French Oldhammer Day at the Octogone !

Just like last year, the Octogone convention in Lyon this year was the occasion for a few of us to gather and have a healthy dose of vintage fun !

To celebrate the event like BOYL last summer. our excellent friends Geoff from Oakbound and Curtis from Ramshackle had had the delicacy of sending us a load of special event models ! I don't know what your definition of classy is but this one definitely stands in my top 3.

An intriguing monk carrying an old hammer and no other than Morcar from HQ fame !

But let's get on with the main reason we all gathered : GAMES.

Beware, there's quite a large number of pics to follow so grab a bag of crisps and a good beverage and fasten your seatbelt !

ROGUE TRADER : The night they killed Santa.

Prastok is renamed for being a haven for all sorts of illegal activities and people you don't want to deal with. It will come as no surprise  that the infamous Abdul Goldberg has set his activities here for a while now...

So far, his identity hasn't been clearly determined but 6 targets are rumoured to have very high probabilities to correspond to the thief...

Note from the GM :At this point, I had decided to randomly determine who Abdul was at the start of the game just to lead the players in potentially wrong directions... Luck decided Abdul would be portrayed by... the model I had painted for him !

One person in particular, Commissar Otto was very eager to find Abdul to make him pay for the sabotage of their space ship which had crashed not far from Prastok... Gathering the men he could amongst the survivors, Otto had to find a way to contact his hierarchy and put an end to Goldberg's actions in the name of the holy Emperor.

Meanwhile, Klaus Spacebeard had managed to get rid of the result of most of his recent thefts and it had earned him a huge hangover and 2 weird robots (the squat who sold them wasn't exactly sure of their origin but ensured Klaus they were top quality). After a nice but manly episode of bar fight, Klaus was joined by the musicians playing that night. A band called KISS...
Klaus had to get away from Prastok pronto and he had managed to contact a certain Abdul Goldberg. He just had to find him and they'd all be good to start over some other safer place.

With 6 potential identities to investigate, Klaus and the members of KISS split and each went their way...

Meanwhile, Serguei, the faithful ogryn was investigating his part of the town when his group spotted the first target.

Unfortunately, as soon as they moved in his direction, the gutters opened and vomitted a flow of mutant rats as big as hounds !

While the mordians where chasing mutant rats, some of the gangers encountered an even bigger kind of them who had the very unpleasant habit of throwing some kind of highly toxic green flames at them !

Klaus had decided to interrogate the first potential target... he was sort of disappointed to find out the person wasn't the one he expected and he shot the poor soul in cold blood...

Serguei being especially motivated by his mission, he decided to stop his target right away and aimed his ripper gun to make a called shot to the feet.
One bullet to the head, one to the heart and the last one splitting torso and legs apart after, the target wasn't moving anymore. That was some kind of success.

Private Prozki, seeing he had his occasion to shine in front of his commissar, went straight to the next target... only to be stopped in his tracks by the song of the sirens.

Teddy the sniper was on the verge of starving, mind blurring. The poor ratling had barely eaten 3 times since breakfast (an hour ago). His nerves of steel made him keep focus and cover the advance of his friend Serguei in the distance.

The giant rat mean had some reason to go after the imperial but at that point, noone cared about what it could be anymore...

Vic, (Kiss' drummer) suspected the pimp trying to lure him into the arms of on eof this girls couldn't be Goldberg (some said it was the price that made him shoot).

Serguei was still in a raging mood and his shooting was getting worryingly accurate (as Klaus painfully learnt).

Private Carter shot one of the prostitutes in the head to clear his brother in arm's mind. The blood poured though made the gutters open again and very disgusting and repulsive creature come out.

The rat-ogryn decided at that point that some places in the scale of evolution had to be settled and charged Serguei the ogryn...

The battle was hard fought...

But Serguei really was in one of those days when you just feel right.

What ratmen lack in courage, they certainly make up with anger, the poor rat-ogryn was promptly avenged (and partly burnt).

With 2 targets fleeing outside the table and 4 dead, the victory had to go to the imperials despite them shooting civilians and the fact they got Goldberg by chance...

Once the first game fnished, I went to have a look at the other tables around for it's always a good way to get inspiration (and possibly find players).

First of all , I found a couple of Mordheim/Frostgrave tables that were absolutely smashing. You could tell some real time and thinking had been put to use. First one being a frozen city :

The other a ruined village (frozen as well).

Those tables made by guys from THIS BLOG (check it out).

Then you got plenty of cool tables like this one (pretty sure I took a pic of it last year as well).

