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