Tribal Warfare

I had a moment of inspiration yesterday and felt like I'd like to try a game of Palaeo Diet based around some form of ritual tribal warfare. I've played some of the competitive scenarios, where hunters are competing with each other for kills, or fighting each other over a valuable prey animal, and the Fireside Tales scenarios have a couple of biped vs biped actions too. But I wondered if I could set up an interesting straight fight between two groups of warriors, one controlled by the player and the other working like beasts. 

This was my first go. I assumed the fight would be arranged and take place at a ford on a river separating the territory of two tribes. The river is tricky ground, except at the ford.

My Tribe had two bowmen, two spearmen and two axemen. The Others had six figures, and I used the Outfolk Hunters reactions for them (with my own adjustments for how Roar and Pelt reactions work on columns after the 'Hunter Within Medium' one*).

My Tribe sent the spearmen around one flank and the bowmen around the other. The axemen crossed the ford, but one was tardy and one of the Others rushed to engage the lead axeman. 

First blood to one of my bowmen, who wounded one of the Others.

The Others reacted, and at the ford one of them wounded my axeman. A second arrow put the wounded Other out of action. 

The fight at the ford. 

My axeman is put out of action. 

One of my spearmen is wounded. 

The Others close in, scenting victory. 

But my other spearman wounds one, which makes them falter. 

An archer crests the hill and downs another of the Others.

I had decided that once at least four figures were wounded or out of action I'd test at the end of each turn to see if the fight ended. This is, after all, a ritual fight and not one to the death. So on a 3 or less on a D6 the fight would end. It did. 

The two tribes assess what happened. The Others have two men out of action and one wounded, whilst the Tribe had one wound and one out of action. I decided on 2 points for a 'kill' and 1 point for a wound, so I won this tussle 5-3.

I set it up again, having checked the Predate reaction rules to be clear what would happen. I'll make some notes on that below. I tried a different setup with the figures all 1x Long from the river, but centred on the ford. The Others were randomly placed, and mostly ended up on the wrong side of the hill from the ford. 

My warriors crossed out of sight of them, leaving one worried Other shouting for help. But he threw a missile that wounded my lead warrior. 

My archers moved up, and put him out of action as he fled, shocked at his audacity. 

I'd moved my axemen onto the hill to hit the flank of the other Others, but with one figure down the Others were riled, and rushed forward in reaction. 

(Oh yes. The white markers? They just show which of my figures have moved in the turn. It's easy to forget if you get a complex web of reactions.)

A fight on top of the hill saw one of my axemen wounded, but they took out the enemy warrior. So the Others had two out of action and I had two wounded. For this game I made the threshold five figures injured. 

Seeing their fellow Other knocked out on the hill, most of the Others backed off (owing to terrible reaction rolls). One stood his ground, and my unwounded axeman attacked him. He fought back and my axeman was wounded. 

With five figures injured I tested for the end of the fight, and both sides decided they'd had enough. I had three wounded figures so the Others got 3 points. They had two figures out of action, so I scored 4 points. This was a closer fight, and had the Others not fled towards the end it could have gone badly for me. 

So in terms of reactions, I assumed that since nothing was being hunted the Predate reaction for dead models wouldn't apply, since no-one is looking to eat. However the Outfolk would do a predate move towards a wounded figure of either side; they would be looking to protect a friend or take advantage of a wounded enemy. If the Outfolk rolled a Predate reaction and there were no wounded figures to respond to, then I rules that they'd move 1 x Medium towards the ford, since that was the ritual ground of the fight. I had them respond with Predatory Behaviour, moving towards wounded figures if they were in line of sight and if no other reaction applied - I treat Predatory Behaviour as a reaction and have it superseded by other reactions if the apply. 

Otherwise, as mentioned above, you simply fight until a turn ends where there are five figures wounded or out of action (you can adjust this based on how many figures you have in the fight). At the end of any such turn you roll a D6 and on a 3 or less the fight ends. Otherwise it continues. At the end of the fight you score 2 points for each opposing figure out of action and 1 point for each one that is wounded.

I think I'm heading in the right direction in terms of what I'm trying to achieve, but more games are required at present. 

*In any column to the right of Hunter within 1 x Medium, all Pelt reactions become Attack (M), whilst Roar reactions become a new Feint reaction - the figure moves 1 x Short towards the figure causing the reaction then Roars. all figures within 1 x Medium test on 2 reaction dice for fleeing (so it's slightly weaker than a regular Roar). This change is because Pelt and Roar reactions in those columns otherwise have no effect because all possible targets will be greater then 1 x Medium from the reacting figure. 

Mammoth For Lunch

One of the nice things about working from home is that if I feel the desire I can set up a quick game to play at lunchtime. And that's what I did the other day.

I chose Palaeo Diet, because it's quick to set up and satisfyingly relaxing.

