Paleo Diet: A year in the life of the Stone Finger Tribe

Introduction

A little while ago, I described my first ventures (nay, mishaps!) into the Paleo Diet rules.  You can read the sorry tale here, if you so desire.  Well, last Thursday at the Helensburgh Alternative Hobby Association, we tried the game again.  I had been busy painting more figures and effects (fire!) and was keen to see how these would work.

Game 1: the Mammoths

The hunters of the Stone Finger tribe were pleased.  Their group had survived the long, harsh winter without very many deaths and now that the spring was here, mammoths were on the move.  There's a lot of meat on a mammoth and their families were hungry, so if they could bring down one of these behemoths then everyone could feast!

So, here's the plan:

Grod and Vorn would enter from the left, upwind of the mammoths.  They would set fires in the grass to drive the beasts to the right...

...where Droog and Groob, Dorv and Guban would be waiting in ambush.

Ok, it's a very simple plan, but would it work?  Read on...

So far, so good.  The fire has been lit, the mammoths are getting a bit restless and (most of) the ambushers are in hiding.

One beast breaks ranks and runs forwards.  Dorv leaps up and hits it with his club (Really, a club?  Honestly, who brings a club to a mammoth hunt?  This is 50,000BC, after all...).  He does manage to hurt the animal before it tosses him aside.

While Dorv limps away, someone else inflicts another wound on the confused and angry pachyderm (I cannot remember for sure, but this might have been a lucky shot from Groob's sling).  Meanwhile, Vorn continues to light more fires, just in case...

Droog throws a spear at the injured mammoth: it's a critical hit!  The beast falls over, dying.

The rest of the hunters walk forwards slowly, shouting and waving to drive off the other two mammoths (but not getting too close).  They depart and the hunters cheer!  A successful hunt; plenty of meat for everyone, no-one died and only one hunter was injured.

Game 2: The Puppies

In our second game of the evening, the well-fed Neanderthals decided that some hunting dogs would be a nice addition to their tribe.  There weren't any dogs near them, but a wolf pack was breeding nearby.  Could the hunters raid the wolves' den and steal the litter?

So, another simple plan: approach from 3 sides and try to scare the adult wolves away (rather than fighting with them).  If the adult wolves are gone then catching the puppies should be easy...

Initially, things went rather well.  Vorn lit several fires upwind of the den; these caused consternation amongst the wolf pack.  They kept trying to pluck up courage to charge a hunter, only to turn tail and run from the smoke whenever they got close.

One animal broke sideways from the pack, but Groob injured it with a well-placed stone from his sling.

The injured wolf's mournful howls scared the wits out of Droog and Dorv; they emerged from the den each clutching a puppy and ran in the opposite direction...

...and straight into the path of the somewhat out-of-control flames that were burning forwards at an alarming rate.

Meanwhile, Groob finished off the injured wolf with another sling shot and the rest of the men queued up to grab their own puppies.  The remaining wolves were too scared of the fire to do much other than make a few futile dummy charges, so the tribe escaped with most of the litter (and a couple of badly burned hunters).

This probably counts as a successful scenario too 🙂.

Game 3: Who wants to be King?

The old chieftain died later in the year.  As he was dying, he announced that the next chief would be whoever managed to slay a large and dangerous sabretooth cat which had recently moved into the district.  Four hunters didn't even wait for his last gasp but instead gathered up their weapons, called to a couple of dogs and set off to slay the monster.

So, this scenario was co-operative, but only up to a point.  Tribesmen (and their dogs) may not attack each other, but there can only be one winner: whoever delivers the final blow to kill the predator.  There were some herds of small horses around as well, but they played no real part in the game and so I'll not mention them again.

Droog's dog, Scar, was first to attack the sabretooth.  It didn't go very well for the smaller animal; he ran away yelping with a nasty gash on his flank.

Next up was Guban, aided by his dog, Alpha.  The hunter rushed in without waiting for assistance and although he did manage to spear the tiger, he was promptly mauled to death.

