Palaeo Diet On Two Continents

I took Palaeo Diet along to the club last night, since a couple of people were interested in trying it for the first time. Caesar decided to play as well. I sat out the first game to run it for the others, so Stuart, Bailey and Caesar ran two hunters apiece in my Australian megafauna setup.

I gave them a group of five kangaroos and three Diprotodons to hunt; they needed six Bulk, so that would be three roos or two Diprotodon, or a combination thereof.

Baily complicated things by selecting a hunter carrying fire.

They players decided to concentrate on the roos at the start, wounding one early on. The presence of fire startled them into a stampede which took them away from Bailey's hunters and towards where Stuart and Caeasar's were waiting.

They killed one, but the fire made the others very flighty, and the hunters couldn't easily get in close enough for further attacks.

However they did manage to kill a second, and it looked like we were in for a short game, since they only had to finish off the wounded one to win.

However the roos really did scatter across the board, and the hunters had to run to not only keep up with them, but also prevent them from leaving the table altogether. One of the kills got caught up in a fire. I ruled that whilst it wouldn't be destroyed it would lose one Bulk, so now the group had to kill something else to reach their target.

The Diprotodons got caught up in the general chaos.

One of Stuart's hunters was injured by an angry, car-sized, wombat, which then ran off. Meanwhile Caesar inflicted a hit on one of the other roos.

Bailey added more fire to the mix, and by now all of the roos were injured. The Diprotodons were proving tough to hunt, so the players concentrated on keeping the surviving roos in play and finishing one off.

Finally once of them got a killing blow; four roos were down, one of which had been lightly cooked, so the group got seven Bulk for one hunter injured. It was a messy, but successful hunt.

We had time for a second game, and switched to the northern hemisphere. This time we played the Men Who Would Be King, a competitive scenario in which individual hunters are vying to lead their tribe by proving who is the best hunter. I took part in this one. 

There were two small groups of grazers (some birds and some horses) as well as a cave-lion. Whoever struck the killing blow on the cave-lion within eight turns would be chief. If no-one had managed that, then the chief would be whoever had killed the most grazers.

Stuart too a club-armed hunter. He moved onto the board and startled the grazing birds, who ganged up him, attacked him and, in a display of unlucky die rolls, killed him.

And then there were three.

Bailey and I had hunters with missile weapons. Bailey shot at a couple of horses, wounding them and causing them to run towards Caesar's spear-armed hunter. Caesar killed one, but all of this activity had attracted the cave-lion, who attacked his hunter. But Caesar managed to seriously wound the lion as well!

With Caesar looking close to a win, Bailey and I made lots of noise to antagonise the predator, which caused it to attack Caesar's hunter with great ferocity, killing him.

And then there were two.

You aren't allowed to directly attack other hunters in this scenario, but you can put them in harm's way. I drew the lion after me, then ducked behind Bailey hoping that it would attack him. It chose to stand and roar. Bailey's hunter backed off and finished off the lion with a lucky shot.

So Bailey was the new chief!

Both games were great fun, and very lively and I think the new players enjoyed their sojourn in our prehistoric past.