Long-time readers will know the drill here. We start the adventure with some hapless wildlife - in this case a trio of mammoths.

And here are the hunters. There's actually four of them, but one with a bow went far out to the left. This trio had one man with an axe and two with spears.

As ever the job of the hunter with the bow was to detach one mammoth from the herd. This he did by howling at first and then by shooting at the hunt's chosen target.

An overview. The terrain (randomised) was very open. The other hunters were closing in on the mammoth now that it was no longer supported by its companions. 

The axeman skipped in behind the mammoth to goad it a little further past the thicket, but it turned and charged him. Surprised he ducked out of the way and dealt the beast a mighty blow with his axe. 

This attracted a nearby predator - a terror bird. But a single arrow loosed in its general direction caused it to flee, never to be seen again. 

The wounded mammoth roared angrily and the hunters backed off. 

But they closed in again. The first hunter to attack it with a spear simply made it very cross, and the hunter was unfortunately gored by the pachyderm's tusks. 

The second spearman was luckier, with his throw finding the mammoth's vitals, dropping it.

So a textbook separation from the herd was spoiled by the mammoth being particularly aggressive and the loss of a hunter. But some lucky attacks saw it brought down. The tribe would have their lunch. 

Holiday Hunting

I fitted in a short game of Palaeo Diet whilst I was on holiday. I'd loaded up my terrain because I'd planned to play HOTT with my son, so sticking in the Palaeo Diet rules and the two small boxes with hunters and beasts in was no great hardship. 

It was a basic no-frills hunt. I had four hunters - one each of the basic types. There were two large grazers and four herd grazers. So a win would be one of the rhinos or a couple of horses. 

I sent most of my hunters to the left, whilst the fire-wielder went to the right, upwind of the beasts. The aim was to use fire to drive the animals into the hunting party. 

As it was, the bow-armed hunter took a shot at a horse and killed it instantly, so that was 50% of their target achieved with virtually no effort. 

The animals panicked as a series of fires started by the fire-wielding hunter raged towards them. Interestingly beasts still base their moves on hunter proximity, so although fire dictates a reaction outcome, the move is still driven by the nearest (or active) hunter. This does mean animals will try and run towards (or around) fire. You have to position your hunters carefully to use a ground fire to move the animals in a specific direction. Panic is panic, I guess. 

Anyway, the horses (which were now the primary target) moved towards the hunters.

They managed to wound one, which caused the three horses to race off past the fire. The hunters set off in pursuit. 

The bowman brought down the wounded horse. When hunting herd grazers someone with missile weapons is worth their weight in meat. 

The rapidly spreading fire also scared a couple of critters out of a thicket, but the hunters elected not to chase them. They concentrated on moving their first kill out of the path of the fire. 

A nice game that whiled away an hour at the end of a long day of being on holiday. 

Monster Island

 After Saturday's Australian Outback Paleo Diet game I set up something different on Sunday. This time the setting is a mysterious island, sometime in the 17th century. Some dinosaurs are relaxing near a river.

But here's some sailors from an English ship. They are looking to bring back the head of the big meat-eater.

They cross the landscape cautiously. An ankylosaur watches them.

They confront their prey.

The plan was to goad it into a charge. Otherwise its reactions would tend to lead it to fall back into the depths of the jungle (off the board). However the sailors milled around in confusion (lots of failed activation rolls).

One of them had brought grenadoes. In order to entice the meat-eater. forward he sought out a nearby group of small raptors and lobbed one of his bombs at them. Two of them were blown to pieces, and the other two ran away. There was fresh meat in the area now, and the meat-eater was interested.

Even the ankylosaur came for a closer look. Two of the sailors worked their way around behind the meat-eater. This was still part of the general plan to drive it more to the centre of the play area.

One of the hunters opened fire with his musket. He wounded the mighty beast. And also made it very cross.

It roared and one of the sailors ran away to be seen no more.

The musketeer crept froward for a better shot and the beast attacked. Needless to say the sailor was injured.

The bomb-wielder used some to try and injure the beast and drive it towards the other sailors.

It was unharmed, but did at least move.

The muketeers fired again ...

... but all they did was anger it. It ate one of the sailors.

Another bomb failed to hurt it.

The bomb did, however, make it even angrier, and the sailor was eaten. Along with his bombs.

At that point the two survivors, one of them injured, decided to call it quits and return to their ship.

The raptors and the mighty beast enjoyed their unexpected lunch.

The sailors were unlucky early on. Without wounds or any particular stimulation the T-rex has about a 50/50 chance of advancing or falling back when it reacts, and in every case it fell back. The sailors kept failing activations that allowed them to properly goad it with attacks and were in danger of seeing it fall back completely out of play. Hence the dangerous changes of plan that split their forces and saw them destroyed when the monster did finally rouse itself.

That said, the T-rex is very much a creature best engaged by weapons with a longer range and that don't need reloading after each shot.