From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 13:02:08 -0400
Subject: DSII: another OGRE battle
Greetings, Over the weekend got together with Aaron Teske for various activities, including a quick game of DSII, using John Lerchey's OGRE rules: http://okapi.andrew.cmu.edu/lerchey/www/DSII/OGRE-DSII.html We were using the latest draft of the rules from feedback John had gotten from the game I played a month or so ago with Noam "Gleefully Mad" Izenberg, Mike "Photobug" Hudak, David "Just Married" Raynes, and Scott "Just Visiting" Field. THere were some new changes, some expansions, but at this draft the Ogre still had HKP/4s as secondaries. I gave Aaron an array of tanks totalling ~7200 DSII points (one troop of Size 5 Andromeda super-heavies, 2 Tritan IV troops of size-3 MBTs, and 5-6 troops of Deimos heavy tanks: all were GEV mobility and had MDCs of the same size class as the tank that mounted it along with GMS/Ls, except for the Andromedas, which mounted GMS/Hs). The terrain was fairly mountainous, so there were few areas that had long ranges for fire lanes. Aaron arrayed his tanks on his half of the playing field, and I brought the OGRE (Mk V, of course ;-) on. I was out of range and hidden behind hills and cliffs, except for my electronics module, which was sticking up. Aaron immediately targetted it, and BOOM, hit it hard. Instead of having it destroyed outright (and dropping my targetting from superior D12 to flintlock era D4). We discussed this and decided that we would just degrade the OGRE's targetting ability down to enhanced D10 (and all subsequent Booms would keep the degradation going; fortunately this never became an issue as Aaron concentrated on my tread and weapons modules 90% of the rest of the game). With the new rules in place, it was now harder for a force to actually *advance* on an Ogre, so Aaron rolled for all his tank troops. As the reaction test was at +3, very few troops moved up into better positions. His lone Green 1 MBT troop, however, had no problems with attempting to circle around behind the Ogre. They would spend most of the rest of the game getting into position before doubling back on their course and getting smashed with an Ogre missile artillery barrage. My attacks on Aaron's forces were primarily with the Secondary Batteries, the HKP/4s; the DFFG Main Batteries were unable to get range on much of anything, and the few times I did, they missed (and it was at long range to boot). I did what I could to split my fire up, but with the mountains blocking me half the time (a mixed blessing), I was unable to target everything I wanted with everything I had. And Aaron was able to bring more forces to face against one side of me than I could fire back at. Nevertheless, we managed to sit at range 30-36 for most of the fire exchanges (some of his units got closer, pulling the MDCs into close range, while the Ogre's HKP/4s remained at medium range). He did manage to quickly destroy three tread modules early in the game, and finally nailed the fourth near the end. He had concentrated I'd say ~75% of his firepower on the treads, which was the logical thing to do. The only thing that bothered us both was that the tread modules vanished rapidly when "Boom"ed or "Mobility damaged". We thought there should be more degradation in the movement before the module totally disintegrates. Feedback has already been given to John. :-) The battle raged hard, and as the Ogre lost its Main batteries (fired maybe 3-4 times total, for no hits) and became immobilized, it started launching missiles. The rules as they were written weren't real clear as to *exactly* how the end result should be (did the missile, which acted in some respects like artillery fire, hit an individual target or hit like arty shelling?). In the end Aaron suggested like arty shelling, which helped the Ogre's cause, as it laid waste to three whole troops this way. HKPs in the secondary module killed a number of other tanks, but in the end, immobilized and at medium range, the Ogre's secondary modules were also destroyed by GMS/H fire from the Andromeda's (who never were brave enough to move from their initial position to bring their big guns to bear). I did not take copious notes (and yes, Oerjan, I haven't forgotten, I still owe you a weapons fire breakdown from the last game ;-), so this is all pretty much from memory. Aaron may have a comment or four to toss into the mix, but overall, he thumped on the Ogre and "only" lost about 60% of his forces. The Ogre rules of John Lerchey's are nice, have a good feel, just need some more tweaking. :-) Now to wait for the next update and play again. And hey, who knows, there might be an Ogre scenario at ECC VII using said rules... Mk