====== OGRE Digest, April 11th, 2003 (Last: April 7th) ======== ===== mines for hexes From: "Chris French" ===== Strategic Ogre From: "Chris French" ===== Re: OGRE/G.E,V question From: "Chris French" ===== Lizards and Ogres From: "Chris French" ===== Re: MK VI scenarios From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com ===== Mk VI cost From: David Morse ===== History of PanEuropean Missile Tanks From: David Morse ===== rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions From: David Morse ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: mines for hexes > From: David Morse > That was my first reaction too, but in all the mine rules published to > date armor doesn't help against mines. Well, if BPC is as effective as everyone says it is, armor should help. Not sure if the Cobb Formula works for mines tho'. ===== [Armor is factored in Da Formula as a general protection against hazards. Putting in mines as zero range hypersmart missiles might make some sense. OK, how about atk 3, range zero, move zero, defense very high? That comes out to about 1 VP. Mines activate just before the first round of overrun combat and pick an enemy unit to launch an Atk 3 attack on, that can't be combined with any other units (not even other mines in the same hex that are activating at the same time, though those can attack the same target separately) and this attack is resolved as ranged fire so that targets are Ded or Xed, but it does target separate squads of infantry. So the expected results are instant death for a single squad of infantry, a LGEV is either disabled or destroyed and a superheavy tank is only in trouble one third of the time while an Ogre has a one third chance of losing a secondary or three treads. Dumb or compromised mines are bought at the usual discounts. -HJC] ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Strategic Ogre > From: David Morse > Because of the rules for disabled armor, we already know how well > autonomous non-ai units fight: no ranged attack, no movement, and half > attack strength in overrun relative to human-crewed. That's the AI used when the tank has to accomodate a human crew; replace even half the crew space with [more|better] pro- cessors.... (How does a _Battlesuit_ Attack Drone work?) > Well, we can quibble about whether or not there's been a end to the > exponential tech improvements in this-or-that field, True. But I *don't* see _O_ postulating a limit to Moore's Law. > Yeah but you could spend 135 points of attack to take a Mark IIIs treads > out, or 48 points to take its guns out. With GEV overrun rules and the > two defenders stacked, which ya gonna choose? :) Not "stacked" -- in adjacent hexes. And we're not talking about GEVs here -- it's straight OGRE v. OGRE. > [Back off a bit and bring a CMC up. -HJC] Yeah, the big nukes do make a mockery of point values. I fi- gured out the effect on a "Kill The CP" force composed entirely of LGEVs against an OGRE whose missiles carried CM warheads and determined that the entire GEV force would be obliterated by a maximum of two missiles. ===== [You were using my design for the LGEV, right? Moves ten hexes in each movement phase and carries a one-shot missile tank attack too. -HJC] ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Re: OGRE/G.E,V question > From: David Morse > Next time there's a counter run, some "destroyed" and "road cut" > counters would be handy. You can't make your own? ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Lizards and Ogres > From: reaper28i > Hello again Henry, > > I loved the article on Godzilla in the OGREverse. Now tabletop battles > could get really silly -you could have Godzuki turn up, or maybe Godzilla > "adopts a Mk.1 or II Ogre as Godzuki? A nasty alien race tries to conquer > Earth. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Godzilla's attitude "nothing > stomps on my planet...apart from me!" It depends on when the Godzilla movie was made -- the early ones had the "stomp on everything no matter what" Godzilla, while later flicks had him as an intelligent pseudo-earth-spirit. > Finally MechaGodzilla might turn up. A Tomy Zoid figure is one chioce for > this, but the scale may be too large I'm not sure. > > Cheers, > Mark. > > ===== > > [I would only allow Godzuki if Ogrethulhu was there to eat it. Godzookie -- Japanese for "Scrappy-Doo". :) > As Godzuki's artificial sweetness probally causes cancer, this kills two > monsters with one kidney stone. -HJC] No, Godzookie has MSG (Monstrously Saccharine Godzilla). :) OK, now it's time for a confession: If anyone here went to GenCon during the mid-'90s, and saw the _Car Wars Tanks_ "Godzilla Takes Milwaukee" events run by the New Omaha Vehicular Assn. -- I must accept the blame for the creation of those events. (I made an offhand comment about how not even Godzilla could take out a CW tank, and things snowballed from there....) THAT SAID, I now propose the following Evil Idea: One of these years, at a GenCon or other big gaming con, if someone can bring his OGRE Macrotures, I can find a Godzilla costume, and we can demo "Live-Action OGRE vs. Godzilla". OK, you can kill me now. :) > [Then Lt Tanks can't escort