Mayhem in Sector IV

Less painting this days, with some (too rare) nice spring days I spend most of my time in the car, visiting so many friends. Luckily some of them share the same affliction, meaning they tend to use their time splashing colors on tiny pieces of metal or plastic, before pushing them around making strange mouth noises while rolling dices like there was some sort of logic in it. This said, I hit the road regularly to play so many games, and most of them are basically awesome.

I connect with people who also share the same point of views about the hobby, that no game would be played without finished stuffs, the narrative should be a major part of it, and the competition can easily be place secondary. By this, I don’t judge others ways of playing games (I to sometimes get eager to win…), it just happened to be the way I want to play mine.So we had a few hundred kilometers a few weeks ago to be host by Nico from http://nico-realmsofchaos.blogspot.com/, kind of a giga holdhammerer guru, to set up our sceneries at the convention « les Arènes du Graoully » set in his beautiful city of Metz. The event proposed many tournament (Saga, Eden, Warma/Hordes, and the louder as ever Blood Bowl), and a few table about Oldhammer passionate players, playing Warhammer (meaning the good old one), Space Hulk, Gasland, Epic 40k, and the board we bring for Necromunda (2017 ed, sorry about that).

We had so many things to do, we missed some of it, but boy everybody got his fair share of play. Some folks enjoyed some systems requiring a few necromancy spells, some tried some new old rulesets, friends where fighting a Saga Age of Crusades tournament, and I for my part got a few round of Age of Magic, the latest iteration from the Saga multiverse.

But the main event for me was a huge Necro17 game I got to master for a few friends. A huge board compiling Asslesman’s (from http://leadplague.blogspot.com) sceneries and mine, five gangs for six players and an insane amount of scatter terrain and NPC’s I got to manage through the game. Six hours later I was exhausted but full filed with so many memories that got to be turn in stories.

I got so involved in the play part that I totally forget to take any pics. So most of it comes from Asslesman, thanks to him (just one more time).

While I was planning to play this kind of scenario for a long time, I didn’t get myself to wrote anything for it. Mostly it was about improvisation and stuff I got in mind for a long time. For exemple the convoy was pretty easy to bring up as a main motivation for one team, and many bits of terrain screams themself for play value, like why would this be painted in red if it wouldn’t explode when fired upon? I also rely on a few long time unused dungeon mastering skills, wich ensure you that whatever you’ll plan, your players are going to come up with crazy fucked up stuffs that you’ll never gonna be able to anticipate.

So for a starter, I gave each team kind of a secret objective. Then I settle them across the board with vague information and advise to look closely at the game area, for I can improvise many things, and I’ve maybe hidden some stuffs here and then. Now fasten your seatbelts, here an heavy load of random narrative pix, thanks to the photo magus Asslesman.

There were a surgeon office…A few imps gathering in a sordid back alley…And a gang of Scavies guarding the fence between the shanty town and the factory…The bucther hunting the meal for tonight…And some union workers doing their best in His name…The Ash Raiders convoys that they got to bring through the wall to deliver their « goods ».A Squat Clan decided to maintain his commercial monopol.A ~~Cult~~ Union on the search for new ~~adepts~~ subscribers.Just a usual day at the sector IV . A junk pirate feel the urge to shoot his buddies due to a strange pain in his brain.But he quickly identify the threat and put it to rest…So the caravan reach the gates, but the path is closed. Time for some good old diplomacy (or is it), with a bit of help (meaning muscles) from the Goliath crew.A Servo Ogryn servoogryin’ his own business.An encounter between Squats and Van Saars ended up in a deadly crossfire pinning them down for a few turns.Lasgun lights the darkness as fire are returned to the grumpy folks.As the negociations with the scavies failed, the ashes people starts shooting on explosive stuf, here a few red painted barrels.While a bounty hunter hunts his prey, the Goliaths champ’ figured they both can make some decent proteins rations.The gates eventually explodes after many fire was exchanged, most of it not so accurately.As the train seems able to get to destination, some poorly minded choices (such as firing on him) bring the Servoogryn to activate his aggression mode. So going berzerk, he ended up blocking the way Eager to find some valuable items, a squat open a loose crate, only to find a frag trap. What a blow…After many fire exchanges with the Van Saars, the Squats got to face a few (hungry) gym club addicts.With so much trouble involved, a siren can be heard from the distance. The Arbitrators were about to apply some law!

After so many turn the convoy ended up blocked by the unstoppable servoogryn who repeatedly smash the engine into pieces. The Squats clan could’ve consider themselves victorious if they haven’t suffered a insane amount of casualties, and the Van Saar were in no conditions to restore the plasma conduits. The stealthy Genestealer Cult had gathered a few new adepts amongst the local workers, and the Goliaths are now miles away from starvation with the gruesome protein stach they gathered.

Like I said before, no really interest here about winning nor loosing, it was all about living the narrative, and the game was delightful in this. Obviously I forgot a few things, there’s some I could have done better, but everyone seems to enjoy their fair share of fun, so that’s an absolute win for me. Plus we got beers!

So thanks again to Nico, and to all the players, Mandrin, Marco, Charles http://figsnonpeintes.canalblog.com, Jean-Baptiste, Audrey et Julien, it was a real pleasure!

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