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| In Command of the Mk III |
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| Tutorial Mk III Setup |
My four-year-old daughter decided that she needed to challenge me to a game of Ogre, which meant we got to play again today. My wife “helped” her play.
This time it was “better,” ending in an Ogre marginal victory. Found out too late I’d misinterpreted the rules on how to damage treads (too fast a read-through): I was rolling a 1-1 attack with the combined attack strength (once that was 19 attack strength, but with only a 1 in 3 chance of anything at all happening!). Now we roll unit by unit, and the 1-in-6 uniform distribution actually can work for you. That makes it not crazy to attack the Ogre’s mobility, which it was before.
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| Explaining the Rules |
I still rolled nothing higher than a 3 until my CP was already destroyed. I had a much better run concentrating my forces, and my wife ran a gauntlet of 22 and 24 attack strength over two turns . . . and it cost her one freakin’ AP gun to roll through all of that.
My howitzer is always taken out by an Ogre missile; next time I’ll wipe those out early if I can. It’s the only thing on the board that can prevent the Mobile Howitzer from punishing the Ogre as it goes through to the CP
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| The First Move is Made |
My GEV strategy was much, much saner this time, and I was able to keep 2 of the 4 alive through the entire game (or was it 3?). My Heavy Tanks fared better too, and those can keep up with the Ogre, and were used to great effect. My missile tanks were wonderful (that long range is great) but got chewed up pretty fast.
I feel like next time, especially with the “oops, that’s not how you attack treads” mistake fixed, it might go better. As an example, I’d have, on the average, reduced the Mk III to Move 2 approaching the CP, and that makes a huge difference, since it effectively increases its exposure to my fire by 1.5x.
Anyway: pictures!
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| The first flanking attacks with the GEVs |
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| GEV Flankers, Surrounded . . . all 1s and 2s |
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| Another Gauntlet, another set of 1-3’s rolled |
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| And another. My goodness, this Ogre is charmed |
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| Driving over the CP, just because she can |
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| Jinking left to escape |
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| By this point weaponless, it was tread-pounding time |
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| Final Destruction. |
Get a new die. 😉
I did! I used both the blue and red from the set, and the grabbed one of my old rubber dice, all to no avail. I was seriously skunked again.
Instead of the mobile howitzer, take a stationary gun. You trade that one hex of movement for two extra hexes of range. It might make a difference, as the Ogre will have to spend at least three turns under the howitzer's umbrella instead of just two.
That's a good tip, though we've been playing with the starter scenario loadout, which has a MHWZ specified. My experience *thus far* has been that the Ogre only spends one turn in the howitzer umbrella, since a missile strike has uniformly been effective in offing the howitzer.
Hmmm…
On the second move, park your GEVs just outside its guns behind the Ogre, forcing it to move back to take them out or spend a missile to do so.
And now that you're resolving tread attacks by attacker, instead of all at once, you can hopefully slow the Ogre down sooner, buying more time for your artillery to do some damage.
By the way, thanks for sharing your experience. I enjoy reading about other people's games.
The GEV strategy you outline is more or less what I tried to do. I did a forked flanking maneuver, with two GEVs on either side of the ogre, and managed to preserve either 3 or 4 (which was my full allotment) for most of the game. My feeling thus far, at least the way my wife plays, is to try and take pot-shots with GEVs at the Ogre's missiles and treads from a distance – enough to eliminate the missiles (only two) and reduce the Ogre to Move 2. If I can do that, I can, by and large, keep my howitzer alive and keep my GEVs as unkillable snipers for harassment fire for the entire game. The key is getting that Move 2 in early, I think.
http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/articles/fourhwz.html
The classic starter scenario predates the MHWZ, and I'm with Desert Scribe: I still think a straight HWZ is better.
I never shoot at missiles. They can only kill one unit each. How many units will it cost me to shoot at them rather than MBs and SBs?
FWIW folks I suggested to Doug that he just use the example setup when teaching the game, because everyone knows what to expect and try out different tactics and different units. It's not how I'd plan to win, but it's how I play to teach.
And yeah, that's a big rules mistake with the treads. Reducing movement is the only way to keep the Ogre from just running up and killing your CP regardless of the damage you do.
As for AP, I never shoot that. I just never saw any real benefit. I do threaten to shoot missiles – once I blow off your MB(s), I will shoot missiles if you're clearing holding them to kill my howitzers. I try to make it clear you better use them up and let my howitzer be, or just hope I miss when I take shots at them. I think my strategy can be summed up as "kill the MBs, then the treads, and ignore the rest."