Steve Jackson Games to Release OGRE 6th Edition Eventually

In 1977, Metagaming Concepts released the first game in their successful Microgames line of affordable war games -- it had a $2.95 cover price. The game had a reasonable print run of 8,000 copies and was a break out success that redefined the war gaming hobby by opening the door to new audiences of simulation game players. The game's second print run was 20,000. The game was among the first war games to have a science fiction theme, and it featured rules that were simple enough for someone who had never played a war game to pick up and play within minutes.

The game was titled OGRE and it was so successful a game that its sales fueled the development and growth of two hobby gaming corporations. The first company, Metagaming Concepts, fought hard to keep the intellectual property rights when the game's designer left the company to found his own company Steve Jackson Games. The lawsuit lasted for quite some time, but eventually the property followed its creator to its new home. By the time the game migrated over to Steve Jackson Games, it had sold approximately 70,000 copies (excluding the sales of its GEV expansion set).

It was the reliable sales of OGRE that provided the revenue which allowed Steve Jackson Games to publish their next runaway success -- a game so successful it made OGRE's sale look small by comparison. That game was Car Wars, but its story is a tale for another time. Today is a day to praise OGRE and to share our anticipation for the upcoming release of OGRE 6th Edition which should be released later this year.

The premise of OGRE is a simple one, but it is also one that captures the imagination. The OGRE referred to in the game is a cybernetic supertank that is attacking a human manned command center on a nuclear blasted battlefield. Inspired by Keith Laumer's Bolo series, Steve Jackson created a game where desperate -- and mortal -- defenders battle against the odds to preserve their fragile position against impossible odds. Though their forces significantly outnumber the OGRE, the supertank significantly outclasses them. The tone of the game can be readily seen in an article published in issue 9 of the venerable The Space Gamer magazine:

The command post was well guarded. It should have been. The hastily constructed, unlovely building was the nerve center for Paneuropean operations along a 700 kilometer section of front -- a front pressing steadily toward the largest Combine manufacturing center on the continent.

Therefore General DePaul had taken no chances. His command was located in the most defensible terrain available -- a battered chunk of gravel bounded on three sides by marsh and on the fourth by a river. The river was deep and wide; the swamp gluey and impassible. Nothing bigger than a rat could avoid detection by the icons scattered for 60 kilometers in every direction over land, swamp, and river surface. Even the air was finally secure; the enemy had expended at least 50 heavy missiles yesterday, leaving glowing holes over half the island, but none near the CP. The Combine's laser batteries had seen to that. Now that the jamscreen was up, nothing would get even that close. And scattered through the twilight were the bulky shapes of tanks and ground effect vehicles -- the elite 2033rd Armored, almost relaxed as they guarded a spot nothing could attack.

Inside the post, too, the mood was relaxed -- except at one monitor station, where a young lieutenant watched a computer map of the island. A light was blinking on the river. Orange: something was moving, out there where nothing should move. No heat. A stab at the keyboard called up a representation of the guardian unit...not that any should be out there, 30 kilometers away. None were. Whatever was out there was a stranger -- and it was actually in the river. A swimming animal? A man? Ridiculous.

The lieutenant spun a cursor, moving a dot of white light across the map and halting it on the orange spot with practiced ease. He hit another key, and an image appeared on the big screen...pitted ground, riverbank...and something else, something rising from the river like the conning tower of an old submarine, but he knew what it really was, he just couldn't place it...and then it moved. Not straight toward the camera icon, but almost. The lieutenant saw the "conning tower" cut a wake through the rushing water, bounce once, and begin to rise. A second before the whole shape was visible, he recognized it -- but for that second he was frozen. And so 30 men with their minds on other things were suddenly brought to heart-pounding alert, as the lieutenant's strangled gasp and the huge image on his screen gave the same warning...

OGRE!

Like the "Mayday!" on the Traveller role playing game box, this description has fired my imagination for years. The fear of the command post staff is palpable, but one can only truly understand their fear after playing the game. The OGRE is a killing machine that tears through defending infantry, ground effect vehicles, and heavy tanks alike. Sometimes one wonders if there is a way to stop the OGRE at all. Then one finds an "unbeatable" strategy that succeeds in defending a few command posts, only to find that the OGRE has adapted to the new strategies and once again exterminates those who stand in its way.

The original war game version of OGRE is a very strategically deep game, even more so when you add the Shockwave and GEV expansions, that has been printed in four "map and counter" editions and one Miniatures edition. The miniatures edition was printed in the 1990s and is a fun game, but I have always felt that it -- like the edition of Car Wars that came out at the beginning of this millennium -- was not the right direction for the game to go. I am certain the miniatures were profitable, and I believe that SJG should have made the miniatures game, but I think that SJG was wrong in thinking that the miniatures game had replaced the classic "map and counter" version of the game. It hadn't, not any more than Warhammer the role playing game replaced Warhammer the miniatures game. To be fair, SJG sold the games parallel in the 90s -- it wasn't until the early 00s that they marketed the miniatures game as a replacement. It just seems to me that OGRE's core strength is its accessibility, both in rules and in price point, and a miniatures game moves away from this strength.

