Little White Bull

I've been doing some testing for a small change to the Palaeo Diet rules to fix a bug in some of the reaction tables, so have been running some hunts with affected beasts to see how they work.

Here's some aurochs. They are not some of the beasts affected, but still make a nice centre-piece for the hunt. One of them is a rare white bull, and the job of the hunters is to kill that one and one other. I ran the aurochs as giant grazers, but with a resistance of 4+ and only 3 bulk.

I had five hunters in play. You can see two of them here.

The others went on a wide sweep. The plan was to use the one archer to drive the white bull away from the rest of the herd and into these three hunters

The hunters in position.

A couple of shots failed to wound the white bull, but did drive it towards the waiting hunters.

The waiting hunters then proceeded to botch the hunt, failing to inflict any wounds on the bull, whilst taking wounds themselves.

And all that gory action attracted some nearby Outfolk (the subject of some of my testing). I had an outlying hunter whose job it was to keep them back with threats and shouting.

My hunters finally managed to injure the bull, but they were making heavy weather of it.

And, ignoring my hunter, the Outfolk came in to join the hunt, just as one of my hunters was gored and put out of action.

To add insult to injury, the archer had been doing a great job of driving the white bull back towards the hunters, but ended up being wounded by another member of the herd.

And it gets worse. The Outfolk scared off my hunters and then killed the white bull. I had to drive them off the kill immediately or they would claim it as their own*.

I didn't. So the hunt was a complete failure. I lost one hunter out of action and two wounded.

Anyway, the thing I was testing didn't seem to be too bad. Basically there is a logic flaw in the reaction table for some beasts, if they have a column headed 'Hunter within one M'. This is generally the second column from the left in the reaction table, and when testing for reactions you work from left to right until you hit a relevant column. So all of the columns to the right of it can only apply if there are no hunters within M. However there are reaction results in columns to the right of it that only have an effect if there are one or more hunters within M of the reacting beast (Roar and Pelt, specifically). They are redundant results. Rather than change the results, because there are some interesting ones in there, I am experimenting with moving the 'Hunter within one M ' column further to the right - to just before the 'Any Other Circumstances' column. This will make the other columns, which are generally fairly specific situations, more likely to happen along with their more interesting results.

From a couple of test games it doesn't seem to cause any weird issues, but I will do some more testing.

If you have the rules (and supplements), this affects the following beasts:

Hominids (Palaeo Diet)
Outfolk (Fireside Tales)
Witch Doctor (Pulp)
Mummy (Pulp)
King Carnivore (Pulp)

*If they were in contact with it at the end of the turn each Outfolk hunter would eat one bulk of the kill. The three of them would basically scoff the lot.

Pre-'Napoleon' Lasalle

Our club is having an outing to see Napoleon this evening, so yesterday some of us played a Napoleonics game to get into the mood. We used Lasalle and picked one of the small scenarios from the book. This involved some Russians and French meeting in a clearing surrounded by dense woods and squabbling over a village.

Peter took four brigades of French whilst Caesar and I ran three brigades of Russians. I had the cavalry, naturally.

I had the position of honour on the right flank, but found myself face with a large group of infantry approaching, backed up with cavalry. Turns out they were conscripts, but I wasn't to know that at the time. Anyway, after a round subjected to Russian artillery fire (the best artillery fire in the world) they slipped off into the woods, thus causing me even more consternation because even I wouldn't go haring off into woods with cavalry to chase down infantry.

On the other side of the battlefield Caesar occupied the village and spread out his infantry to await the inevitable French attack.

The conscripts continued to advance menacingly through the woods.

I moved my cavalry out to threaten what I could, although this did leave our right flank (along with our camp and an objective marker) somewhat exposed. But there were French horse out there and conscripts who hadn't made it into the wood and who were seriously considering that square formation they'd been told about.

Caesar had formed square on our extreme left when threatened by more French cavalry. Peter responded by charging it with an infantry column and wiping it out in a typically shabby French move. The rest of our infantry put up more of a fight.

