Steve Jackson Games, £40 OGRE: the most successful of the 1980's "Micro-game" craze, playable in an hour and offering a complex tactical problem: what is the best defence from a mixed armour and infantry force against one giant tank bristling with firepower? So, what's different about Deluxe OGRE? Well, it's the same OGRE, but now it's no micro-game. Instead, Deluxe OGRE offers a halfway house between a board game and a miniatures game. The original small two-tone game board has been replaced by a 35" by 22" full colour game board with hexes about 1.5" across. They need to be that big to fit the miniatures on! These come in three plastic "video boxes", which fit inside the games card slip-cover: first bad point about this game - no proper box. A good point is that the miniatures are lead free (I'm of the school of thought that lead free pewter won't kill the hobby, and whilst lead figures sensibly handled won't kill you either, lead free has to be a good thing). Anyway, the miniatures consist of: 4 heavy tanks. The chassis is about the size of one of the OGRE's track units, the turret has a low profile and is set right back on the chassis. At first I thought the vehicle was oriented the other way round (i.e. turret very far forward), but it isn't! This vehicle doesn't quite look right - I'd have liked the turret to be slightly further forward, or the overall vehicle length to have been shorter. 6 Ground Effect Vehicles (GEVs). My least favourite miniature I think. It looks like a wingless aeroplane, with four pods hanging off its sides. I'd always imagined these as more hovercraft like - with all round skirts. Taken without my preconceptions, they're quite nice. 4 missile tanks. Large flat bed style tank chassis, with a forward crew position, and a MLRS style bank of rockets in the centre of the vehicle. The small size of the rocket section with respect to the vehicle can be presumably explained by the tank carrying its own reloads. 1 howitzer. Only 1! Well that's the 4 howitzer defence out of the window (and if you want to know what the 4 howitzer defence is, try picking 4 howitzers in your next game of OGRE!). The howitzer is a large calibre weapon, sited on its own base, with a control bunker for the crew. A very nice, if very simple, miniature. 21 Infantry figures, to be based on up to 10 bases (so that some can be strength 1 or strength 2 bases). There are two styles of 3 figure strips, if you were thinking of using the OGRE miniatures rules set at some point you could paint some figures in different uniforms to designate engineers or marines. They'd make no difference in the boardgame though. A command post - a substantial building consisting of a large rectangular section butting onto a cylindrical tower, surface detail is fairly sparse - just heavy doors and steel shuttered windows, quite nice though. And an OGRE MKIII. This is a very large vehicle - it sits in two hexes on the gameboard, and consists of four sets of tracks, a two part superstructure, 1 main cannon and 4 secondary guns, a pair of missiles, and 8 anti-personnel weapons. A record sheet for keeping track of the damage to the OGRE can be cut out of the card slip-cover - it is suggested that it should be laminated to make it long lasting. This seemed a bit mean, I think a separate laminated card could have been provided. The rulebook provides the game background, the game rules, and a couple of scenarios using the MKIII OGRE. And that's it. This is the second main fault of the game - the lack of counters. Although it'd be perfectly possible to make your own, I think it would have been nice to have had a large size version of the full original counter set provided. Otherwise the force mix available to the defender is only that provided by the miniatures (you're free to buy more miniatures of course). Also, although the stats for the Mark I - Mark V OGRES are provided, there is no guidance on how potent they are (i.e. what should the opposing player be allowed as his force mix? Is a Mark IV worth 2 Mark III's?). Of course all this information is available in good old fashioned pocket OGRE (and the follow on games and supplements - GEV, Shockwave, etc.), but shouldn't the relevant guidance be in the DELUXE version as well? I liked OGRE; I still like OGRE. That this is probably the most negative review I've sent to Lone Warrior is, I think, a testimony to how good OGRE is, and how much I've enjoyed playing it. I think that, the map aside, Deluxe OGRE isn't Deluxe, but is basically a way of selling some of the OGRE miniatures line. The tactical challenge is limited by the force mix provided for the defender, and I really feel that the lack of additional counters and scenarios detracts from the game. As I've already got a fair number of 1/300 scale SF vehicles from other manufacturers this wasn't my main reason for buying the game. I was glad I'd bought it in a sale for 25% off, as for the full £40 I think I'd have felt really ripped off. If, however, you don't have OGRE figures, and want to buy a large number, then I suspect that Deluxe OGRE offers a reasonable deal, since they aren't exactly at the budget end of the line for SF miniatures! If you've never played OGRE (and I'd recommend that you do - it plays well SOLO) and just want to try out the game I'd recommend buying the OGRE/GEV boxed set (both original board games in 1 package for about £12). [Guys, this is just the sort of review that allows Lone Warrior to state that ‘Reviews are done by wargamers for wargamers’. Thanks yet again to Jonathan. Kenn] Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #137 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com