====== OGRE Digest, March Forth, 2004 (Last: Feb 17th) ======== ===== Plastic Minis From: BillA2720@aol.com ===== Fencer-Heavy From: David Morse ===== What to fix for the next printing of OGRE/GEV. From: Henry Cobb ============================== From: BillA2720@aol.com Subject: Plastic Minis << I've said this since my _Car Wars_ days -- if the gaming co's want to make minis, make them out of plastic. If Plastruct Inc. can offer 15 1/200-scale cars in white styrene plastic for $15, then whomever sold the gaming biz on metal minis has shafted not only the game co's, but the gamers as well. >> The gaming biz grew out of Little Wars, and other people playing with "Tin" soldiers. Injection molding requires time consumming cutting of steel molds, while with metal minis you can vulcanize a mold for production in about an hour, and the castings will have more detail. Games Workshop has gone back to metal for the relaunch of the 40K epic scale for those reasons. Bill Armstrong ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Fencer-Heavy Before the fall of Sheffield, it looked like Paneurope would have to scratch build its own Ogres forever. The Fencer had been in development for over a decade, and though its projected missile rack armament was going to whomp on small formations of armor units, it would be relatively useless for stopping the Ogre Mark III (by far the most common Ogre of the time), and the upcoming Ogre Mark V (which was clearly going to cripple PE armor morale even more). As we know this led to the Fencer-B, which replaced two secondaries with two mains. Simultaneously came the fan-favorite Fencer-A, which had a quad-secondary turret. But even these were not enough to go toe-to-toe with the mighty Ogres of the Combine, and so a more radical departure was begun... The rear chassis was redesigned. The missile bays were ripped out, and replaced with the infrastructure for two more giant turrets: Fencer-Heavy 2 main batteries 8 secondary batteries 4 AP (doesn't need many, its got plenty of 2ndy for the inf) 45 treads total M3 same cost as a fencer The three turrets were stacked, battleship style, so that they could all fire forward. The main battery turret, being highest, could fire a full 360, but the other turrets only can fire in approximately a 240 degree arc centered forward. In practice this was not much of a limitation. The resulting unit could detonate Ogre Mark IIIs easily, and made Mark Vs think hard about giving up first close range shot. About a half dozen Fencer-Heavies were under construction around the time of the fall of Sheffield. When it became clear that "true" Ogres would soon be seing servince for Paneurope, all further Fencer production was rerouted back to the missile armed variants. Rumor has it that there was one Fencer-Heavy which recieved all secondary turrets, for a whopping total of 12. The report cannot be verified. Such a unit would be very powerful against other Ogres, but vulnerable to GEVs. It would cost as much as a Fencer-B. ============================= From: Henry Cobb Subject: What to fix for the next printing of OGRE/GEV. The "classic" boardgame is out of print at the moment. http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products/ogregev/ Which means it's a good time to look it over carefully for corrections before the next printing. In addition to adding the changes from http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/errata/ogre-gev.html here's my notes. So O5.035, may an Ogre ram the same target Ogre twice in the same turn? Also may an Ogre ram both an armor unit and another Ogre in the same turn? G4.02 step 6, shouldn't this be "stopped by swamp, forest or town" as the GEVs could have entered the hex along a road? G5.02 shouldn't this read "Each single infantry squad" ? G5.021 Rather munchkiny to me. Shouldn't combining infantry just be at the end of the player's turn? (Otherwise you could have a counter with 2 squads with 1 MP left and 1 squad with 2 MP left.) This would also help with G6.081. G5.071 should make it clear that you can reverse direction with the road bonus hex. So a Hvy Tank could move up three hexes and overrun something then back off one hex down the road it came in on. G5.083 By the stop before crossing a land/water hexside rule the GEV couldn't move on both road and water on the same movement phase anyway. G5.084 Can an Ogre enter a swamp hex, roll a 3-6 and then continue on to an adjancent clear hex in the same movement phase? (This is a difference between board and minis rules I think.) G5.111 should have a hoverblitz note about overruns. And should be changed to have the mounting point be the last action in a player's turn. (It could be an infantry phase after GEV second movement where infantry squads combine (they can split at any time during movement) and mount onto tanks.) G6.09 Infantry can only split their fire by squads, not attack points. For example if six GEVs overrun a full platoon the grunts can't divide up their six attack points (doubled for overrun) into six 1-2 attacks. G6.101 I think the rule ought to be that each infantry unit can only be attacked by AP from any given Ogre only once per fire phase or fire round. G6.113 An Ogre submerged in a water hex [cannot make ranged attacks and may only attack other Ogres with missiles in overruns. An Ogre attacking another Ogre with a missile in an underwater overrun has its attack strength doubled for being an Ogre in an overrun and then halved for attacking an underwater target.] (And in Shockwave add a note that Ogres (and supers) can use their AP guns underwater, but only against submerged Marines in an overrun.) G6.133 An overrun may end in a draw where neither side is capable of harming the other. For example a GEV can be disabled by forest while overruning a disabled D3 CP. After two full fire rounds in which neither side has harmed the other, return the surviving attacking units to the hex they came from. G6.134 is rather unclear on Ogres ramming Ogres. One way of reading this is that an Ogre can only ram another Ogre starting with its second fire round but can then ram this same Ogre every fire round thereafter. Just so long as it didn't ram an armor unit during its first fire round. -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. 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