Single Axe; Looking for warm guts to bury in!

Hello, welcome to the stronghold!

Ogres can play as agressively as you like. We've got the highest average movement of any non-cavalry army in the game. Maneaters and hunters can have vanguard, maneaters can also be scouts, and of course mournfang are the original name takers of the monstrous cavalry genre. We dont't tend to do as well with protracted combats, but since we can smash nearly anything with a well timed combo charge that's not much of a drawback. Nurgle's -1 to hit is always a problem with our unimpressive weapon skill, but we have impact hits and stomps to compensate for that. A pair of ironblasters are just what the doctor ordered for greater daemons or daemon princes, and they make great support units in combat.

Converting ogres is my favorite part about the army. You can model them into any theme you want with a bit of kitbashing. You could even paint them up to match what you already have and run them in your warriors army as chaos ogres. The models are big, thick, sturdy chunks of plastic so whacking off one thing and replacing it with another is easy and forgiving of mistakes. There's tons of room for drilling pins and such if needed for more elaborate additions. Also ogre attire tends towards rough, plain materials which makes greenstuff work really simple. There's no fiddly cloth bits or teeny little crevases to fill, just lump up some muscles and put a crisp edge along the metal and it looks great.

On top of all that ogres are about the cheapest army to start. Two battalions and some kitbashing will get you your characters and core with bodies left over to kitbash some maneaters(i'm guessing you won't want to build the leadbelchers), add a few boxes of mournfang and two ironblasters and for less than $400 bucks or so retail (but who pays full retail?) you'll be fielding 2K/2.5K points no problem. And then there's the painting, 30ish ogres take no time at all to paint up to a respectable table standard... really there's no reason not to start ogres, you should probably get off here and just go buy some already!

Scale is one drawback to converting ogres, bits from most other armies usually don't look quite right when applied to ogres. Orcs and warriors can be exceptions to that, I've seen a couple of "orcgre" armies that look good, and I imagine some of the warrior weapons and heads would go just fine on ogre bodies. Look at the minotaur stuff as well, they're actually a step up from the ogres but they have some axes you might like. I picked up a couple for a maneater conversion I did awhile back. As for weapon swaps I usually shave the weapon off between the hilt and top of the hand, then if it's a small enough weapon just glue it on or if it's a pole of some kind I'll usually drill and pin it. I do that before glueing the hand to the arm, it's easier to work with that way. Don't worry about making mistakes, you will have tons of everything but bodies and irongut arms left over. If you mangle something just chuck it and try again with a new piece.

Stonehorns can be pretty smashy, frenzy is a drawback but playing khorne you probably know all about that. They halve multiple wounds so cannons will need at least 2 shots to take it off. Like all ogre units they really don't want to get stuck in long drawn-out combats, after the charge they fizzle off and start losing combat. I've never played with the thundertusk myself, by all accounts it's a support piece and tends to be hit or miss. The frost aura is nice with our low initiative but they are lackluster otherwise. Some people have had success with them though.

For me (primarily a painter and modeller rather than an avid player) it was a combination of things. Primarily prior to starting Ogres I had a 10000pt + 40k Ork army and I wanted to paint something bigger than orks that wasn't a horde army.
Secondly I loved the fluff relating to ogres; it created weird images in my head that fuelled my enthusiasm for going with them.
I wanted to have an army that had giants in it and they ticked that box.
I loved the look of Leadbelchers; fat boys with cannons...I mean, what more could you want?
The new (then) book meant that Ogres were performing better on the table, so it also seemed like a good time to give them a try.
The last thing was the Ogre Stronghold TBH. I went on a bunch of other forums (beastmen, vampire counts, Chaos Dwarfs) and just found the people here to be more friendly and encouraging and ready to answer endless noobie questions that they must have been asked a thousand times before but still did it without any "why not check this link..." answers. Pretty much that combination of things above sold Ogres to me.

G_H