I really want to like the ogres.  I’ve played an ok campaign with them.

my three biggest gripes relate to contracts (not worth it), camps (not mobile) and food…. which is manageable.

Camps should be land Black Arks!

Greasus needs other mount options.

I'd prefer Golgfang be a DoW LL. There is enough LL options to draw on, like that one Human who leads a Gnoblar Clan, the Gnoblar Horde, the one who is homies with the Chaos Dwarfs, the one whose just a Necromancer (He'd be fun.), etc.

Sagez#6761 wrote:

Some of you may remember my thread on the old forum, this time it's back!

Old problems are still there: Greasus and Skrag, Camps, Contracts, Big Names and more.

So I'll continue making this little compilation, feel free to discuss all things Ogre and from time to time I'll post some takes from the community.

Before anyone will tell me that we need to wait for ''Ogre DLC'' let me tell you that Dark Elves got some really important changes in 2023, like ports generating slaves. That was a gamechanger for them. Change is possible.

I'll keep gathering player feedback.

*

u/Mercy on reddit, 1,1 k upvotes on Reddit

Can we all agree that Ogre campaign mechanics are in a terrible state and we may have to wait for years for these issues to be addressed?

I'll start this long-winded whinge off by saying that Ogres on the campaign aren't "unplayable". I enjoy their units in battle and they aren't in as sorry a state as Beastmen or WoC were Pre-Taurox and Pre-CoC. Additionally, some of their issues are less to do with the Ogres themselves and more issues with the general campaign and battle mechanics. However, this does little in the face of the mountain of issues the chungus boys face on the campaign (and to a lesser extent in battle), so we'll go through this point by excruciating point as I dissect each one of them. In no means is this list exhaustive though and I'm not claiming to the be final arbiter of what makes the Ogres enjoyable or not.

Legendary Lords

Given that the Ogre Kingdoms were a preorder bonus for TW:WH3 they ended up in a similar state to Norsca where they got only two Legendary Lords; Greasus Goldtooth and Skrag the Slaughterer, leaving Golgfag Maneater and Bragg the Gutsman out in the rain (for now.) There was some controversy with Greasus showing up on a wheelbarrow rather than his carpet of Gnoblars, and given the circumstances of Nurgle's most recent visitation upon this mortal plane I at least was fine with this. Until, that is, that it turned out that Greasus' attack animations are terrible and he's considered one of if not the worst LL on the battlefield, and his campaign skills simply don't make up the difference. Skrag is a passable LL, being a wizard with decent MA and weapon strength, but the fact that he has a single unique ability, no actual unique skill line and is unable to gain Terror or Regeneration via his skills when compared to a generic Slaughtermaster lord. Yes, he has unique Big Names, but..

EDIT: People have pointed out that Bragg the Gutsman by the lore is much better suited for being a Legendary Hero rather than a Legendary Lord, and I agree with this. If we get an Ogres DLC lord, it'll probably be Golgfag, but Ghark Ironskin could make a unique FLC LL with his Iron Rhinox.

Big Names

Why in the name of the Great Maw are Big Names mutually exclusive? Is Greasus Goldtooth's full name not Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Gatecrasher Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese? Why is he only allowed to use one? Why are all Ogre characters only allowed to use one of their Big Names at a time? This feels like a huge oversight when compared to the Path to Glory Boons of Chaos, which are not mutually exclusive. These would be so much better if they were permanently active once you achieve them and you didn't have to choose only one at a time.

Meat

Now into the meat and potatoes of the Ogre's issues on the campaign map. Meat. The resource every Ogre army needs to keep moving, and it can be spent on Offerings to the Great Maw which give some pretty decent buffs. Every unit in an Ogre army consumes one meat a turn, but is reduced when in a settlement and counteracted completely when in range of a camp. This is fine if not for a few caveats.

While Gnoblars are cheap in terms of money and make useful tarpits, the fact that they consume the same amount of meat as all other units makes them cost-inefficient and in terms of lore, Gnoblars get the Ogre's scraps, not the same amount of meat they get. Gnoblars ideally shouldn't cost meat, or should have a researchable feature that stops their meat consumption.

Meat is generated via being in a settlement, being in the radius of a camp, winning a battle, and with some research unlocks. Raiding neutral or hostile territory does not generate meat, despite the fact that raiding is exactly how Skaven generate food. Ogres wander across the world, yet they're severely hampered if they stray too far from their settlement or camps, giving them no real ability to roam far unless you want to baby sit a camp. Speaking of...

