OGRE!

 Some years ago I picked up this retro reproduction of a hex-and-counter game, first produced the year I was born:

This classic is clearly based on Keith Laumer's excellent Bolo novels, which I read in childhood and have been reprinted and new stories published by the SF publisher Baen. For the uninitiated, they're military SF, but the heroes are artificial intelligences in massive supertanks, occasionally supplemented by human crew. The conceit is that the intelligence is real; despite the combat and significant nods to esprit de corps (the Bolo tanks have their own Dinochrome Brigade and unit traditions), the plots usually focus on the characters of the tanks themselves, and how they react to intangible values like honor, loyalty and bravery. Despite their sheer power, the battles are rarely one-sided, and when they are, there is something else at stake, like time or innocents.

The game doesn't focus on character, though. It focuses on the massive battles between freakin' huge tanks and perfectly ordinary (if nuclear-armed) tanks and armored infantry.

It does have a solo mode, of sorts - tips for programming units are provided, mostly along the lines of "unit moves directly towards target." Given the sheer power of the Ogre, moving into its range is practically suicidal, which explains why the basic scenario is one Ogre counter versus approximately twenty "conventional" counters. An Ogre has (at least) seven powerful weapons and 45 "hits" before its tracks are disabled and it can't move; tanks can move generally faster, come with a single weapon apiece, but can combine for greater chances of damage. Infantry has a move of two, short range and combat strength according to the number of infantry present.

I played this whilst on vacation, for two reasons:

• I have so much junk in my apartment (books, games, modeling bitz) that a clear table is hard to find;
• One of my cats is young, playful and sees all that stuff on the table as something to step on or nudge. This is especially problematic when I want to take a break and come back to the game later. (Or the model - I came home to find out she'd scattered the Paperboys I was working on and had left on the table.) Just for example, I must work on this post in between her stepping on the 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  
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The board - 8x13". Lines represent
ridges, and black hexes impassable
craters.

Initial deployment, with good view of many typical units.
The typical scenario requires the Ogre to take out the CP
at top (Command Post), and either escape the board
(Victory) or wipe out all units (Total Victory).

And redeployment, after I reread the scenario and
realized twenty points worth of counters could be 
placed forward of the "line of departure."

There is a single Combat Result Table, which relies on relative attack strength vs. Defense strength. (4:1, 3:1, 2:1, 1;1, 1:2) Pretty easy to grok, with a couple exceptions such as that hitting the Ogre's track units is always done at 1:1. Tanks and infantry can be disabled (taking them out for one turn), but the parts of the Ogre are either destroyed or continue at full effect. Even a disarmed Ogre can continue rolling over the field, ramming its opponents, but losing track points in the process - lose all and it is immobilized.

Turn 1 - I used both the expendable
missiles from the Ogre to kill two vehicles.

In Turn 2, the Ogre killed two more tanks, one by ramming (losing two of its track points), and lost its main battery to a tank hit.

Turn 3 - tanks are getting close enough to combine fire
on the Ogre (the first number at the bottom of a counter
is attack strength, the second is range in hexes). They kill 
two of the Ogre's four secondary weapons, but lose two
more vehicles.

Turn 4 - lost my howitzer (longest-range unit on the
board, but immobile), and a missile tank. The mostly
intact Ogre is past my main line, in the clear, and I
clearly need to slow it down because most of my units
can only move two spaces while it can still move three.

Turn 5: three infantry counters
threw themselves at the Ogre
and died to no effect.

No pics of Turn 6, wherein the Ogre overruns and destroys the CP. Now it must turn about and either escape off the bottom of the board, or kill everything. That doesn't sound difficult.

Turn 7: The Ogre drove over the next-to-last
tank, now reduced to a move of two.
I spread out the remaining "conventional"
units (see next photo).

At this point, I took a break to take a sunset boat tour on Blackwater Sound near Key Largo:

This is one of the perks of (uninterrupted) solo play. After I got back to the hotel...

Turn 8: Carnage. Ogre finishes crushing the disabled tank
it's sitting atop here, destroys the last tank, kills one more infantry.

Turn 9 - Ogre killed two more infantry
with secondaries.

Final turn. There's one infantry
counter left, but it is out of 
range and has the same movement
as the Ogre. Hence, it can't be 
killed and the Ogre is limited
to a normal victory. I think.

A fairly simple game (the booklet is 20 pages long), but clearly with plenty of scope for expansion. There are movable command posts, more powerful Ogres, and several different scenarios, whether between Ogres, Ogres and conventional units, or Ogres and conventional units vs. Ogres and conventional units. (There is also just playing the conventional units against each other, but that might be missing the point of the genre.)

Playing always helps me "grok" a game better than simply reading it, and I now feel confident that I can run it again. Quick to play, easy to set up, the sheer fun of blasting through enemies; what's not to like?