Irregular Wars Wargaming

Perhaps there's something primal about February because in parallel with Mark's Palaeo Diet month, I was asked to run a couple of games of Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten this week out at Clare Gaming & Hobbies in Ballyclare. With four players (Andy, Dave, Roger and myself) sat around the ould 3x3, we set up a basic hunting ground with populated with a little bit of everything for the first hunt and set out with a hunting party of six hunters and two hounds. The party's inexperience played out hilariously as the wolf and cave bear savaged hunters and prey beasts alike, while our fire-bearer contributed to the chaos by flushing the prey right off the table. In the end, the tribe managed to secure enough food to survive purely thanks to the half the hunters getting killed. But at least the tribe's only female survived, so there is hope for humanity yet! By the second hunt of the evening, there was a much better understanding of hunter strategies. Working cohesively, th...

To finish this year’s Palaeo Diet season, Mark used the Pulp variant of the rules to play a game of skulduggery, as the black hand of the Russian regime - the Okhrana secret police - tries to capture V I Lenin who is resting up at a German army camp at Bialystok on his way to the Finland Station. So, it’s April 1917 and Lenin is being conveyed by the German High Command from his exile in Switzerland, back to Russia where they hope he will further destabilise the tottering Provisional government. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Here’s an overhead view of a small German army camp outside the town of Bialystok. In Lithuania if you’re a patriot or in Poland if you’re not. It’s the dead of night … (Photo #1). The camp is guarded by a detachment of six men (Goons, commanded by Sgt Ostmann, all armed with smg). A snatch squad of five Okhrana men (Adventurers, commanded by special agent Malinovsky, all armed with pistols) will try to infiltrate, grab Lenin, and escape with him (Photo...

Continuing with his rampage through prehistory, Mark returns with another Palaeo Diet: Pulp (mis)adventure! *** The freighter Excelsior! was carrying a fusion bomb to the Europa colony when it lifted off from Suvarnabhumi at the start of its most recent voyage. Unluckily, in what is being officially described as a sequence of unforeseeable events, the weapon had to be jettisoned to allow the ship to break earth orbit and enter the aether flux. Luckily the astrogation crew got a good fix on where and when it impacted. Six months later, and the Eromanga Sea about 93+/- 0.02Mya is the focus of the search for the errant weapon. As usual in such cases the Uttlerley-Barkinge (Time-travel & landscape gardening) Corporation is leading the search, on contract from Imperial Spaceways. The approximate site has been confirmed by aerial sensing, and a recovery team is ready for insertion. Here is the official group photo of the recovery team. It comprises six divers (Gold 1-3 & Red 1-3) a...

Mark returns to the Trout clan for some more Palaeo Diet mischief : At about the same time the Grey Wolf party was encountering the Glyptodonts in the lands beyond the East River, the Trout Clan faced their own problem, with a beast that had dropped by their home territory. A huge Giant grazer had appeared in the rocky area from which the Trouts had - only last year - finally driven away the cave hyaenas. The area is already becoming a prized foraging ground, especially for snails and other tasty small critters, and the Trouts aren’t about to see it invaded and laid waste by some shovel-toothed hefalump. A hunting party is organised to drive away, or kill, the intruder (Photo #1). The hunters comprise two men armed with spears, three with clubs, and the leader, Crocus, who carries a burning brand. They approached cautiously. The terrain comprises rocky outcrops, which the hyaenas had favoured for their dens. The Trouts can scramble at reduced rates through these, but the Giant Grazer c...

The third contingent for my 28mm Trojan forces is Aeneas, son of the goddess Aphrodite and leader of the Dardanians. All minis are from Eureka Miniatures. Keeping the red-brown key colour, the Dardanian contingent has yellow as their binding colour. Aeneas was a second cousin (first cousin, once removed?) for the Trojan king and one of the most prominent heroes on the Trojan side. He helped lead the Trojans following the death of Hektor, and would lead the Trojan refugees to Italy in the aftermath of the war. The Dardanian promachoi warriors (Eureka Bronze Age Greeks). The Dardanian promachoi archers (Eureka Chaldean archers).