Dorv leaped in as well, though too late to aid his friend.  He gave the sabretooth a crack on the head with his club, but it then turned on him and tore him to pieces.

Droog and Groob were trying to catch up, but were still some way off.  Whilst they ran and panted, Alpha and the sabretooth (both injured) snarled and snapped at each other.

Incredibly, the tiger's attacks missed the dog again and again.  Eventually Alpha got a good hold and ripped out the cat's throat to deliver the fatal blow.  And that is why, even to this day, the Stone Finger Tribe worships dogs and holds them supreme over all other spirits and gods.

Conclusion

Paleo Diet is a quick, simple, fun set of rules.  The animal behaviours are unpredictable, but within realistic bounds, so the (player) hunters are never certain of an easy victory.

We were able to fit three very distinct games into a single evening, with a different (but overlapping) set of players in each.  It would have been ideal as a mini-campaign - and there are rules for this, but on this occasion we weren't tracking injuries, successes or failures from one game to the next.

Next time we'll have to do such a campaign properly.  Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible to organise a club league, with people dropping in for the occasional game as & when it suited them?

Recently Finished...

Introduction

I know how much my readers like eye candy, so here's a selection of models that I've completed fairly recently.  There's nothing particularly common to them, other than they're all 28mm figures.

Congo

First up is Uguah, the fictional witch doctor who comes with the "Mungo Mah Lobeh" expansion book for "Congo".  He's a seemingly cruel old man but a powerful sorcerer; he provides the main opposition for Mary Kingsley, the explorer upon whose exploits the campaign is based.

Despite his near-naked state, the model is covered with details.  I just wish that they were more visible, as his hunched pose hides much of the work, including the grotesque face that he is pulling!

Next up is a fairly generic lion, also from North Star.  I can never seem to find my existing lion miniature when I need him, so having an extra should help.

Finally (in this section), I have some dugout canoes.  These, like so many of my models, were undercoated many moons ago but only completed recently.  I've added some scratch-built paddles and some baskets (one empty, one containing fish) as I felt the canoes were a bit bare without this.

Dreadball

Here are two more star players for my Dreadball teams:

• The Excavator is a ForgeFather or Brokkr mining robot.  Apparently there's nothing in the rules that says they cannot bring it on to the pitch!
• A'Teo Adysi is an Yndij: a primitive species of hunter from some remote planet.  It seems that his strength and lightning reflexes make him a very good player.

Neanderthals

In our first game of Paleo Diet, all of the hunters were armed with spears.  That's all very well, but perhaps a bit dull.  To fix this, I bought some Lucid Eye Neanderthals to add to the tribe.  Mind you, they're from a different manufacturer and are painted in a different style from my existing Neanderthals so I don't yet know if they'll fit in very well.

One model had a club, so that was fine.  The other two both had spears, though.  I converted one of them into a fire-wielder by cutting down the spear and adding some flame from green stuff.  He's got a flint knife as well, so he'll be all right...

Viridians

I recently stumbled across a Facebook group called Void 1.1 Nexus (not sure if membership is required to see anything much), which is full of enthusiasts for this old game.  They're running a painting competition just now to encourage people to complete old (or new) figures that may be lying around.

Well, I have a very large number of Void 1.1 miniatures lying around, mostly still in packets.  I thought I'd get some out and paint them, without necessarily entering the competition.  Here is the first batch to be finished (and yes, I was persuaded to enter them in the competition after all):

Viridian chain gun on a ground mount

Viridian Commando squad

Conclusion

Well, it's another fairly mixed collection of painted figures; I hope you like them!  Not much more to be said, really...

Paleo Diet: The Hunt Begins

Introduction

I've run games that pit men against ice age mammals before [for example, here, here and here] and my "go to" set of rules was "Adventures in the Lost Lands" by Two Hour Wargaming.  However, despite the number of times that I've tried this game, it didn't quite work for me.  Either a player's choices were too limited or combat outcomes were too one-sided or something; it just wasn't the game I really wanted to play.

