An Ogre Odissey

Back in late 2008, i decided to start playing Ogre Kingdoms, mainly because i didnt want to have to paint 200 models worth 3-5 pts each. As everyone know, Ogres weren't really a powerhouse back in 7th ed. I still managed to play 46 games, winning very rarely. Once 8th ed came out, all of a sudden Ogres were able to win, and fun followed.

Of course, people who usually seen Ogre as an easy win started to complain about our list, involving alot of character (character frontage FTW), big units (what do you expect, of course 9 ogres have a big footprint, but its still 5 dead away from loosing Look out Sir!.) and stackable buff (how fun was it to have T8 Ogres, or S6 Bulls, or Regen on top of those). Now people were starting to fear Ogres, despite our very limited army choice and available tactic. We were finally competitive, but like Vampires right now, were very limited in what worked and what didnt.
With a new book around the corner, it is now time to rethink Ogre as a whole, and consider all possibility the new book will bring.

#1 the mobile Gunline
As of right now, Scraplauncher, Ironblaster and Leadbelchers are all move and shoot. This mean you could easily build an army that shoot alot, and still get into close combat. I have not seen the new stats of the Scraplauncher or the Ironblaster, but i'm expecting them to be relatively like the scraplauncher is right now ; 3 S5 attacks from the rhinox, and some bonus attack from the gnoblar/ogre with some impact hit.

in a 2500 pts list, this could mean something along those lines ;

Slaughtermaster
Firebelly
BSB
Hunter

9 Ironguts
6 Bulls

2x5 Leadbelchers

2x Scraplauncher
2x Ironblaster

10d6 S4 shoot, 2 large template S3 KB, and 2 cannonball. even if the Leadbelchers are only 12", i'm pretty sure everyone will think twice before front charging them.

#2 the mighty big monster list
We know for a fact that one of our Stonehorn or Thundertusk can be a mount for out hunter. This open a door for 3 big monster in our list. But like i've seen before those are usually too easy of a target for shooting to be viable. Nobody want to see 800+ pts of monster off the table just by cannonball, or poison shooting.

But because it is fun to play crazy list once in awhile, here's something i think would be fun to play ;

Slaughtermaster
BSB
Mounted Hunter

14 Ironguts

6x Mournfang

2x Stonehorn/Thundertusk

3 monster, a gigantic unit and a unit of cavalry. Each one can kill its own weight, but that's 5 easy target for ennemy to pick one by one.

#3 the well rounded list
More often than not, a list that does well in at least 2 of 4 phase (movement, magic, shooting, cc), will do well in tournament, or at least, that's what i found out. If you can shoot them to death, its nice, but you gotta have a backup plan once they get to your line. If you can cc them, you gotta have the magic to protect you while you advance, or have the movement to be able to chose your target. If you own the magic, you gotta be able to do something else if you get a few bad magic phase in a row, or if your mage get eaten by the warp.

From our book, we can dominate 3 of 4 phase ;
Movement : with a move of 6, we most often than not have an advantage on the charge, but our low unit count can counter this if not played well. Movement is not just about getting as fast as possible to the ennemy, but also being able to take advantage.

Magic : i do not think we can dominate that phase, since we don't really have anything special that make us stronger than most, like Lizardman power to "give away" miscast, or Warrior of Chaos Tzeentch caster who can get +6 to cast. We can do ok, but that's as far as i'd go.

Shooting : With a cannon, a catapult, and some very strong low range shooting, we can do almost as good as Dwarf or Empire with our new army book.

Close combat ; with our S4/6 T4 on our core unit, its pretty easy to see that we can kill alot of stuff. We're not in god mode, because of our WS3 and low ini, but we have nothing to sneeze at vs most other units. Of course, we might be in trouble when facing a unit of 21 Witches, as poison nullify one of our strenght.


So our list would be best to have ;
- a minimum magic (to avoid letting every spell go thru)
- shooting, but not too much (spending 1000+ pts in shooting might not be a good idea, as it leave less than half your army to go ahead and meet your opponent.
- close combat. Since our core is only close combat oriented, its pretty easy to have a strong cc phase.

Tyrant + Trickster Helm + 5+Wardsave
SM + lvl4 + Hellheart (given that it cause miscast 5d6 around the carrier, once per game)
BSB + 4+Wardsave
Firebelly + Dispell Scroll

8 Bulls
8 IronGuts

6 Mournfang

1 Scraplauncher
2 Ironblaster

That allow you to get a unit of Ironguts full of character that will tear through just about anything, a unit of bull as backup if the IG gets too small, or for counter charge, a unit of cavalry that i put much hope in, two cannon and a catapult. the two cannon would have one main purpose in that list; kill opponent artillery. Once that's done (or if there's none to start with), you can start taking care of lone model (such as chariot, monster, flyer). I'd consider including a Monster instead of the tyrant, but i personally do not like to think of an army led by a Leadership 8.