Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Portable OGRE

OGRE Designer's Edition is a pain to transport because of its size. OGRE Pocket Edition is a pain to manipulate because of its size. My solution: The deluxe-sized classic cardboard counters from SJG, played on my old Deluxe Ogre and Deluxe GEV maps, with the rules from those editions for reference.
A plastic Plano model 3750 storage box has enough room for all of the components, although I couldn't give every counter type its own compartment--you can see the Ogres and buildings all jumbled up in their respective spaces. But it makes it easy to quickly set up your forces when you want to play a game.
These counters are substantial enough not to get blown around by a sneeze and big enough to pick up and move without much effort, unlike with the microgame. However, I also came up with a system to make it easier to set up and break down the counters for the Pocket Edition.
Instead of sorting through a jumble of chits in a plastic bag, I put each type of counter into a separate compartment in a pill container from Walgreen's. Note that I have two of them, one for the black counters and one for the white (I have counters from two copies of Pocket Ogre, in case I want to play a large battle on a tiny map). The pill containers fit with the map and rulebook inside a plastic videocassette box that an Ogre miniatures set was sold in.
Simple to transport, and simple to put away. Although I enjoy playing the big boardgame--or even larger games using Ogre miniatures--I like having ultra-portable versions to take on vacation. Anyone else make their own Travel Ogre set?

1 comment:

Ski said...

I took the old small copy Ogre with me on a recent train trip to Florida. Unfortunately, the ride was too bumpy and not suitable for hex and counter gaming. I gave it the ol' college try though!