The Mammoth And The Bear

I played Palaeo Diet with Daniel last night. He'd not played before, so our first game was the traditional hunt. We had a couple of hunters each, with a single mammoth and four horses up for grabs. Daniel played it safe with two spear-armed hunters, so I rounded out the party by adding a club and a bow to the mix.

We decided to go for the mammoth and ignore the horses, (but not to the extent of driving them away).

To that end Daniel operated as a blocking force, whilst my hunters worked their way around a rock outcrop - cautiously, so as not to scare the horses - in order to drive the mammoth towards his hunters.

Naturally the mammoth did not cooperate, and moved off in very much the direction we didn't want it to go.

Daniel decided that one of his hunters was close enough to have a go with his spear. He missed and the mammoth charged him.

He was wounded. So Daniel went in with his other hunter, and scored a critical wound! The mammoth attacked that hunter, but failed to injure him.

So we had the mammoth halfway to a kill. We set up a three hunter ambush on a small hill. The idea was that I'd use my bowman to drive the mammoth towards it, and each hunter would get a surprise attack as it came in. giving us good odds of at least another wound.

My bowman shot at the mammoth scoring a lucky third wound. The mammoth turned and ran ...

..  towards the ambush, but fell fractionally short of the distance required to spring our trap.

The mammoth then backed off, towards my hunter. Enraged it fled towards the table edge, and mu hunter didn't get out of the way in time and was trampled.

Since one of the conditions for a successful hunt in this scenario is not to lose a hunter, it was a failure, so we abandoned it at that point. We could have gone after the horses, but it wasn't really worth it.

I set up a second game, this one being a competitive scenario. In Clan Of The Cave Bear, Daniel ran three members of the Bear Tribe, who were looking to kill five interlopers from the Strangers Tribe (me). We were looking to kill the bear (centre of teh table. The bear was looking to be left alone.

I sent three hunters after the bear and left a couple to hold off the Bear Tribe.

My club-armed hunters quickly attacked the bear, wounding it.

But the both ended up wounded in return.

They kept up the attack and one was killed.

Then the other. But I had inflicted two out of three wounds on the bear. So I just needed a hit from one of my other hunters.

On the flank one of my spear-armed hunters was attacked by the Bear Tribe, and killed. This attracted the bear.

Daniel dealt with my other spear-armed hunter. I now just had my bowman left. He was being stalked by the bear and two opposing hunters.

All I needed was a couple of actions to get in a move and a shot and I could have possibly taken down the bear. I got one action. I used it to have a shot at one of Daniels hunters. I missed. The hunter killed my bowman. End of scenario

So it was a close game; I was one would away from killing the bear when Daniel took down my last hunter.

Thanks to Daniel for two fun games.

To add to the fun of the evening, there was cake. Caesar and I share a birthday (although not an age) and this was the closest Thursday to it. Traditionally we exchange cards and both bring cake. This year was no exception*.

*Last year was, but only because I was in the UK at the time.

Mammoth Hunt

I played a quick game of Paleo Diet the other day, just to while away a lunchbreak with something other than a nap.

I set up a couple of mammoths and some horses. One of the mammoths was a juvenile as I'd not really used the juvenile rules that much.

There were five hunters, with a target of six bulk. The adult mammoth is worth 4, the juvenile 3 and the horses are 2 each.

An early shot with an arrow saw the adult mammoth wounded. The archer was really just trying to drive it away from the calf.

A hunter inflicted a hit on the calf, but this brought up the wounded parent who was quite cross. The hunter was wounded in the attack.

Another hunter came up and attacked teh juvenile mammoth. This obviously enraged the parent whose subsequent attack were all ineffective.

The hunters killed the juvenile and the parent ran off.

A spear-armed hunter had attacked one of the horses, and found himself in the path of the bereaved parent.

One of the hunters carried fire, and had been trying to set up a wall of flame to prevent the animals fleeing north. However the fired had kept going out and it was only now, well into the hunt, that he really got things going.

The spearman ducked out of the way of the mammoth and finished off one of the horses.

In panic the other two horses stampeded over him, injuring him.

They also ran towards the fire, panicked again and headed towards teh edge of the table. If they left then the hunters would have to take on the adult mammoth; not an enticing prospect. One of the club-wielding hunters moved to drive them back into the hunt area.

They turned around and he was lucky enough to get a good strike at one, killing it.

And that was it; with two horses and a juvenile mammoth in the bag the hunters had managed a successful hunt, albeit with two injuries.

In fact they were very lucky; the adult mammoth had attacked four times with a 50% chance of scoring a hit and missed each time. At least one hunter would have probably been put out of action if the mammoth's attacks had been better.

Still, juveniles offer an interesting challenge, and I'm going to try another hunt with one for my next game.

Palaeo Diet Down-Under

I took Paleo Diet to the club last night as an alternative to the Shiny New Tank Game that was the primary game for the week. Expecting a modest three players (including me) I ended up with five. However since two were only barely familiar with the game and two had never played before I still went with a simple hunt, and we simply had one hunter apiece. Tough if someone got killed early, but we hoped that wouldn't happen.

