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Ogres have always seemed to be a slight bit underpowered. Will their new book give them their needed power boost, or will it just 'balance' them like TK?

It appears to me that based on the TK and O&G books (I play TK personally) that unlike 40k codex revisions, they are making a real attempt to level the playing field. TK's got a boost but not a ridiculous boost, and since they came from a really weak book before, I don't see them making Ogres ridiculously overpowered. Both new books are pretty balanced and got a good mix of new units and abilities. Although I do think that any changes made to Ogres will feel like leaps and bounds of progress to Ogre players. My friend plays Ogres and loves them, but there complete inability to compete means they get shelved.

Just by looking at the new models, I think the flavor of the new Ogres is a real attraction. The idea of making ogre units that hail from different regions and therefore have different abilities seems great!

I agree that the WHFB new books seem just set the same bar. The simple fact that most spells and items are in the BRB shows that.

In 40K there's a simple formula, where the new book = OP. Though I think that CAN, as much as people hate to say it, be attributed to the age ranges of players. More aggro younger players aren't going to dish out their allowance money for a merely okay army. If you want them to switch (and really, switching is how GW keeps generating revenue) it needs to be kickass. I don't think that policy would work on WHFB base as people would get irritated pretty fast and maybe move to competition.

So, I love the fatties, but I actually hope they don't become OP at all. I like their lore.

Ogres were fine in 8th.

The upcoming armybook is just going to properly price out the bull units, bring their magic and items upto speed with 8th, and give them more toys to get the job done.

And I wouldn't have any other way.

Hail to the Great Maw!

Tzeentchling9 wrote:Ogres were fine in 8th.

The upcoming armybook is just going to properly price out the bull units

A ~14% change to cost as well as buff to charging and potential resist modifications means it wasn't fine. Those are pretty sizeable changes. You can't say something is fine ignoring the cost.

Funny thing about 40K is that contrary to what the internet loves to tell you (over and over again), it isn't a constant stream of ever-increasingly powerful armies.

In fact, it wasn't that long ago, in the early stages of 5th ed, with the recently released Space Marines and Orks that you had a well balanced range of core armies, and while there were certainly languishing codices, these were the result of just not fitting into the changed rules of the new system (Tau) or having been really underpowered when they were released (Witchhunters & Daemon Hunters). The Imperial Guard codex isn't even that powerful across the board, it's just that medium armour is way undercosted, allowing people to take some stupidly powerful tournament builds... then the Space Wolves came along and everything got ugly, quickly.

The same is true for WHFB, up until 8th edition, the game was plagued by absolutely horrendous game balance, with the most recent books being crazy powerful in contrast to what had come before. The books released in the new edition haven't screwed up the power balance, but the newest books in an edition never do.

See, the way I see it, it's typically the same books in each series that break the game. Space Wolves screwed up 40K, and the rest are just trying to match it for power, leaving older books way behind. It'll get worse when Chaos Space Marines is inevitably released again, as it had the gimped codex already, and now it's time for the crazy powerful list once again.

The same will likely happen with WHFB, and it'll likely be one of the usual suspects that breaks the game again - Chaos Warriors or Vampire Counts.

This isn't because of some grand GW scheme of machiavellian commercialism, it's just because some armies are the favourites of certain GW employees, and ultimately some armies have "badasses tromping all over everything" as their main theme, so it's kind of hard to get the theme of the army right unless they are actually smashing aside most other armies.


To answer the OP's question, OK are going to get a slight boost in power, that'll probably line them up with the other armies, and depending on how their new big monsters turn up, maybe give them some builds that can compete among the cheesiest tournament builds. But seriously, wait for Chaos Warriors or Vampire Counts for everything to get screwed up again.

I doubt WoC and Vamps will be broken. There's just no grounds.
Sure, Vamps were dumb in 7th ed. but they're hardly a GW favorite, with Warriors of Chaos being the same. The Hordes of Chaos book, and indeed the current WoC book wasn't incredibly broken.

DukeRustfield wrote:

Tzeentchling9 wrote:Ogres were fine in 8th.

The upcoming armybook is just going to properly price out the bull units

A ~14% change to cost as well as buff to charging and potential resist modifications means it wasn't fine. Those are pretty sizeable changes. You can't say something is fine ignoring the cost.

They were fine. The new armybook is just making them better. Bulls were one of the better core units point for point.

