Landships: Ogrette Class

Her Majesty's
Ogrette Class Landships

The Ogrette class were light landships featuring many elements of the successful Ogress design. The Ogrettes were meant to counter the threat of the Einhorn class German light landships, which were the descendants of the original Wilhelmina von Holstein.

Generally, they carried one gun or one machine gun in the casemate. A few were fittedwith a gun in the casemate and a Gatling in an enlarged pilothouse on the upper deck, as in the pictures of the HMLS Leopress shown here. This arrangement made the pilothouse a crowded place in action and was most distracting to the jostled and deafened steersman.

Rear view of the Leopress and closeup of the pilothouse. The dark paint was designed to make aiming at the gunports difficult, but was soon abandoned because of excessive heat buildup.

Construction
The original battles between the larger landships tended to be rather static slugging matches because the size of the vehicles left little room on the table to maneuver. For more mobile play and for games involving a single landship supporting infantry - the tactical equivalent of an armored car - something more like the original Wilhelmina was needed . Max was rather taken with David's Ogress design and decided to create a light landship with a similar look.

Leopress is only 3.25" (83mm) long and 2.2" (56mm) wide. Her upper deck is 2" (51mm) above the ground. The deck is cut out so that the pilothouse floor is partly down in the hull. The hull, deck and formers for the tracks are foamcore board, with other parts made from thin posterboard.

FALL BACK to the HMLS Ogress; ADVANCE to the HMLS Sinuous

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