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.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today.

I have been putting together a few more figures for Palaeo Diet: Pulp this week. These are the two most recent - a warlock and a wood golem. The former is to be run as a Witch Doctor, whilst the latter is a Giant Biped with a Bulk of 5 (essentially the 'King Kong' from the alternative version of the 'To Kill A King' scenario).

And, indeed, I used them both to play an alternate version of 'To Kill A King'. In this game the adventurers are after a giant humanoid monster that has appeared in their territory.

It's almost certainly part of the machinations of an evil warlock that is plaguing the colony. He is hanging around in the vicinity of the monster.

The adventurers advancing towards the monster. One again they are led by Ahab (from the rear, though, thanks to his terrible activation rolls). Job and Isaac are there as well, with their muskets. However Joseph and Ezekiel stayed at home for this one; instead we had Old Moses with his axe and swordsman Aaron. As before,  each musketeer was teamed with a melee specialist to take the brunt of any charges.

The group provoked the warlock early on and he summoned a wolf to harry them.

The party blundered across the board with a series of terrible activations, but eventually Job got within range and took a shot. It had no effect.

Isaac had a go, and also missed.

Old Moses charged in, but didn't get a chance to hack at the creature before it attacked and wounded him.

The hunters backed off and the creature let out a series of roars and bellows.

The first hit was a scored by Job.

A second was scored by Isaac, who held his ground as the monster charged.

Old Moses finally got back into action and hacked a third hit onto the creature.

By now two of the adventurers were wounded and Aaron was cursed by the warlock (which meant he had to use stressed dice for all of his activations).

The creature attacked him as he bumbled around on the edge of some woods.

Another roar saw some of the adventurers fall back, and Isaac left the hunt altogether. This was the group's first loss.

Aaron attracted more attention from the warlock, who wounded him in a hand-to-hand fight, but who was wounded in return.

Ahab finally got properly involved. He'd been late into the fight because of poor activations and had then been driven back by the creature's roars. He drew the creature to within pistol range, and inflicted a wound. Only one more was needed to down it once and for all. 

The pistol shot caused the summoned wolf to react, and it moved towards and attacked the creature, scoring the final hit on it.

The monster was downed, in eight of the allotted twelve turns.

All of the hunters were wounded and Isaac was lost (I'm sure he will be back). So it was a fairly desperate fight.

It was fun trying a new mix of creature reactions. I'd only used Witch-Doctor once before, and it's quite fun, with summoning and curses creating issues for the group. The Great Biped profile gives some interesting attack reactions too, including the ranged attack, pelt and the potentially dangerous Flail attack.

There are more strange encounters waiting in the wings (once I've painted them).

Genesis Park

It's the early 17th century. On the fringes of a new World, a group of pilgrims are on a hunt. Led by Ahab (sword and pistol) we have Job and Isaac, who each have muskets, whilst bringing up the rear are Joseph and Ezekiel, with polearms.

Their prey? The giant satanic monstrosity that's been devouring their herds, as well as distracting them from their favourite pursuits - interminable sermons and recreational witch-burning.

Everything's set for a game of Palaeo Diet: Pulp. I set up the To Kill A King scenario - the hunters have 12 turns to kill a King Carnivore in the opposite corner to their entry point. with at least one of them surviving. It's designed for four hunters, but since only two of my 'pulp' hunters had proper guns I added an extra man. For this game I ran the muskets as rifles, straight out of the rules. This was just for simplicity's sake. A better way to run them would be as shotguns, with the added limit that they have to spend an action to reload.

Anyway, with the monster in sight (thanks to the randomised terrain being around the edges) The hunters moved forward swiftly, with the two musketeers to the fore.

An opening shot surprised the giant carnivore, but bounced off his scaly hide.

A proper leader, Ahab moved up to show his musketeers how it was done. But his pistol shot went wide.

In fact it caused the monster to flee, which wasn't really what the hunters wanted; if it left the hunting ground they'd have to abandon their mission.

Joseph boldly ran forward, attracting the monster's attention, and bringing it back towards the hunters. Joseph backed off as the creature roared.

Ezekiel moved up to and the creature charged, but he escaped injury.

The creature charged Job, who responded with a well-aimed shot that scored a wound. In the background you can see some interested scavengers. Ezekiel spent a turn driving them off.

The monster roared again, and the pilgrims fell back to reconsider their options.

