# how do i beat ogres?



## MidnightKid333 (Feb 2, 2011)

hey all, i just had my *very first* game of fantasy with my skinks. it was 1050 points and i had:

skink priest
8x10 skink skirmishers w blowpipes
7 chameleon skinks
stegadon

he had
a bunch of big fat ogre things with 3 wounds each
a mob of 50 knoblars (the really really small things)
some big fancy HQ

this will be a bit of a battle report, but only becuase i want you to show me where i went wrong.

i moved everything up 12" shot at as much as i could, did some poison attacks, got charged, did a stand and shoot, my stegadon did some good hitting, 2/3 times he hit his target. the knoblers wandered around and looked scary, the chameleon skinks taargeted his big fat ogre dudes and whiffed their shots and died. 

i read an article on another forum waying that ogres will die easily to skink armies, so he was either lying or i played my army entirely wrong. Are there any pointers you could send my way?

i like how the ogres have a -Sv, but the 3 wounds each was killing me! how do i deal with those wounds?? as well as a charge attack from them.

please help. i need to improve. thanks.


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## MidnightKid333 (Feb 2, 2011)

btw the ogres were in formations of 2x3, so not too big of a squad


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## coke123 (Sep 4, 2010)

With 80+ poison shots, you should do alright. I think the key is to delay combat. Move up, pepper away and outmanuevre him. It's not like he's taking up massess of the board, so your skirmishers should be able to skirt around him. If you have to sacrifice a unit or two as bait, then so be it. make sure the rest of the skinks get around the side and rear, and force him to charge each unit one at a time. this effectively allows you to maximise the time the bulk of your force is shooting. Eventually, weight of fire will bring him down. Each unit should be enough to drop a bull per turn (assuming you can get into short range). eight units equates to roughly eight bulls dead per turn, with this number probably decreasing by about two each turn (as you will have to feed him skirmishers each turn in order to protect the others). then the chameleons should be able to drop another. I can't imagine he's have more than, what 12-18 bulls in 1k? Then numbers say that you should drop almost half his force by the second turn.

Another idea is a refused flank tactic. I assume you're familiar with the idea from 40k? Basically, shove everything on one flank, and then focus fire each of his units off the board.

EDIT: I think your list could also use some razordons. You've massed S3 abounds in it, although you could really use some S4, hence I suggest Razordons over Salamanders. It'll certainly help against Ogres. Drop two Skirmisher units, pick up a hunting pack of two razordons.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

There should have been no way that you lost this one... the reason you did was that you were overly aggressive.

With a shooting army you aren't going to win in 1 round of shooting (well... skinks vs ogres can, but that's a special case), while a combat army can. You should be setting out with 3 goals every turn.

1- avoid getting charged
2- get in range to shoot
3- don't let any enemy unit destroy more then 1 unit a turn.

Against ogres a skink army should win- ogres are a high impact army that moves fast, hits hard but has no armour and doesn't have the wounds to last long once they start taking damage. Each ogre has the stats of an orc (more or less), with little or no armour and yet you can get something like 7-10 orcs per ogre (so the shooting that would annihilate an ogre army would only kill about 1/3 of an orc army).

Skirmishers can march and shoot, so you should be looking to be marching past the front of the ogre units. At the start of the game you should be trying to get to about 20" from the ogres- they can't charge you and won't really do any damage with magic/shooting (they can, but its not usually an issue). This leaves the ogres with 2 choices- head straight at you, or sit in a stalemate. Almost all will just march 12" straight at you, at which point you just march into their flank... at that point you've won. You can just march round them every turn and keep pelting them with blowpipes, the ogres should never get you into their charge arc (you might lose 1 or 2 units occasionally, but not significant amounts of your army). If the ogres stand there (as I would do) then you can send a few units forward into long blowpipe range and flee any charge (always flee their charge, never stand and shoot unless its about a 17-18" charge that is very unlikely to connect).... that way you lure the ogres forward.


Basically- you only want to get shooting at the ogres if you can do so without getting killed. If there is something that stops you from getting into a safe place to shoot from then don't shoot that turn... you have plenty of time to pick and choose your shots and still annihilate an ogre army. Once you get the tactics down playing against ogres will become really really boring, since there is almost nothing the ogres can do to stop you... but its good practice for other games against armies that stand a chance against you.

The most boring game my ogres ever had was a 2k game against 7*10 skinks and a 2*10 chammies (or something like that). I refused to be baited into a charge since it would leave me surrounded by skinks and in charge range of some big blocks of saurus, so the game was just long range skink fire against some return fire from my gnoblars and magic missiles.... either side moving forward would have been suicide, so it stayed at astalemate (but I was happy to leave the game with a draw).


