Tribal Warfare

I had a moment of inspiration yesterday and felt like I'd like to try a game of Palaeo Diet based around some form of ritual tribal warfare. I've played some of the competitive scenarios, where hunters are competing with each other for kills, or fighting each other over a valuable prey animal, and the Fireside Tales scenarios have a couple of biped vs biped actions too. But I wondered if I could set up an interesting straight fight between two groups of warriors, one controlled by the player and the other working like beasts. 

This was my first go. I assumed the fight would be arranged and take place at a ford on a river separating the territory of two tribes. The river is tricky ground, except at the ford.

My Tribe had two bowmen, two spearmen and two axemen. The Others had six figures, and I used the Outfolk Hunters reactions for them (with my own adjustments for how Roar and Pelt reactions work on columns after the 'Hunter Within Medium' one*).

My Tribe sent the spearmen around one flank and the bowmen around the other. The axemen crossed the ford, but one was tardy and one of the Others rushed to engage the lead axeman. 

First blood to one of my bowmen, who wounded one of the Others.

The Others reacted, and at the ford one of them wounded my axeman. A second arrow put the wounded Other out of action. 

The fight at the ford. 

My axeman is put out of action. 

One of my spearmen is wounded. 

The Others close in, scenting victory. 

But my other spearman wounds one, which makes them falter. 

An archer crests the hill and downs another of the Others.

I had decided that once at least four figures were wounded or out of action I'd test at the end of each turn to see if the fight ended. This is, after all, a ritual fight and not one to the death. So on a 3 or less on a D6 the fight would end. It did. 

The two tribes assess what happened. The Others have two men out of action and one wounded, whilst the Tribe had one wound and one out of action. I decided on 2 points for a 'kill' and 1 point for a wound, so I won this tussle 5-3.

I set it up again, having checked the Predate reaction rules to be clear what would happen. I'll make some notes on that below. I tried a different setup with the figures all 1x Long from the river, but centred on the ford. The Others were randomly placed, and mostly ended up on the wrong side of the hill from the ford. 

My warriors crossed out of sight of them, leaving one worried Other shouting for help. But he threw a missile that wounded my lead warrior. 

My archers moved up, and put him out of action as he fled, shocked at his audacity. 

I'd moved my axemen onto the hill to hit the flank of the other Others, but with one figure down the Others were riled, and rushed forward in reaction. 

(Oh yes. The white markers? They just show which of my figures have moved in the turn. It's easy to forget if you get a complex web of reactions.)

A fight on top of the hill saw one of my axemen wounded, but they took out the enemy warrior. So the Others had two out of action and I had two wounded. For this game I made the threshold five figures injured. 

Seeing their fellow Other knocked out on the hill, most of the Others backed off (owing to terrible reaction rolls). One stood his ground, and my unwounded axeman attacked him. He fought back and my axeman was wounded. 

With five figures injured I tested for the end of the fight, and both sides decided they'd had enough. I had three wounded figures so the Others got 3 points. They had two figures out of action, so I scored 4 points. This was a closer fight, and had the Others not fled towards the end it could have gone badly for me. 

So in terms of reactions, I assumed that since nothing was being hunted the Predate reaction for dead models wouldn't apply, since no-one is looking to eat. However the Outfolk would do a predate move towards a wounded figure of either side; they would be looking to protect a friend or take advantage of a wounded enemy. If the Outfolk rolled a Predate reaction and there were no wounded figures to respond to, then I rules that they'd move 1 x Medium towards the ford, since that was the ritual ground of the fight. I had them respond with Predatory Behaviour, moving towards wounded figures if they were in line of sight and if no other reaction applied - I treat Predatory Behaviour as a reaction and have it superseded by other reactions if the apply. 

Otherwise, as mentioned above, you simply fight until a turn ends where there are five figures wounded or out of action (you can adjust this based on how many figures you have in the fight). At the end of any such turn you roll a D6 and on a 3 or less the fight ends. Otherwise it continues. At the end of the fight you score 2 points for each opposing figure out of action and 1 point for each one that is wounded.

I think I'm heading in the right direction in terms of what I'm trying to achieve, but more games are required at present. 

*In any column to the right of Hunter within 1 x Medium, all Pelt reactions become Attack (M), whilst Roar reactions become a new Feint reaction - the figure moves 1 x Short towards the figure causing the reaction then Roars. all figures within 1 x Medium test on 2 reaction dice for fleeing (so it's slightly weaker than a regular Roar). This change is because Pelt and Roar reactions in those columns otherwise have no effect because all possible targets will be greater then 1 x Medium from the reacting figure.