Way back in the mists of time, namely the 1980s, I picked up a copy of Steve Jackson's Ogre, the game of futuristic cybertank warfare. Ogre was a revolutionary - and cheap - little game that featured a massive tank the size of a housing block seeking to destroy a command post which was defended by a battalion of infantry, artillery and armoured vehicles.
If it sounds like an asymmetric scenario, you'd be right. I played it quite a bit in the 1980s when the game came in a small plastic box with an A4 map. It was small enough to play at the back of the class in school without being noticed. The concept was simple, but involved enough basic carnage to entertain the male teenaged brain.
Fast forward to 2013 and I backed the launch of the Designers Edition of the game on Kickstarter. This seems to be Ogre, its successor game GEV, and plenty more sheets of units and Ogre variants, but all in a deluxe format, that is glorious in its proud technicolour. Since backing the game, however, I have left it on the shelf to literally gather dust, which is sad.
I finally got the opportunity to get the game onto the table this month, and we played a couple of the classic scenarios, featuring an Ogre Mark 3 and then a Mark 5 going up against Paneuropean infantry and armour. The game plays quickly and easily despite its age. It was very much a learning experience and we needed some time to get our heads around some of the rules concepts.
For example, we failed to appreciate that units cannot combine fire on the tracks of Ogres. This meant that in both scenarios, the Ogres were disabled more quickly than might have been the case otherwise. That said, my Mark 3 came close to being able to take a shot at its command post objective. Secondly, we also underestimated the firepower of the Ogres' diverse weapons batteries, meaning they were both a lot less powerful than they should be...
In retrospect, the Ogres should pack much more of a punch and be much harder to stop than they were! We learned our lessons, however, and are keen to get the game back on the table soon. I have even been experimenting with a little scenario design. There are still a lot more tanks to assemble from the massive box. It remains an excellent game and I'm also now tempted to take a look at the miniatures rules, although this does sound like another rabbit hole to go down!
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