OGRE has been on hiatus for a few years as SJG has focused the majority of their efforts on the wildly successful Munchkin card game. SJG has a history of focusing like a laser on their most successful titles while leaving less attention for other products.

But this year seems to be the year that SJG, after two years of excellent non-Munchkin offerings, is resurrecting the OGRE. The sixth edition of the game has components that fall somewhere between the map and counter game of old and the more recent miniatures game. This edition will feature "chipboard" playing pieces that the players construct for use in play. This is an approach that takes advantage of the cost savings of a "printed" rather than a "cast" product line, while having greater aesthetic appeal than looking at square counters bearing numbers.

I think it is the right direction for the game, and I hope that it is a successful venture for Steve Jackson Games.

I know that I am eagerly awaiting this edition and will proudly place it next to my OGRE/GEV boxed set, OGRE mini-game, OGRE Book (first and second editions), and OGRE Deluxe Edition (non-miniature) versions of the game.

If all goes well, I should be able to purchase and play the game at this year's GENCON -- though they don't include OGRE in their list of official releases yet.

Wargaming School Renaissance -- Victory Point Games

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the fact that I collect and play role playing and board games. My collection of each is quite large and ranges from the original D&D White Box by TSR to the recently released Old School Renaissance White Box by Brave Halfling Publishing on the role playing side, and a copy of Milton Bradley's Dogfight to Bucephelous Games Dogfight on the board game side.

What readers may not be aware of is the fact that I am also a fan of simulation war games as well. My collection currently includes the full line of Squad Leader boxed sets -- the precursor to Advanced Squad Leader (of which I don't own any sets) -- and a nice collection of issues of Strategy and Tactics and World at War among other things. My introduction to this particular market within the gaming hobby came in the early 80s when a friend named Christian Hunt introduced me to Steve Jackson's excellent mini-game Ogre which featured an artificially intelligent supertank crushing a small defensive force of human soldiers. The game was great fun, and it used all the classic components associated with the traditional war game -- i.e. hexagon maps, small 1/2" counters (hand or die cut depending on the game), and a Combat Results Table (or CRT). That game, with its small and easy to learn rules set, deeply ingrained an appreciation for how fun war games can be and made it possible for me to try out more complex rules sets -- though I must admit that I've yet to try Drang Nach Osten.

The vast majority of war games are time consuming affairs that take up a good deal of table space and require either familiarity with the underlying systems of a series of games, or the patience and time to read a complex rules set. This is one of the reasons there have been so many wargamers who play these games solitaire over the years. It can be hard to find someone else who had the time, energy, and interest to pour through pages of rules and who also spent the time futzing around with them enough that the two (or more) of you could just get straight to playing without one player having to teach the other the basics of the systems etc.

This "intimidation gap," particularly acute in monsters like Drang Nach Osten, is one of the reasons that I believe that Metagaming's line of mini-games (which started with Ogre) were so successful. They provided small, approachable, quick, and playable games that in turn gave players a substantive and robust gaming experience. A game like Ogre initially appears to have little strategic depth, but one quickly learns otherwise. In a way, the mini-game was the Eurogame before there was a Eurogame.

Recently, I had been lamenting the lack of a vibrant "mini-game" community of manufacturers. I believed, wrongly as it turns out, that there were few if any publishers selling games that offered depth of wargame experience with the compactness and playability of a mini-game or a Euro-game. I knew of Eurogames like Neuroshima Hex which were Euro-style games that approached the war game experience. I was even familiar with the Euro-influenced Card Driven Strategy war games available on the market -- ranging from Command and Colors to Paths of Glory. I was looking for a company more akin to Metagaming back in its heyday or Steve Jackson Games during its early years.

I didn't believe they existed.

Then I saw an advertisement for a new Independent French War Game Magazine called BATTLES -- published in English. That's right, a French magazine. The first issue of BATTLES contained a nice, playable, and quick wargame -- in contrast to the comparably monster games of Strategy and Tactics -- that had excellent quality components. The game was beautiful by war game standards...not to mention the magazine. BATTLES is a graphically amazing magazine that covers the war game hobby as a whole, rather than focusing on "in house" games as some other war game magazines do. But enough about BATTLES, or rather not enough but I'll save some comments for posts regarding the magazine, I want to talk about an American company that I found out about because of BATTLES.

