Starting Ogres

[scottyde]

So the WoC section had this great guide about how to get started on a WoC army. I haven't even started my fantasy career yet, but feel that if I did "rothgar13" and "captain sarathai" (sorry if i got names wrong) both gave me many good reasons to consider starting up Ogres instead of WoC. If I were to start an army what are the "avoid these guys" units of the book and what are the "INCLUDE THESE AT ALL COSTS" units?

Also if I was going to make a WoC list I wanted to do lots of conversion work, and make them all look plague ridden and pox covered and make it a nurgle themed WoC list. I love the idea of themed lists that involve a lot of conversion work, what if anything can you do to theme an Ogre list other than themed as "ogres".

To give you an idea, with my tau in 40k, I gave them a "stranded on an ork over-run planet" theme which involved kit bashing suits and ships with ork peices, making all of it look beaten to crap and like they are refugee's and survivors instead of your typical shiny and new tau.

Thanks for your help!

-Scott

P.S. Are things like the battle box worth it? I know for Tau it was a steal because the only unuseable thing in there were the stealth suits.

[Strassa]

The battalion box is great get 2 boxes and one more box of bulls and you are set.

Bulls are the core of your army and they are all you really ever need as far as core goes, however, I take a unit of Ironguts because I think they look awesome and they are pretty good so its your decision if you want to take them but they are a luxery in my opinion.

As far as special goes lead belchers are a fun unit to have kicking around because they can produce a massive amount of shots without any real penalty, and they are ogres so if you need them to charge something no problem .
MORNEFANG are dope!!! They are a huge scare factor on the board everybody is affraid of what they can do and rightfully so. my favorite combo is to give them great weapons and the dragonhide banner, it rains train on people.
All other special I dont ever touch no need.
Rare
The stonehorn is great I have seen him used to great effect, however I never use them because in my opinion they are only useful on the charge and the mournfang fill its roll just fine, however it is your decision if you want to field them because they are a sick model.
The Thundertusk is the backbone of the ogre army in my opinion. It has great shooting support is meant in combat and supports all your troops by giving always strike last to all enemy models with 6" effectivly turning your orges biggest weakness into a strength.

[Kage2612]

ok, first thing Well come to the Pit!

second guy before me got it pritty much right few changes however!

do buy the 2 battlions you save like £9 which is always nice, do buy 2 boxes of mournfang they are just silly strong do buy a few slaughtermasters/butchers, buy a thundertusk, and finnally BUY AN IRONBLASTER!!!

Don't! buy a tyrant unless you make it a bsb bruiser, don't buy yhetees gorgers hunters, Don't put great weapons on mournfang yeah its good but a 2+ armour save is better.

Maybes, firebelly, personally havn't got one to use so havn't tested it. Iron guts depends on how you wanna go with them, you could just build the bodies up as bulls your'll have enough bits trust me. Sabretusks are kinda groovy little things i have seen one kill off a terrorgheist before funniest thing ever. Gnoblars are just fun i personally am working on getting 160 of them. Stonehorn you could buy this or you could be sneaky and just magnetise the thundertusk so you can swap them over.

remember! read the FAQ its our little gold mine trust me.

[rothgar13]

Here's a quick primer on Ogres, from my experiences playing with and against them:

Units you want to avoid: Yhetees are mostly considered to be a bit subpar, because they don't have the Impact Hits and armor that other Ogre choices do (they do have higher Movement, Initiative, Swiftstride, and magical attacks, so it's not all bad), and the Scraplauncher is simply out-shined by its meaner cousin, the Ironblaster.

Units you should have in most lists: In this case, I side with the Ironblaster (A cannon, on a chariot. Need I say more?) and the Mournfang Cavalry as the guys that will find a home just about anywhere. A lot of Ogre lists also include a Slaughtermaster, so you can add that onto the list (and he represents a cool conversion opportunity if you don't buy his kit). I'm actually a big fan of Ironguts (I find that Bulls can run into a bit of trouble against the beefier armies), so I'd definitely recommend those too.

