9th Age Phoney War - Ogre Khans

The lumbering linesmen of the old Warhammer universe, Ogres always existed in a weird place. A novel concept when they were first released, they were hit hard by that most terrible of afflictions – Designer’s Fear.

You can see why of course. An army where the basic core unit was a special unit in other armies… cue visions of endless scenes of victorious belching ogres feasting on, well, everything… it must have given the writers nightmares (well, having met some of the design team over the years, they probably giggled, but the point stands).  I liked the idea of self-comping armies designed so you could never quite find the points for the optimal loadout, but that only works if all armies have the same cross to bear. The ends may not justify the means, but the aim never justifies such lacklustre execution.

 

I have always been a proponent of the utterly heretical (post internet forums) view that ‘fluff’ is the most important aspect of any game or faction therewithin. Without some hook that makes you fall in love with your little toy soldiers you have little to get you through the long lonely nights of the relative power decline all books go through, lost in the formless and uncaring meta wasteland. Without something to love there is nothing to stop one from hopping from army to army, chasing the magic dragon that lives on the cutting edge of the meta, forever just beyond your grasp. People that do so are, after all, no better than 40k players who paint their Space Marine armies in some generic mishmash of colours and decide what Chapter they will be depending on the most recent release. Yes, these are the very worse of people.

 

Why do I bring up the grim spectre of 40k on these hallowed pages? Because the poor fat balding ogres suffered brutally in the fluff as well as in the design. It all had the feeling of a movie franchise that went on for a film too long. In films they end up going to space, or adding a baby. In this case the world was all set, we knew where everyone was – where on earth could the Ogres come from? Ummm… The other side of the world? Sure, why not (why not? Because none of the more interesting civilisations hinted at from that part of the world ever got any love, but I’ll let that drop). Cool – we have somewhere where they can fit on this map… what are their characteristics? Oh gosh… no idea… hmmm they’re fat – maybe they are hungry all the time? Genius – print it!

 

The sad fact of the matter is that, for me, there was not really enough to them for their own army – the lack of actually distinct unit choices highlights this. They would have been a cool Dogs of War type book.

 

My personal Ogre baptism was very much 8^th edition, when they burst onto the scene like a herd of stampeding buffalo.

 

Whole new concepts were introduced – Monstrous Cavalry units of 3 or 4 models that could destroy entire infantry hordes; highly accurate cannons that could ride on the back of powerful chariots (they mugged some Giants you see); “Gutstars” that could (at the time) go toe to toe with anything in the game. It was quite the education (as with most lessons, it wasn’t that fun, but you ended up wiser)

 

Of course, a lot of these lessons, and relative strengths, had more to do with the mechanics of the game than anything cool about the Ogres themselves, but for a good while they terrorised the tables of the UK scene, and one assumes there was a suitable amount of belching.

 

Playing Lizardmen for about half of 8^th Edition I never really rated Ogres (after the initial shellshock wore off), and found them extremely dull (other than the really cool and hyper efficient ultra MSU builds that the internet would go apoplectic telling us all could never work, yet did). I was curious, therefore, to see what those shadowy powers* within the 9^th Age’s inner sanctum would do with them.

*seriously, they are everywhere, you have been warned

It has to be said - my experience of the Ogre Khans book is highly limited – almost entirely based on talking to players (and not always paying that much attention, an Ogre is an Ogre right?) and watching games (lots of fat hairless dudes running across a table) than facing them myself.

That said – I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. All the little touches (yetis becoming so much better; the cold cow seeming to do its job better; bombardiers seem quite terrifying; hunters becoming even cooler than their already cool old selves), combined with a shift in how the game works (no more Purple Sun > Army fears, no more character wall nonsense) seemed to make a lot of things viable. The Names and the ability to take Marked Ogres also seemed cool.

As with all armies that seem to rely primarily upon getting across the table and throwing their bellies at you (admittedly rather a niche), the starting assumption is that they have some bad matchups, and this seems to be borne out by anecdotal evidence.  

The internet tells us that they are below the aimed-for power levels and, this will shock you coming from me, the internet is not always the aggregated thoughts of a mass of gibbering gibbon brains rendered in binary, so I was keen to see what treatment they got from the mailed fist of 9^th Age authority.