And people pushing things to 11 for maximum dedication.

This quietly led us to our 2nd game of the day and this time we wen the real hadrcore path :

Warhammer 2nd edition : The blood tide

Next game was a sort of classic in many aspects. The game was to play an invasion of Ulthuan by chaotic forces using the 2nd edition of Warhammer fantasy Battle. The game was mastered by Bruno from Vialudibunda and used a huge High elf army from the good old days of the 4th edition with the chaotic force mostly provided and played by myself focused on 3rd edition models.

The forces of chaos had set sail and had every intention to take a good bite off the elvish domain. They would have to destroy the force pillar first to remove the force field protecting the island from a much bigger invasion first.

The landing started with orcs archers lining on the beach to cover the advance of the Snakemen (played as ogres) and Dragon ogres. Hopefully these 2 units would be the spearhead for the rest of the army and would buy enough time for the slower troops.

The confusion in the elvish troops (and the poor initial deployment due to surprise) meant the chaotic forces were lucky enough to  see the Snakemen charge the white lions and the elvish cavalry charged by the dragon ogres.

Meanwhile, the artillery crew was doing its best to mowe down the coming forces.

The elf general mounted on his glorious Gryphon took off and flew over the combat to try and stop the impending disaster.

As the elves were starting to fall down one after the other, the Elf Lord charged the dragon ogres in the rear to stop them.

That was all the chaos general Lord Mc Heix was waiting for to go destroy the pillar and open the gates to his troops. He gathered a few troll before him (they had spent the previous part of the battle eating their own fecces and trhowing stones at each other) and proceeded to do what the gods had put him on this cursed earth for...

I know this will come as a frustration to many but at that point we decided to put an end to this game. We had started late and had chatted a bit while playing but the game had already had enough turns under its belt to give a good hint of where things where headed. It was really nice to see the faces of people passing by and being genuinely moved by this piece of rag-tag oldschoolness. The cherry on the cake really. It was also nice to push this chaos army I hadn't used for years now. I have to say I really enjoyed the 2nd ed too, very straightforward, little non sense if any. A go to for my next battles I'd say.

After coming back at my place, Mandrin and I unpacked and played a bit with the cameras to take good shots of his models (the little force he had brought for the occasion at least).

First of all, his mordian force which he used for our Rogue Trader game in the morning. As you can see, there's a bit of everything models wise with some miniatures from all eras, all tied together by his excellent painting.

Then we took a pic (many actually) of his legion of the damned. Those include very discrete but excellent additions like candles and such and I really love the duality in tones with a cold bluish black for the armour and the fire on the other side.

I advise you to go have a look at his videos (in french) if you feel like it.

So after playing, talking about miniatures and drinking beer, we had to call it a day. We had good hopes to have a last slic eof fun pie in the morning...

Warhammer 40k 6th : To see Prastok and die...

With the little time we had left and the few models Mandrin had brought, there had to be some way to have fun. After quick calculations, we realised he had about 320 points worth of models. I quickly picked about 320 of chaos myself and we were good to play the epilogue to our RT game !


Commisar Otto had managed to kill Goldberg but that left him in a delicate situation still. He still had to contact his command officers. The return to the crash site though left little hope. Noone was there left, well none of the survivors...

After catching the imperial distress signal, the Death Knights knew they had the perfect occasion to shad some imperial blood. They had slain and butchered the survivors left behind and now they were waiting for the main course...

As soon as they spotte dth eimperials, the terminators and chosen moved forward to get their preys.

Teddy spotted them and alerted his companions

And just things were about to get desperate, some ghostly figure emerged out of nowhere and intercepted the advancing chosen.

The Terminators and the other renegades wanted to behead the imperial force right away wo they kept moving.

The chosen and the legion of the damned engaged in a furious hand to hand combat, each side as frightening as the other.

The chaotic autocannon shouted  once more and Serguei fell, he truly had been the hero of this mission. How many soldiers had made it thanks to his heorism...

Knowing that the best example is the one a man sets himself, Otto engaged the termnators in combat.

His men valiantly maintained their ground while the commissar was holding the place. Maybe there was hope after all...

The game ended on this note to leave enough time for my pal to catch his coach. It was a truly fun gaming WE. Quite reasonable as far as fat sweaty nerds are concerned and it was a lot of fun for all of us. A very nice way to finally shake hands, roll a few dice and have real life lughters arond a beer. The kind of fun I like.

I'm really eager to meet the guys again and will surely have some things prepared for the next events.

In the meantime, I have like a mountain to paint in my plate so I better get painting asap !