I've never given up hope for a hunting game, though.  Now there is a new kid on the block: "Paleo Diet", from Ganesha Games.  In Paleo Diet, one or more players take control of a small number of hunters.  These humans can be equipped with bows, clubs, fire and/or dogs, though the default weapon is a spear which can be thrown a short distance or used close up to stab at things.

The basic mechanism is that a hunter chooses to roll from 1 to 3 dice each turn, with a "success" granting an action and a "failure" alerting a nearby animal.  A fresh, unwounded hunter has a pool of 2 white dice (success on a 2+) and one coloured dice (success on a 4+); an injured man downgrades one of his/her white dice to a coloured one.

Animals never act on their own, but rather they react to various events such as the proximity of a fire, being attacked or a hunter failing an activation roll.  Different classes of creature (from apex predator to small prey animal) will react differently, but on the whole if you're far enough away they will ignore you and if you're very close then their reaction will be more extreme.  Usually the carnivores and large herbivores (mammoths &c) will defend themselves aggressively whilst smaller herbivores will run away - but different reactions such as roaring/trumpeting or stampedes are also possible!

So far, so good; this sounds very much like the sort of game I'd like to try.  Everything in a hunting game depends on the animal behaviour, though: is it believable?  Let's see...

Trial Game 1: The Mammoths

We had 3 players, so we set up 3 groups of hunters.  One group had 2 neanderthals, whilst the other 2 groups each had a neanderthal and his dog.  So, a total of 4 men and 2 dogs.  Let's go mammoth hunting!

After a short conference on tactics, we decided that we needed to split up the pair of mammoths and concentrate all our efforts on just one of the beasts.  Goodness knows, it would be hard enough to face even a single such creature!

To this end, the hunters crept forwards carefully.  Crug sent his dog on a wide, flanking move.  In hindsight, this wasn't a terribly clever idea: if the dog failed any of its activation rolls in the future then it would probably try to rejoin its master, which would result in it sauntering through the mammoth herd.  That's not really what we intended!

Durc stalked right up to within touching distance of the mammoths, planning to hide and ambush the chosen target later.  Unfortunately, something gave him away and both beasts rounded on him

The hunter wasn't badly wounded, but he was pretty shaken up.  It didn't help that one of the mammoths then trumpeted loudly and the other pursued him for a short distance; Durc fled!  Well, at least we had split up the pair of mammoths; there was now a significant gap between them...

Durc spent much of the rest of the game hiding in some foliage.  The player claimed that he was laying a fresh ambush, but personally I reckon he had soiled himself.

Broud's brown dog then decided to have a go at the nearer animal.  It did manage to bite the pachyderm, but the mammoth squashed the dog in return.

Then, Crug's grey dog had a go.  It rushed in and bit the mammoth on the bottom (so that's 2 wounds inflicted; another two will bring it down).

The mammoth reacted with extreme hostility to this assault on its nether portions; it spun around and flattened the dog.  Hmm, both dogs are now out of the game - but that's OK because they don't count against us when determining victory.

The hunters (apart from Durc) moved in and tried to spear the mammoth.  There followed a long and confused sequence of quick assaults, trumpetting, retaliation and so on [far too complex to describe in detail!].  Any notion of a plan had gone out of the window after the beast's first short charge!

The end result was that 3 of the 4 hunters were injured, but the mammoth had taken a 3rd wound out of the 4 hits it could sustain.  Sadly for the hungry tribe, the mammoth ran off the table before it could be finished off.

One player suggested that we had a go at the other, uninjured mammoth that was still grazing peacefully in the middle of the table.  This suggestion was quickly vetoed by the other bruised and battered hunters!

End Result: mammoths are tough to hunt, especially without ranged weapons and/or fire; expect casualties.  Leave the dogs at home; they might be good enough against a deer or a wolf, but they're really outclassed here!

Trial Game 2: Something Smaller

For our next hunt, we decided to try some smaller prey.  This time, there were 5 neanderthals and only 1 dog; we had a small herd of deer as our target.

The hunters stalked carefully around the edges.  Our plan was to surround the herd and then pick off as many as we could from close range.  We needed to kill 3 of the 6 deer to collect enough meat to feed the tribe, so we really didn't want any to escape if we could help it.