 

 1. Core. Despite the previous efforts made by the ABC to make Tribesmen as attractive as Bruisers, these had failed since most lists still included the S6 bunker. Although we had negated Ogres Parry for months, we felt it was time to allow this army to have it too (considering Parry was nerfed last release and that we had to increase the overall power level of the army). Therefore we added Parry to the existing Ironfists rules to stopTribesmen from getting hit on 3+ constantly, where as Bruisers will still get hit on 3+. With heavy armour (4+ armour save) and a maximumunit of 14 tribesmen, we now feel they can challenge Bruisers as the go to choice in Core. More armour, parry, more attacks, more wound-count, hitting a lot earlier... lots of reasons to take them over bruisers now. Additionally, we gave Scraplings the option for Parry as well by separating spears and shields as options (this was an oversight by the ABC in December).

 

Love it – its fundamentally hard to make something that is not the S6 unit in core as attractive as something that is, but they are trying. 14 Ogres is a *lot* of Ogres (if that needs to be said). As for parrying scraplings – I have visions of my Vampire Knights being as useless at killing them as they have been at killing skinks recently – but I realise sulking about parrying scraplings is not the manliest thing in the world, so I’m not going to. Honestly.

 

 2. Great Shaman. With the change in magic we realized this guy was way over-costed and decided to make him quite a bit cheaper (compared to other level 4 mages his price was uncalled for, especially when compared to some like an Anurid High Priest). In order to fully justify his entire price drop we made some nerfs to some stats to do with his offensive combat abilities, as we want this guy to cast spells and fight only when strictly needed. We also freed up the option to take Alchemy and Fire by not being forced to take Fire Blessings, just as an option.

 

Nothing but good news from a competitive point of view (thematically I liked the fire blessing requirement, but hardly a big deal).

 

 3. Bombardiers. These guys were not too popular in 8th and theyre still not very popular in 9th outside of gunlines. Some complained they were too expensive and didnt put out enough damage while others complained they were too strong in combat due to Halberd use of their handcannons. We decided to make them more shooty orientated and less combat-fit by adding/removing a couple of rules. Mixed with a small price drop and we feel they should be a very viable option now in both gunlines or in mixed lists.

 

This isn’t surprising really (though I generally hate any changes that make things shootier, primarily because I don’t like getting shot).

 

 4. Sabretooth Tigers. We hadnt realized that the army's main diverters were no where near as effective now as they were before in 8th. This is mainly due to them having to take Terror Tests, where in 8th they didnt (and for a good reason). With the overwhelming abundance of Monsters in 9th (all Terror causers) you basically almost always had to take a Hunter in order to give them LD9 (and then keep him alive and keep him within LD range of all 3 tigers) or else they would flee from Terror most times and were almost useless (LD5 no rerolls only if no Hunter is around). This proved to be a huge issue as Ogres were being left without diverters, and the lists that included tigers were being funneled into obligatory Hunters. We have now made some changes to prevent this from happening. Also, to make them playable as a big unit we increased the maximum number per unit.

 

I like the idea of tigers running in fear from bigger monsters they are trying to divert, has a nice cartoony feel to it, but I can see the gameplay issue. Have always wanted to see big units of these guys, though I still doubt I will.

 

 5. Yetis. These guys have been completely redesigned; having finally found a place in the army. They were the most underused option and rarely fielded options for years, only recently being taken alongside the Wildheart big name. Even as small units they were still being out-shined by Mercenaries and especially Tusker Cavalry. The new design will change all of this, and hopefully encourage players to field Yetis in their future battles.

 

Very intrigued! (Though in all honesty, any excitement for these and the sabretooth tigers will probably depend on someone out there making better models for these guys…)

 

A rather welcome, if anaemic, list of updates here – I am intrigued to see if this means they are not changing all that much, or if the balancing of other armies will have the result of lifting the comparative power of these boys. I have been broadly impressed with what has been done so far, so I have no reason to doubt the continued success here.

 

 

Until next time.

 

 

Raf