New tribe!

Hello great maw!

I'm starting up Ogre's as a break from 40k. Due to various life issues, I haven't played any tabletop games in a little over a year but I'm back to the building process, and now working on bringing my brush skills back up to "decent".  Never was a Golden Daemon contender but I was able to at least produce a good table top level.

I was originally looking at keeping it small like 2000pts. in total.  When assembling the first battalion I messed up and set up the bulls with two hand weapons instead of Ironfists, and rather than amputate and start over, I just bought a second battalion, the Ironblaster, and two character models, so I guess I'm just going to go for it. 

Here's my inventory starting with the Army book

Lords & Heroes:
Tyrant - How do you equip this guy?
Firebelly - Could sub as a Butcher/SlaughterMaster
Bruiser soon to become BSB

Core:
12 Bulls with additional hand weapons, bellower, and banner
12 Bulls with Iron fists, bellower, and banner
12 Ironguts, with bellower, and banner
18 Gnoblars, with a fist full more, maybe 30 in total.

Special:
6 Leadbelchers
4 Mournfang Cavalry

Rare:
1 Ironblaster

Total: +/-  2500pts

Wishlist:
Sabertusks - Screen/Darts
Ironblaster - 1 is a target, 2 is a threat
Stonehorn - 'Cause ya gotta
Mounfang - Would give me 6 for 2 units of 3
Bulls - 'Cause you can never have too many.  Thinking more Ironfists


Any recommendations, suggestions, or advice would be greatly appreciated.  Do I need more casters, and if so how many?  Is it worth investing $100+ into Maneaters or should I look at just converting some bulls with the various extra bits I have?

I haven't played Warhammer Fantasy since 4th (Brits and Lizards) so I need to probably start off with a 1000pt game, but for the most part my local shop plays 40k and Magic.  So it should be fun trying to set up a game.  I do have around 1200 pts of Skaven to set up a rules learning match against myself if I need to.  Goofy as hell but....

Welcome to the Stronghold and may the Maw praise your belly!

So, long story short: In my opinion, playing tyrant is not as competetive as playing SM instead, but I give you a gredit bringing that model on table. If you want to play tyrant in 2000-2500p, well then you just take it

You have/you are planning models that make a good list. No doupt. Stonehorn is bit of a same thing as the tyrant. ME's are something you must have, competetively and fluffwise. Convert those from bulls and make them look what ever you want.

you will get plenty (point of view, at least you get enough) of extra bits from the mournfang/ironblaster/stonehorn boxes to convert man eaters fairly easy. It is cheaper and you can customize better.

I have found normal ogres be to be better in units of 6 as they will end up lacking strength to beat anything with a decent AS. More is not better - ironguts on the other hand...

For the tyrant build, check out the other sub-fora here - there are currently a lot of active threads on how to make the most of the guy. The SM is preferably (but dependent on metagame, opponents and how YOU like to play) overall but the tyrant can be justified and just go for it!

Oh, and welcome : )

So would you guys recommend going with the Slaughtermaster/Butcher for my general instead of a Bruiser or Tyrant?

As for my local "meta" I think card games (Magic etc..) is becoming more the case.  There was a league playing 40k on Wednesdays but it looks to have died down a bit.  Maybe I'll do some painting at the hobby shop instead of at my place and see if there are any bites for getting more Fantasy games going.


So um yeah.... It looks like I need to grab a Butcher/Slaughtermaster.

You can just put the 2 hand weapon guys behind the ironfist guys in units and call them ironfists. If you are gonna roll with lots of ironfist ogres you will need some magic to back them up. I like a slaughtermaster on maw and butcher on beasts. Wildform for S5 T5 ogres is no joke.. looks like you could run a hoard of 18 bulls.. then people might ignore the ironguts till they are smashing stuff.

Joakim -

Are you saying that instead of a blob of 12 ogres that I should split it up and go with smaller squads of 6?  For example instead of doing a two big blocks of ogres I should look at maybe more of an Empire approach with a big core block of Ironguts flanked by a squad of 6 ogres on either side. 

Instead of: 
   
        O  O  O       IG  IG  IG
        O  O  O       IG  IG  IG
        O  O  O       IG  IG  IG
        O  O  O       IG  IG  IG   
                               

Try this:     
                           IG  IG  IG
                           IG  IG  IG
        O  O  O        IG  IG  IG       O  O  O
        O  O  O        IG  IG  IG       O  O  O     

________________________________________________________

Colonel -

I had been thinking the same thing.  If I needed to, in a friendly game, I could use the dual weapon guys as fill ins to boost numbers for a larger block of bulls, or whatever other combination.  Generally speaking, I have yet to play a game of Fantasy in recent times so I do not have a preference between Ironfists or two hand-weapon bulls.  So we'll see how it goes after the first few games.

Yep, that was my point : ) Going for two units of six bulls is more flexible as you get an additional 'drop' during deployment and during the game more tactical options, as ogres often have a low unit count.

