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I am a player who has recently started playing fantasy again after about 9 mouths without a game. I have recently entered a campaign with my Empire, as to get me back into the game, and there are a few ogre players near my starting area. I have never had any luck when playing against ogres. Any advice on what units and how to build characters would be appreciated.

We are playing with the battle of the badlands campaign book so my 3 generals are set and can't be changed, and I'm mostly looking for advice.

A couple of hellblasters to whittle them down.
A lore of death wizard to cast purple sun for the ogre Death Stars that they may have.
Unit of 20+ great swords with a detachment of hand gunners to soften them up a bit when they charge.
Hippogryph knights can give you a nice punch on the flanks.
You can rarely go wrong with a steam tank.
With empire you have so many options. Part of the trick is to remember that you will most likely outnumber him. Use that to your advantage to hit flanks and rear

Engineer Hellblasters, Cannon and Steam Tanks. S10 and D6 wounds can ripe through a group of Ogres.

My main suggestion would be to shoot the ogres and soften them up before they get to you. Don't charge up to meet them on their terms. Shoot them while they walk across the board to you. Then try to get the charge off on them to deny impact hits.

Just take Demigryphs vs the mournfang. Demis win that reliably.

As for the blocks, take light magic and a hurrianum,

Other than that, war machines.

Thanks for the feedback. I will try and implement these ideas into my army. Time to buy some demigryphs!

Yeah, these guys have it right, Ogres can't be fought head-on. If that death star unit is a Hoard it gets ugly quickly.

I tend to like shadow magic, Okkmans Mindrazor is a game changer. A hoard of empire spearmen or sword and shields with strength 7 is a very scary thing. Assuming you can get it off.

Oddly enough, cannons do a very bad job of killing Ogres and MI in general.

This is because if the cannon ball fails to kill an entire model, it stops and ceases to bounce.

If you hit a regular RnF ogre, you only have a 55% chance to kill it. Thats if it has no saves. If he has the 6++ against warmachine weapons item its only a 45% chance to kill. And if he's got Trollguts up, you've only got a pathetic 27% chance to kill it and proceed to the next ogre in the unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Just take Demigryphs vs the mournfang. Demis win that reliably.

If the Demi-gryphs get the charge, they win it. If they don't... They die horribly.

And the Mournfang are faster than the Demi-gryphs.

I used to run a huge block of Halbriadiers and shoot the ogres a lot before throwing the blob at them. Worked pretty okay. Would be very bad in a Campaign where losses matter, though, and I haven't played them for a couple editions.

They were a cool army and let me paint an infinite sea of men in pajamas. 10/10, would suggest.

Well in addition to what has been said,

Light wagons because of the magic flaming bolt thrower.

And I guess even a mortar can hurt them to some extent (S6 wounds d3 under the hole).

as an ogre player... you have 2- maybe 3 turns if lucky to stand and shoot. not enough to do more then possibly really bang up one unit. some observations.

-demis vrs mournfangs... sorry but i think the mfc win that fight. most people take the IF/HA option, and have dhb. aside from impact hits, that ASL breath weapon will mess up your day, and the number of strikes the units gets is pretty sick. plus as mentioned move faster - and more likley to get charge off. then impact hits... for the MFC you want to nail them with hellblasters. then wrap up with a few damaging spells. mfc have pretty bad LD and are prone to failing those checks and being away from bsb and or general.
-ogre deathstars.. the one i run usually has 18 or more ogres with IF, FC a bsb, at least one caster, maybe 2 and sometimes a tyrant. the unit with buffs up is beyond terrifying. dont let them get off toughness or regen spells. let anything that does str off. (wyssans from lore of beasts is debatable - because usually lvl 1 or 2 casting and needs a 10.) simply because high str dosent REALLY help too much vrs empire. whereas the high toughness and regen makes them so much harder to kill. especially at range.
- keep your casters far far away. hellhearts have max range of 30, average about 20" and ive seen it totally ruin a caster heavy army. keep casters back, and delay the amount of time before that thing can go off, and if you can kill the bearer before he uses it.

if i was empire, playing my ogres i would use hell blasters to shoot up mournfangs, maneaters, or any other small unit. thats less then 6 models. finish them off with fireballs or pit of shades, or anything that can dish out a good number of wounds. priority, mournfangs, scouting maneaters, followed by leadies, small units of ironguts, then start laying into the core. have at least 3 units alinged and ready to get into the fight witht he brick of deathstar. the idea here is to deny the ogres a charge, OR make them charge a small unit, then counter charge into front and both flanks. such an ogre deathstar has, in my loadout a static combat res of +5 + wounds. you need to have at LEAST that, and be able to keep pace with the wounds. try to avoid challanges... ogres can be scary in a challange and ive often thrown my unit champ in, just to deny that scary character from unloading on my unit. you want your killy characters if any, hitting rnf, not fighting one guy. if he challanges, toss him a unit champ. youll loose but the payoff should balance.
- finally, make use of buffs. a life mage not in the fight but close, can keep your guys alive, and buff em up to rock better attacks and be more durable. i love the idea of a lvl 4 and lvl 2 iife mage. get throne of vines off, and just pump out the heals. and empire mages are cheap, so can have those plus a firemage, and a shadow or deathlore mage for the aforementioned uppercut.

dont waste time on cannons. dont worry about gnoblars... they are distractions. same as kittys. they hit tough, but 2 toughness 4 wounds goes away easy enough. hope that helps

Lore of Shadow

- Pit of Shades if you want to be a dirty player
- Withering can drop Ogres to T1. Imagine wounding on any ranged on a 2+... you can eliminate entire units with a single shooting phase.
- Enfeebling Foe stacked with Miasma will likely force Ogres to break from combat assuming they aren't steadfast (which is rare for Ogres).