Initially, the plan seemed to be going very well.  All the hunters (and the dog) crept closer and closer...

The first hunter to act was Broud.  His thrown spear hit a young buck and wounded it, but the startled and confused animal then ran straight at the hunter and tried to attack him!  Fortunately for the man, the deer then fled in the opposite direction without injuring him.

The panicking, injured buck fled straight towards Goov, who had no difficulty in felling it at close range.  As he did this, the rest of the herd stampeded, running over the unwary Crug and kicking him in passing.

The hunters scrambled to try to head off the small deer before they fled out of reach; it looked as if their prey was about to elude them.

All their efforts achieved was to scatter the herd; deer ran in all directions.  Brun managed to bring down another buck as it raced past him, but no-one else was so lucky.  Despite a brief stalk of the remnants of the herd, all the other deer eluded the hunters and fled to safety.

End Result: we didn't gather enough meat to feed the tribe and one of our hunters got a broken rib!  Not the ideal result, though at least we weren't totally hopeless.

Conclusion

I think that we all enjoyed these games very much.  The players each had plenty of choices each turn and the animals reacted in what seemed like a realistic manner.  I don't think this will be the main event in one of our gaming days, but it's a very pleasant filler (it would work very well as a participation game at a convention, I think).

Clearly, our hunting tactics leave something to be desired - but that could change with practice.  Perhaps we should set more ambushes and then have a few hunters drive the prey into them by shouting and/or throwing stones?  I'm also quite keen to experiment with that new wonder weapon which Ug keeps talking about: fire!  More figures have been ordered...

Afterthought: even the deer are dangerous; they hurt one of our hunters.  Maybe my stone age men should become rabbit hunters instead.  What could go wrong with that?

Lost Lands: Mamut and Ogrom

Introduction

I run a lot of games at the Helensburgh club.  Roughly speaking, this is 1 game per week during school term times, so something like 30 sessions per year.  Each of these has a cunningly contrived and balanced scenario that's designed to stimulate and interest all the players.  None of my games are ever get thrown together at the last minute, just because real-life pressures mean that I haven't thought about it until the day before, no sirree!

Well, OK - that last bit is not totally true.  Sometimes a scenario is underdeveloped and doesn't play out the way I'd hoped at all.  This is not frequent, but here is an example; this didn't really work well in my view (though the players seemed happy enough, for all that).  Note that I'm not trying to railroad my players into certain courses of action when I set up a game.  However, it's important that both/all sides feel they have (a) something to do and (b) a reasonable chance of achieving their goals.

The Scenario

We're back in the Lost Lands this week.  A group of explorers have established a base camp, from where small parties intend to set out to gather specimens for science, meat for the pot and trophies for the ancestral home.

However, before they can achieve these goals the camp is raided in the night by a couple of large bull mammoths ("Mamut" and "Ogrom").  Amongst other destruction, the crate containing all the bottles of gin is smashed.  Swearing revenge, Sir Reginald Utterly-Barking leads a small band to hunt down the animals, unaware that they are crossing the territory of a local tribe of ape-men to whom the mammoths are sacred!

So, this is a 3-way battle (the mammoths are a player side as well as the explorers and the "ape-men"):

Forces

• Explorers: 2 white men (1 with .577 express elephant gun and 1 with .303 rifle), 1 askari (with .303 rifle) and 4 native porters.
• Mammoths: 2 wooly mammoths ("Mamut" and "Ogrom")
• "Ape-men": 5 Neanderthal warriors with flint-tipped spears.

Objectives

Note that these objectives were secret and known only to the appropriate faction:

• Explorers: kill the mammoths!  For extra credit, collect trophies and use the native porters to carry them back to base camp.
• Mammoths: Each mammoth must drive off or kill all intruders who approach within 12" or who shoot at it.  Otherwise, a mammoth won't itself move closer than 12" to models from other factions.
• Neanderthals: Drive off or kill the explorers!  If the mammoths get in the way then by all means dispose of them (they aren't that sacred).  But note that it'll take considerable luck for only 5 of you to hurt a mammoth...

