[Ogre] 'Shadow' Ogre

[Douglas R. Pearson]

There is an excellent article on the use of Ogres beyond
the tactical game on Andrew Walter's "Ogre on the Brain"
page at:

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/9645/Ogre/StategicOgres.html

This got me to thinking:  What if the answer to a thorny
strategic problem is not _more_ Ogres, but _less_ . . .

To pull a phrase from the article, an Ogre "can't be ignored".
An enemy commander _must_ find a way to deal with an Ogre
loose in his backyard.  This would open up any number of
other situations which the commander of the Ogre could
exploit.

So what commander wouldn't be glad to have several of the
following:

Mark III-S Shadow Ogre
   1 Main Battery (4/3; D4) 0
   2 Secondary Battery (3/2; D3) 0 0
   6 Antipersonnel (1/1 against infantry
         or D0 CP only; D1) 000 000
   60 Tread units: Movements starts at M3
      00000 00000 00000 (movement drops to M2)
      00000 00000 00000 (movement drops to M1)
      00000 00000 00000 (movement drops to M0)
   Ramming Dice:	2 (3 vs. bldgs)		Size: 7
   VPs:  75		Year: 2077 – 2078 on
   Designer:  Doug Pearson	Source:  Doug Pearson

Notes:  The 'Shadow' Ogre is a highly modified Ogre based
on a standard Mark III chassis.  It is intended to be a
weakened, lighter Mark III.  To this end, it has two less
secondary batteries and two less anti-personnel weapons.
The ramming dice and size reflect its Mark III chassis.

But the 'Shadow' doesn't _look_ like a Mark III.  Its
upper frame and body have been altered with lighter
layers of BPC armor to resemble the Mark V.  It has the
following additional _non-functional_ weapons:  one main
battery, four secondary batteries, six anti-personnel
weapons, and 6 external missiles.

The 'Shadow' has a weight ("load") of 10.5 per tread
according to Henry Cobb's javascript calculator (if I'm
doing it correctly) and a cost of about 71.  The standard
Mark III has a cost of (almost) 100 and a load of 14.
I've assumed that some of the difference is taken up
with massive amounts of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM).
Unlike the 'Ninja', these electronics are there to mimic
the electronic signature of a Mark V.

While the 'Shadow' cannot fight toe-to-toe on the level
of a Mark III (much less that of a Mark V), with careful
use of its weapons, it should be able to be, for all intents
and purposes, indistinguishable to the enemy from a Mark V.
Thus, for the cost of a real Mark V, a commander can have
two faux-Mark Vs to wreck havoc behind the enemy's lines
and hopefully break a stalemate wide open.

A later variant replaced two of the six fake external
missiles with real ones.  This gave a load factor of 11.5
and a VP cost of about 81.  So with the electronics,
I'll give the variant a final VP value of 85.

Comments?
Doug Pearson     "Bowser"     pearsond at odsgc.net
===========================================================================
OGRE Geek Code:
S+++ O1() O2+ G+++ S++ RP++ OM() B+ GO() PO+++ HR/NU- MK3() MK5-- CM-- W()
     thanx to Michael Powers 2001/gevfeb23.txt