|
|
01-23-2024, 10:40 PM
|
#1 |
|
Join Date: May 2012
|
Ogre Buyer's Guide - January 2024
A lot of people have asked, over the course of the Backerkit campaign, what are the entry points into Ogre? What’s available? What should I buy as a starter? What should I buy for a complete experience?
To my mind, there are four main lines of Ogre product. Each contains 3-5 main products. I have bolded the one product on each line that would serve best as a self-contained introduction to the game of Ogre. If you can get a hold of everything in a given product line, you will have a reasonably complete experience - everything you need to enjoy that aspect of the game for years to come. O6e-scale
These four product lines are not completely independent of each other:
The Miniatures product line is the simplest to describe and get into. Miniatures-style gaming involves maneuvering your units on an open landscape model using terrain objects that you build yourself. There is no hex grid. Movement and weapons ranges are determined using a ruler. Those who love this style of play, love it a lot. Ogre Miniatures Set 1 includes a one-sheet rule set called “Ogre Miniatures Lite” (also downloadable for free) that makes it a perfectly playable miniatures game in and of itself. More detailed rules, lore, painting tips, and more are found in the Ogre Miniatures 2e book.
The Micro-scale product line is how Ogre was originally released. Its counters and maps are much smaller than those of the main O6e-scale line. The maps are too small to comfortably support using the miniatures as tokens. It has the advantage of being very portable. It is an excellent travel game, and is a much more compact (and inexpensive) way to play genuinely large scenarios. O6e-scale is the primary Ogre product line. Large, mounted color maps and/or playmats, large chipboard 2D counters for the conventional units, and large colored slot-together chipboard models for the Ogres and buildings. [It's worth noting that this is the scale and art-style pioneered in Ogre Designer's Edition, and that the maps and counters in Ogre Designer's Edition are identical to the counters and maps in the O6e-scale product line.] The O6e-scale product line is centered around the Ogre 6e box set. If you buy nothing else, buying this box set gets you the complete classic game of Ogre. It is played on a relatively simple, orange map, representing a blasted nuclear wasteland, and depicts PanEuropean conventional units defending their command post from a North American Combine Ogre. The complete O6e-scale product line requires the purchase of two other products: Ogre Battlefields, and Ogre Reinforcements. Between the two of them, they give you the additional units and more detailed terrain rules that were originally introduced in GEV. They are split up in an interesting way. Ogre Battlefields gives you the complete terrain rules and a selection of four maps with the new, much more varied terrain. [It also includes the most recent, complete, and up-to-date rulebook for the entire Ogre game.] Ogre Reinforcements gives you the additional units and their rules, including counters for the new units to augment the PanEuropean force Ogre 6e came with, as well as a complete Combine army equivalent to what you now have for PanEurope. There is a difficulty though: Reinforcements is out of print and somewhat difficult to find. Without it, you will lack Combine chipboard counters to balance the Paneuropean forces in the Ogre 6e box. I will discuss a solution for this below. [See "Filling the Reinforcements Hole".] Where to purchase: O6e-scale:
Micro-scale:
Miniatures:
Supplemental Material: PDFs will suffice for these, though physical copies are available via Print-on-Demand from Amazon. Amazon links can be found on the respective W23 pages.
Last edited by HeatDeath; 01-31-2024 at 11:54 AM. |
|
|
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Threaded Mode