These games were sold in a Baggie®. Well, actually, they were sold in a plastic pouch in the late 1970s. There were 8.5" x 11" maps folded into quarters, and little cardboard playing pieces. Ogre and G.E.V. were futuristic tank battle games, with the “Ogre” being a large, 45-tracked dreadnaught. G.E.V. was an expansion to Ogre. Wizards was a similar sword-and-sorcery game.
Did anyone play these? Does anyone still play them? I still have my original pieces (but not the map or instructions) for Ogre. I also recently bought a re-issue of Ogre/G.E.V. in a VHS-sized box. But there is no one to play with. (Ah, I don’t have the time anyway.)
I was more a CarWars type person than Ogre, but I do remember Ogre. Have you seen the new stuff at SJGames? Get a bit of a kick from the Ogrethulu suppliment…as if an Ogre wasn’t allready bad enough.
Ogre/GEV was/is a great little wargame. Simple rules, simple idea, fast paced, yet with enough complexity for some good flavor.
Melee and Wizard were one on one battle games that formed the basis for Steve Jackson’s first RPG, The Fantasy Trip. I had all the solitaire adventures for that. And of course, The Fantasy Trip suitably modified became the basis for GURPS. It was kind of weird reading the GURPS rulebook when it first came out and seeing all these concepts from this little tiny game that came in a baggie!
Yep, used to play the Ogre and GEV board games. There was a version for the Commodore 64 too, that was kind of cool.
There was a similar game called the Perfect General that I played all the time on my 286 computer. I don’t know if it was actually based on a board game, but it used hex maps and was turn based. There were a bunch of different types of ground vehicles (mostly tanks) and artillery. It came with all kinds of cool scenarios to play.
Chitin was the first thing I ever got from Metagaming. Now THAT was a cool game. Armies of giant bugs scrambling to bring in the harvest for the hive…and the dead bodies of the slain just add to the food stores! Although with the facing and ZOC rules made it much less fast-paced than OGRE/GEV.
The “Fantasy Trip” RPG had all the stats for the various castes of hymenoptera, which was supercool.