Cave people by the dozen!

In the distant past, long before I discovered Two Hour Wargames, I wrote a game for cavemen, though really proto-Native Americans, from about 12,000 - 10,000BC.  I based it upon discoveries at the La Brea Tar Pits in California.  It was called NEOLITHIC,  and is still available through the Free Wargames Wiki at
http://freewargamesrules.wikia.com/wiki/Neolithic .

It was fun, in its day but Adventures in Lost Lands is more fun, and, better still, uses d6.

When I wrote the rules, I was a bit poorer and couldn't even dream of Copplestone figures, who may not have had cave people back then anyway.  So a friend got me a number of packs of Stratagem Miniatures Indios from the Sugar Wars range.  There were only 3 figures, club armed, bow armed, and a female.

Quest for Fire, 1981, had come out some years earlier, and I was quite impressed by the Ash tribe, so my 2 opposing sides were the Red Clay People, and the Ash People.  And, finally, here is a photo of the Ash People. You can click on the pics for a larger view.

Though there appear to be more variety, that is just simple conversions. The club man had his club removed, and either left weaponless or given light throwing spears.  The spears were made a little squiggly on purpose. (I can't tell you how many .025 drill bits I broke putting those spears in.)  The female has a pack on her back held by a headband.  She also has a fig leaf.  If I were to do it again, I would probably remove it.  In my rules, and ALL, girls are not fighters unless cornered.  So they fit my hunter-gatherer ideas perfectly.  And here are the Red Clay People. Both tribes have a total of 25 members, with 4 ladies.  I have since received about a dozen more figures, but they are still in the bags.

You can see that the Stratagem figures are a bit rough by today's standards, and, as far as I can tell, are no longer available.

Later, I was able to add Pulp Figures Neanderthal figures.  Apparently, I have PLT1, 2, and 4.

These are, of course, much better figures.

To counter them, I added both Reaper and Copplestone Cro-Magnons.

(What caveman collection is complete without the last figure on the right?)

When Mega Minis decided to cease production, I picked up a set of their monkey boys, 2-part hairy boys!

And of course, I have added any figures that I thought I could fit in. A Ral Partha, 2 Reaper cave girls, and a Ground Zero Games.

The Ral Partha girl is a slight conversion.  The first Reaper cavegirl had a non-removable (for me) mold line, so I painted it as a scar.  She also has a happy trail.  You'll notice that the next Reaper has had her eyes finished since her last appearance here.
And here are 4 Smilodons by 4 different manufactures, so they won't look all the same on the table. Remains were found in the La Brea Tar pits.

A cave bear, a large and heavy metal casting, probably from RLBPS.

A giant ground sloth, in resin, from the same source.

A woolly rhino, again from RLBPS.

And a shovel-toothed mastodon, an extremely heavy metal casting.

I also have 2 pre-painted plastic woolly mammoths, but they were hiding this morning!

And a dozen goats from Irregular miniatures. (No, they're not all in the picture.)

I have a few cape buffalo who substitute for aurochs.

So there you have it.  Almost all of my cave people.

Females, and Orcs, and Giants, oh my!

The up-coming Two Hour Wargames fantasy gladiator rules have had me at the painting table, finishing up figures that have been lying around for a while, buying a few Reaper minis, and digging out some painted oldies!  As always, click on the pic for a larger photo.

So here are pics and comments.

Here a a couple of Reaper minis that I started a couple of months ago, always adding to my caveman collection.  The girl on the left had a mold line through her face and down her abdomen that was in too prominent a position to do much about, so it dawned on me to paint it as scars.  Hey, these are warrior women, aren't they?  Looks like I forgot to paint the irises on Raquel Welch.  I also forgot to put a gloss coat on her obsidian spear blade.

Thong girl is a Reaper mini, and also had a non-removeable mold line on her left cheek, so she also has a scar.  I'm not sure who made the hero on the right, but he was a pretty easy paint job.  He's been around for awhile, primed and based, but not a lick of paint.

Two new orcs from Reaper.  I go more for the Lord of the Rings skin tones, rather than the GW green.  (Yeah, I know.  The orc head above is green, but at least it is Reaper Pro-Paint ghoul grey.)  The metal is painted with Reaper steel plate, and the sword with Iron Wind Metals steel.  I'm about at the end of that bottle.  

Two more Reapers.  The one on the left is the plastic one that comes prepainted, but you can buy it unpainted on Reaper's site for about $1.99.  Of course, it's made of the same material as all of the 1/72 plastic figure, and can't be sanded.  By the by, Walmart's cheap grey primer remains sticky, but acrylics on top stop that, and I was able to dull coat it with a spray paint, Tree House Acrylic Matte Coat, available from Hobby Lobby for $5.99 for 11 oz.  All the figures here were coated with it, with no fogging problems.

This giant is a GW product got at a yard sale, and painted when Warrior Heroes-Armies and Adventures came out.

The miniature on the left was included as a gift in a Bronze Age Miniatures order, and appears never to have been released.  I got it a few years ago, the front of the shield has a large eagle on it.  I'm guessing the other figure was Reaper.

Very old Grenadier orcs, painted a long time ago!

Lots of skeleton warriors form Mega Minis.  I have 24 painted, and 24 still in the pack.  I painted all metal as rusted. Duh!

One of my favorite groups (of course!), painted as harem guards when Legends of Araby arrived on the scene.  An experiment to see how many skin tones and hair colors I could come up with.  I have no idea who made them.  I'd like to have a unit of 20 (wouldn't we all)!  I believe the commander is Ral Partha.

I don' remember who made the girl, or the enormous mandril.  I thought they were both from Black Orc Games, but I don't see them on their site.