You read that series of sentences correctly. I found out about an excellent American (Southern Californian in fact) game company by reading a French war game magazine (published in English). Talk about the world being flat!

That game company is Victory Point Games and they operate out of Irvine, CA. The story of the game company's founding, and the Wild West nature of their product line/production schedule, are very reminiscent of all the qualities I admire about Metagaming and Steve Jackson. The company started as an extension of a college course, and has become something of a "community course" in game design. From their "About Us:"

Most great game ideas begin with an impassioned gamer thinking about a game and saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” That’s how the best game ideas occur – not from bottom-line watching bean counters, not from Sales or Marketing, not through scientific research – it is gamer passion that creates the best games.

Enter Alan Emrich, who was teaching various game-related subjects such as Game Design, Game Prototyping, and Game Project Management at The Art Institute of California: Orange County in 2007. An impassioned gamer himself, while teaching other impassioned gamers about the art, craft, and science of making games, he had one of those “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” moments. Although he had been ‘designing game designers’ among his students for some time, the notion arrived as a culmination of thoughts coalesced.

Just as some genius at Reese’s figured out one day, “Hey, what if put the chocolate and peanut butter together?,” Alan blended the ideas of Desktop Publishing (DTP) with his students’ game projects. The seed of an idea for Victory Point Games was planted.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if,” Alan reasoned, “I could desktop publish a few copies of some of my students’ better course project games? That way, when they graduate and go find jobs in the game industry, they’ll have a published title to their credit and a copy of it in their portfolios. That would certainly be a plus on their resume and at job interviews. What a great graduation gift I could give them!” This became a notion that he had to pursue.

A quick look through their website shows a deep catalog of games that appeal to the simulation gamer, with creations by well regarded creators like Jim Dunnigan, Joe Miranda, and Frank Chadwick, as well as light-hearted games that appeal to the casual gamer. Games like Forlorn Hope and Nemo's War address topics (space marines vs. aliens and Captain Nemo's world on the world's navies) that don't fit within the narrow confines of traditional wargaming.

What one will also find are blog entries discussing Victory Point Games' business model, and giving advice on how to design your own games the "victory point way."

These are games by gamers for gamers, but they aren't just games by gamers for "hardcore" gamers. These games are for both experienced and inexperienced gamers. You won't find any games that have "hundred" of die cut counters here. In fact, they have a whole line of games that feature no more than 20 counters used during play.

Everything about the company echoes Steve Jackson's early days -- before everything they made was Munchkin! Back in those days SJG produced games like One Page Bulge (which had one page of rules), Ogre, Car Wars, Undead, and Kung Fu 2100. The games were innovative and fun and made by people who obviously loved what they were doing. Add to this that SJG's house magazine The Space Gamer had a series of articles discussing the art of game design and you quickly see some parallels between the two entities.

Don't get me wrong. SJG is a great company. Their Frag Gold Edition is a wonderful, if overlooked by game stores, product. The same is true for their Revolution game -- and I am looking forward to owning copies of their new Zombie Dice and Cthulhu Dice games as well. In fact, I think that SJG has managed to recapture a bit of the creative spirit that was lost for a time as they focused on the best way to pay the bills. My point is that Victory Point Games behaves like SJG did when they were small and hungry.

Victory Point Games is indicative of a movement in wargaming similar to the "Old School Renaissance" movement in role playing.  It's a movement of gamers who want to break from the current fads of gaming and introduce the world to a robust and vital hobby.

I'm all for it.

I am very excited about Victory Point Games offerings, and am looking forward to reviewing them as I'm playing them.

Nuff Said: Shat My Dad Says

William Shatner...Nicole Sullivan...



I am almost bursting from the anticipation.

Nuff Said: The Stars Are Right -- CthuLegos

Who knew that you could use Legos in your regular Call of Cthulhu rpg sessions?

Hey Wizards of the Coast! What About Those of Us Who Have "Home Games?!"

I am glad that Wizards of the Coast is using their experiences running Magic: The Gathering events over the years to improve they way they run Dungeons and Dragons organized play. I even think that the D&D Encounters model, short adventures that can be run in two hours and tie into a larger campaign story, is an ideal structure to use in game store based play and to use in game store demos. It also gives me a sense that Hasbro is dedicated to promoting the hobby when they support endeavors like this -- that empower the hobby market and allow it to generate interest. I am certainly happy that they are making videos that show examples of what gaming really looks like:



What I am not excited about is that they seem to be limiting the D&D Encounters program to game stores alone and not offering the adventures (with their cool maps and supplies) to the gaming public at large -- after a delay to allow the game stores some exclusivity naturally.

You see...I am a bit of a completist. When I play a role playing game, I like to own all of the adventures and as many of the products for the game as I possibly can. This is especially true when the products come with well designed maps that I can use repeatedly.