Game 1: Ambush!

As is often the case with my games of Lost Lands, we had time to run the scenario several times in our 2 hours of club time.  This is what happened the first time around:

The explorers advanced until they passed the clump of trees where Mamut was feeding.  On taking the In Sight test, the mammoth decided that he really didn't like the look of these strangers, so he charged!
The native porters fled immediately, but the 2 white men and the askari all fired at the rapidly-approaching beast.  Their hasty shots went wild...

...so Mamut stomped on Professor Contender before spinning round to gore Sir Reginald.

Bakhari decided that he wasn't going to do the white mens' work any more; he fled for the trees, hoping to be able to evade the victorious beast in the thicket.

Result: the explorers were obliterated.  The Neanderthals hadn't even managed to cross the river (they're slower than average), so they slipped away quietly and left the field to the trumpeting mammoths.

Game 2: The Power of 3

This time, the explorers (their force bolstered by a second white man with elephant gun) climbed the hill on their baseline and refused to move from it!

 Again, the Neanderthals made slow progress and didn't manage to get close to the action.

Ogrom and several PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) approached the explorers, taking care to remain hidden by a clump of fir trees whilst doing so.

One of the PEFs advanced past the trees and was resolved as a small pack of dire wolves.  However, the explorers were waiting for just such an event...

First one wolf was shot down, then another.  The last remnants of the pack fled in disarray before they could reach the humans, terrified by the sudden death of their fellows.

Mamut and Ogrom both moved forward to investigate the strange noise and were joined by a 3rd mammoth, as one of the PEFs just happened to resolve as a mammoth.  The stunned explorers didn't react initially (the group threw a double-6 for their "in sight" test, then rolled a further 6 for their leader dice!).  When the men finally came to their senses, they decided to make a hasty strategic withdrawal - they ran away!

Result: no casualties to any player forces, but the mammoths held the field (the Neanderthals withdrew as quietly as possible without even seeing either the mammoths or the humans).

Game 3: A Friend in Need...

For the third game, I started the Neanderthals half-way along one edge of the table, rather than at the far end.  With their slow movement rate, this might allow them to be part of the action!

Almost immediately, they encountered a PEF; this was resolved as a Smilodon (sabretooth).  It looked as if the beast would attack the Neanderthals, but the explorers could also see it and one of them fired at the animal.  Warily, the animal turned to face the humans instead.

The Neanderthals had a good run of initiative rolls and silently approached the big cat from behind.  This was too good an opportunity to miss and they fell upon it, stabbing with their flint spears.  In the initial rush, they knocked the Smilodon down and wounded it.  However, the predator wasn't badly hurt; it quickly regained its feet and turned on its attackers!

This was too much excitement for the nearby explorers.  They couldn't resist "trying to help" and started to fire volley after volley into the melee!

By the time the smoke had cleared, Crug, Brun and the smilodon were all dead from gunfire.  The remaining Neanderthals were defiant and angry.  This puzzled Sir Reginald: he thought they should be grateful to the explorers for having helped to slay the sabretooth.  He was even prepared to let the cavemen have the pelt as a sign of goodwill!

Result: Another cultural misunderstanding that ended in a massacre.  That seems to happen a lot in my games of Lost Lands, though in no way had I planned such an event.  In this game, the mammoths just stayed where they were, grazing and letting the noisy humans fight it out.

Conclusion

This was designed as a 3-player scenario.  However, in all of the games we played only 2 forces had any contact; the 3rd side might as well have not been there.  That's not what I had intended at all.

I'm also a little unhappy with the one-sided results, particularly of the first 2 games.  It's always difficult to balance a game where the technologies, resilience and abilities of each force are radically different from each other.  This is very apparent when fielding rifle-armed hunters against large wild animals.  At range, the hunters will almost always win, whilst in melee the mega-fauna cannot really lose.  It's one of gaming's great perennial problems and if you have any solutions then I'd be delighted to hear them!