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I've lately grow tired of setting up my armies in 40k and watch them get shot to pieces, so i've deicde to take the plunge into other game systems and was thinking about starting a Orges army but was wondering if its a good idea as i know some fantasy army books are quite all ( never really followed fantasy as i tried to make wood elves work at one point which didn't good well lets just say i stop =P) so any comments about orges and what to buy and whats seen as semi-competitive as thats how the group around my parts play =)

Well... to start off, they're called Ogres, not Orges.

That's about all I know about them, but it seems like I could still contribute!

Ogres are simple: you set up like 25 models, move them forward and have them smash things.

They are an army of living sledgehammers that like to eat things and tend to carry around cannons as if they are rifles.

That's pretty much everything you need to know.

Ogres are definitely competitive but not overpowered and broken. Fantasy in general is very balanced with all the latest books being roughly the same power level.

The game is much more skill dependent.

Now, ogres themselves have a bit of tactical depth. its not just plonk them on the table and bull-rush your opponent's biggest unit(that's how Ogres lose) It's all about exploiting your above average movement and buffs to ensure you get favorable charges and don't get surrounded.

Ogres are melee orientated but they do have some good ranged options. Probably the best BS based shooting unit in the game in Leadbeltchers(BS based shooting generally sucks because of modifiers, which Leadbeltchers ignore most of) and also a very good cannon. The cannon's good price and abilities are made up by being a Rare choice(which limits you to only 2 of them in any normal sized game)


As for what to buy, here is a general laundry list of purchasing priority.

1st purchase: 1-2 Battalions and a Slaughter Master.

This will get you the following,

Slaughter Master

Bruiser battle standard bearer

Butcher

12 Ogre Bulls with Ironfists and full command

12 Ironguts with full command

6 Leadbeltchers

Normally the battalion would yield 8 Leadbeltchers but you use 2 of those bodies to scratch build the Bruiser and Butcher using the many many extra bits you'll have.

This is the basic meat and potatoes of any ogre list and will round out any core requirements.


After that, you'll want to pick up the following.

1 pack of Sabretusks. Excellent chaff and redirector unit that's also dirt cheap.

2 boxes of Mournfangs. This will get you a unit of 4 with Ironfists, musician, and the Dragonhide banner. This unit basically will delete any infantry unit it charges that doesn't have str4 or better attacks. The math is rather sickening on how many str3 models these guys can take on without any losses.

1-2 Ironblasters. The cannon shores up our biggest weaknesses, which are other warmachine and large monsters. It can take them out before they hurt our main combat blocks.

a second Butcher. lots of competitive ogre lists run a Slaughter Master and 2 Butchers as the main characters(plus the BSB) so you'll want a second guy.


Things that aren't necessary but can still do well.

Stonehorn/Thundertusk. Really fun to use and actually decently competitive. But they compete for Rare points with Ironblasters.

Giants. Maybe not the best but certainly not too bad. Giants actually are the best thing to hunt enemy monsters(who they screw royally)

Maneaters. Actually these guys are quite competitive but its really a matter of personal taste. They are quite expensive pointwise, and very expensive modelwise. General consensus is that they are best with the front rank having pistols and the back rank having great weapons with some extra bodies to soak wounds. They kill stuff dead but you pay the points for it.

Ogres are the easiest army to learn fantasy with, as well as the cheapest army to collect. S4 & T4 is not as common as in 40k, which is average for Ogres.

Other strengths:

*Ogres have a decent magic phase.
*Move 6 army wide (except gnoblars) they are on average the fastest army in the game.
*They can have a decent shooting phase
*In a game with a focus on CC, they do that really well.

Ogres are not point, click, win... But in the hands of a good general it's pretty close.

If you want to start Fantasy and you like Ogres, go for it. Ogres are one of the best beginner armies in the game and among the best armies in the game full-stop. Grey Templar's shopping list is good too, though feel free to stray a little, most units in the Ogre book are perfectly viable.

To qualify that statement, there are a couple stinkers.

All the special characters range from utter crap to meh. Bragg the guttsman is like a bad joke. A bruiser half his cost will eat him easily. Scragg can be OK if you are skilled and build a list around him.

Yhetees are also horrible. More expensive than man eaters while having less attacks, no impact hits, and being flammable. All you gain are magic attacks and a situational debuff.

Hunters are also very bad. We really want magic to buff our troops up and also have a bsb. The hunter basically makes taking both of those impossible if you take him. Only thing he has is being able to ride a stone horn, which is of dubious benefit.

 Grey Templar wrote:
To qualify that statement, there are a couple stinkers.

All the special characters range from utter crap to meh. Bragg the guttsman is like a bad joke. A bruiser half his cost will eat him easily. Scragg can be OK if you are skilled and build a list around him.

Yhetees are also horrible. More expensive than man eaters while having less attacks, no impact hits, and being flammable. All you gain are magic attacks and a situational debuff.

Hunters are also very bad. We really want magic to buff our troops up and also have a bsb. The hunter basically makes taking both of those impossible if you take him. Only thing he has is being able to ride a stone horn, which is of dubious benefit.

I don't know, I actually kind of like Yhetees. I am not an ogre player myself, but the extra bit of movement, increased initiative and magical attacks looks handy. Debuffs never go wrong either.

Most importantly in my opinion for ogres, there's relatively few models so not lots of painting to be done and you can go wild on conversions. The ogre models are a bit static so it's difficult to reposition them but aside from that they are one big blank canvas you can go wild on conversion wise.

