Monday, January 17, 2011

OGRE/GEV minis part 1: Cybertanks

After mentioning the classic Steve Jackson creation OGRE and noting coverage of OGRE/GEV around the web, it seems appropriate to elaborate on the official miniatures for that game and to show off some of my collection.

The future history of OGRE--along with the miniatures line--concerns itself mainly with two factions: the North American Combine and the Paneuropean Union.  Riffing off World War II paint schemes, I decided to paint my own figures in olive drab (NAC) and dark gray (PE).  Unfortutately, because I'm lazy, most of the paint jobs are incomplete.

The designs for the OGRE and the PE vehicles came first, based on the game art by Winchell Chung.  While the models were great for their time, the translation from the printed page to three-dimensional playing pieces shows how dated their aesthetic has become. 

First, of course there's the OGRE itself, which was used by both factions and comes in two versions main versions (yes, I know there are minis of the Mark I through the Mark IV, but I'm sticking with the models in my collection), both faithful to the game illustrations: 
OGRE mk III
OGRE mk V
There's also a miniature of the OGRE's sensor tower sticking up out of the water (in the brief story setting up the original game scenario, that's how the cybertank snuck onto the battlefied), which I've actually used in a game:

Years after the first miniatures came out, Steve Jackson Games came out with a miniatures version of a Paneuropean cybertank called the Fencer.  This design was much more modern in appearance:
The standard version of the Paneuropean Fencer.
The turret shows this to be a Fencer-B, the upgunned version of this cybertank.
As you can see, I need to finish detailing these miniatures (especially the ones in gray, which is really just what I sprayed on to double as primer).  You'll see that again once you get a look at my conventional Paneuropean vehicles ....

7 comments:

  1. Good to see these old classics, now all you have to do is paint them.

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  2. It's great seeing these ORGE posts of yours, I remember having a lot of fun with this game years ago. Thanks for the nostalgia!

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  3. Thanks, Ashley and Papa JJ, I'm glad you enjoyed the pics. I need to get this game out again; it's been months since I've played OGRE.

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  4. I own every single miniature Steve Jackson put out for the OGRE/GEV series.
    One of these days I am going to make resin reproductions of these minis and make a few examples of each type. This way I can paint them any way I wish and not be locked into one paint scheme.
    I even have the CAR WARS minis even though they were horrible for the scale they tried to fit to. We shelved them for the flat 1/2"x1" counters (we sometimes hand drew).

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  6. Hessian, your links aren't working.

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