Steve Jackson’s Ogre

Steve Jackson’s Ogre is back, when many people see it on the game store shelves again they say "Hey I remember Ogre" and many gamers do. I just finished playing a solitaire game that I thoroughly enjoyed. The Ogre a super powerful cyber tank without any human pilots is like Terminator with bigger guns! It marched up and took out the command post but then it tried to escape off the bottom of the map and was finally brought down. A marginal victory for the Ogre because it’s objective was met.

One of the great things about this game is the flexibility for the number of players. My solitaire game was a lot of fun and you can imagine the Ogre programmed to plow straight toward it’s objective the command post or to always fire at the largest threat for example. It plays great as a two player game and it’s very easy to make teams for multi-player. A game can be played in as little time as 30 minutes but much longer games are possible if you add more units and play on a bigger map.

It is arguably one of the best game to introduce someone to the war gaming hobby because of its simple rules and small size. All of the units mostly made up of tanks, but there are some infantry and hovercraft units called GEV’s have a basic attack and defense strength and movement and weapon range. There is a chart you roll a six sided dice to see what happened during an attack.

The basic scenario pits a lone Ogre against several armor units and infantry as it tries to take out a command post. There is a lot of replay value here as you can play all sorts of scenarios and it’s real easy to make up your own, grab some hex paper and you can make your own maps as well.

Another thing to note about this game is the support materials by Steve Jackson games. They are coming out with a small expansion called Shockwave, a reinforcement pack and the thing I am most excited about is a GURPS source book that will allow you do some role-playing the Ogre Universe. There is also some new miniatures on the way.

This is a great game for any war gamer!

Clayton Capra

Mirkwood Coffee Comics & Games