Hard Times: another PDEE season

It's February and, for Mark, February is prehistory month. He's found time to dust off the Palaeo Diet rules and see how the Grey Wolfs and Trouts are doing in the aftermath of the plague that struck both clans last season. The survival of both remains uncertain. The mammoths have failed to return to their summer grazing lands, again. Other sorts of animals, never seen before, are making their presence felt.

The Grey Wolf clan has weathered the great sickness / attack of the evil spirits better, and has remained on its traditional hunting grounds. The Trouts, almost wiped out, have retreated up into the hill country.

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In the first game, a small Grey Wolf hunting party is sent out, with instructions to bring back at least “8 bulk” of meat to the main camp.  Here is the traditional pre-hunt charcoal and ochre painting of the hunters. They are imaginatively named Red, Yellow, Brown, and Grey. Grey has a hound, named of course Greyhound. The humans are all armed with spears. The Grey Wolf clan isn’t much into clubs as weapons. They generally leave that sort of thing to the Trout clan.

And here is a view of the river flats where they will be trying their luck. From their vantage point at the south end they can see 2 groups of antelopes (ibexes), and 1 group of mountain goats. But the main interest is the big male Elk and his three bases of females and young. All these are Herd Grazers, so worth “2 Bulk” except the goats who are only 1 Bulk.

The hunters may or may not have spotted the Ground Sloth (Giant Grazer, 4 bulk) who is peaceably minding its own business in the scrub thicket. For added interest: the male Elk, and Ground Sloth, will morph into Apex Predators if they roll ‘6’ at any time as their beast reaction.

On turn 1 most of the hunters headed left, except for Yellow who went right, towards the river. The beasts are not showing any concern yet, except for a single Move Away reaction by one of the closer ibexes.

Turn 2, and Grey fluffed a sneak attack on the mountain goats. I mean, how hard could it be. He had only to skulk up and throw a spear. But no. The beasts spotted him and stampeded. Being mountain goats they went straight up the nearby cliff face and are now safe on top of the precipice. Then the hound started to howl. Luckily too far away from other beasts to provoke any reactions.

The other hunters all continued their stealthy progress around the flanks of the grazing animals.

Turn 3, the first kill!  At first things didn’t go well, as Red and Brown (on the L) snuck up on the Elks but caused Move Away reactions. But Yellow over by the river successfully attacked and wounded an ibex, provoking them to stampede towards Grey, who finished off the wounded beast. The other ibexes seemed unperturbed by the death of their friend. So that’s 2/8 bulk taken care of.

Turn 4. The action hots up. Grey wounded one of the other ibexes, which turned and fled (with the other survivor of its group) back towards to river, where Yellow was waiting. The hound chased it, causing some Move Away reactions among the Elks. The wounded ibex attacked Yellow and wounded him. But he not only killed the beast, but put in a second spear throw to wound the third ibex.

Meanwhile, Red and Brown (top left)  finally attacked the elks, wounding one that fled, without much disturbing any of the others. Phlegmatic creatures these elks. The hunting party now have 4/8 bulk in hand, and a wounded ibex loitering helpfully.

Turn 5, and the male Elk reveals its true colours. Attacked by Grey, it turns into an Apex Predator, exchanges wounds with Grey, then moves away. The other nearby hunters, Red and Brown wound an ibex from the remaining group (which stampede away) and carefully avoid the threat while edging closer to the female and baby elks.

Over by the river Yellow finished off another ibex despite his wound. His spear throwing has been phenomenal today. The hunters progress to 6/8 bulk in hand. I have started marking the kills with yellow tokens.

Turn 6. Red brought down the wounded elk mother and child. The other elks stampeded on seeing this, and I decided this should include the male, despite his recent show of aggression. 

Nothing much else happened. The Ground Sloth continues attacking the vegetation in the scrub thicket. The hunters have met their mission objective of bringing down at least 8 bulk of meat (one yellow kill marker is just out of frame at lower right). It would have been good to exceed the quota, but 2/4 hunters are carrying wounds and the remaining beasts are out of position for easy stalking. So we’ll call it a day.

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We now cross tp drop in on the Trout clan (H pattayaviensus), sadly depleted by the plague, and making the best of their new home in the hill country. A foraging party has come from the main cave to find at least 4 Bulk of resources, which must include both meat and seasonal berries.

Here is the foraging party, comprising 3 adult male hunters and 3 women and subadults.

Here is the area selected for the hunt. It contains residual areas of melting snow, 6 of which are sources of the frost berries the women and children are here to collect. Each patch (the patches on small scenic bases) contains 0.5 Bulk.



There is also a Woolly Rhino (Giant Grazer) and 3 x Warthogs (Herd Grazers) who do not wish to be disturbed. Lastly, on the hilltop across the steam are 2 x Cave Lions. They will stay on their own side of the stream unless a Human activates on snake eyes, or the Warthogs cumulatively roll 3 ones during their reaction rolls. They’re not interested in tackling the rhino. Not stupid.

Turn 1. The Trouts all activate successfully and start their mission. The woman & children (Gatherers) head for the two berry patches right next to the starting hill. The Hunters start stalking the warthogs.

Turn 2. The Gatherers have picked all the berries in the two patches and start  towards the north end of the area, skirting along the table edge behind the oblivious rhino. The Hunters decide to split up to better catch some warthogs. One starts to go around the small hill to get behind the beasts, the others stay put for now. There is an activation fail, but the beasts remain unmoved. No photo this time.

Turn 3. The Hunters are closing in on the Warthogs, although one beast has becone Alarmed and moved off 1M. The Gatherers (out of view) continue toward their next berry patch.

Turn 4. The Warthogs react too quickly for the Hunters, (centre right) who manage only 1 wound before all the beasts flee or stampede in different directions. The Gatherers reach the next berry patch (top left) after loping across the whole table. Harvesting begins.