them. Light Tanks should not be escorting *anything*, much less Missile Tanks. Lt. Tanks belong on the flanks and rear of the advance, mopping up any D'd units the front line doesn't kill. > The rational for this silliness? See GO118 for grounded Hypersmart > missiles. -HJC] Yuck. > [As a clarification for anybody who hasn't got everything, the Fencer-A > is the version listed in the Ogre Reinforcement Pack or in Ogre Minis, > page 20. -HJC] My copy of _OGRE Reinforcement Pack_ has copyright dates of 1985 and 1987; is the Fencer listed therein the one you're referring to? (For reference: 4x SB; 4x MR; 20x IM; 8x AP; 45x TU; 3x MP; 24 Armor units.) CF ===== [You need to paste in the errata. http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/errata/reinforcement-pack.html Actually there IS an Ogre Minis game going on a convention this weekend. http://www.sjgames.com/ill/ "April 11, 2003: Overload-A-Con" Look who's running it. Gives one hope for seeing OM2 before it becomes a historical game. -HJC] ============================== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: Re: MK VI scenarios << Here's a number of scenario alterations, designed for the Mk. VI. I've posted these before, I think, and no one found any significant flaws. However, this group has been quiet, and I'm paranoid, so I'm posting them again for further perusal. >> No infantry? Just as in PanzerBlitz, no one will buy INF unless they have to. Which compeletly ignores the INF's non combat roll of holding the place when the armor rolls of somewhere else... Ad Astra! Stan Leghorn ===== [Can't we just assume that a few battalions of infantry show up and are blown away by the Mark VI before doing anything so we can skip moving the counters around? -HJC] ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Mk VI cost > From: "Chris French" > Splitting forces isn't the issue -- it's the fact that while the Mk. 6 > looks like it has more firepower, most of its guns DO NOT > WORK AGAINST ANYTHING BESIDES INFANTRY! Thus, > comparing OGREs at their full pt. values in armor-only fights is > invalid. At first I thought you were alluding to its AP guns. I was going to point out that a III + V have more AP than a VI, and that AP guns only make up a fraction of an Ogre's firepower, even when confronting infantry. However, now it occurs to me you're perhaps talking about secondary batteries as well? Secondaries really only come into play against Infantry, Ogres, and tracked armor, leaving 75% of the units in the Ogreverse unharmed. That 75% is [L]GEVs by the way, and I'm basing that number on my tounge-in-cheek reading of this list, where LGEVs are the ultimate solution to all opponents. ;) A pair of Ogres is much better equipped to deal with hover swarms than a single big Ogre. They can dash in two directions at once, and thus kill more GEVs before they lose their mains and drop to M2, at which point the GEVs become immortal. Plus they have many more treads, before M2 Its pretty clear that a V and III are close enough to a VI that it comes down to first shot. However your point that they need to be evaluated against other forces, say hybrid-armor-ogre-force-X or GEV-force-Y or whatever, I think lends a little support to the argument that the VI is perhaps 10% overpriced. Then again, I've almost never played with a VI. Perhaps its extra firepower makes it all but invulnerable to infinate numbers of armor units, out of proportion to its incremental improvent over a Mark V. I guess I just have to playtest it. T'would be nice if I could convince the locals to get fired up about testing experimental rules. :P ============================== From: David Morse Subject: History of PanEuropean Missile Tanks > From: "Chris French" > 5 hexes, or 5 inches? 5 hexes. Inches are for barbarians! Man, I played Exercise T yesterday and took the Fencer-B. What are the oddds of a Mark V coming in right behind me, and hitting with 5 of 6 missiles and thus stripping me of all my racks and a main battery. Grrrrr! Mr Mark V had karmic bounceback though, as later in the game his five secondaries lost out to a Mark IV with only two guns left. http://66.93.230.14/~dm/ogre/exercise-t.html ===== [How about the Great Patriotic War, http://66.93.230.14/~dm/ogre/great-patriotic-war.html I think that one deserves to be in the GEV scenario book. -HJC] ============================== From: David Morse Subject: rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions Wednesday we had two rules questions on Ogre ramming (no overruns, straight Ogre). Question #1: can an Ogre ram a 0-tread enemy ogre just to lose some of its own treads (okay, perhaps the scenario should be changed so that players will stop wanting to do this :P ) Question #2: Suppose an Ogre rams a missile tank, but only manages to disable it. That was its last movement point. Then here comes /another/ Ogre, that also wants to move into that hex. Does the newcomer hit (a) the MSL, (b) the other Ogre, (c) both? Does it make any difference what the rammer wants? Please answer for MSL aligned with each of the Ogres, or with neither of them. ============================== 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