Then, and now: OGre KIngdoms since their inception.

Good afternoon all

Having been a member of this esteemed forum for circa 4 years now, and a fan of the eponymous Warhammer army for roughly 7 years, I have seen the gaming highs and lows that our beloved fatties have endured...

I remember very well, the days where we had to build a cookie cutter Tenderiser list, just to make OK even worth considering for the most semi-casual of games. However, since our new book, I have seen a very different perception of our army, particularly in the mids of our opponents...

but is by no means the Iron blaster + Mournfang cookie cutter list that is the scourge of the tournament scent at the moment.

The above quote, from Ben Curry (presumably), highlights this change of fortunes for the fat lads, and I was curious to see how you guys all see this. So, do you believe we have significantly risen up the power scale? Or, perhaps, the spectrum of armies have began to balance? Maybe, that the additions to our book simply leveled the playing fields, and our opponents had just become to accustomed to walking all over us?

Give me your thoughts

JJ

Upon the release of the current book, it became apparent that we were going to be good, but I personally doubted we were going to hit the top tiers, mainly because I thought a lot of the big, powerful toys were expensive to the point of being mutually exclusive. That, and I was a bit unimpressed with the Lore of the Great Maw compared to the BRB lores.

Now though, with strong tournament showings and wide general acknowledgment, I can safely say that they are indeed top-tier; Ironguts, Mournfangs and Ironblasters really are the shizzle. That said, what is 'top-tier' nowadays? Well, there's Dark Elves, Daemons, Skaven, Lizardmen, High Elves with Teclis, Ogres, possibly Warriors of Chaos - the club's not as exclusive as it was in 7th. What was 'broken/OP' then is nowadays just 'very good', I feel.

I have had tons of success with a wide variety of lists.  I've run ME heavy, magic heavy, IB+MF, Gun line, Mass bodies, MMU, MSU.

I have not yet tried out our new monsters, but the rest of our book has really good synergy.

We can compete in the shooting phase as well as the magic phase with the best of them, and no matter what list you build (except gnob only) your list WILL be strong in CC because it's ogres.

In terms of versatility we have a lot of ground to play around on, maybe not as much as a few other armies like Empire, but we are still in the top 40% for versatility I believe.

I played all of 2 games in 7th with my ogres and had all but given up on them. Then 8th hit with all the changes and the Ogres were revived.

I think we've gone through 3 distinct phases over the last few years.


The Abyss: This is the phase we were in prior to 8th edition. These were the days of spamming 3 man units of Bulls/Ironguts. When the tactic was to get an Ogre Charge off and hopefully kill enough of the enemies front rank so they couldn't do enough damage to us before we hopefully won combat and would autobreak the enemy due to fear. Lots of hopefullies in there.

The Struggle: 8th dropped and suddenly we could actually win games. The game actually allowed us to rank up and fight head to head. We were actually decent in melee. Gutmagic was awsome being that it could be stacked indefinitly and we had Loremaster. A unit of ogres properly buffed would hit like a freight train. But we still had to be careful. Our book was lacking variety and full of pointless restrictions. Scraplaunchers were awsome, but you had to take Gnoblars to get it.

Dominance: Our new book came in and we finally had the tools to destroy. However, I will never accept that ogres are overpowered as long as Purple Sun, Dwellers, Mindrazor, Pit of Shades, and any loremaster that can take those spells exists in the game.

However, I will never accept that ogres are overpowered as long as Purple Sun, Dwellers, Mindrazor, Pit of Shades, and any loremaster that can take those spells exists in the game.

Does the humble Japanese wasp think he is better than the vicious honey bee?
Does the royalty think he is better than the commoner?
Does the Tyrant think he is better than the plebs?

...wait...  Those are bad examples for making my point...

Ogres are widely considered the strongest of the 8th ed armies. While the cookie cutter list that has been doing well is probably the strongest build, the internal balance of the book isn't bad at all and you see a lot of variation in successful builds.

I don't think there's any doubt that Ogres are one of the strongests books out there now. They got a significant boost, while most of the other 8th ed books got a slight bump or a lateral move at best. While the balance for 8th ed is much better than the mess that was 7th (ogres have not done to 8th what daemons did to 7th), the book has been out long enough that everyone has adapted to Ogres saturating the metagame and yet we're still doing well. This is no brief blip, the ogres are damn strong and they're going to stay that way for a good while yet!