Ogre: 5 years of Nuclear Powered Rage
Tags
Blowout Ogre day at Endgame to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Ogre Designer Edition's release. This is the game which really got my hobby interest started. We hadn't played as a group for a while, and I had not played it in over a year so it was time to get a group together and go at it.
GEV Escort
The GEV Escort scenario is from the Steve Jackson-designed scenarios from Book 3. It's a slightly augmented classic "kill the command post" exercise with the attacking Ogre getting some GEVs, and the defender getting a few more units as well.
Three games of this in total, all against the same opponent SK, who is a master at the Ogre/GEV ecosystem. I rarely win against SK, can't recall I've ever won against him in fact.
Game 1
Hunkered down in an attempt to get first fire, which I did, but with no progress up the map, the Ogre was swarmed, the GEVs killed and there was no chance so I conceded.
A depressing start!
Game 2
Straight up the middle, GEVs from the corners. Two GEVs were taken out without firing a shot, conceded the game. There was just no possible way to win given the attacker retained his augmented forces.
Game 3
Straight up the middle, GEVs in flying wedge. This puts a lot of heat on the Ogre pretty fast, but saves the GEVs to be a harrying force, which was moderately successful.
Here's what the wedge looked like:
Still no dice, was not able to flank with GEVs as desired.
After this set of games, I'd had enough of getting thrashed. Time to move on to some other games.
Objective 218
After being soundly punished in GEV Escort, I pulled out Ogre: Objective 218 and got a taker in DMc. We played a pretty fast game, he left the left side wide open and after a lot of distractions on the right, I sent in a GEV and Infantry for CP occupation and the game.
Good game, plays fast.
Battle for Sheffield
This last game could easily be regarded as the main event for the day. We didn't get started until a bit later with it, some time around 1 or 2 pm if I recall correctly.
The Battle for Sheffield scenarion is quite interesting and fun. As can be seen from the photo below, there are a lot of Ogres involved in this one: Mark II, III, and V defending, and a Mark II and 8(!) Mark Is for the Pan Euro attacking (AS).
The defending Combine player (me) also receives 12 hex side blocks which render movement across impassible for GEVs. I set them up to funnel all the GEVs up the middle and hopefully into my howitzers.
Our game started a bit slow, with AS probing the outside defenses. It did not work out well for him, it let me set up a defense which proved very expensive for him.
Here's what the situation at the end of the game looked like:
While the attacker seems to have a lot of armor still on the board, the Mark II and several of the Mark I Ogres are out of commission, while the defending Mark V still has most of its armament and treads available. The defender still has all the howitzers in play as well, which would be increasingly tough for the defender. The infantry hasn't engaged yet either.
Closeup of where the roads were cut:
I believe if I were the attacked it would probably be best to just charge right up the middle to reduce as much defense as possible, then scoot the GEVs around at the end and try to flank.
All in all a great day, and we're going to try to get another session together sooner than later.