Ogre Kingdoms
From Painting to Planning a Battle

Building up a 2250 OK Army is going to be my summer project. I’ve decided to go with a dwarf crushing theme as it seems like we have an excess of dwarven armies in the league around here. I’ve managed to pick up almost all of the models I need 2nd hand/WIP/NIB through local guys from the league, they should be arriving this week Most of the Ironguts I want to use are going to be converted Bulls, so I have a lot of flexibility in their appearance.

I am planning on doing an Orc head swap on all of the models. After seeing Gujozec’s work, I’m inspired to emulate

My initial line up is going to be along these lines:

Tyrant (General) 306
- Heavy Armor, Luck Gnob
- Tenderiser
- Wallcrusher
- Bullgut (minotaur head mounted on the gut plate with horns out)

Bruiser 219
- Heavy Armor
- BSB
- Dragonhide Banner (hide with head still attached)

Butcher 180
- 2x Dispel Scrolls

Butcher 180
- Siege Breaker
- Skull Mantle (2 back mounted shoulder spikes on each side topped with a skull each)

Core
————–
3x Ogre Bulls 136
- Light Armor (Plate studded leather, similar to Gujozec work)
- 2nd Weapon (At least 1 of them is getting a hook!)
- Musician

7x Ironguts 411 (Assorted plate/leather armor pieces with dwarven armor features riveted in)
- Champion (Custom club great weapon)
- Standard
- Musician
- Look-out Gnoblar (Gnoblar in a bucket over the standard)
- Bull Standard

3x Ironguts 154 (Assorted plate/leather armor pieces with dwarven armor features riveted in)
- Musician

3x Ironguts 154 (Assorted plate/leather armor pieces with dwarven armor features riveted in)
- Musician

3x Ironguts 154 (Assorted plate/leather armor pieces with dwarven armor features riveted in)
- Musician

20x Gnoblars 40 (still debating with these guys. I love some of the imitation Gnoblars, but I was thinking of doing a ‘huge pile of shields’ formation where there is nothing but weapon tips and noses sticking out. Then again, a unit of Gnoblars dressed up like greasy little troll slayers would be quite hilarious.)

Special
—————-
Scraplauncha 165 (Tilt head up, extend horns, use a bunch of Gnoblars to pull back on a giant sling)

Rare
—————-
Gorger 75 (Skrip)
Gorger 75 (Scrap)

I don’t have a whole lot of sculpting experience, but I’ve been doing a bit of work with Pro-create (slightly harder than Green Stuff, but more workable than brown stuff) on my WE army and movement trays, and I think I can handle my ideas if I take it slow and easy. I have a few rough sketches to go on, and a bunch of mental images that I should trying to draw out on paper, along with many of the images from the other Gnobbogs that I fully intend to imitate

I don’t expect to progress real fast on this one. I’m still actively playing and painting my WE army after all I’m hoping to have the Ogres ready to prime by the fall season though. So for now, nothing pretty to look at, but I’ll post pics as things come in and as I progress.

I’ve yet to use this guy.  He seems weak for his point value.  After last’s night loss to the WE where the guy’s treeman ran around my units unmolested and reeked havok on me, I may squeeze him in against WEs only.  I love gut magic though so it’s hard.  That 1 dispel die could mean 1 less treesing.  Maybe on a smaller scale game I’ll just bite the bullet and try him out.  The model looks so freaking cool, so he deserves that much atleast.

MVP in 750 point games.  Some people tell me its a waste of points @ 750, but I just love these guys.  4 casting dice and the bangstick means you’ll dominate.  Granted its like 23% of your points, but he has yet to fail me @ 750.  The really good thing is that alone these guys are very tough and at 750 there’s not much out there that can really dominate them.

The bangstick is a must at any level.  How I’ve been using it is to cast it first to draw out dispel dice.  In my 2250 loss to the WEs last night, my opponent on the first turn threw 1 dispel die and got a 2.  That’s double goodness.  Got his die and did damage.  I ended up rolling a 6 and killing 4 archers.

I’ll focus on gut magic in its own section.

Betwen my bangstick and Bonecruncher I was able to kill a great eagle and do 1 wound to his noble rider.  In my 2250 game vs WEs my regen saved atleast 10 wounds.  I rolled like a fool saving probably 90% of wounds on units with trollguts.  In fact in my 2250 loss the butcher was one of a few units that I felt good about.  In my draw to the beasts of chaos(draw by like 10 points ), my opponent kept commenting on how he didn’t think gut magic was that effective before, meaning it was kicking his buttox.  Unfortunetely that game I missed most my regen rolls, that alone probably cost me my victory.

