Defensive all rounder

Hi all, i have been asked by my etc team to find an army which is not necessary ogres, not orcs which is an all rounder defensive.  The army where you can get a draw with any opponent.  All other 7 armies are chosen, it remains the one that i will be leading.  I am an experienced dwarf and ogres player for years now so i wanted to ask if you think an ogre army can be a defensive army.  My idea was to have a front line of gnoblar trappers and unit of bulls with several msus, a cannon and ladies or maneaters with pistols...

any ideas guys?

From my (limited) experience I have always found attack to be an ogres best form of defence. Ogres do have a ranged threat, but none of their core carry shooting, and are close combat specialists. If an ogre army try's to sit at the back of the board and play ultra defensive, I doubt you could get the ranged firepower to threaten true shooting armies such as dwarves or woodelves, and would probably struggle to do enough damage to heavy hitters like Chaos Warriors before they got across the board. Ogre magic isn't greatly offensive at range either. It also negates ogres big strength of high movement, and completely lets an opponent dictate the game. If your looking for that tough nut to crack I'd stick with dwarves myself.

I love using ogres aggressively, pressing my opponent early with the ogres high M and forcing engagements before magic and shooting can trim numbers down. They are a tough army, but not the best defensive army in the game from my own experience.

I agree with RumblingGuts; Ogres can be a defensive army, but you'll be denying yourself the two big advantages that Ogres have: their high base Movement, and their Ogre Charge ability, which is their primary strength.

If you're looking for defensive, you'd be better off with Lizards or HE, since they can castle pretty well and still give off a good damage output via magic/shooting. Also, since you said you're an experienced dwarf player, you could build the snore-and-bore gunline (although, with their new stuff there's a lot more options for them now!).

I have had some success with an ogre shooty army, but I think it depends what army you are playing against. As RumblingGuts said, not good against other gunlines that can fill up there core with shooting, like dwarves of empire. And not great against tough armies like warriors and daemons etc, but where I've had success is against High Elves, they drop like flies from leadies, and you can use Gnobbler trapers for your core as its amazing how people try to avoid the dangerous terrain tests. And you can have small units of bull to work as flankers. But to be honest, I find unless I know I'm playing high elves I just go offensive, (in fact most of the time when I do know I'm playing high elves I still go offensive as its a much stronger army), its much more fun for everyone involved

An ogre army with heavens SM (gutsickle), BSB(rune maw) and lots of leadbelchers, some gnobler trappers, and a medium size guts star would be the most "defensive" Ogre army that I can imagine.

But lizards can pull it off well with a castled-up slaan.

I find shooty ogres are  a great solution to dwarfs or gunlines. Your cannons have more wounds and any unit of ogres can catch cannon balls. You can stand back and shoot off their war-machines and drop some comets. Biggest issue is poor leadership.

I would think Orcs or Skaven would be the best at pulling a draw minimum with conservative play. Brets and Empire can both field an all mounted army with warmachines and pull an easy draw.

Anything multi wounds is death to ogres, and our cannons may have more wounds but empire and dwarves can have twice as many.
Yeah ogres can catch cannon balls but only got a 33% chance, one cannon shot can kill 3 or 4 ogre which is way more devastating than 5 regular infantry that a cannon normally kills against other armies. I've had a 12 man irongut unit die in 2 rounds of shooting against an empire gunline. I think you do much better with a fast combat army, get in as quickly as poss with lots of small units to minimise cannon damage. Once you get into an empire gun line they crumble, but they'll out shoot you every time