Ogre In May at Endgame
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This is a report on the May 10th Ogre meetup at Endgame. It turns out only Dave M. and myself showed up for this, with a brief appearance from Caleb, who was suffering from lack of sleep, and didn't stay very long.
We ended playing 3.5 games over the course of the afternoon.
Here's what went down:
Super CP - Classic!
Warmed up with a classic "Super CP" scenario, defender with standard armor + Mark III, attacker with Mark V (Huscarl!). I squeaked out a marginal win by ramming the Combine CP on my last treads.
But there was no way I was going to get back off the map given I had no more weaponry than a few AP guns.
Train! (Game 1)
I got the train off the board at the cost of a lot of units. Probably a marginal win for me. However, after playing the second game (below), we didn't count VPs and just assumed getting the train off the board constituted victory. Which isn't quite right.
Ok, we played it wrong, not remembering that victory points are the point.
Too bad we didn't figure this out until most of the way through the next game…
Train again, swapping sides
Dave M took the defense. As the attacker I tried to make an end run to cut the track before the train entered, at the hideous expense of most of my armor. This is where I found out infantry transport in Ogreverse is not a good primary tactic. Costs too much attack factor. Result, at least tactical, probably decisive win for Dave M. This is where we found out we were supposed to keep track of VPs, instead of whether the train escaped east or not.
The victory point requirement makes transporting infantry really expensive. While it only takes a single squad to cut a track, getting that squad into position, in the case, was horrendous. Worse, I wasn't able to make an end run around the defense. Hence, track didn't actually get cut.
Kerry Anderson's "The Final Frontier"
Turns out both Dave M and I have The Final Frontier, an empire building microgame by Kerry Anderson based in our solar system. We played 5 turns to learn the rules. Initial impression: fun little game! Phil Reed, currently a marketing officer for Steve Jackson Games, is listed in the credits.
The first 5 turns went pretty fast. Perhaps next time we'll play 10 turns or more.
I like simple games such as The Final Frontier to close out a day. Makes for a nice change of pace.