[Arli]

I have an upcoming Mighty Empires Campaign. I have not chosen my army as of yet. The choices are Lizardmen (my primary army) and Ogre Kingdoms (secondary army). I am split on which one to take for the campaign. I know that the Lizardmen army is more suited to 8th edition. But I do like the Ogre Kingdoms army because no one else really plays them in our gaming group. I do worry about losing alot with Ogres (as I am still learning to play them).

The other armies that will be in the campaign are:
Dark Elves
High Elves x 2
Skaven x 2
and My army.

What do you guys think?

Right now I would like to use the Ogres, but I really like the magic that I can bring as lizardmen.

 

[Drax]

to be honest, if you want to do the ogres, do them - sure they may not be as competitive as you can make the lizardmen, but this campaign may help you develop them with consistant use against some tugh armies.

 

[Tim/Steve]

Ogres can be a good army, and they are a lot simpler to play then they use to be... they're still fun anyway. Their magic has taken a bit of a nosedive though, mostly due tot he enemy being able to dispel RiP in your magic phase (so if you raise defences turn 1 and charge turn 2 the enemy can let the all thorugh in turn 1, wait for you to waste dice turn 2 then just dispel them all. Im learning to just re-cast magic at units which alrady have the same buff- if they are let through they cannot be dispelled at the end of the phase, and if they are dispelled hopefully the opponent wont have the dice to dispel the original RiP from a previous turn.

 

[neilbatte]

While ogres have had some improvements with the new edition their weaknesses will be made glaringly obvious when fighting against the opponents that you've listed.
If you want to play a campaign to keep you interested you will need to win occasionally so although I like playing ogres I'd recommend the lizzies.
All your opponents have high initiative and units that can dish out the pain well before your ogres get a look in and given the pants armour of ogres you will lose far to many bodies before you can do much damage back.
The alternative is to use an ogre gunline like mine although it's not for the faint hearted and will still struggle against a Skaven horde.

 

[Tim/Steve]

Ah so you are still running the gunline then neil... good to hear. I was wondering if you would shelve that for 8th.

Ogres have very big problems fighting against big blocks of enemy, especially if they are used as hoards (like the 50 spearmen/LSG HE unit). The only effective way I've found to counter this is to use a hoard bull unit- it comes in at about 660pts (I use 18 bulls with no equipment but with a bellower and musician) and if you can get a buff on it it'll go through pretty much any enemy unit.... but you need to keep it strong to win. Just like orks in 40k large units will kill anything, but if they become too small they become pretty ignorable as they will always take too many wounds to win fights before they ever get the chance to attack.

The problem is that this unit is then massively vulnerable to magic (not so much to cannons- being monstrous and if you give them the ironcurse icon then cannons dont do huge amounts of damage (only a 46% chance to kill an unwounded ogre with a 6++ outright, otherwise the cannonball stops dead). But with magic there is no such defence- you could have MR3 but that wont help if you get a purple sun/pit of shades hitting the unit. I've faced an army with 50 LSG and Teclis with my ogres... and I just cant think of a way to beat that using ogres (3 gnoblar scraplaunchers banging away every turn could just about... but Im not going to buy 2 more scraplaunchers, at least not till the model gets redone).

 

[neilbatte]

Yeah even with a gunline ogre army I couldn't face building more than 1 scrap launcher (luckily I've been hearing rumours of a big plastic kit coming out when the new book is released)
I'm struggling with the gunline at the moment, Its great for small elite armies like Elves and deamons but anything with armour or horded up and it's a struggle as to take the numbers of gnoblars I still need MSU ogres.
I read your earlier post about the gnoblars though and while I agree anything killed by gnoblars is a bonus mine killed 5 knights of khorne this morning and my opponent has got so used to this he didn't even seem surprised and has long since stopped moaning,I only wish their was a way to give them the firebanner so I can model some throwing flamming toilet rolls:grin:.

 

[Tim/Steve]

Would be awesome to see... you could also get some molatovs going as well

I hadn't really thought about the impact of more infantry based armies on ogre shooting... but you are right, except the scraplauncher there really isnt anything to deal with hoard blocks... and since I can't even get the will together to glue the 5-6 parts back on that have fallen off (not to mention the 3-4 gnoblars that I still havent got round to painting and adding) I'm certainly not going to be getting anymore. I am quite tempted to convert up 3 rhinox with scrap catapults strapped onto them. That way I could actually go places and have a scraplauncher (since with the current one a bit falls off if you even whisper the word "travel" in the same room as it).

 

[Arli]

I have decided to go with Lizardmen. Primarily because I want a more competitive game.

On another note, I plan on trying to make a scrap launcher using an old stegadon that I have. I still need to get gnoblars too. All that I have in my Ogre army is 3k of ogres (bulls,6 Iron guts, tyrant, 2 butchers, 2 bruisers, Skrag, 2 maneaters, 1 gorger [subbed maneaters for gorgers with skrag], and 7 leadbelchers). I am going to proxy some skinks for some gnoblars in an upcoming game though.