Cryonicleech wrote:I doubt WoC and Vamps will be broken. There's just no grounds.
Sure, Vamps were dumb in 7th ed. but they're hardly a GW favorite, with Warriors of Chaos being the same. The Hordes of Chaos book, and indeed the current WoC book wasn't incredibly broken.

Only if you consider 7th edition alone. The game has a long history, and that history shows certain armies release over powered books that sets the whole game out of whack as other armies are then released to 'keep up'.

sebster wrote:

Cryonicleech wrote:I doubt WoC and Vamps will be broken. There's just no grounds.
Sure, Vamps were dumb in 7th ed. but they're hardly a GW favorite, with Warriors of Chaos being the same. The Hordes of Chaos book, and indeed the current WoC book wasn't incredibly broken.

Only if you consider 7th edition alone. The game has a long history, and that history shows certain armies release over powered books that sets the whole game out of whack as other armies are then released to 'keep up'.

Even if you do onlt take seventh alone the DOC book was disgusting tier 1 for god's sake

most certaintly, although 8th edition itself did most of the hard work.


Ogre Bulls were slightly overpriced at their previous level, this brings them down to a proper costing.

a horde of Ogres(with full command and Ironfists) now costs 570 points as opposed to the previous 770 points. the bulls also have a 5+ armor save at all times as opposed to nothing outside of combat and a 6+ armor inside combat. both have 6+ wards to the front.


so I can basically run several hordes of bulls in a normal game if I want to without making the rest of the army suffer for it.

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:Even if you do onlt take seventh alone the DOC book was disgusting tier 1 for god's sake

Oh absolutely, they were ridiculous. It's just hard to comment on Daemons impact on game balance long term, because the split of Chaos is fairly new.

But Chaos, whatever it's form, has been buggering up balance for multiple editions.

At least good Chaos lists arn't monothemed. there isn't just one powerful build, but several. you can go all Khorne marauder hordes with Great Weapons or Flails. or you can go Tzeench marauder bunkers with Shield and LA. Or you can go for Warriors, Khorne with Great Weapons or Halberds for killy, Tzeench Sword n Board for survivability. Chosenstar with 3+ ward. Monster Mash.... the list goes on.



Ogres have decent competability simply with the 8th ed rules, new book just gives new tools and varity to accomplish things with.

I wonder what the collective thinks of running a horde of mournfang cavalry (with characters obv) and a horde of bulls aswell as two flanking units for a 2500 points denial list

Going by the rumours, Mournfang will be WAAAAY too expensive to run that many of them.

they are only 30 old Gnoblars each.

a unit of 6 without command is 360 points.


certaintly not dirt cheap, but compared to other ogre units it isn't that bad.


it would be around 1000 points for a horde of them. in a large point game you could do it and it would be devestating, although you would be buying 9+ boxs of the buggers.

They're also not core (AFAIK), so you'd need at least...4000 points minimum?

I'll admit it'd be god-damn devastating, but it's just too expensive until you start getting into silly points ranges.

They are Special, so you could spend up to 50% on them(3k game would give you 1500 points to spend)

Ah, thought they were rare.

Still, 2 to a box. It's gonna cost a whole bloody lot.

I think Ogres are going to be more than fine.

To be honest, their point costs and weakness to initiative tests were what was keeping them down. And unlike 7th, charging didnt give them the chance to hit first, so where before you could take MSU ogre sqauds and charge everything, now you need enough to live through the first round of combat.

This means the horde of bulls right? Well now you have a 1100 point block of bulls, that, if they somehow lose combat, might run off the board with half your points.

I think the Fire-dude is a little broken, but Ogres needed a new toy to fight back against mages.

They should be more than okay.

Yep, the points cost was the big thing. For less than the price of a naked bull with the current book, we'll be able to take a bull with an ironfist.

I've always maintained ironfists would be amazing if it weren't for the fact that they made an expensive model even more so, but I reckon they'll be more widely used now that the price has went down.

And who DOESN'T want a shield that can be used as another hand weapon?


And the Firebelly isn't too bad. I'm just happy we have, at least, a choice in lore. I've heard butchers/slaughtermasters have a selection of lores but at least one caster in the army has to use gut magic.

ironfists are now just shields. no XHW option.

in return, its a shield at all times(even outside of CC)

Hmmm, still OK for 2 points a pop. At least they HAVE a save now.