I used my Australian Outback setup. We had five hunters, two with clubs, two with spears and one with fire. Two of the hunters had dogs. We were after 5 Bulk worth of kills; on the table were three Diprotodons (giant grazer) and three Bullockornis (herd grazer) as well as a lurking Megalania (apex predator).

We entered from various points around the table. Bailey, as the fire-user, was designated as the hunt leader and got to determine the order in which the hunters activated.

Three of the hunters, including the two with dogs, were to the north and closest to the Bullockornis flock. They closed in on the birds, although their movements did cause a few nervous flees.

Bailey and I were to the south. Bailey immediately advanced on the Megalania waving his burning brand.

It quickly fled the table. So at very little effort we'd removed a major obstacle to our successful hunt.

Caesar came close to a Bullockornis which, much to his surprise, turned and attacked him, wounding him.

New player Philip managed to wound a Diprotodon with his spear. It roared and everyone backed off to consider their next move. Indeed it did a lot of roaring in this game, keeping the hunters in a constant state of movement.

My hunter was moving towards the action but attracted the ire of two particularly aggressive Diprotodon. Fortunately he escaped injury.

Further into the game and the hunters to the north had wounded two Bullockornis  and one of the Diprotodon. It was now simply a matter of finishing them off.

The Bullockornis fell fairly quickly - Philip got one and the other strayed over to my hunter who put a spear in it. So we had four of our five points already. We either needed to kill the final Bullockornis or finish off the Diprotodon.

I looked at chasing after the last bird, whilst everyone else went after the already wounded Diprotodon. It proved singularly hard to kill, though, and even wounded Minh's hunter.

The final Bullockornis ran off the table thanks to Bailey's irresponsible fire-starting. This was supposed to drive the animals towards the hunters, but in fact simply diverted them from the hunt and out of play.

After a lot of effort Philip finally managed to adminster the coup de grace to the Diprotodon. We'd got seven bulk to take back to the tribe; plenty for everyone and we only had two hunters injured.

The final positions. Philip had scored two of the kills, whilst I had one. Minh and Caesar helped with wounding beasts early on. The dogs did very little except annoy the prey.

So a good hunt all round, although it was more frustrating than it looked. Everyone seemed to enjoy how the seemingly easy task gradually became more chaotic as action failures caused reaction among the beasts. By the end we were beginning to doubt if we'd ever get the Diprotodon before a hunter was seriously injured or killed (which in this scenario would have counted as a failed hunt). The new players picked up the game fairly quickly as well.

Update: A couple of bonus photos courtesy of Ralph

Scarecrows

I wanted to give my new animated scarecrows an outing, as well as one or two of my new pilgrim adventurer figures. So I set up one of the scenarios from the Palaeo Diet: Pulp book - The Mummy Returns.

A party of adventurers in the centre of the table must collect artifacts that are randomly scattered across the table. The artifacts are each worth a number of points, but the adventurers don't know how many until they get them home. To win they must recover (in this case ) 5 pts worth of artifacts. Three of the six artifacts are worth 1pt, one is worth 2pts, one is worth 3pts and the sixth is worth a whopping 4pts.

In two sectors of the playing area are mummies. At least I used the mummy stats for them; they were, in fact, animated scarecrows. I used the leader as a greater mummy and another as a lesser mummy. Each could summon more animated scarecrows if they rolled the appropriate reaction.

In PD:P mummies are scared of cats, and in this scenario a cat starts on the board. I don't have a model of a cat, so I used a rat swarm. It would react like a beast and affect the scarecrows if within a certain distance of them.

Here are the three adventurers. We've met the swordsman Aaron before. And, in fact, the musketeer Job has featured on the blog as well. So the only new adventurer is Adam the Alchemist. He is armed with a a big bag of grenades. What could possibly go wrong?

The Scarecrow King is menacing, but in fact took no part in the game.

Adam and Isaac loped off towards the small farm to pick up artifacts there.

Isaac edged warily past the screcrow.

It lunged at him, wounding him.

The injured Isaac backed off. If an adventurer is killed in this scenario then the VP target increases by 2pts, so it's best not to lose anybody.

Adam lobbed a bomb at the scarecrow. A bomb can be thrown a short distance, then you roll for a bounce. Hopefully it continues on its path, but it can scatter, go off immediately (hitting the user) or, in this case, simply fizzle out and not work at all.

Aaron had collected an artifact and rushed over to assist his companions as the scarecrow pursued Isaac. Isaac escaped further injury, but the scarecrow cursed him.

Aaron wasn't having that, and in a brisk fight, which saw him injured, chopped the scarecrow into distinctly non-animated pieces.

Isaac and Adam fled with a few artifacts between them.

Aaron soon joined them; the Scarecrow King was too far away to do anything effective.

The lads had four artifacts between them. I rolled 4D6 and rerolled until the numbers were unique; 1-3 meant an artifact was worth 1pt, 4 meant it was worth 2pts and so on. The adventurers picked up 9pts, so got a very convincing win. They needed 5pts to win, so four artifacts would always do it for them. 

The scenario played very quickly and, to be honest, seemed pretty easy. It wasn't hard to get to the artifacts and obviously the scarecrows only do anything if the party fail any activations. Playing with two adventurers makes it harder, since they still have to collect four artifacts to ensure a win (but have less risk if they go for fewer). Also making the terrain denser would change things a lot as well.