Bulls only having S4 will not put out enough damage against tougher opponents with high AS so worst case your 12 bulls would be killing one empire knight (+1 AS, T3) per combat round which is by far not enough considering their cost.

Ironfists or additional handweapon is more a personal opinion. If the bulls are going for smaller units to kill eg. zombies the AHW is preferred but for bigger units fo bulls against the above knight I'd go for ironfists for the 6++ to keep them alive for a little longer.
But as I cannot roll my needed 6's I usually just buy them naked, close my eyes and hope for good luck ; )

Ok lets see...

Then what you're saying is that ogres cost too much to put into a big block.  Besides, two smaller units, even though the model count may be the same (i.e. 1 block of 12 vs. 2 blocks of 6), the two squads give your opponent two things to worry about instead of one.  This means for the same amount of points I would be getting a much more flexible army. Ok that makes sense.  Also, I can see huge blocks of troops getting stuck in terrain pretty easily.   

I know the recent editions of WHFB have a put more focus back on the troops what with Horde Formations and all, but back when I was playing it was essentially "Herohammer" where the troops didn't really matter as much as who had the most uber-cheesy lord.  Maybe after seeing the shift back to large infantry blocks I went a little too far in that direction in my thinking than I needed to.  Good to know. 

So from your description, additional hand weapon does make sense for dealing with larger blocks of weak infantry like skelies and such, while the Ironfists are more about surviving heavy hits from more "elite" model like great swords or Ironbreakers.  Does that sound about right?

Oh and game jargon question:  I get that T3 = Toughness 3, and  AHW= Additional Hand Weapon, but what is AS?  Sorry quasi-rookie here.

Thanks again for all of your help. I sense more questions coming so ... um yeah.  Ha ha.

AS is armor save. The more drops you have, the better. I have 3 sabretusks and 3blocks of ten gnoblars to put out before I even reach an Ogre in my 2000 point list. I am currently 2-1-1 with that list.

Bigmacdaddy -

AS = armor save.    Should have guessed that one.

Let's see... 3 groups of 10 Gnoblars.  I can do 2 groups at the moment, maybe 3.  Are any of these Trappers or kept stock for a cheap throw away distraction?  By the way, your strategy of dropping "non juicy" units first makes perfect sense to me. 

I've done some reading and now that I have the core stuff a couple of Sabertusks are definitely on the radar for the usual artillery hunters, blockers and "Kamino Saber Darts."  Yeah I know. I'm a geek.  Any thoughts on the Gorger or Yhetees.  The models don't do much for me but if they are good game wise I may actually have to check into them or at least proxy with a Feral Warp Wolf from that other game.

I realize there are probably a 100 posts on these questions already but....  thanks for the help.

Sabretusks are best used in 3 units of 1, and you put them in front of enemy units at weird angles to force them to reform instead of overrun (or run off the table or into some other disadvantageous position) when the sabres die. Artillery hunting is another good use for them, but they're by far the best redirecting unit in the game, and given what Ogres can do on the charge, you want to be using them to help make sure you get it. I'd personally skip the Gnoblars in favour of more ogres to stab things with, but I understand the logic of what Bigmacdaddy suggested.

Gorgers can be fun, but in my opinion they're a bit too unreliable, so I don't use them. Other people have more positive opinions, so I'd suggest you read around a bit on that one. I think the general consensus is that Yhetees just aren't worth it when you could have Leadbelchers or Mournfangs or Maneaters, any and all of which will be far more useful to you, instead.

If I were you I'd playtest the various Ogre unit setups (i.e. 1x12 or 2x6) and see which works best for you.

Given the strength of our magic, I'd take a Slaughtermaster over a Tyrant any day of the week, especially since you can kit the SM out to be almost as killy and *much* tougher to kill - Fencers blades for WS10 and +1 attack, glittering scales for +1 armour and -1 to enemies trying to hit him - means that most enemies (majority of things are WS<5 S3) will be hitting AND wounding him on 6's in combat. Most Lords and Heroes will be hitting him on 5's, and probably wounding on no better than 4's as long as your magic is going reasonably well. And, thanks to the Maw lore attribute, any wounds he does manage to take will probably be healed by him successfully casting spells.

A cheap lvl 1 Butcher using the Lore of Beasts would be a good inclusion as well - give him the Hellheart, put him in a unit of bulls, run him towards enemy wizards, and laugh when you force them to miscast - and he can give your units +1S+1T if you take the Wyssans Wildform spell, which I always do.

More good points Flamebeast - Hmm this new info makes me grin like a big gluttonous Butcher.  I have better teeth though. Sadly the guts a little too similar 



I did some more reading last night, and its funny because it finally hit me: Even if everything goes horribly wrong, at the end of the day this guy isn't one of those frail bodied casters with pointy ears.  He's a FRIGGIN OGRE!          HULK SMAAAAAAAASH!     SPLAT!   

Sometimes I get myself wrapped up in the trivial stuff and forget the bigger picture.