Thunderfrog wrote:I think Ogres are going to be more than fine.

To be honest, their point costs and weakness to initiative tests were what was keeping them down. And unlike 7th, charging didnt give them the chance to hit first, so where before you could take MSU ogre sqauds and charge everything, now you need enough to live through the first round of combat.

This means the horde of bulls right? Well now you have a 1100 point block of bulls, that, if they somehow lose combat, might run off the board with half your points.

I think the Fire-dude is a little broken, but Ogres needed a new toy to fight back against mages.

They should be more than okay.

Wait, I am missing what you are saying... That doesn't sound like an Advantage... that sounds very bad... 1100 points off the board if we lose by one...?

Am I missing something?

Ogres are undoubtedly better off with the new book. Point reduction are always good. The cannon allows them to more easily deal with big beasts and *very importantly* the firebelly gives them an answer to grave guard bus. They also have cheap redictors (kitty cat or 10 man gnobs).


However, there's nothing you can do about the fact purple sun and pit make them cry. There's nothing you can do to stop that (runemaw helps against pit, but only on your character bunker). Shadow is also very common in tournament armies, so you're going to see that pit a lot.

Between the cannon, firebelly, the exceptionally strong cav (AMAZING buy at 70 points), scouting or sniper maneaters, 10 man gnoblars that don't cause panic, they certinaly have a lot of the tools to win. However, those don't balance out the LD difficulties and the I2 problem. Sure, you can get LD9 with BSB (I think tyrant is too expensive), but you need to stay really tight (likely bunker) and that means you need a BSB with runemaw or auto lose to pit of shades, so now you're stuck with a bunker susceptible to purple sun / a 1 on runemaw redirect.



To respond to the above. You 1000 points of bulls isn't running off the board if you lose by 1. If you take a death star you have stubborn on a character and a bsb nearby. So you're likely running on a rr 10 or rr 9.

GalacticZ wrote:

Thunderfrog wrote:
This means the horde of bulls right? Well now you have a 1100 point block of bulls, that, if they somehow lose combat, might run off the board with half your points.

.

Wait, I am missing what you are saying... That doesn't sound like an Advantage... that sounds very bad... 1100 points off the board if we lose by one...?

Am I missing something?

The fact that a Bullstar only costs about half that many points unless you have about 500 points in characters in it too?
Or maybe the fact that the Bullstar will never lose a frontal combat? A bullstar will have at least 36 S4 attacks against a unit(4 in btb, 3 ranks), not counting: stomps, impact hits, buffs from magic, attacks from stronger Bruisers/Tyrants, etc.

Tzeentchling,

How will the bullstar never lose combat? Horde dark elf spears with mindrazor do the job very nicely. And that's not even a hard combo to pull off and one that you will likely see often at tournaments.

Let's be careful with absolutes. The bullstar offers very limited survivability. If you spend the points to put defensive characters in the front rank, you're susceptible to all those lovely initiative based spells.

the natural counter to the Low I problem, in CC anyway, is the Thundertusk.

everyone within 6" is ASL. which is basically HEs and those rare units with ASF(who lose their reroll)



at least 1 Thundertusk will be required support in competitive enviroments. it will basically tag along with the main combat line and make several enemy units very unhappy.

Until it gets shot/casted at.

While low I is a problem many armies face, I don't think that the Thundertusk is the ONLY solution, though it's great in combat.

There's not people can do against Purple Sun and Pit of Shades, except bring along dispel scrolls.

True enough, although I don't fear the Purple Sun as much as I used to.

PS requires several variables to fall into place before its successful.


1: it has to get cast. with a 15+, that requires 3 Power Dice for a Lvl3 to have a roughly 50/50 chance. a Lvl4 still needs a minimum of 3 dice, and that is by no means certain. the Boosted version requires a 25+, a Lvl4 needs to roll 6 dice to meet that reliably.

2: your opponent actually has to get the Spell. If its only a Lvl1 or 2 wizard, forget about casting the PS reliably at all. this is a spell that requires a Lvl4, and most if not all of your Power Dice to get off successfully.

3: the vortex, if cast, has to go the right distance to catch us and not misfire, in which case the PS is now in the casters's lines.. it also has a max range of 30", with the average being about 18" it can get accross the board in 1 turn, but is a fairly short ranged spell.