I was out a a local botanic garden the other day and in the gift-shop I found a couple of plastic dinosaurs that not only looked nice but were, based on measurements and a quick Google on my phone, in scale with 15mm figures. So I bought them.
Now I fully intend to give them a repaint (or at least touch up the original job) but this afternoon I gave one an outing in a game of Palaeo Diet. Here's the lovely Stegosaurus I got.
I don't have any pulp adventurers/hunters yet for that proper Lost World hunting experience, so I simply went for a good old One Million years BC cavemen vs dinosaurs game. I reckoned six hunters would be needed for such a mighty beast - it has 6 Bulk and is very difficult to wound, so would be a tough prospect. I did add a small pack of raptors to the table though (four MY Miniatures walking vultures).
I went with one bow-armed hunter, three with spears and two with clubs/axes. With hindsight this was a mistake; the spears only have the same chance of wounding the Stegosaur as a bow, but require the hunters to get in a lot closer. A mix of bows and clubs would be the optimum way of hunting this beastie.
(In case you're wondering, dinosaurs are covered in the pulp supplement, and are classed as Raptors, Great Herbivores or King Carnivores. They have a couple of reactions not in the base game - a Rush is a long-move attack, with a penalty, whilst a Lunge is a short-move attack with a bonus. The Stegosaur can pt to use the Flail attack instead of a Lunge; this has a penalty on the attack but allows the beast to attack all opponents within short range.)
The hunters stalk the Stegosaur.
(In case you're wondering, dinosaurs are covered in the pulp supplement, and are classed as Raptors, Great Herbivores or King Carnivores. They have a couple of reactions not in the base game - a Rush is a long-move attack, with a penalty, whilst a Lunge is a short-move attack with a bonus. The Stegosaur can pt to use the Flail attack instead of a Lunge; this has a penalty on the attack but allows the beast to attack all opponents within short range.)
The hunters stalk the Stegosaur.
Unfortunately a series of bad activation rolls saw the raptors rush in ...
... and attack the hunters. Fortunately the hunters were still in a mostly in a tight group
The hunters fought back, with spears. The axe-armed hunters were elsewhere.
The bow-armed hunter shot one raptor down, and the spear-armed hunters accounted for the rest. One hunter was injured.
The Stegosaur had simply watched the fight. The axe-armed hunters crept up on it and attacked.
Between them they inflicted a couple of wounds on the dinosaur, which roared, causing the hunters to back off.
The hunters moved in again and inflicted another wound.
At this point I brought up the spear-armed hunters and realised that they weren't going to be that effective. One of them was wounded by the Stegosaur's thagomizer.
The stegosaur did a flail attack, but missed all of the hunters within range.
I pulled the spear-armed hunters out of the action, deciding that they would be better employed throwing stones and shouting to try and keep the creature from escaping off a board-edge. The axe hunters and the single bow-armed hunter would the the ones to bring the creature down.
The Stegosaur backed off towards a board edge and the hunters had to carefully draw it back into the centre of the hunting ground.
One of the axe-hunters (wounded, I can't remember when), made another attack, scoring a critical and leaving the Stegosaur on its last hit.
The Stegosaur retaliated, eliminating the hunter.
A lucky '6' saw the bow-armed hunter finish the dinosaur off,.
The victor and the vanquished.
I supposed the question is “why?”. If dinosaur flesh takes like (the equivalent of) best quality steak then potentially you have waaaayyyyy more food than you, your family and tribe can eat for the foreseeable future. Of course, if dinosaur flesh is tasteless, tough and hard-to-digest then I imagine the only reason to fight the dinosaur would be if it was attacking the tribe.
ReplyDeleteA nice little game though and I suspect the lessons you are learning (i.e./ weapon choice) would have been learnt “the hard way” by our pre-historic brethren.
Cheers,
Geoff
Palaeo Diet assumes that basically if it moves then it's edible. There are some side-rules that steer hunters (and beasts) away from cannibalism :)
DeleteI often throw lurking predators into games as an extra challenge, but sometimes killing those has provided a lot of teh tribe's winning score. In future games I will limit how much predator flesh you can take home as a win - if you've been sent out to get mammoth then you're expected tor return with at least *some* mammoth :)
Dinosaurs almost certainly taste like chicken (crocodile does, albeit slightly fishy chicken).