Christmas Eve OGRE

Holidays and gaming have gone hand-in-hand for me since I was in junior high.  All that free time while school's out is conducive to rolling dice with your friends.  So it was nice today to break in my  spouse-approved copy of the OGRE Designer's  Edition since I was off work.  I invited a gamer who lives nearby, and since he had his brother (another gamer) in from out of town, we played two Mark IIIs attacking the command post.  The siblings each took an Ogre, and I played the defenders, setting up a four-howitzer defense with the command post in the upper right corner of the map.

Defending against a pair of Ogres is much harder than taking on a single unit, even a Mark V.  I had to split my forces and try to wear down both at the same time.  I was able to quickly knock one of the Ogres down to 2 movement and destroy its main battery, but the other scooted along the edge of the map and was a lot harder to slow down.  Even though it was within the howitzer umbrella (I was rolling four and then three dice against the treads every turn), it kept coming.  I took out its main gun, but even with artillery barrages assisted by a missile tank that slowed it by 1 MP on consecutive turns, the Ogre was able to get the CP in range of its secondaries, destroying it. 

At that point, the first cybertank (which hadn't even made it to the middle of the map) turned around to flee.  Since my remaining units were three howitzers, a missile tank, and about 12 squads of infantry, there was nothing to catch it and keep it from escaping.  I was able to get revenge on the CP-killer, however, immobilizing it and withdrawing my mobile units to let the howitzers finish it off.

So a marginal victory for the Ogres, and a decisive good time for the players.  My guests, who last participated in a game of  OGRE was when Reagan was president, remarked that it played just like they remembered, coming down to a few suspenseful dice rolls as the giant robot tank closed in on the command post.  Here's to holiday gaming!