By offering the Encounters adventures solely to the game store, Wizards is encouraging the eventual development of an underground market for these adventures and the merch that accompanies them. This is a bad thing, and ignores a potential revenue stream.

Not every gamer has 2 hours on a Wednesday that he/she can spend out of the house playing a game in a store. Some gamers are home bound and can only play in their own homes. They might be parents of small children. They might be married. They might have graduate school. They might have jobs that prevent them from going to stores during normal operating hours with any regularity.

What about these gamers Wizards?! What about those of us who would be willing to pay, and use, these products in our home games?

Sure, I'd be willing to wait 6 months -- or a year -- to wait for the whole Encounters storyline to be played out in the stores. This would give the stores a period of exclusivity that might encourage those who do have the time, but might not otherwise go to local stores (who are the lynchpin of the business) otherwise.

Thing is, I'd really like these to become available commercially at some point. Throw those of us who buy our stuff at FLGSs, but who are limited to gaming at home, a bone here!

We're the hobby too.

Fantasy Flight Games to Release "Space Hulk" Card Game

From the first publication of their flagship board game Twilight Imperium, Fantasy Flight Games have been succeeding at balancing the two most difficult tasks that game publishing companies face. There is often a tension between managing a company effectively -- actually treating the business as a business -- and the publication/creation of high quality games. If a company pays too much attention to making games that fit trends, and thus might sell well in the short term, they run the risk of alienating players due to the decreasing originality of their own products. If they ignore the financial aspects of the industry, they will slowly grind to a halt and fail to produce product that fans have eagerly awaited for years.

Fantasy Flight has done neither of these, much to their credit. They have a proper balance of pushing new creative envelopes in game design, and extending on great design ideas. A quick look at the history of the company shows that they have created some innovative games like Disk Wars and Twilight Imperium, but that they have been savvy enough to end a product line before it ended the company.

Ever since I first read that Fantasy Flight had been granted the license to create games based on Games Workshop intellectual properties, I have eagerly awaited each new entry produced by the company. Fantasy Flight have managed to release a nice balance of reprints/revisions of classic GW boxed games like Fury of Dracula and producing new games based on a previously used themes like their excellent Horus Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition games.

Last year, Games Workshop did a limited release of a revised edition of their classic Space Hulk tactical board game of Space Marines fighting sinister aliens. The new release, an update of the 1st edition of the game that ignored changes made during the second edition, was available for a very short time and is currently sells for somewhere between $100 and $150 on eBay (still fairly close to list price). $150 can seem a pretty steep price to pay for a tactical board game -- even one as high on replay value as Space Hulk -- and one sometimes finds oneself in the mood to play a game when there is no one available for a quick table top game or with more friends hanging out than the two required for Space Hulk. The movement rules in Space Hulk do allow for solo play, but the game is better with two players. For my money, I'll current play Dennis Sustare's Intruder over Space Hulk as a solitaire game -- it's more portable and plays quicker. This will likely change in the coming months.

Fantasy Flight Games has announced that they will be releasing a new cooperative card game, designed by Corey Konieczka, entitled Death Angel.

Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game is a cooperative card game set in the grim darkness of Warhammer 40,000. Players must work together as an alien menace threatens to devour their hopes of survival. If all Space Marines perish, the players collectively lose. Likewise, if at least one of the surviving Space Marines completes the objective, the players all win!

Playable in under an hour, Death Angel takes 1-6 players straight into the action. Each player takes control of a combat team (or two combat teams if playing with less than four players). If playing solo, the single player controls three combat teams. Combat teams are made up of two unique Space Marines, each with their own flavor and style.

A quick playing cooperative card game that emulates the grim darkness of the 40k universe?

Yes please.

Is The Cup of Tears Already the Third Best Ninja Movie Ever Made?

Gary Shore's two-minute independently produced "trailer" The Cup of Tears has already led to him signing an agreement with Universal to direct a film based upon the trailer. The two-minute trailer combines Tibetan monks, Shaolin looking monks, Samurai, Ninjas, things that look like missiles shot in "bullet time," and space ships shooting at each other. Somehow it manages to do this with almost no similarity to Cowboy Bebop.

Looking at Shore's direction of the action sequences, I am almost tempted to say that this is the third best American made ninja movie ever produced.

The first two?

Ninja Assassin and Revenge of the Ninja

The lack of Sho Kosugi automatically removes Shore's film from the top two.

As for other films in the Top 10 American Produced ninja movies, they include in no particular order The Octogon, You Only Live Twice, American Ninja, The Challenge, and The Hunted.

I don't consider Kill Bill a ninja film. It is too much an amalgam of all that is awesome in Eastern action cinema.