Games Workshop mounted deamonette(?). They came 4 to a pack, and are my evil cav, also acquired when WH:A&A came out.

The cuthulu horror is still available from Black Orc Games, for $1.80.  The cave orc(?) troll(?).  Don't have any idea who made him.

And now to whining.  My IWM steel and bronze metallic are just about gone.  Has anyone picked up their paint line?  All they have now is mixing bottles.  GW's yellow metallics are actually pearlized, and not metallic.  With the exception of bolt gun metal and mithral mail, which they haven't screwed up yet.  Reaper metallics were acceptable, though a little thin, but now have gone to the dropper bottle.  I'm just becoming acquainted with P3, but their washes, which you need a full brush of, are in dropper bottles.  They do seem to cover a little better than GW.  Vallejo, in addition to being in dropper bottles, were a big disappointment.  Way too thin.

Suggestions?

Adventures in the Lost Lands

Today I played 2 quick games using Two Hour Wargames "Adventures In The Lost Lands" (known hereafter as ALL).  A few years ago, I had written a set of rules now available at freewargames.com called "Neolithic", which attempted to give a somewhat realistic view of warfare in the California area around 10,000BC.  I thought I'd dig out my cavemen and give the rules a try.

FIRST GAME
I decided to use the Lost Worlds encounter list, figuring it would give me more adventure.  Boy, was I right!
The premise was that members of the Red Ochre tribe would explore some new territory, gathering food as they went.

The dramitis personnae:
Leader: Rep 5, club, Fierce, Born Leader
Able Bodied Villager No. 1, Rep 4, Brute, Spear
Able Bodied Villager No. 2 Rep 4, Brute, Spear
Hunter No. 1, Rep 4, Fierce, Throwing Spear
Hunter No. 2, Rep 4, Fierce, Throwing Spear
Villager No. 1, Docile, unarmed, female
Villager No. 2, Docile, unarmed, female
Villager No. 3, Docile, unarmed, female
Villager No. 4, Docile, unarmed male.

Since armed figures cannot carry food, it was necessairy to bring along unarmed figures to carry the goodies.

The terrain generated all 9 portions of the table to be clear, with 3 sections, numbers 3,4, and 7 having trails.
Section 3's trail just dead-ended in its own section.  However, section 4 and 7's trails joined at right angles.
The ER (Encounter Rating) was 2, and the 2 PEF's (Possible Enemy Force) ended up in sections 2 and 3.

Here follows the game:  Note that all double dice rolls for Activation were ignored, so turns only contain those dice that allowed Activition.

Turn 1: Cavemen (C hereafter) 4, PEF (P hereafter) 6
The leader chose to follow the trail and moved in 8" with Able Bodied Villager No. 1 taking the point.  Hunter No.4 was shadowing the group off to the left and always out of the picture.

Turn 2: C2 P1

The caveman group move forward 6" along the trail.  Both PEF's pass 0d6, and so don't move at all.

Turn 3: C2 P3

The section is empty.  And the gatherers pass 2d6 on the gathering table, and so collect 2 food points each, for a total of 8.

Turn 4:  C6 P2.  Once again the PEF's fail to Activate with 0d6 passed.

Turn 5:  C5 P2.  Everyone follows the leader around the angle in the trail.

This is an unfortunate move, as the nearest PEF activates and moves 12" towards the group, putting them at the end of the trail.  The other PEF fails to activate.  The PEF is revealed to be 2 smilodons, who separate.
The Leader takes his insight test, passes 2d6, and being Fierce, charges1/2 move, hoping to cause the smilodons to flee, and save his party.  Of course, the rest of the fighters follow him.  The smilodons counter-charge, and the hunters split up, two on each smilodon.

 The fifth hunter is unable to reach them. The gatherers, being Docile, halt.  To make a bit of die-rolling shorter, only the leader matches successes with a smilodon, even though they must split their dice between 2 attackers each.  So 3 of the hunters go down OOF.  The leader is pushed back 2".

Turn 6:  Cavemen 1, Smilodons 6, PEF 3
In the best "Monty Python's Quest OF The Holy Grail" tradition, the Leader yells "Run away!", and the remining hunter, and 3 of the gatherers follow, though only 2 pass their fast move, and 2 move only 6".

Turn 7:  Cavemen 5, Smilodons 4, PEF 6
The Leader makes it off the table, as do all but the lagging unarmed male villager, who again fails his fast move, and turns to face his fate.  The closer smilodon, having only half the meal of his buddy, fast moves after the party, sees the remaining gatherer and charges him, with fatal results for the poor guy.

After the battle, only the hunter who did not close with a smilodon, loses a Rep point, going down to 3.  The leader makes a great speech, and blames it all on him.

Lesson learned: RUN!!!!! when you meet smilodons.

Game Two:
I decided to see if the Caveman Encounter table would be better for the cavemen.
I stuck with the surviving crew, adding a Rep 4 Able Bodied Villager with club.
It was pretty uneventful.  The gatherers were able to gather all they could carry in Food Points.  The only PEF that moved into view turned out to be nothing.  However, the Leader had had enough excitement for the day, and decided to move off the opposite end of the table when the gatherers could carry no more.  So there was no chance for anyone to advance.  I'll just show a few pictures, and not go to a turn-by-turn description of the game.

The party enters the table.

The gatheres fall back, uh, gathering.

With the gatherers loaded down,

the Leader decides that discretion is the better part of valor,

and begins to lead them off the table.

The party leaves the table laden down with food.

The figures are converted from Strategem "Los Indios" in the Sugar Wars Range.  I have about double this amount of figures or more in the Red Ochre tribe, and the same number in the Ash tribe.  I have no idea how to obtain more, though I still have about a dozen I haven't converted.