Also.

New blog logo. Next up is the favicon but it won't get a blog post like this.

Painting Latest: Mournfang Rider

Howdy.

As you can tell from my Ogre review, the pictures of my Ogre miniatures and the only content being Ogres, they are my latest army to collect. After much laziness and work getting in the way, I've got a Mournfang Cavalry Crusher painted up and ready.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 9 - Closing Words

What a crazy trip this has been.

Most of this writing has been on my holidays off work, where I can focus on it and sticking together all the new ogre stuff I bought. I've got a wonderful Thundertusk now that's trying it's damned hardest to stick to the base. The rest of my time has been writing this, playing Space Marine or eating or sleeping.

Ogres as a whole are an aggressive army, which favour taking a proactive approach of charging the enemy. They have a large amount of attacks in combat and have a good magic phase to back them up, used by tough wizards who can hold their own compared to anything less than a chaos sorcerer. Ogres also have decent shooting, large monsters, heavy hitting cavalry and the options for lots of models or very few. On top of this, their heroes and lords can cause hell and get to some wickedly high damage potential.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 8 - Sample Armies

A lot has changed with regards to how you build Ogres and what you can really do with them. You can even have several different types of armies that operate differently, it all depends how you want your army to focus. Always remember to try and keep things balanced; a good army is able to take on everything with a degree of success, a bad army forces the enemy to have to deal with it.

Let's start with something you may have never thought possible, the Ogre Gunline.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 7 - Magic Items

If you've seen any of the other hardback books you'll know that a lot of magic items have been removed. With Ogres this is no different. Many will be sad to see that the Greyback Pelt has gone. Mostly me. The changes may not be that easy to take, but you'll have to take it in and realise that somethings just won't get used.

Thundermace: Essentially a Great Weapon that can do a Thundercrush attack. It's pretty much the same, other than said attack doing S3(9) and D3 wounds. It also costs you 30 more points. Taking up a huge chunk of the item budget for something that people didn't really take to begin with is horrendously expensive compared to other methods of building your Tyrant. Unfortunately, too costly to do much with.

Siegebreaker: Another 85 points weapon which lost a point of strength. Still strikes against initiative but can't have parry saves taken against it. Otherwise, you can make a Siegebreaker attack against a building. Instead of normal attacks you get D6 hits with a strength equal to the height of the building in inches, from bottom to the highest point. If you play in a game or scenario where you need to knock down buildings, this may see some use, otherwise it's horribly costly for what it does. Much like the Thundermace, this won't get a lot of use.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 6 - Lore of the Great Maw and Big Names

Gut magic has had an overhaul too and now sports the title of Lore of the Great Maw. It's true that in being changed it's no longer the same and debatabley it's no longer as easy as it used to be. In turn, it's been granted a degree more flexibility and benefits your army better.

Previously, all your wizards knew every spell and everything was cast on a 3+. Some spells tried to kill you too. In the new book, you have to randomly generate your spells. You no longer have a guaranteed level 4 wizard, though you can buy it for the lofty price of 285 points. Or 425 if you fancy taking Skrag out for a walk.

Your lore attribute is Bloodgruel, which now gives you wounds everytime you roll a 2-6 on a dice. On a 1, your spell tries to eat you and hits you with a S6 hit. Other than that, this is entirely free with every spell you cast, granting you a supply of wounds and funny moments where your spells try to eat you. On top of that, the next time said wizard tries to cast or dispel a spell, he gets +1 to the attempt.

A good lore attribute, meaning you can take some hits and still recover by pumping out spells. It also helps your own casting be just a bit better.

Onto the spells Surprisingly, most of them have remained the same.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 5 - Named Characters

Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Gatecrasher Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese: I prefer to call him King Fatty.

So, King Fatty. The rules for 8th edition made him a monster, which means he couldn't join units and got shot to pieces. Luckily, he's a monstrous infantry now. An ogre with fear and no Ogre Charge and movement 4. Oh dear, they didn't seem to change those bits.

He has decent WS, high strength, monster toughness and wounds, only I1 and A3 with no armour. He strikes at S10 and does D3 wounds, but with no volume of attacks this doesn't present as much of a threat as it should do. Then again, he can cause some damage, if he doesn't get turned to mince for being I1.

The I1 is a huge disadvantage, mostly due to Purple Suns all over the battlefield. King Fatty doesn't even have any magic resistance to help him out. He gets a 4+ ward save though, which helps a little. Unluckily, not against Purple Suns.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 4 - Lords and Heroes

Tyrants: For some reason, certain units got worse. By small degrees or large ones, in his wisdom Jervis decided to make somethings more expensive when they necessarily didn't need to be. The entire Ogre Kingdom Lord section was one of those things. The Tyrant probably got one of the better deals but still didn't escape unscathed.

Your Tyrant is now 10 points more expensive, with gear that costs a few points less. You still have the 100 point limit on things but overall, those 10 points aren't needed. If anything, 10 points off would have been more fitting. Still, Tyrants aren't nearly mandatory anymore. They aren't needed to unlock a slaughtermaster and you can easily pick up a much cheaper bruiser to do the job of face beating. In high point games, you can get away with him, if you don't mind losing a Slaughtermaster.

