armor line, to remove major annoyances; or behind stream hexsides, to chop up paused GEVs. Keep this piece away from high-Attack-value units, or surround it with more threatening units; otherwise, it will be vaporized. (If all else fails, run; this unit has the speed and MM to get away from anything it can't kill.) (Mobile Mortar alternate rule: The unit may not move in a turn if it wishes to fire; if it moves, it may not fire.) MISSILE TANK PLUS According to the Cobb formula, a MSL with 3 MP is worth: (42 + 32) / 12 = 6&1/6 armor points. HEAVY TANK PERSONNEL CARRIER (HVY-PC) Attack 1; Defense 3; Range 2; Move 3; Move Mode HVY; 3 pts. INF cap: As GEV-PC. The Combine first deployed this unit in eastern Spain during the prusuit of the defeated Paneuropean Second Army. After massive GEV-PC losses suffered due to the hover unit's inability to deal effectively with mountainous terrain, Combine designers took the basic Heavy Tank design, removed the turret and ammo storage, capped the turret ring, and added a LGEV gun to provide some offensive capability. The unit saw service in all theaters of war; similar versions were produced by all major armor producers. Pro- duction continued even into the Factory States era, especially in Western North America, where GEVs are of marginal effectivness. MOBILE OGRE MAIN BATTERY Attacks 4, 1AP ; Defense 4; Range 3; Move 3; Move Mode HVY; 9 pts. Produced initally by Paneurope as an alternative to the more ex- pensive Superheavy Tank, this unit was created by strapping the main battery from an OGRE onto a Heavy Tank chassis. This unit proved effective against Combine Heavies, and en masse could give an OGRE pause. Paneurope was the primary user; however, all combatants produced some numbers of these units. MOBILE OGRE SECONDARY BATTERY (Nihon) Attack 3; Defense 3; Range 3; Move 3; Move Mode TNK; 6 pts. Nihon began deployment of this unit during the Invasion of America, as a means of countering the masses of Heavy Tanks encountered in the Sierra Nevada range. This unit could outrange a Heavy, at the cost of some hitting power. Production is believed to have ceased after the collapse of the Nihon Empire. CF ===== [Before you reinvent the Turtle, please go to http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ take a look at the upgunned Mark VI miniature pics, select the ARTICLES link, read through the Variants and New Units section then select bibliography and scroll down to Warren, Jim Gould Left This In My Mailbox and see what horrors were unleashed by the first version of the formula. -HJC] ============================== From: stephan beal Subject: Basic Scenario defense: 10 GEV, 1 HWZ? Yo, fellas, A couple of my brothers came to visit for the holidays and i introduced one of them to Ogre (the other has played for a while). The newbie is an excellent strategist, and beats Civ-style games on Diety level 98% of the time. After his second game my brother was whooping major cyberbutt when playing the defense (though he's almost as good with the Ogre). He's forced me to re-think of some of my defensive tactics, and i looked to The Ogre Book for ideas... One interesting article in TOB is the all-GEV defense. i've tried this before and never could get it to work, mainly because we simply lack the firepower to stop The Beast. So i altered it a small bit and replaced 2 hovers with one HWZ. The thinking behind this was: we've got to start with 2 hovers "behind the line", anyway, so we're looking at a several-turn delay before they can get to the Ogre. So why not replace them with a single HWZ, which will allow attacks on the Ogre within approximately the same time frame and with mucho bango. An SHVY would probably be better than the HWZ, but we're playing using the old (late 1980's) Ogre Deluxe Edition, which lacks the SHVY pieces (and my brother complains about the size of the 1/2" counters). Okay, to be honest i didn't pull it off. The first game i managed to strip the main + missles and strip him down to 5 treads before he got all my armor (leaving only 2 infantry), but he had a good 7+ hexes to go before reaching the CP, so i think the setup is workable. My strategy was slightly different than that proposed in TOB, though: i hit the Main first, instead of going immediately for treads (which were 2nd priority). The second game i was slaughtered very quickly, largely because it took me 7 rolls before i got a single hit (and all were at 1:1 or better), and half of my force was slag by that time. (But the Ogre hit 2x 1:2 attacks vs Inf in that same time period, re-affirming my "the Ogre Always Rolls Higher" theorem.) Another variation on this is to replace the HWZ with 2 MSLs, though i haven't experimented with that. If the GEVs can strip the beast down to 2 by turn 3, as the article suggests they can, then the MSLs may be the ideal icing on that cake. Have one of you perhaps tried a similar setup, and if so what is your experience with it? ----- stephan stephan@einsurance.de - http://www.einsurance.de i need a woman who can say, 'honey, can you please take a look at this stack trace while I order the pizza?' and really mean it. ===== [Try taking 12 GEVs BEHIND the line and push the infantry as a solid cloud of single squad counters forward. Kill the main and then the treads and ignore all other components on the Ogre. Don't shoot at single-shot missiles. -HJC] ============================== From: "Louis Wardlaw IV" Subject: lads&howitzers Why did they give lads that horrible disadvantage outside of the 5 hex command post's radius? They are not all that powerful, but with the option of being re-located they can really help out the defender. I could also see them being of use to the attacker for shelling units moving into and out of cities. That rule though makes you never want to move them. I do not think it would even be worth it. A 4-hex 1 attack does not really seem worthwhile for a unit worth an armor unit. When one side just picks a bunch of howitzers and missile tanks, and sits there in a cluster around the cp is a tough nut to crack. If they have 3 howitzers backed up by missile tanks and a few mobile howitzers then what can you really do about it? This is particularly bad on the basic gev map when one side gets the town with two roads going into it. It has forests all round and a river just to the south of it. Heavy tanks are quickly sorted out by the artillery on their way in, which leaves your missle tanks and light tanks to seize the day. The terrain causes your forces to either string out or move a hex or two per turn, all the while you lose roughly two units a turn to artillery. ============================== From: "Louis Wardlaw IV" Subject: terrain for nuked map I was also wondering if anyone else thought of extra terrain types for the basic nuked ogre map. How about nuked cities and canyons? The real problem I see with canyons would be crossing them, since the nuke took care of whatever bridge was there. Also, you could have dry river beds. I am not sure about this as even if the nuke flash-steamed all of the water out of the stream, as long as some of the orginal pattern remained there would still be a river. ===== [Nukes are VERY unlikely to dry out a river even for a few minutes, but they might collapse the sides of a canyon if exploded within. For the most part the nukes in the Ogreverse (outside of cruise missiles) are small and use "shaped charge" effects rather than brute force to overcome armor. -HJC] ============================== Send all submissions or mailing list changes or problems to ogre@sjgames.com Archives for this mailing list may be found at http://www.io.com/~hcobb/ General online support for the OGRE game is at http://www.sjgames.com/ogre Ogre, G.E.V., Shockwave and other products mentioned here are trademarks or registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy at http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html