Developing Ogre as a miniatures game

[ColBosch]

Originally Posted by dwalend

Plus you get to play Ogre.

Excellent point. I like the cut of your jib.

[Knockman]

I really like redcoat's article, and agree with a lot of it. If I'm honest to myself, I'm a wargamer first, a boardgame and cards player next, and role-player/GM after that.

Ogre Miniatures has always been a favourite of mine, to the point where I invested heavily in Hexon terrain from Kallistra UK to end up with a hybrid Ogre game drawn from both the Miniatures and boardgame formats. Acquiring the metal minis was the hardest part - hence why I ended up using so many 'proxies' from other manufacturer's ranges.

That is why I find the Ogre plastic miniatures to be, for me personally, the stand-out success of all the latest developments of Ogre over the last five years. The quality is exceptional, with great potential to even 'mod' some of these into variants or give them that campaign look. And the irony is that I already see the possibility to use some of them as 'proxies' for other genres/games - e.g., 'Hammer's Slammers'.

In other wargaming genres, hard plastic figures are steadily taking a sizeable market share of wargaming compared to just having metal miniatures available. Some well-established companies (e.g., Perry Miniatures) are cleverly using a mixed approach - plastic for the rank-and-file, metal for commands and specialist sets. Some new companies with new product lines have been entirely reliant upon plastic from the outset. And I've even seen some discussions where the plastic sprues themselves are likely to be re-designed so that they can contribute too, for example as rubble/bricks/girders/stones/etc., once the miniatures are removed from them. (Pig Iron Miniatures used to do this with their metal range).

It all now relies upon keeping the supply easy to acquire and affordable. It's why number 1 priority on my own preference is to see Combine equivalence to what we now have for the PE. That would round out the basic foundation of the range, to have all the standard elements of both armies available.

I sincerely believe you have a great success here, with a great opportunity to take it even further. Some wargamers - me included - discover a range of figures they like, acquire them, then look at how they can get them on to the tabletop with whatever rules are out there. If that's followed by others, think how many would discover all the other aspects of Ogre via picking up the plastic miniatures first?

[wolf90]

I have been following this thread with great interest, and I appreciate the sentiment espoused here. That said, I'm going to ask the fundamentally basic question behind this: how do we attract new players to Ogre? I'm not talking dozens; I'm talking high hundreds to thousands. Ogre suffers from a top-heavy approach - there is a (fairly large) group of veteran players who are very well versed in the game, but they (we) are aging out (not surprising, given it is a 41 year old game!). Without attracting a large number of new players, Ogre will eventually wither on the vine. There are a lot of forces working against us:

- The current market re: speed and quantity of games released.
- Hex game popularity (or lack thereof).
- Wargame popularity (or lack thereof).
- The inaccessibility of the Ogre game history. (I'm working on this one!)
- The diffusion of game information (magazines, websites, blogs, social media, etc. - once upon a time The Space Gamer and a couple of other magazines were THE source of gaming info!)

But we have some positives in our corner:

- A truly great game! Easy to learn, but capable of significant depth.
- A vibrant game history (if this can be made more accessible!)
- A dedicated fan base.

So, please continue this discussion, but consider my question alongside your response. How do we get new players into Ogre?

D.

[jfleisher]

Just a few thoughts...

Ogre can be enjoyed at many levels: the “classic board game”, Deluxe with larger maps and 3d or flat counters, and the miniatures game with terrain.

Regular, publicized, large scale Ogre/Ogre miniatures events at game conventions.

Advertise the low cost of entry into Ogre/Ogre miniatures, vs. the high cost of other games.

Develop a relationship with existing miniature terrain companies to supply Ogre themed terrain and buildings, without having to reinvent the wheel.

Similarly, existing sci-fi vehicle manufacturers can supply the trucks, trains, and archaic armor.

[ColBosch]

That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?

[redcoat]

Hi there Wolf90,

I don't know about getting thousands of players quickly. Don't discount the fact that your game has been around for 40 years though - that is probably the number one strength you have. It stood the test of time despite being largely unavailable for years at a stretch. So... I go back to the idea of simply keeping it available. How did Munchkin get so big? I remember playing it a long time ago, now I can go into a book store and see it on the shelf with other games. So Munchkin has somehow hit the mainstream.

As far as the popularity of wargaming goes, I don't know if miniatures gaming has an alternative to wargaming, so at least you are not going to lose miniatures players because they are turned off war games.

Knocker makes some very good points about miniatures wargaming in general. I would also say that miniatures gaming is not just about the game itself once you have been doing it for a long time. I enjoy painting, and like Knocker says my armies get used to play lots of different games. If you do historical wargames you sometimes need to be prepared to re-base an army to fit a different rule set. Lately, I have started to appreciate 1:72 scale plastic for wargaming because it is dirt cheap, readily available, paints quickly, and still looks good. I painted a WWI Canadian army in 1:72 scale, and I used rules for a game called Stargrunt - if you can believe that - because the rules emphasize morale, small unit tactics, and suppressing enemy fire that I wanted to reproduce for 1918 infantry attacks.

Miniatures gaming is a hobby like golf or downhill skiing and might actually be cheaper than those. The hobby is to paint something that will look like the army it represents and put it on a tabletop battlefield that looks like the battlefield they should be fighting over. And Knocker is right about Perry Miniatures too and the mix of plastic metal. Actually I have been wanting to do a Burgundian army from them.

Games workshop recognized early that their product was a hobby - not a game. I could go to their store and get advice on painting, how to build scenery and I could meet other players. For a long time that worked well for them and I don't want to get started on what happened after that. There is a trend now towards prepainted minis of course and I have some of them too. But when you have been painting for a while and you get good at it you start to think...I could do a better job if I painted it myself.

Now think about the marketing that had to go into launching miniatures gaming as a hobby. In some senses, that work is already done for you - the hobby exists now. I don't know that even games workshop will ever recapture the success they had in the first 20 years. What other companies seem to be doing is to diversify their product lines. You are already doing that.

So it may be more a question of how do you make a wide variety of your products sustainable over the long run and continue to add to them until rule the world...cough...fnord.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by wolf90

I'm not talking dozens; I'm talking high hundreds to thousands.

One gamer at a time. This isn't easy and requires a lot of effort.

Some actions and tools that would assist with growing the Ogre player base:

* More online how-to-play videos and video play sessions posted to YouTube, Facebook, BGG, and other sites. If someone plays Ogre on Twitch, also share that.

* Online painting tutorials and, possibly, a painting contest.

* Convention games, with Ogre players going to their local cons and teaching the game to others.

* An Ogre campaign series of four to five scenarios released free to the web. Say there's a scenario posted on the 1st of the month, with results filed by the tenth. Players play the game, submit their results (which side won?), and then the 16th of the month a new scenario is posted; the overall results reported by fans influence the second (third, fourth, etc) scenario in the series. At the end, the campaign is archived and a new campaign starts.

* Players in a region talk to the local stores and figure out which one would be willing to host a monthly Ogre meet-up at the store. Play Ogre once a month at a local store on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon where others can see the game in action.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by redcoat

How did Munchkin get so big?

A lot of hard work and a game that combined the right amount of ease of play/accessibility, humor, and fun artwork. And a lot of hard work.

Add to the above, hard work.

[ColBosch]

Originally Posted by philreed

A lot of hard work and a game that combined the right amount of ease of play/accessibility, humor, and fun artwork. And a lot of hard work.

Add to the above, hard work.

And luck. Never discount luck, but don't count on it, either.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by ColBosch

And luck. Never discount luck, but don't count on it, either.

Luck is the secret weapon.