Themes you can use: Ogres have a great mercenary backstory, so suiting up all your Ogres in Empire-like garb (colorful breeches, feathered caps, swords) and saying that they get their gear from the Humans is a cool idea. Alternatively, you can for the "bad guys" side and kit them out similar to a Chaos or Dark Elf army. A more "off the cuff" option is to make them seem a bit more savage, to reflect the fact that they're essentially cavemen living in a place where the Ice Age never ended, which can be cool.

Hope that helps!

[abbazabba1920]

Welcome to Ogres! as the previous have stated, Battalions are a great place to start. I know financially it may be impractical, but 3x battalions and you should be set with those things. With an ogre horde and an IG horde, you'll have some flexibility of core units and 12 lead belchers should be sufficient for most armies 2.5k and below. The others if you're going a shooty list might be flame banner shooting maneaters and as many iron blasters as possible. Your core would be whichever of the two core options you get from the battalions. Yhetees shine against some armies, but you shouldn't buy any more than about 2 boxes of them (great against low WS/low LD armies for a reduction to WS 1 or 0 if they fail the fear check). A summary of a good variety of boxes for a complete ogre army with many tactical applications would be:

3x battalion boxes ... $315.00
2x MFC boxes (2 groups of 3 through 3 boxes is nice to have, but 2 boxes would be fine) ... $72.50
2x boxes of ogres (conversions into characters and maneaters) ... $80.00
2x iron blasters ... $66.00
1x thundertusk/stonehorn (can magnetize) ... $57.75
1x box of sabertusks ... 16.50

total: $607.75 retail or.... $455.81 at one of the 25% off web stores with free shipping.

Not quite as low as a 40k GK palidan spam army, but getting there, and you have some room for different lists if you want. Making maneaters that can be both pistol ones or "normal" melee + GW in the back ranks would be good, too! You can also use the extra core ogres you aren't using in an army to proxy as w/e else you desire (yhetees, other maneaters, gorgers, etc) to make sure those models are worth investing in in the future. You can, naturally, buy more at your own rate, but this allows a fairly cost efficient army that can comfortably field a few different lists with different play styles at around 2250-2500 pts. Additionally you can cut some of those purchases down if you have a list you'd like to make before reaching this spread of boxes. One less battalion box, one less ogre box and you could still field a non gimped army.... Those cuts would make this army 462.75 retail or $347.06 with a discount store. Not too bad!

[scottyde]

Thanks! for the replies! +Rep for all.

I notice a lot of people recommending armies of 2250-2500 is that standard game size in fantasy? I come from 40k background and we usually play 1500-1850 and the larger games get to 2k, whereas everylist people are suggesting I go to is 2250+ which makes me raise an eyebrow.

Also as far as a theme for my army which allows heavy conversion, I was thinking of 3 different dirrections.

1) Make them some subculture of two headed ogres (similar to that of warcraft lore) give them a blue-ish tinted skin, and model 2 heads onto every body. (I know in 40k I have an abundance of spare heads, would there reasonably be enough heads for me to do something like this? If not I could just give 2 heads to important models.) If I went this route, I would make them look like they were from some subtropical area, give lots of foliage on the bases and give lots of native/tribal tattoos covering their bodies, and make their gear seem "more primitive" if possible. Paint up larger creatures to look more suitable for the jungle.

2) Make them an army that has been corrupted (nurgle themed) cover their bodies in poxes and sores, with oozing pustules and rotting flesh. Instead of a butcher, convert a nurgle demonprince to be a "butcher" with plague ridden/rotten meat that he is serving. Use the backstory that they had been tricked into thinking this demon would promise them never ending food, but instead gave them never ending hunger/disease. A lot of green stuff for the sores/flesh decay and use chaos peices to "evil" up their armour and make it more chaos themed, and replace weapons from converted chaos weaponry. Use forgewolrd chaos things as stand-ins for thundertusks/mornefangs/stonehorns.