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## GreatUncleanOne (Apr 25, 2011)

Unless the rules have changed dramatically I would suggest that with your movement you should get into any terrain to slow him down and try and stay out of his charge arc.


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## MidnightKid333 (Feb 2, 2011)

the problem is the range of the blowpipes. 12" maekes me dangerously close to the enemy.

note to self: i should spread my groups out more, so they dont get simulataneously charged by ogres that killed a skink group then charged into another within 6". this will also be good, so i dont have to take multiple panic checks for more than one squad of skinks. 

question: should i stay back at just under 12" to shoot the ogres with 10 shots hitting on a 5+, since i moved, and be reasonably safe from being charged, or move and march 12" inches right up to him and declare multiple shots?

another question: should i use groups of 20? it would minimize my models of coverage on the table, and give me better shooting dakka oomf against him, and i would act as a bit of a tarpit against him, holding him back for a few rounds.

what about mixed groups of 10, 15 and 20? or all groups of 15? or all groups of 10 with one command group of 20?

i think i should stay just under 12", so he will need to get lucky to charge me, and if he does, i get my stand and shoot reaction. (there was some kind of rule where i couldnt stand and shoot if the enemy was within 6".

also, i ordered salamanders from ebay to deal with my friends skaven and stoned elves, so maybe i could count them as razordons when against my ogre friend.


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## khrone forever (Dec 13, 2010)

Tim/Steve said:


> Skirmishers can march and shoot, so you should be looking to be marching past the front of the ogre units. At the start of the game you should be trying to get to about 20" from the ogres- they can't charge you and won't really do any damage with magic/shooting (they can, but its not usually an issue). This leaves the ogres with 2 choices- head straight at you, or sit in a stalemate. Almost all will just march 12" straight at you, at which point you just march into their flank... at that point you've won. You can just march round them every turn and keep pelting them with blowpipes, the ogres should never get you into their charge arc (you might lose 1 or 2 units occasionally, but not significant amounts of your army). If the ogres stand there (as I would do) then you can send a few units forward into long blowpipe range and flee any charge (always flee their charge, never stand and shoot unless its about a 17-18" charge that is very unlikely to connect).... that way you lure the ogres forward.


from what i remember of reading 8th ed, you can only march in 8" if you pas a LD check, that screws skinks up really badly:suicide:

only quote relevant sections please- there is no point quoting 5 paragraphs when only 1 is relevant to your reply. Anyone who read it initially already knows what it says, anyone who skipped over it won't read it the 2nd time round either. Quoting someone else is used to bring attention to a point that you want to discuss/comment on, otherwise a simple @Tim/Steve would suffice. 
T/S


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

khrone forever said:


> from what i remember of reading 8th ed, you can only march in 8" if you pas a LD check, that screws skinks up reall bad:suicide::suicide::no:


It's 12" (Er, not. Fix your confusing grammar, within would have been a better word), and it was worse in 7th ed, where you just couldn't march at all if an enemy was within 8" Besides, Skinks have Cold-Blooded.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

khrone forever said:


> from what i remember of reading 8th ed, you can only march in 8" if you pas a LD check, that screws skinks up reall bad:suicide::suicide::no:


Ld6-7 is terrible... unless you happen to be cold blooded. Skinks normally pass their Ld, hell, if you could see my record of breaking stegs you would laugh. Stubborn Ld6 and despite winning countless rounds of combat against them I can still count on 1 hand the number of times they've actually run away.
Throw in a skink chief as the general and another with a BSB and you're laughing. The odd unit will fail its Ld, but 6" straight into the flank of an enemy unit normally gets you clear of being attacked, otherwise you just move away as far as you can then flee the charge- that probably puts you at 10" + 2D6 flee... you'll almost always manage to escape.


With blowpipes imagine you are at school- if you shoot the teacher when their back is turned you can get away with it all day, while the teacher just gets more and more pissed off. If you stand straight in front of them while they are looking at you then you're toast.
Secondly.. always try to hit on 6s at worst. Move, long range, multiple shot will take you to 7+ to hit... which means your poison is useless. In that case drop the multiple shots (you don't have to use them) so you hit on 6s (and all hits wound). Only use the multi-shots if you stayed still (rare) or are in close range (ideal).

I use these sorts of tactics with my wood elves- I'm only movement 5, can't march and shoot and am not a skirmisher but I manage to avoid combat most of the time anyway (though I do occasionally have to sacrifice shooting to march). The local WoC players hate my WE- they bring units that are so strong in combat that I don't even try to compete there (even my combat units can't touch them), so I spend the game avoiding the crap out of them while I kill off the non-block units: I don't need to deal with 30+ man units of chosen/warriors if they kill nothing while I take out a couple of war shrines. Same goes for ogres, except that their block units are much easier to kill (though a little harder to avoid).


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