Their plan was a bold one. Each halberdier would move in front of one of the musketeers, so that if the creature charged it would be them that bore the brunt of the attack and preventing the musketeers from being injured until they could bring the monster down. Ezekiel faced a charge and was wounded, but his sacrifice allowed Job to wound the monster with a couple of shots.

The scavengers were sniffing around again. Joseph moved forward and attacked the monster with his halberd, but failed to wound it.

Isaac was the hero of the group. With three actions he took three shots at the beast. The first wounded it, causing it to charge, injuring Joseph.

The second shot missed, but the third felled the behemoth.

The scavengers closed in again, but the hunters quickly drove them off.

Ahab posed for a woodcut with his two brave musketeers. Although it was Joseph and Ezekiel, the halberdiers, who had actually been wounded.

Rifles are very effective, and you'd have to be careful how you balanced scenarios using them. For these figures a reduction in their effectiveness will make for an interesting game though.

I may try a more conventional hunt for the next game. But I'd been itching to get the dinosaurs on the table. In fact Steggy was in play as well, in a corner to the left of the action, but he did nothing but watch the action and failed to make any of the pictures.

Update: I tried it again with the muskets being treated as shotguns that have to be reloaded. It was a bloodbath. The carnivore and raptors killed and ate all of the hunters, although to be fair they came within one wound (and a single shot) of killing the carnivore still, so it was close.

Unorthodox 2

Following on from the previous game of Galleys & Galleons where I am trying out Unorthodox propulsion, I set up my three Ivory Towers against three galleys. The Galley and Unorthodox traits are very similar in that they require the vessel to spend activations in order to move. The Galley trait has a few extras though; the vessel doesn't have to move their full distance, which is always Medium, they shift their broadside to the front, but can't fire a more effective 2 Action 'broadside' and they get an automatic +1 in boarding actions. As a trait Galley is free, whereas Unorthodox costs points.

I ran three ships on each side. The Ivory Towers were the same as in the previous game, except that I removed the chasers. The Galleys were Q3 C3, and had the Master Gunner trait to offset the points the Ivory Towers spent on their propulsion.

The board had a series of shallows and islands, and wind was irrelevant. Both forces started in adjacent corners, and the battle mostly ended up taking place along one edge of the board.

The galleys advanced in line abreast, as this gives them the most effective gunnery options. The Ivory towers are best off moving in line abreast, because of their erratic movement, but still need to turn to bring their broadsides to bear.

A galley too the first shot and missed.

One downside of the galleys is that in order to shoot they have to present their bow to the target, and this leaves them vulnerable to being raked. And that's exactly what happened; a galley was shattered by the first raking broadside.

The Ivory towers shook out into a rough line, and poured broadsides into the advancing galleys. The galleys fired back, but despite their master gunners they didn't seem to be able to hit anything.

The galleys had potentially dangerous concentrated fire in one direction, so the towers attempted to work round onto their beams. A galley caught fire. 

And exploded. The galleys still hadn't inflicted any damage on the towers.

This changed. Spurred on by their consort's untimely destruction, the remaining two galleys actually made an effort, turned and starting firing effective shots at the towers

The towers turned in response and replied with their broadsides

One of the towers struck after taking a few hits.

The galley then sped forward, grappled another tower, and boarded. However despite an edge in the combat the galley lost, and was soon in trouble.

Meanwhile the other galley was taking steady fire, ended up holed, and sank.

The remaining galley cut grapples and fired, staring a fire.

This bought it time to pull away, and repair some damage. The tower extinguished the fire, and soon both towers were lining up shots on the lone galley.

A gunnery duel ensued, but it was obvious that the odds were against the galley.

Taking advantage of a moment's command paralysis, the galley closed up, hoping to inflict some critical damage on the of the towers. It wasn't enough.

The galley was steadily battered into submission.

This didn't turn out the way I expected, as I tend to regard the movement capabilities of the galleys as far superior to those of teh unorthodox vessels. However the fact that the galleys have to present their bows to raking fire, and that the towers get the ability to fire powerful broadsides whilst not having to move with the wind, did seem to offset some of this advantage. To be fair though the galleys rolled appallingly for shooting early on, and fluffed a couple of critical command rolls too, and that gave the Ivory Towers and early advantage they were able to exploit. 

For my next game I will dig out some suitable ACW vessels and pit the Ivory Towers against vessels powered by steam.