====== OGRE Digest, November 4th (Last: November 1st) ======== ===== Alternative Miniatures From: Servitor@aol.com ===== Alternate play sequence From: David Morse From: stephan beal ===== Mark IV Week From: "Chris French" ===== Re: Small Hex GEV From: "Charles Barnett" ============================== From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: Alternative Miniatures > Weren't you once big in the _Car Wars_ scene? Until it eventually became "Car Fleet Battles", oh yeah... (sound of being slapped by a trout...) >>In fact, I've considered running a con game (maybe when Gen-Con comes to Indy), where I'll teach the Ogre Minis rules, and people can bring -any- 1/300/285/6mm units: Warhammer 40K, Ogre, Micro-armor (Modern), Battletech - even the new-scale Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles minis can work. Unit cards are easy to prepare, and hand out multiple copies of. Get 'em all on the table, and start blasting.<< At the Steve Jackson Games OGRE pages, there's a section on combat walkers (ala anime style) for OGRE/G.E.V. Can you say "Titan"? You're insane, but more power to ya... best, John Hurtt (Servitor@aol.com) ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Alternate play sequence Dave Morse wrote: > blah blah blah, simultaneous movement system, blah blah blah Ugh, reading it over I don't like that system at all. Why? Because holding 3 HVYs in your rear areas, doing nothing, magically gives your dogfighting HVYs the inititiative. They should have no effect. So here's another suggestion: 1) Move phase 1 - All units with 3 or more MP move 2) Move phase 2 - All units with 1 or more MP move 3) Move phase 3 - All units with 2 or more MP move 4) Move phase 4 - All units with 4 or more MP move 5) Move phase 5 - All units with 5 MP move (road bonus) 6) Go get snacks phase 7) Conventional Fire Phase - everyone gets to fire. Resolve effects simultaneously. 8) Gev move phase 1 - *-1 and faster GEVs move 9) Gev move phase 2 - *-2 and faster GEVs move 10) Gev move phase 3 - *-3 and faster GEVs move 11) Gev move phase 4 - *-4 GEVs move (road bonus) This breaks up the movement into phases, ala Car Wars. There is still the question of who moves first when nearby enemies are scheduled to move at the same time. Within that phase, slower units move first. If there's a tie, flip a coin, loser must move all his units of that speed in that particular phase first, followed by the winner. In many cases units will be so far out of combat that they will be able to simply move for the whole turn without danger of confusion. Players should excercise this possiblity often, to speed up play. ===== From: stephan beal Subject: Alternate play sequence > From: David Morse > > I'll assume everyone is playing with minis at this point, as well as a > bunch of extra 1/2" counters gathering dust. Bad assumption. i don't even have a copy of minis (never bought it because the minis weren't available for so long, and now that i'm in Germany it's simply too expensive to import them). However, i do have many thousands of 1/2" counters, the majority of which gather dust. ----- stephan ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Mark IV Week From: Henry J. Cobb > [First off, I'm declaring next week to be Mark IV week. > > Everybody please come up with your thoughts as to how to use or oppose > the Mark IV. It usually takes a 3MP OGRE 4-6 turns to cross the standard game's map. The Mk. IV can cross it in 3-6 turns. Plus 1 to the Mk. IV. The 3 MP OGREs usually have only enough missiles to punch out a platoon of Heavy Tanks. The Mk. IV can punch out an entire HVY platoon in one turn, and do so upwards of 5 times. (Assuming the HVYs don't punch out the racks first; but the HVYs take two turns to achieve firing range....) As for GEVs: 3-1 odds; you figure it out. Plus 0.5 to the Mk. IV. Basically, a Mk. IV is a "lightning war" weapon; it outruns and out- maneuvers its foes, and plasters any of them who get close. The "basic" OGREs (III, V) are Sonny Liston to the IV's Cassius Clay. > [Light Attack Drone http://www.warehouse23.com/item.cgi?SJG10-0224 -HJC] So, this has never been published for the "original" (paper) game? > [Same as a Light Tank. Ogre Minis calls it Movement Mode: TNK. -HJC] Right. Thanks. > Sounds interesting! I think MSL tanks would also occassionally get the > first shot on other armor ... which they need, badly. I probably shouldn't say this, but I *never* use Missile Tanks; they're too slow to keep up with the fight, too slow to avoid an on- coming OGRE (or a brace of GEVs), and rarely if ever get the benefit of the 4-hex range. About the only use for them is in the _GEV_ "Breakthrough" scenario, where they serve as light artillery for the INF shutting down the eastern corridor (and it's still a secondary role to PBIs!). [You've never seen a cruise missile in action I take it? -HJC] > I can see why the GEVs would be super-weak. I'm not sure how to > rebalance them, but one advantage you could give them would be to let > them always move /after/ all non-gev units. They're still going to get > brutally owned by HVY and LT though. Well, one thing to keep in mind is that with the unified fire phase comes simultaneous application of results -- that is, a unit which is disabled or destroyed still gets a chance to shoot. So those four GEVs jumping the SHVY will lose half their number, but they still have a chance to s---hammer the SHVY. (Overruns and rams were handled the same way.) > I'll assume everyone is playing with minis at this point, as well as a > bunch of extra 1/2" counters gathering dust. *AHEM*! I'll have you know that I do not own a single miniature from any game that started off as pure-paper. _OGRE_, _BattleTech_, any of them. I've seen too many cons where minis either get destroyed by inconsiderate players -- or worse, "get up and walk away", if you catch my drift. Initiative was decided by a simple 1d6 roll -- each side totaled its armor units (OGREs were valued higher, of course); the results were then used to create a CRT result (i.e., if Side A had a total of 30, and Side B had 10, it was 3:1 in favor of Side A). If the roll indicated D or X, the higher-value side won; an N indicated the lower-value side won. I was working on additions for command-control, but haven't been able to playtest them. > On the ogre map. On the south third of the GEV map (usually). Umm, remember those hexsides with the rubble on them? Takes a GEV two MP to move around one; INF and OGREs ignore them. So while the GEVs are doing Rallycross, the OGRE is doing a John Force impression. CF ============================== From: "Charles Barnett" Subject: Re: Small Hex GEV >Overruns occur when the phasing player moves one of his units adjacent to >an enemy unit. At that point the defending player chooses one of his units >(if the moving unit just moved adjacent to more than one defending unit) to >defend against the overrun and the overrun is conducted as per the terrain >in the hex of the defending unit. Since you've essentially reinvented the zone of control (ZOC), I have a suggestion for naval OGRE/GEV. What I've seen has been pretty surface ship oriented. Unsurprising since hidden movement is counter to beer-and- pretzels gaming. So little use seems to be made of BPC Subs rules. I think subs can be brought in without bookkeeping or excessive complexity. An ancient SPI game called Sixth Fleet had an odd means of resolving combat that well simulated the tendency ASW has of tieing up many units to nail one lousy sub. While not usable here (combat before movement, for example), it does give me an idea. Eliminate hidden sub movement, but say that subs are not well enough localized for a fire control solution unless 'triangulated' by three sonar equipped units adjacent to the sub. GURPS OGRE says marine battlesuits are so equipped, but doesn't say OGREs are. Localization not needed if using cruise missiles. :) ===== [Dang! GURPS OGREs have no sense of hearing! -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