Man vs Man-Eater

In earlier posts I said I wanted to showcase my recently-painted sabre-tooth cats, so yesterday I set up a scenario specifically designed around them.

Two predators have moved into the territory of the Tribe of Gong - big cats that have already taken some of the women and elderly whilst they were gathering nuts and berries. They are pack predators, but with a bulk of 3 each.

Four of the tribe's best hunters set out to hunt and kill them. One has an axe, one a bow and two have spears. Someone wielding fire was a possibility, but the tribe didn't want to just scare the cats off; if deemed the scenario a failure if they simply ran off the board since, after a period of time, they'd simply come back.

The hunters spread out and make a bit of noise to try and startle the predators into splitting up; they will be much easier to take down if they can be dealt with one at a time. The problem with predators in Palaeo Diet is they they do tend to home in on the action.

One of the cats stalked the bowman.

A spearman rushed in and inflicted the first wound.

The axe-hunter was really bad at moving quietly and attracted the attention of the other cat, which pounced. he fought of this first attack.

This pretty much caused the whole thing to kick off - the cats rushed back and forth, and the other spearman was attacked and injured.

The second cat attacked him as well, but he held it off ...

... and he ran for it. The other spearman wounded the cat again though.

The cats didn't pursue. One returned to the axe-man, whilst the other growled at the first spearman and the bow.

The axe-man was wounded, but things got worse when both cats teamed up and took down the so far unwounded spearman.

The bowman wounded the other cat, but was mauled to death in return.

All of the hunters were now dead or wounded, but they persisted. The unlucky spearman found himself attacked by both cats again, but amazingly survived.

Both cats were now on their last hit, but so were the hunters. The axeman attracted one cat's attention, and brought it down as it charged.

But this drew the other cat's attention, and the axeman was quickly dispatched.

The surviving hunter moved in slowly - enough time for the cat to eat most of the axeman in fact. But it wasn't paying attention, and fell to a spear-thrust.

So as hunts go this was a disaster, with three hunters killed and the fourth wounded. With hindsight it was a tough mission; pack predators are actually more aggressive than the bigger apex predators (the latter are harder to kill and inflict wounds more easily, though), and giving them three hits made them very difficult opponents indeed. So if playing it again I'd either run them both as apex predators, run them as basic pack predators or increase the number of hunters.