Items:
@750 I ONLY bring a bangstick and it always works.  You will rarely find a person with 4 dispel dice except dwarfs and even 3 dice isn’t all that often.  With the bangstick I’m able to either damage one of his few units, or possible take 33-50% of his dice while I still got 4 dice left of my own.  Like I said, this has yet to fail.  I’m sure there are times when you will roll a 1 or a 2 and flop your wound rolls, but that’s rare.  I always target low toughness units first, or units I need to knock ranks off.

Point cost to performance grade: 5(750 win vs empire), 5(750 tie to beasts), 4(2250 lose to WEs), 4(650 lost to WEs), 4(tie to brets)

Unfortunetely I have to go do some family stuff, but I’ll continue later today.
What I still want to add is a breakdown of how things preformed for me.  I don’t want to give my opinions on what I think a unit should do, but how they actually perform.  For example I may think gorgers are the greatest, but I’ll try and only limit my comments to how they actually are doing.  This might help me form an army list based on performance and not expectations.

I field so many ironguts that a unit of bulls gets lost.  They’ve never done anything memorable except in 2 games they failed 3 rally checks in a row and rallied on turn 6 to take a quarter.

Nothing in my experience has warrented any more than the 1 required.

Point cost to performance: 4(win vs empire), 4(tie vs brets), 4(tie vs beasts), 3(loss to WEs), 3(loss to WEs)

My first few games with these guys I took them in units of 8.  Both of those games they suffered 2 deaths in the first shooting phase and paniced.  I have sense them bumped them up to a unit of 9, which is a shame since I bought 8 really nicely painted trappers and now have to throw an average painted guy in with it.  I’ve yet to play a game without a unit of trappers.

Verse empire @ 750:
Came around flank and did 2 wounds on a swordmen detachment before fleeing off the table.  This was my first game as ogre, but it distracted that detachment from my main force.  I’ll call it a push.

Verse WE @ 750:
Now this is actually funny, his first shooting phase he moved archers over alittle to shoot at them and killed 2 casuing me to panic.  The next turn I actually rallied them and by them he had a unit of fast calvary and a noble on an eagle behind my lines.  Using gutmagic I killed the eagle(he rolled 2 bad dispell rolls vs bangstick and bonecruncher) and left the noble with 1 wound.  My trapped, currently 6 strong, came in behind and through their 12 sharp stuff actually got a hit and wound killed the poor guy.  They later died to archer fire, but I call it plus on my side.  I still brag to the guy how his forcing me to panic made my trappers be in perfect position to kill his noble.

Most of the other games they generally just ran around grabbing table quarters, which of course is a plus for them.  However my last game 2 days ago:
Verse Dwarfs @ 2250: (MVP)
I set them in the woods to the one flank infront of his slayer unit of 10 and in front of my yhettis.  Not the best place to be since I ended up blocking my yhettis for a turn.  I moved them out of the trees right in front of his hammerers hoping he’d charge and I’d stay and hopefully lose combat but force him to chase breaking up his line.  He didn’t charge though.  He lined his guys up thinking one flank of his hammerers would be open to my trappers his front open to a unit of ironguts and his other flank protected because there was no room to get in with a full unit.  I ended up charging his flank with my trappers, which I was tempted to leave it like that to force him to pursue sideways away from the middle of the battle, but I decided to charge my tyrant out of my unit into that flank he thought was protected(I LOVE Charging just my tyrant out of units.  No one EVER EVER expects it and he’s a killing machine) and charged his front with 3 ironguts.  Now the trappers actually hurt that combat, doing no wounds and losing 1 guy.  However, I won combat by alot and he ran and the only unit to catch those slow little dwarfs was my trappers.  Let’s see 54 point unit chased down a 300 point unit who probably would have rallied next turn, snagged the banner and later the quarter.  The 54 point unit got me like 500 points.

Always bring 1 unit, so versatile and people tend to ignore them completely making them very useful.  I may never use a hunter, but to get a 2nd unit of these guys it may be worth it.