You can, with some conversion work, make pretty much all the ogre units/characters from the stuff you can get in the battalion set. Core units, Butchers, maneaters, bruisers, BSB. With some imagination, patience and greenstuff (or whatever your conversion material of choice is ) you can make pretty much every actual ogre unit entry in the book. Not only does it save you a lot of money (the gnoblars also come as extra's on the ogre sprues, so no need to buy a box of those ever) but it means you can make a truly unigque army that really looks how you want it to look.

The only reason I actually bought some of the, then, metal character models was because I liked the look of them, not because I really needed them. I had all the characters I needed converted from the battalion sets already.

Ogres are a great army for the budding converter due to their large size, and lumpy builds.

Its fairly easy to cut and reposition then sculpt over with greenstuff.

Fantasy has better rules then 40K, but 40K has much more interesting factions to play.

Ogres is an excellent choice. Good rules, some models that shines very much, both to build and to play.

Easy to convert (if so desired) because of the big models and low model count. They also have the prefect excuse to be converted to anything you want.

Fantasy is much more movement phase and close combat phase then 40K. You will find T4 and S4 models are easier to learn the game with. They are also cheap on the wallet, and the few entries in the codex means you will not end up on a shopping spree that never ends.

There are two downsides. Your leadership will be a bit low. Also the ogre characters are so very expensive you very rarely will be able to afford both a leader, a banner bearer and a mage.

The only things I would dis advice is picking up yetis, and the hunter. Also make sure your core does not consist of only gnoblars. Yeties and hunters where good some edisions ago, and while funn, it takes some finnes to use them. The same is true with the gnoblars as you should idealy use them to get rank bonus. But for starters ogres are easy to buy and play. Do not have a S3T3 army as your first unless you want a steep curve. (My first was TK, that was a steep learning curve.)

Fortunately the Slaughter Master happily fulfills the spot of both general and lvl4 mage.

I routinely have Slaughter Master, BSB, and 2 butchers as my characters. The butchers tend to have little in the way of equipment beyond scroll and hellheart though.

 Niiai wrote:
Fantasy has better rules then 40K, but 40K has much more interesting factions to play.

Well, that's clearly a matter of opinion.

When I look at 40k, I see one book of humans, something like 7(?) books of augmented humans, 2 books of tall humans, 1 book of female humans, 1 book of blue socialist humans, 1 book of evil humans, 1 book of stupid green humans and Tyranids.

I don't mean that they look humanoid. That's a given and the Fantasy armies share that, but all their motivation and how they think in 40k is incredibly human. The only humanoids that possibly could be less human in their logic are the greenskins, but even there, I feel like their Fantasy counter parts are much more interesting. There are a lot of Space Marine chapters that are fueled on rage, much like the Orks.

Fantasy, imo, has considerably more interesting factions.

 Purifier wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
Fantasy has better rules then 40K, but 40K has much more interesting factions to play.

Well, that's clearly a matter of opinion.

When I look at 40k, I see one book of humans, something like 7(?) books of augmented humans, 2 books of tall humans, 1 book of female humans, 1 book of blue socialist humans, 1 book of evil humans, 1 book of stupid green humans and Tyranids.

I don't mean that they look humanoid. That's a given and the Fantasy armies share that, but all their motivation and how they think in 40k is incredibly human. The only humanoids that possibly could be less human in their logic are the greenskins, but even there, I feel like their Fantasy counter parts are much more interesting. There are a lot of Space Marine chapters that are fueled on rage, much like the Orks.

Fantasy, imo, has considerably more interesting factions.

You forgot the metal Egyptian humans.

I'm also interested in starting ogres, I was wondering what would be better, ogre warriors or ironguts?
Also this is a brilliant thread.

archonsythrax wrote:
I'm also interested in starting ogres, I was wondering what would be better, ogre warriors or ironguts?
Also this is a brilliant thread.

Iron Guts. They ASL, but since ogres tend to have ini2 you'd be striking last anyway.

The benchmark is:

normal ogres are slightly more defensive and ironguts ore more offensive. But normals also cost a lot less. So they can have more ranks, be more steadfast, have more units of them.

They are equal but have different purposes.

Ogres are more durable both by having better saves and having more bodies.

Ironguts are more offensive orientated.


Regular Ogres are, however, more effective against basic RnF than Ironguts are due to having more attacks and durability per point.

So basically Ogres are for killing cheap enemy troops as well as any medium infantry while Ironguts are best at taking down monsters and infantry with 3+ or better saves.

I'll mainly be playing against tomb kingdom and lizardmen

I usually always run both regardless of opponent.

Typically a 2-1 ratio of Ogres to Ironguts.

Typical 2500 point list has 2 units of 12 Ogres with Ironfists and 1 unit of 9-12 Ironguts depending on the specifics.

Tomb Kings are funny in that their large monsters are T8, which means Ironguts and Bulls have the same probability of wounding them. So either you use Bulls against them or cannons.

Maneaters are a given right?

Nothing is a given. Ogres have good specials.

Maneaters and Mournfangs are both great enough to build your armies around, but not required. Leadbelchers are also the best elite shooters around. (And I suspect will get better in 9th because BS shooting "must" get a buff however small.)

There are almost no auto-includes in the ogre army, and Maneaters aren't one of them.

The only things that you could say are auto-include would be a Slaughter Master and Sabretusks. And the Slaughter Master is debatable.

I agree, with most of everything on this thread. My only disagreement is the Yhetees. In my experience, using a 3 man unit, they've been successful(mostly). They are a gamble. You really just need to decide how to use 'em right. Ethereals are top priority for Yhetees, they can steel the charge quite well too. Again, they're a gamble, but if used right, you'll get your points out of them.

A butcher/slaughtermaster is also recomended.