I softened up the French conscript square with artillery (Russian horse artillery - best Russian artillery in the world), then charged it with my dashing cuirassiers. The French infantry decided that they had somewhere better to be.

A turn  later my other cuirassiers swept away the French cavalry on our right. This broke the French army; they had taken heavy losses elsewhere thanks to our artillery and marauding Russian horse in a big open space was too much for them.

To be fair on the other flank they were doing very well, and our infantry was having a bit of a rough time. Mind you, our Cossacks held off an attack by two French cavalry units (who'd sneaked through the wood we thought was covering our flank) so that was a win of sorts right there.

Anyway, it was a fun little game played to a conclusion in a couple of hours. And as accurate as anything we're likely to see at the cinema tonight.

Running With Wolves

Tucked away at the back of Palaeo Diet is a fun little scenario where you get to turn the tables on the hunters, playing a pack of predators who are looking to munch some of those delicious looking bipedal apes. Yesterday I gave it a go.

The predators are basically run as club-armed hunters, but have the Hungry trait to reflect their less controlled predatory behaviour. This means that they will make uncontrolled moves towards wounded and killed things.

I ran a pack of four wolves. The objective was to lose no more than 1/3 of the pack (one wolf in this case), whilst killing hominids equal to the number of survivors (so at least three and possibly four).

I put a group of four bipeds in the centre of the board.

The wolves approached their prey in two groups. One hominid reacted by rushing towards a pair of wolves. These wolves were approaching from beyond a hill, as a lot of the mandatory reactions the wolves have are based on line of sight, so it was best to stay hidden for as long as possible.

The other three hominids were more wary as the second group pf wolves closed in.

The wolves rushed the nearest biped, wounding him ...

... and then killing him.

The other bipeds ran off.

The second group of wolves now attacked, bringing down a second biped.

One of the wolves went wide to steer the hominids back towards the rest of the pack. The hominids obliged.

A third hominid was brought down.

One of the wolves chased after the fourth biped

He turned and fought back, wounding the wolf!

But then he ran off at top speed, leaving the board. 

I had killed three prey items, but with four wolves to feed it wasn't enough. My first hunt was a failure.

I set up another game. There was less terrain this time. The wolves approached the hominids in one group.

That said they spread out to approach the hominids from multiple directions.

A lucky kill with the first attack.

Of course this caused the other wolves to make uncontrolled moves towards the fresh meat.

However they quickly sorted themselves out and attacked the hunters again. Or, in this case, found themselves attacked, which was a golden opportunity to get another kill.

Three wolves chased down one of the bipeds.

He could run ...

... but he couldn't hide.

There was one hominid left now, and he'd fled to the edge of the board. The wolves moved in cautiously, aiming to use one of their number to drive him into the other three.

Then I took a closer look at the charts. The hominid was more likely to run if the wolves did something like howl whilst a distance away. If they came in close, and quickly, he would be more likely to stand and fight, even outnumbered.

So one of the wolves did just that - rushed into an attack.

The hominid fled!

So another failed hunt - three kills but four wolves to feed. 

I might try five hominids the next time.

I used the hominid reaction chart in the main rules for this scenario - it's the one provided. But it's similar to the Outfolk one from the first supplement and the latter offers some more interesting extra reactions, so I may try that the next time too.

Steggy And Rex

Steggy has a friend!

(Fun Fact: The difference in time between Stegosaurus and T-rex is greater than the difference in time between T-Rex and now.)

I got the T-Rex at the same gift-shop but wasn't sure how I wanted to paint it. In the end I kept the original scheme, but added some washes, painted detail such as the eyes and claws and redid the teeth. In addition I straightened the tail a little; on the original model it beds down very sharply to act as a third point of support for the model. I heated it in boiling water, straightened it as far as I could and then popped him in the freezer for the afternoon. Did the job.

Here's Rex with a more modern predator, Aloy

And a re-enactment of a scene from One Million years BC, or a Ken Ham creationist tract.