3)Pirate theme. Greenstuff hats/patches/peglegs alter weaponry to look like that of the high seas. (this would probably be the least conversion work imo.) Make bases look like the deck of pirate ships. Add in things like parrots, and treasure chests for fun. (Problem with this theme is I'm unsure what to do in regards to the larger beasts.) To be honest this is the least thought out of the 3 ideas I've been bouncing around in my head. I could make yhettees into bipedal sea monsters, but they don't sound so useful, so I'm not sure that I would even bother. If I went this route I would go with a more "shooty" army because cannons/muskets/flintlock pistols are all fairly easy to fit into "pirates". Mournfangs not so much.


What are your guys thoughts on those thematic ideas? Any ideas of your own that either you HAVE done or have thought about doing? or would like to see done (I plan on making a photo gallery if/when I get around to this project)

[rothgar13]

Yeah, the standard size for most Fantasy tournaments is actually 2500-3000 points. It's definitely played in a significantly larger scale than 40k, and that's without mentioning that even at the same points total, Fantasy model counts tend to be higher. Fortunately for you, it's real easy to fill in points with Ogres.

1) A neat conversion idea. You'll get plenty of extra heads in Ogre kits as well, so you can definitely pull this off if you want to.

2) Also a neat one, though it feels a bit too Chaos-y for my taste. Sounds like a ton of GS work to add all the pustules and stuff.

3) Flippin' awesome! I like this one the most, by far. Ogres' mercenary nature plays right into it, and you'll be able to spruce up your Maneaters and the like even more than the norm (to boot, the most popular Maneater builds carry guns! How fluffy is that, eh?)

[scottyde]

Well, I did some browsing of the interwebs. It appears numerous people have made chaos (especially nurgle) themed ogre kingdoms armies. And I found this entirely ogre kindom webpage where people post their finished army pics. I saw lots of oriental themed ogre armies, and lots of chaos ogre armies. I saw an amazing one by a guy named Lewis Clark who made an entire army of maneaters essentially making each ogre from a different army (amazing I highly recommend searching "Lewis Clark Ogre Kingdoms" and having a look). The two headed subtropical ogre army I couldn't find, but there were plenty of blue/mutant ogres (just not a lot of double headed AND jungle themed) and there were lots of subtropical themed Ogre armies as well. I had some difficulty finding an entirely pirate themed Ogre kingdoms army however. (much to my surprize, I figured with the pirate maneater people would just naturally gravitate that way)

I did find someone who made custom sculpts and was selling those, and while I found a few pirate themed ogres, I didn't find an entire army done in this fashion.

So I think that solidifies it. My question is this now, is shooty ogre army viable? I have no idea about points/costs/unit effectiveness, but just looking at the models what about an army something like this.

Tyrant (made to look like the ship's captain)
Butcher (made to look like a ship's cook)
2 units of either bulls or iron guts (converted to all look very piratey with hats/hooks/pegs and the like)
1 unit of gnoblars (with mops/ropes/scrub brushes to look like deck hands)
2 units of lead belchers (with cannons appropriately)
1-2 Ironblasters (more cannons on a pirate ship seems reasonable)
1 set of maneaters (with pistols and made to look piratey)

As a display tray, I could put them all on a Big pirate ship.

[rothgar13]

Looks like a rather solid start, actually. You need a BSB, though (give him a pirate flag!) - the only armies that can really get away with not having one are Undead. I would suggest looking around for plastic Ogre handgun bits so you can convert your Maneaters - the Mournfang kit has a couple for their unit champion that nobody uses. Another thing to consider is that you may want to upgrade that Butcher to a Slaughtermaster, because otherwise magic defense mighty be spotty.

[scottyde]

What is a BSB? Battle standard bearer? Big strong badguy? Battle sorcerer Bob? What does it do? Also what if any magic gear and upgrades do I take when making an ogre list. Do you take every upgrade? Do you take some upgrades? Should every unit gave musicians? That seems very musical.