With his 100 point limit, your Tyrant can pull off some very nice magical item combinations. You can go either of the following choices, which will be common and tweaked to suit individual need:

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 3 - Rares

Scraplauncher: Another thing that's been made cheaper. The scraplauncher has much more simplified rules. It's exactly the same as before, except it's also a large target. It counts as a chariot as it did before but no longer has to take a leadership test to see if it charges a nearby enemy. On top of that, it can move and fire and it has a misfire chart that isn't as bad.

The catch is your scraplauncher got reduced to a small template. With something like the scraplauncher, this is the most important thing. Due to the smaller size, much less models are hit and thus, less damage and killing blows are produced. This reduction in targets hit, wounded and outright killed if they're infantry means the Scraplauncher has lost 30 points and has lost a lot of it's killing power.

You can control it better and all in all, a rain of S3 with killing blow may kill some rank and file infantry, but it won't kill as much as this warchariotmachine should. Even at a reduced price, it seems hard to want to use one. It's also competing for space with the next entry, which makes it a hard choice to justify.

Ogre Kingdom Review, Part 2 - Specials

Leadbelchers: A price drop to 43 points means no matter what they're worth a consideration, even if we're just comparing them to ironguts. The new Leadbelchers are a bit different, a bit similar and hopefully a bit better.

They come as basic ogre bulls with leadbelcher cannons and light armour. The cannons themselves are redesigned; slow to fire, with D6 S4 hits that are armour piercing, as well as having the ability to move and fire without penalty, plus shoot at full distance. There's no more bad reloading rules to contend with anymore which means you have an actual, decent ranged option to go for now.

Full Command is still 10 points each which makes it always a decent choice, but a point of note is the Champion for Leadbelchers gets an extra attack, which is entirely pointless on a shooting unit.

Overall, Ogres needed a decent anti-infantry option and Leadbelchers can provide it. Being able to move and shoot at a long range without any of said penalties makes them mobile and able to reach out to smaller blocks. Anything without a 4+ or better armour save will be shredded, so they make excellent medium armour harassers.

All in all, nothing could be worse than the old leadbelchers. They will find a use in your army but this will be a case of questioning how good they are compared to other ranged blocks, as well as if you really need them. Weigh up the options and see if they fit in your army. In most cases, they'll find a place.

Ogre Kingdoms Review, Part 1 - Book basics and Core

With the advent of hardback army books written by people who understand game balance, 8th edition armies look more balanced each time you forget that the magic phase doesn't exist. Ogres have waited 7 years for an update and many players only dreamed of the day when a new range of models would show their plastic or finecast resin faces on the front page of Games Workshop.

Let's take a look then to see what's new and to see if it really dragged them up to a balanced, fair level or broke them harder than my brain reading the slave giant page.

Ogre Kingdoms Review: Old Book, Part 2

Leadbelchers: 55 point ogre bulls who get light armour and a leadbelcher cannon, in a unit size of 2-5 fatties. The cannon counts as a club in close combat. Otherwise they have a range of 12”, hit at strength 4 with armour piercing and roll an artillery dice worth of hits. A misfire makes your entire unit take D6 S4 hits and that cannon doesn't fire. They take no penalties for long range, moving or multiple shots. Once they fire, you can't fire them again unless you take an entire turn reloading them, which means doing absolutely nothing for one turn.

The myriad of problems with this unit should be apparent. When you get within 12” of the enemy you fire your cannons, most likely hurting your own unit of leadbelchers in the process. You kill a few rank and file men and now no longer have any shots left to pummel them with unless you spend a turn doing nothing. You can stand and shoot with your cannons either, but not if they're reloading. If you do stand and shoot, you have your leadbelchers standing around doing nothing, and they'll most likely ignore you. They could be charged, but you're throwing expensive, naked bulls into combat. The enemy now has ample time to charge you and bring you down. You only have 5 ogres so you have the fighting power of ogre bulls, without the parry save of ironfists.

55 points each. A champion and a musician costs you 10 points each. If you did take 4 it costs you 240 points, 260 with a champion and musician. A champion without BS4. 4 ironguts with full command costs 242 points.

Ogre Kingdoms Review: Old Book, Part 1

Ogres.

With the advent of the Ogre Kingdoms being rereleased for 8th edition, isn't it time we walked down memory lane, nostalgia goggles rosed up and tinted so we could look back at what is, compared to what will be?

I've decided to try and take my hand at writing up a Then & Now comparison for the Ogre Kingdoms. Let's review what we know and see if times change for the better.

The Old book was written by a certain Phil Kelly. Back in 2003 before he got around to Space Wolves and Dark Eldar, the gods of Games Workshop instructed him to write out a book for the Ogre Kingdoms. And so he did, and what a wonderful trip it was. It was so full of cool and interesting fluff about our favourite fatties. All the possibilities of an Ogre Clan or family, their markings and rituals and where they get their equipment from.

Then you read the rules, expecting that your army of ogres would be a match and beat the face off those dark elves or daemons. Surely, Might makes right?

The time of beginning

 Hi. Welcome to Melta Martini: Shaken, not Stunned.

I'll post a mixture of things, from 40k and Fantasy reviews and tactica from my limited knowledge, my models and recent paintings. I'll also post a lot more other things that are relevent to a blog with Melta in the name.