Comments on tactics in Ogre 6th edition by Henry J. Cobb.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the OGRE system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

Scrap All GEVs!

Now that we have a Defense Five Superheavy, GEVs really need a boost against odd defense factors. (And Def 5 is very odd indeed...)

So I spent a few milliseconds calculating the optimum ratio of GEVs to LGEVs and determined that the answer is zero.

That's right, for every LGEV in your force (and you should have plenty!), you should take exactly zero GEVs.

Why? Well GEVs make sense only if they can use their defensive advantages to protect their overall force and apply their feeble attacks over and over again.

So take a look at the following chart:

AttackerAtkAverage VPs of damage per firing attempt against
GEVLGEV2 * LGEVHvy Tank3xInf
MHWTZ, OGRE Missile65.003.004.004.003.67
Hvy Tank, Main Bty44.002.753.503.002.67
Missile Tank, 2ndy Bty33.002.503.003.002.67
Lt Tank, GEV23.002.002.501.501.33
LGEV, 1xInf11.501.501.750.000.00

So the only time spillover on a pair of LGEVs makes their defense worse than a single GEV is against a one point attack and spread out LGEVs usually take a third fewer casualties. This is on top of the ability to spread out their odd attack factors more evenly.

Obviously the reason that LGEV pilots were lost in such high numbers is that they were the ones doing all the fighting.

Disable, then ram.

An Ogre that overruns a lively Superheavy suffers from a six point attack (2 tread units), plus a defensive ram (3.5 tread units) for an average of 5.5 treads lost. However if you disable the Superheavy first with a missile or pair of SBs, then only a single three point defensive attack occurs, which only averages one point of tread damage. So it's almost six times better to ram disabled armor units.

BTW, Hvys are actually better at digging Ogres out of town, because every shot has a 1 in 6 chance of knocking the terrain down one step. (You can get the first terrain damage step "for free" by overrunning the Ogre with a single really depressed infantry squad. After that point it only takes one more step to yank the def bonus away from the Ogre.) The converse of this is that a SHVY trying to gently scrape a Inf platoon off of a forest road should accept the 96% effectiveness of two 1-2s rather than take the 1 in 6 terrain conversion risk of the 1-1 attack.

Expected tread damage from overrunning 2 AUs of whatever
4 live LGEVs5.33 treads 4 Ded LGEVs0.67 treads
4 live Lt Tanks6.67 treads 4 Ded Lt Tanks1.33 treads
2 live GEVs3.33 treads 2 Ded GEVs0.67 treads
2 live Hvys6.67 treads 2 Ded Hvys1.33 treads
live SHVY5.50 treads Ded SHVY1.00 tread 
6xInf4.00 treads 4xInf2.67 treads

Note that a D result on inf reduces its overrun defense much less than a D result on armor.

The change in the terrain is mostly in the brain.

The new found ability of GEVs and Inf to use railroads as roads has a minimal impact on the classic GEV map. There's some extra escape routes for the attacker in Breakthrough, and a parallel road through the north in Ceasefire Collapse. It's mostly just a tiny gotcha for old time players. The beach impact on GEVs was errataed in some years ago, so isn't all that new.

Terrain conversion is very different and in general much easier to use. One vast change is that towns and forests are much more vulnerable to cruise missile shockwaves. So at six hexes both the old and new rules would damage one third of towns, under v6 an additional third is reduced to rubble. This is a great result for Ogre class vehicles, not so good for everybody else.

Another gotcha is that Heavy Tanks are hammered with the penalty of cutting their own road forwards a sixth of the time, while most other units (including Superheavies) can easily avoid this. In exchange purposeful attacks on towns are harder for small units, which has some impact on say LGEVs, unless of course they declare overruns against empty town hexes. Squirrel! Kill it!

Kill all Ogres

Anti-Ogre tactics are otherwise mostly unchanged in v6.

Setup: If you've got fairly clear terrain pick an all LGEV (not GEV, see above) force in the back, and 2/1 Inf squad "sections" forward.

Plan of attack: The LGEVs hop over the infantry to attack and then hop back over the infantry to withdraw. Plan out your infantry movement to allow clear spots for these "knight moves". The infantry stacks up when they can attack, then downstack back to 2/1 sections when they just can't reach this turn.

Choice of targets: The first Ogre parts to go have to be the main batteries. Then chew off missile racks, if they still have internal missiles. Finally all further firepower is directed at treads. Secondary batteries and APs can be credited on captured Ogres.

-HJC