A 2 player game about a giant robot mega-tank (the OGRE) as it ploughs towards through the defenders killing everything in the way…
Back in my school days in Bury St Edmunds, there was a little boat enthusiasts shop called the Bury Boatique, hidden away round the back of a house in Eastgate Street. Sometime in the late 70’s or early 80’s, Mr James who ran it started to sell games and wargaming miniatures, and soon it was where all my pocket money went. At some point I picked up Metagaming’s RPG published as piecework, The Fantasy Trip, or at least the first part, Melee (I still have it somewhere!) and shortly thereafter I picked up a couple of micro-games, very cheap little boardgames that came in a bag and had minimal components. One of these games was Metagaming’s 1977 classic, OGRE.
Now the designer Steve Jackson (USA — not to be confused with Steve Jackson UK) left Metagaming and set up his own company, and had his first really big hit as far as I know with Car Wars, and later with his RPG GURPS, and I picked up a supplement for OGRE, called GEV (Ground Effect Vehicle) which luckily I still have in my bedroom at my parent’s house! :).
Back to the Future
Skip forward to 2014, and I have grown fatter, my hair is far more sparse, and now as then I have little money. Steve Jackson Games are still going strong, and they raised almost a million dollars on Kickstarter for the OGRE Designers Edition. I missed it, but I got to see it at Continuum 2012 where a very enthusiastic MiB demo’d it and ran a tournament that Hugh and Lloyd played in. I now live in Cheltenham, and about a year ago Ben at Proud Lion got a copy in – it was retailing at around £80, and I was not going to pay that — I might have, but I don’t have that sort of money, I wish I did — but when in 2014 I saw he had OGRE Pocket Edition, almost an exact facsimile of the first Steve Jackson version (but with art from the Metagaming original? Not sure!) for the 1977 price of $3, or $3 in this country – well I grabbed it off the shelf. I even bought Lloyd a copy, as this is famously the only boardgame he has ever liked and agreed to play!!! 🙂
So for me this was an exercise in nostalgia, but also a chance to combine it with my copy of GEV and play for the first time in 30 or more years. So how does it hold up? Well some of the predictions, like automated warfare (drones!) are coming true – but is this still a fun game, and does it have anything to offer the Eurogamer generation?
Well I really enjoyed it, and Phil who I introduced it to thought it OK, but he would prefer to play other games! It had clearly been a long time, as I had to look up how terrain works on the oh so simple map (answer: not much, it restricts movement a little but you can fire over it) and more importantly how movement works for OGREs – 3 movement points per turn, assuming tracks undamaged. Finding that in the rules was actually a bit of a challenge!
So I still have not said what the game is about. It is pretty simple – an OGRE is a vast huge robot tank, armed with missile launches, rail guns that fire tac-nuke shells, and lots of anti-infantry weapons, and it is played by one player, and is his only piece. The defender tries to stop the OGRE getting in range of (and hence destroying) the defenders Command Post, and if it is destroyed, tries to stop the OGRE escaping back off his end of the map. To do this the defender has GEVs – hovertanks, heavy tanks, light tanks, missile tanks and infantry units. Each counter has a D value (Defence) a M value (movement) and a X/x, so for example 4/2 – a strength 4 attack with a range of 2.
You work out the ratio of Attack Strength to Defence Strength, round in the defenders favour, roll a dice and consult a chart that will instantly be familiar to people who played Avalon Hill or SPI hex based wargames, but is hardly mentally taxing even if you have no idea what I am on about! So with Attack Strength 6, hitting a tank with Defence 2, you roll a dice and consult the 3:1 column.
It’s hard to get over how basic and ugly the map is in this reprint of the first edition – the GEV map was marginally better – but I recall making my own maps. You can easily do this nowadays too. There is also tons of fan support – including an OGRE map editor for XP/98. Another good fan site with maps can be found here and Steve Jackson maintain their own OGRE page here.
So how did the game play? Unlike GEV I would say OGRE makes for a great solitaire game, as the OGRE player (Phil in this case) has less to do. He chooses which of the defenders units to target true, and his movement tactics, but after that he just rolls the dice a lot as his weapons annihilate the defending units. With the exception of Howitzers – expensive and vulnerable immobile big guns the defender can use – the OGRE has the longest ranged weapons, and can annihilate most of the defenders units before they get close.
The defender really has their work cut out, but the classic scenario (Mk3 OGRE versus a lot of infantry and some armour) is pretty well balanced as I recall. Not in this game – despite Phil having some appalling luck, my weak tactics as the defender let him slaughter me. The game ended in a total victory for Phil, with him blowing up my Command Post AFTER he has wiped out every other one of my units. So if this appeals to you, let me give you some defender tactics I’m now recalling after 30 years…
Tactics for the Defence
Whereas the OGRE only has to get to within 5 spaces of your Command Post, no die roll needed, to destroy it, you need to immobilize his OGRE and take out all the weapon systems. In hindsight and with vague memories of my youthful gaming – I was under ten years old though – make sure your Command Post is secure not by putting troops around it – he can shoot over them – but by hitting him with everything while he is still as far away as possible. You have to be up close to actually hit him, so the carnage will be terrible, but crowd in as many units as you can to maximise firepower. “Get their fastest with the mostest” as the old military adage has it.
Now an important rule I overlooked – if you hit his tracks you do damage equal to your attack strength… While I took out Phil’s main battery with a lucky shot from a Heavy Tank, and yes you should fire at the Main Battery (can only take one hit) combining fire if possible, and then take out those awful missile systems (he has two) ultimately you buy more time by taking out his tank tracks. He has 45 points of Track, but every 15 destroyed slows him by one hex a turn movement and buys you more time. You will need to stop him anyway, so do this as quickly as you can. a couple of Howitzer units can with luck quickly bog him down, as every hit (1 n 3 chance) does 8 points to his tracks. Of course they are immobile, and he will destroy them as soon as he closes on them, but I think it is worth the gamble. Once you have taken out his main weapons, use your tanks to chew up his Anti-personnel weapons (8) before any infantry go near the OGRE.
And the most important bit – GEV hovertanks move, then fire, then move again. So zoom in on your turn, shoot, and run away. They are pretty weak but they are fun to use. Anyway, hopefully you will do far better than I did today!
Overall
I like this game a lot – but there is an element of nostalgia. Priced at three pounds though, it would be silly not to buy it? You will need a six sided dice and some paper, though I have since discovered that rather than recording the OGRE stats (weapons and track armour) on a piece of paper I could have downloaded a rather good free app named OGRE War Room that I now have on my Android phone (I expect there is an iPhone version) and which does handles all this, and dice rolls etc. You still need the boardgame- there has not been a computer version of OGRE since 8 bit machines as far as I know, though there is an attractive miniatures version I would like to play, but for three pounds I think anyone can afford it.
The component are very basic, but Winchell Chung’s silhouettes of tanks on the counter evoke happy memories, and they are good quality card stock. The map is awfully, hilariously, dreadful – but entirely usable. The Mk3 and Mk5 OGRE are given stats, but others are available online (including build your own OGRE systems) and this faithfully reproduces the First Edition, though with some clarifications on the rules I think.
I don’t think Becky will ever want to play this, but she was never a fan of games like Vietnam, Advanced Squad Leader, Air War or Freedom in the Galaxy. She is simply not a wargamer, or interested in military themes – yet even so, if she tried it I think she might enjoy the simple tactical challenge and surprising depth of this venerable, creaky, astonishingly basic but still amusing classic. I shall award the pocket edition a score based upon the price of £3 -it has to be 10/10!
"And sometimes he's so nameless" 