Monster Island

 After Saturday's Australian Outback Paleo Diet game I set up something different on Sunday. This time the setting is a mysterious island, sometime in the 17th century. Some dinosaurs are relaxing near a river.

But here's some sailors from an English ship. They are looking to bring back the head of the big meat-eater.

They cross teh landscape cautiously. An ankylosaur watches them.

They confront their prey.

The plan was to goad it into a charge. Otherwise its reactions would tend to lead it to fall back into the depths of the jungle (off the board). However the sailors milled around in confusion (lots of failed activation rolls).

One of them had brought grenadoes. In order to entice the meat-eater. forward he sought out a nearby group pf small raptors and lobbed one of his bombs at them. Two of them were blown to pieces, and the other two ran away. There was fresh meat in the area now, and the meat-eater was interested.

Even teh ankylosaur came for a closer look. Two of the sailors worked their way around behind the meat-eater. This was still part of the general plan to drive it more to the centre of the play area.

One of the hunters opened fire with his musket. He wounded the mighty beast. And also made it very cross.

It roared and one of the sailors ran away to be seen no more.

The musketeer crept froward for a better shot and the beast attacked. Needless to say the sailor was injured.

The bomb-wielder used some to try and injure the beast and drive it towards the other sailors.

It was unharmed, but did at least move.

The muketeers fired again ...

... but all they did was anger it. It ate one of the sailors.

Another bomb failed to hurt it.

The bomb did, however, make it even angrier, and the sailor was eaten. Along with his bombs.

At that point the two survivors, one of them injured, decided to call it quits and return to their ship.

The raptors and the mighty beast enjoyed their unexpected lunch.

The sailors were unlucky early on. Without wounds or any particular stimulation the T-rex has about a 50/50 chance of advancing or falling back when it reacts, and in every case it fell back. The sailors kept failing activations that allowed them to properly goad it with attacks and were in danger of seeing it fall back completely out of play. Hench the dangerous changes of plan that split their forces and saw them destroyed when the monster did finally rouse itself.

That said, the T-rex is very much a creature best engaged by weapons with a longer range and that don't need reloading after each shot.