Cheap and Cheerful Ogres?

Can Ogres be cheap and cheerful?

I am new to Ogre Kingdoms and every list i look at or write myself i see a lot more magic items and upgrades that i would do with other races.

In short do Ogres spend more points on upgrades and magic items that other army books? and why is this?

Follow on question

Are all these upgrades really needed?

I think it depends on what you mean by upgrades.  Are you asking about just magic items?  Magic items and big names?  The loadout on mournfang and maneaters?

Assuming you are just talking about equipment for characters (magic items and big names), I don't think that we spend more than any other race.  All of our heroes have the standard 50 points allowed, and all of our heroes have the standard 100 points allowed.  It may seem like we spend a lot, but it is because our characters are expensive and limited.  In any standard 2500 list, you have enough room for a lord and maybe 3 heroes (a bsb and usually 2 casters.  I go bsb, caster, hunter, but I digress).  We want to make sure those investments stay safe, so we load them out.

But most other races do the same.  Scar vets are given a 4+ ward and a cold one, demon princes are given glittering scales and a sword of striking (plus wings, etc.)  Characters are a big deal, so you spend points to make them as killy as possible.

Coming from empire like you do where characters seem to have one or two items apiece it probably feels like a lot. But for all their strength and toughness ogres really aren't that great, mournfang and trollguts are our only saves past heavy armor and our initiative, weapon skill, and leadership leave much to be desired. Magic items plug some of those gaps and so we tend to run tooled up characters and usually have a standard of discipline somewhere. You can run an army without them to have more boots on ground, but it tends to underwhelm when it counts.

Another thing to consider is that our characters are, by and far, the most expensive on average to field without any powerups. Our cheapest characters is a Butcher at 100points pre-upgrades. Comparing that to a Night Goblin Big Boss at 30 points, it's kinda crazy.

So, when we field characters, we want to get the most bang for our buck out of them. Yeah, that may mean a lot more magic items, but then again, if we're going to field them, we want them to succeed. Plus, our characters don't necessarily give innate bonuses to our units (as opposed to Captain "cold-blooded" and Battle Priest Hatred/prayers), so running them naked doesn't really help out the units, either. You can get away with a GW Captain on foot and still have it be viable, but "just" a GW Bruiser? Could be better.

I had typed a long rant about why it seems to cost so much, but, go figure, it got erased as I pushed "post" so I'll keep it shorter.

By default our character choices cost a good chunk more then other races, which to be fair is because we have very strong statlines (5W 5T wizard I'm looking at you ) so by the time we deck out ours it's a good 25-33% more costly then another race's.

However we don't often skip magic items because the statline alone can't compete with the fully decked out opponent's characters so it becomes an arms race of sorts.


ED: looks like Sazel beat me to the gist of what I was trying to say

Part is also play style.  I typically run nothing more than a dispel scroll and the banner of discipline in terms of magic items, but I usually rock a Level 4, a Level 2, and my BSB all with great weapons, and then rely on my magic to boost my damage and survivability. 

In general, this works out fine, though I have a rough time against dedicated combat characters (looking at you, WoC DP ). 

So, I'm spending 40 points total on magic items, but I'm tying up hundreds of points in characters.  And part of that price tag is durability.  My two heroes are both T5 and have 8 wounds between them!  My level 4 is T5, has 5 wounds, and can heal himself!!

You want to see magic-item intensive armies, give WoC characters a look sometimes.

As Nihmwit just said, it does partially depend on your local meta and playstyle decisions. He also listed the two magic items I would claims as largely required (Though you can get away from Banner of Disc if you do a tyrant list and hellheart can do more than a dispel scroll most of the time)

Tough 5 with 4 or 5 wounds goes a long way against for defense, but it is really the only defense most of characters can have that's not magic based. Magic items can cover this.

As for unit upgrades -  adding full command to any ogre (aka not gnoblar) is less than the cost of adding one more model to any one of our units, so relatively speaking its worth it. This does result in a higher command/unit ratio than most armies.

Thank you all for your replies they were all really insightful. I asked this question because i wanted to run the standard set up for ogres; 2 Ironblasters, 3x1 Sabretusks, Mournfangs, Leadbelchers, BSB +Core and i wanted to run a lore of beasts set up similar (and inspired by) Jimmy. So thats 2 Lore of beasts wielders and 1 LotGM. The only way to fit it all in was to run minimal upgrades and its left me with only 127 points to spend on things like command, heavy armour, magical items etc

Run ogres with 2 hand weapons instead of ironguts.. cheaper and good damage output with wildform.

depending on frontage, 3-6 extra attacks versus loss of the occasional save granted by 5+ armor/6+ ward doesn't really seem worth the points (if you're just running little 3 man groups of ogres on the other hand its arguably worthwhile)

Glad I inspire someone with my antics!!  . Whatever you choose I hope you share your journey with us.