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Ogre First Blood: Bambi vs Godzilla

My wife and I played our first game of Ogre ever tonight. This will be a very short play report, because my wife destroyed me so utterly and completely that, oh . . . wait. By the time you finished reading that first sentence, the game was already over.

That bad? Pretty close. We set up for the beginner’s scenario, and my wife played the Mk III. She rolled in fairly well, but I made two mistakes right away.

I miscalculated my GEV movement, and she took brutal advantage, I think knocking out two of my four GEVs and a missile tank in two turns, trading only minor damage to her treads for a huge reduction in my ability to do hit-and-run tactics. I then miscalculated again, trying to set up a situation where I could bring lots of units to bear, and again she rolled in and wiped the floor with me, rolling (seriously) only 5’s and 6’s any time it mattered, and I couldn’t roll anything but 1-2 for most of the game. But again, my miscalculation of both her intended tactics and the range of her movement plus her entirely too effective main battery left me with a bunch of infantry and a single GEV by the time she approached my CP.

She offed my Mobile Howitzer with a not-even-subtle wave of a missile at long range, casually obliterating my best offensive piece after only one shot fired in anger (though it was an effective shot).

Next time, I will play defense again, and see if I can use my GEVs to better effect, with hit-and-run tactics to wear down treads and the AP and secondary batteries, which she used to incredible effect, not the least reason of which is I was utterly idiotic in how I let her concentrate her fire.

She won a total victory. Eliminated every unit I had at the cost of 1 AP, 11 treads, one missile, and her main battery.

Lesson learned.

But . . . her complete and total Godzilla to my Bambi did mean that she ended the game wanting to play again.

And she told me she’d crush me like a grape.

So, mission accomplished.

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10 Comments

  1. My OGRE DE box came w/ a little troll (looks to be about the same age). I taught my two oldest (both 10) to play today. Each won one game, both on defense.

    1. Really? Honestly, how? Maybe they had better patience or a knack for the right balance of when to hang back and charge in, but my wife dismantled my defensive pieces so thoroughly it was embarrassing.

    2. From playing with very inexperienced players, there's an easy way for an attacker to crash and burn. The Ogre is not so tough that it can tolerate letting the entire defending force attack it at once. It needs to divide or soften up the defenders before engaging.

      An incautious Ogre player who lunges into the main body's strike range without cutting them down to size first is probably doomed.

    3. I generally play the classic scenario (Howitzer, not MHWZ), and I think that's a lot more demanding on the popcorn than on the Ogre. The Ogre just needs to decide when to start the run under the HWZ umbrella; the defenders need to decide just who comes out to attack him, and coordinate their attacks in force.

    4. A common mistake is to rush your defending pieces in so they come in range of the OGRE before they can strike first. At the beginning, you are going to lose a lot of pieces but once you knock out the MB and missiles are used up, you start working on those treads to slow them down. Combine your attacks as much as possible to do that, it evens the playing field then you can start on secondaries as well.

    5. Ogre (as the defender) is a great game for teaching you to concentrate force: get the units that can attack in range, keep the ones that can't out of range but where they can get into place later.

      Personally I usually go for MBs, SBs, then treads.

    6. Roger: thus far, and maybe it's bad play on my part, my Mobile Howitzer has been more or less ineffective. If you can hit the Ogre, it can hit you with one of it's missiles. Granted, it's possible that the fact that my wife's rolls were all 5-6 and mine were all 1-3 any time it mattered has biased my thinking, but the Howitzer has played effectively no part in my defense in the (admittedly only) two games thus far.

    7. If the Ogre's saving its missiles for your Howitzer or CP, it's not using them to kill other vehicles.

      And yeah, real (non-mobile) howitzers have longer range than missiles. Attack 6 Range 8.

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