Camps

Ogres aren't builders. They'll set up tents or squat in the ruins of long dead empires. Every settlement of theirs can only be upgraded to tier three with a small handful of buildings; the best unit you can hire from a settlement is Ironguts. Anything bigger, you need a camp.

And camps suck.

Before Warhammer III, if you weren't playing WoC with mods, you generally needed a few hordes to sit somewhere safe and build income buildings in them to fund your other hordes. Camps are like this, but you need them close to your frontlines to feed your armies, and they aren't protected via generating chaos corruption to grind down incoming armies with attrition. Just like old WoC hordes, rather than supplying their own garrison, Camps are stationary armies that have upkeep costs and you have to recruit and pay for units to protect it, and recruiting these units take up valuable recruit slots in your settlements or camp that your actual army may need.. This makes them incredibly vulnerable when starting up, as you can only protect it with cheap gnoblars and ogre bulls. Because it's so weakly defended, AI tends to make a beeline straight for your camps, and if you lose a camp battle, the whole settlement, all the money and time invested into it is gone, 100% of the time.

Camps do provide very strong benefits that nullify the food upkeep and provides replenishment even in hostile territories, but they're inherently extremely vulnerable and require babysitting for quite a while, and even when you think they're safe, the AI has a tendency to sneak around you and crush your camp with a full army. If your capital is attacked and usually either sacked or occupied, only being razed if you're unlucky, it's not that hard to build it back up. If you lose a level 5 camp, it's right back to square one and tens of thousands of gold down the drain in the blink of an eye.

Units

Unlike Norsca which didn't have a concrete army list on tabletop to reference from, the Ogre Kingdoms did, so there's notably a few holes in the Ogres' roster, namely Bruiser heroes, Yhetees, and Thundertusks. You could say there's a lack of Maneater diversity, what them all being pirates when tabletop models existed for Pirate, Paymaster, Empire, Arabyan, Nippon and Female Maneaters. Still, the roster is flexible and doesn't have any serious holes in it in terms of armybuilding.

Contracts

Perhaps the sorriest thing the Ogres have, and it's a core part of their identity as mercenaries. If you're not familiar, every ten turns, three factions will offer you a contract to go destroy or occupy a settlement or defeat a character in battle. Completing these contracts gives you money, diplomatic relations boon with the faction that posted the bounty, and either a magic item or meat for your army. And by "money" It can be as little as 1500 gold, asking you to declare war on a faction that may be far stronger than you.

Sadly, perhaps due to the limitations of the game's systems, this is the way that the ogres' mercenary nature is represented. If you declare war on someone, attack one of their armies or settlements to fulfil a contract, you're now at war with them and it's very unlikely they'll accept peace after you attacked them unprovoked. It would be great if you were able to attack as a third party, do your job and get out, or even be offered a contract by the faction your contract is targeting to betray your current contractors. It lacks flexibility in a big way.

While they have been changed a bit, given the payout is a bit more than it used to be and now that contracts only expire if the target is destroyed or the contractor is destroyed, it's still often just not worth the trouble and it's a painfully shallow experience. What makes it worse is that ogres need the money regardless. They're not a strong economy faction, they make money from battles, raiding, sacking and razing, and from contracts.

My biggest concern with all of this, is that like the Beastmen or the Warriors of Chaos, it may be years before any meaningful changes (or even an overhaul) are made to address the myriad issues Ogres face on and off the battlefield. There have been some steady changes made, but they need more than the occasional tweak to bring them up to par with the rest of the factions.

Of course this is all just my long-winded whinging over a faction that I love on the battlefield but their campaign mechanics and some of the choices made have started to grate on me enough to write this giant text wall.

Couldn't agree more here. My biggest gripe is that a generic lord is stronger than Greasus, which makes no sense. Skrag really needs a smaller melee line.
Camps should be able to move, Names should be able to stack and Contracts need some real attention.

Also, the Mercenary units, need an updated pool. Allow more variation and options. 

I like Ogres as a race in the lore, I don’t like how they function in the game.

Monstrous infantry suffers a lot in this game because it gets stuck very easily and it is very hard to pull them from combat without suffering horrible casualties.

The meat mechanic is ok.

Camps are weird, why can’t you move them every few turns?

Contracts are pointless. I am not going to attack a faction I am not at war with for that kind of money.
If Ogres are mercenaries, then the contract mechanic should work in another way, for example you lend an army to the faction that requires it: you can fight battles when required, but otherwise you don’t have any contact with their enemy. You shouldn’t be forced to declare war to everyone just to get a contract. 

I definitively agree with most if not all of OP comments here.

My hope is that we get a Silence and the Fury-like DLC for them, including a beefy rework.