Point cost to performance: 3(win vs empire), 5(tie vs beasts), 5(loss to WEs), 4(loss to WEs)

When don’t these things do good?  My game two days ago was verse dwarfs and I have to say the 6 str on a flank charge just flat out hurts.  The WS3 is my only dislike of this unit.  Dwarfs were hitting me on 3s and I was always hitting on 4s.  That kind of was a mute point though in my games.  Like I said I’m trying to show how they performed, not how I expect them too, or what the math says.  Against the dwarfs I ALWAYS got the charge in.  That’s atleast 9 attacks with str 6.  The poor dwarfs were just failing in front of me.  On my last turn I had a flank charge on a Longbeard unit.  10 attacks because I had a champion in that unit, my tyrant was in there too to start, but I charged him out on like turn 3.  Anyways, 10 attacks, 8 hits, 8 wounds, no armor save.  Can you say DAMN!?  That’s not even counting the 1 impact hit that wounded.  Noone attacks back, I get a flank, he has a standard and out numbered I won combat by like 8, he takes a break test on 1 die and rolled like a 4 or 5 and runs.

I normally don’t put champions in a unit.  Its expensive for 1 more attack.  Its like a glorified sword gnoblar.  But I got to start thinking that with my tyrant, a gutlord and 1-2 ironguts attacking you talking about a possible 15 attacks.  So far it seemed to work.  My one unit with gutlord and BSB ended up with 3 standards, one being a BSB.  I can’t say it was the gutlords fault, but if you really want a hammer, 20 points for 1 more attack makes that hammer that much stronger.  I’ll test this out further in future games.

Points cost to performance: 5(win vs empire), 5(tie vs brets), 5(tie vs beasts), 5(loss to WEs), 5(loss to WEs)
Recommend taking as many as possible in units of 3-4.

Nothing remarkable about these guys yet.  I did have a big long like of 20 screening my guts vs some Brettonians, got off like 34+ stand and shoot sharp things and actually killed 2 knights of the realm.  Not a bad performance.  I tried the same screen tactic verse WEs, but they just got in the way.

My last game they combo charged some dwarf warriors with a unit of bulls, lost combat, the bulls held, but the gnoblars just ran right off of the table 2 turns later.

I still would take a unit, because they are so very cheap.

Point cost to performance: 4(tie vs brets), 2(loss to WEs)

In 2000+ games I go with butchers, so this guy only ever gets used as a General in <2000 points.  Meaning I’ve actually only used him in a bunch of 750 games.  He has yet to preform good for me, except in 1 game verse the Empire.  I stick him in a unit of 3 Ironguts and everyone I fight in CC just aims at the unit making me break from combat and get run down.  The one time he did good I charged him out of the unit at an Empire Detachment and kept making them flee right off the table which put me in charge range of his Rocket Gun, which he massacred.

All in all I think he’s underachieving with me.  I haven’t found a good build for him really.  If I stick with the Wyrdstone Necklace, but keep him in a unit, then he never gets a chance to use the ward save.  Maybe I’ll try playing him more solo in 750 games.

In my 1 draw against the beasts of chaos he was able to get 1 wound on the guy’s general who had a 0+ armor save, gaining half points, but my opponent ripped my ironguts apart and made him flee and get run down.

He costs a lot and isn’t doing much for me, but you have to take him.

Point cost to performance grade: 5(win vs empire), 4(tie vs brets), 3(tie to beasts), 2(lose to WEs),

Tyrant
I’ve only played 1 game with this guy so far and in the fight, sadly he only got to fight a big unit of dryads,  they out numbered me and did 1 wound(forgot I had a luck gnoblar  ) and I did 2 wounds back for a draw.  It was turn 6, so that’s how the fight ended.  To be fair his 9 leadership also saved my butt a time or 10(freaking treeman’s terror).

Current prefered Items:
Heavy Armor
Tenderizer
Greedy Fist
Wyrdstone Necklace

Point cost to performance grade: 4.  His leadership will always make me pick him over a Slaughtermaster.

I think I’ll just write a little commentary on how each unit type did for me after each battle.  So this will be a unit by unit commentary on actually performance and not biased by how I or anyone else thinks these units should work.  I play Ogres and Dwarfs and even though my Dwarfs seem a little more powerful, my Ogre fights are ALWAYS fun and leave me wanting more.  This will also help me remember all those memorable moments.

Bare with me, as you can see I haven’t played them much and am learning as I go.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REPLY WITH YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES! I want to combile info on how units actually do.

Overall Record:
4-3-2
3 @ 2250 (Lose to WEs, Wins vs Dwarfs X2)
6 @ 750 (Win vs Empire/O&G, Ties vs Brets/Beasts/Dwarfs, Loss vs WEs)