There is a DLC-size amount of missing units

LL: Golfag Maneater

FLC LL: Ghark Ironskin

LH: Bragg the Gutsman

Generic character: Bruiser hero

Units: Yhetees, Thundertusk, Maneaters vatiants (could be a Golfag specific mechanic), Blood Vultures, Gnoblars additional units 

Mechanics rework:

- Camps as Black Arks on land

- Non-exclusive Big Names

- (Much) better contracts. Oxyotl rewards could be taken as example (also teleportation to the contract place maybe with a cooldown)

- Better Greasus -> Malagor got his wings to fly, Greasus should get his gnoblar carpet

CA did it in the past for the Beastmen, no reason why they couldn't do it for Ogre Kingdoms as well.

I'm back after a break, so...

​Two ''fun'' facts about Ogre Kingdoms They are so forgotten that they weren't even included in the Immortal Empires trailer.

 and...

 A complete list of LLs worse than Skrag the Slaughterer:

Greasus Goldtooth

​

Sagez#6761 wrote:

I'm back after a break, so...

​Two ''fun'' facts about Ogre Kingdoms They are so forgotten that they weren't even included in the Immortal Empires trailer.

 and...

 A complete list of LLs worse than Skrag the Slaughterer:

Greasus Goldtooth

They fixed Greasus animations and he hits like a truck now, the only thing holding him back is his poor speed otherwise he's not useless as he used to be.

He doesn't, he doesn't even get sundering attacks like a lot of other Lords or other debuff on hit. His items are very average. He melts to missiles in seconds. His unique skill line is too short and lacking. In some areas he is worse than generic Tyrant, just like Skrag is worse than Slaughtermaster.

Greasus took powerful axe blows to the chest and keep going, game doesn't represent his toughness. He should be a pain to fight in melee, like many other Lords. He's a joke.

The biggest problem is people trying to paint the map with them. How about just don't? Pick a faction you wanna help, pitch your tent safe in their territory and start murdering their enemies and instead of keeping settlements that are garbage anyways, sell them.

​

Sagez#6761 wrote:

He doesn't, he doesn't even get sundering attacks like a lot of other Lords or other debuff on hit. His items are very average. He melts to missiles in seconds. His unique skill line is too short and lacking. In some areas he is worse than generic Tyrant, just like Skrag is worse than Slaughtermaster.

Greasus took powerful axe blows to the chest and keep going, game doesn't represent his toughness. He should be a pain to fight in melee, like many other Lords. He's a joke.

I'm not saying he doesn't have issues, he does and he needs to have his actual mount from the TT and a proper skill tree but he isn't useless anymore since they fixed his animations.

​

Neodeinos#5871 wrote:
he needs to have his actual mount from the TT

He really doesn't.  His TT mount is just as dumb as the one he got.  He needs a mount that ISN'T a joke.

My preference would be that Ogres could be played in multiple ways like how Vampire Coast can be played with few settlements and just sacking and setting up coves or you can make a big empire.

Hexi#4540 wrote:

The biggest problem is people trying to paint the map with them. How about just don't? Pick a faction you wanna help, pitch your tent safe in their territory and start murdering their enemies and instead of keeping settlements that are garbage anyways, sell them.

Actually that's a good idea. IMO Ogres should be able to have normal, up to tier V settlements in the mountains. ​It would largely fix them and AI would be able to play them decently.

So Ogres should be strong in mountains (at least in MoM), weak in the open fields (current weak settlements) and camps are a nice extra.

Druidsbrook#6139 wrote:

My preference would be that Ogres could be played in multiple ways like how Vampire Coast can be played with few settlements and just sacking and setting up coves or you can make a big empire.

Hexi#4540 wrote:

The biggest problem is people trying to paint the map with them. How about just don't? Pick a faction you wanna help, pitch your tent safe in their territory and start murdering their enemies and instead of keeping settlements that are garbage anyways, sell them.

But that would completely negate the whole point of them being nomadic. Their camps should move tho, like Black Arks.

​

Druidsbrook#6139 wrote:

My preference would be that Ogres could be played in multiple ways like how Vampire Coast can be played with few settlements and just sacking and setting up coves or you can make a big empire.

Hexi#4540 wrote:

The biggest problem is people trying to paint the map with them. How about just don't? Pick a faction you wanna help, pitch your tent safe in their territory and start murdering their enemies and instead of keeping settlements that are garbage anyways, sell them.

That's not playing multiple ways. That's called playing the faction correctly vs deliberately making stupid choices by holding yourself back.

Playing H ways would be something like Nakai at release in the LM. you pick Nakai to be a horde or anyone else to build an empire.