Turn 5. One hunter manages to sneak up on the wounded warthog and finish it off. The nearby beast attacks, but fails to wound the hunter, and a second hunter skulks up in support. The third hunter starts to take a shortcut across the table to join the Gatherers (those Lions are starting to sound serious), but must tread carefully (amble and skulk only) to avoid provoking the third Warthog on one side and the Rhino on the other.

The Gatherers clean out the berry patch and prepare to move on to the next. But the next closest patches are near the Cave Lions lair. 

Turn 6. The first Hunter activates (fails) on snake eyes, so the Cave Lions can move out. The two remaining Warthogs make themselves scarce. The one fighting the Hunter turns and stampedes off table. The one up near the Lions Moves Away. The second Hunter also fails one activation dice, and a Lion attacks the nearby Warthog, which was just close enough, but somehow fluffed the attack and the Warthog wasn’t wounded.

The photo above shows the end of turn 6. At top left the Gatherers are retreating back along the far table edge, away from the Lions,  arraying their berries. The two Lions are now both across the stream. One is attacking the Warthog, the other is sizing up the two hunters who have rushed across to cover the retreat of the Gatherers. At lower right the third hunter (now known as “snake eyes”) stands guard over the Warthog kill

The Trouts have 3.5 Bulk so far, and havn’t suffered any wounds or deaths. They need another 0.5 Bulk to reach their target. So close.

Turn 7. The first hunter (a different one) to activate rolls snake eyes. The nearest beasts are the Warthog and Lion. The Warthog attacks the Lion, fails, the Lion attacks back and wounds the Warthog. Then the club-armed hunter moves up the the other Lion (skulk, skulk) and clubs it to death with a well placed double hit. The first Lion immediately switched from attacking the Warthog to the Hunter, but failed to wound him. No photo this time.

Turn 8. The Trouts clean up. The spear-armed hunter finished off the last Warthog (already wounded by the Lion). The club armed hunter in combat with the Lion dealt with it the same way as before, clubbing it down with a well placed special hit. That’s both Lions killed by the same hunter in the same way. A Hercules to be sure!

So here’s the end of game position. Over on the far side, the Gatherers are making their way back to the exit point (upper right corner) laden with 1.5 Bulk of berries. On the rest of the table the only beast remaining is the Woolly Rhino, which was undisturbed by any of the goings-on and has been chewing its favourite shrubs throughout. The four yellow body markers show where the redoubtable Trout hunters brought down 2 x Warthogs & 2 x Cave Lions adding a further 8 Bulk of meat to today’s bag (not to mention the hides, bones etc). All without any wounds or loss of life.

A memorable day out for the Trout foragers, with great stories to share around the fire.

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The final chapter of this season’s visit to the Grey Wolf & Trout clans sees them encounter each other in the debatable lands where their territories overlap.  A hunting party from each clan is pursuing a Gomphotherium giganticus …

Here’s the tabletop, a swampy area with scattered patches of vegetation, quite unlike the clans’ usual ranges.

Each clan has three hunters in the field this time. The Grey Wolf hunters (Brown, Red, Yellow) are all spear-armed, while the Trouts (Club, Axe, Pointy Stick) have 1 spear and 2 clubs. Here they are posed with their would-be prey.

The Gomphotherium is the biggest animal ever seen, with these stats (and the stats for a standard Giant Grazer for comparison).

Savagery: 3+ (4+); Resilience: 5+ (5+); Bulk: 6+ (4+)

I’m going to be using an appropriately Palaeolithic system of dice rolls, weighted by contingent factors (such as “the need to bring home the bacon outweighs the desire to kill the Outfolk”) to run the Conflict or Cooperation aspect.

Turn 1. The hunting parties come on from diagonally opposite table corners. The Grey Wolfs make use of an ancient walkway built by long-forgotten ancestors. The Gomphotherium placidity munches its way through a thicket.

Turn 2. The hunting parties catch sight of each other and both pause to figure out what to do. They can both also see the Gomphotherium moving about in the nearby vegetation. By the Spirits, it’s BIG. None of these hunters has ever seen one before, they have only a few old half-believed stories to go by.

The Trout clan are feeling pretty confident (score 12/18 for aggression), and are inclined to see off the Grey Wolfs before bagging the Gomphotherium. The Grey Wolfs OTOH score only 5/18 and are willing to extend the hand of friendship and cooperation. They’ll wait and see what the Trouts do next.

Turn 3. The Trout hunters move up to within L of the Grey Wolfs with much howling and waving of weapons. There are a couple of activation fails but too faraway for the Gomphotherium to notice. The Grey Wolfs retire slightly to show their peaceful intentions. How will the Trouts interpret this?

Turn 4. The Trouts seem to calm down a bit (lower modified aggression score) but follow up to stay at about L from the Grey Wolfs. Who in turn also advance cautiously. But then an unexpected development, as the Grey Wolf hunter “Brown” (on the left of the GW line) activates on 2D6=12, and throws a spear at “Axe” the nearest Trout. He misses, but what will happen now ?

Turn 5. The Trouts response is low key, laughing off the failed throw as a joke with appropriate hoots and gestures. But the Grey Wolfs don’t take it that way, thinking the Trouts are insulting their prowess as hunters. So the skirmish begins.

Brown shoots a spear, misses, Axe moves up and attacks and wounds him. Brown has a second activation point up his sleeve (?) and fights back wounding Axe.

Yellow shoots a spear at Pointy Stick, hitting and wounding him. Pointy Stick flees. Yellow shoots a second spear at Club, but misses, causing Club to move back a little bit.

Red moves across to join the fight against Axe, but cannot actually land a blow this time. Club doesn’t react to the move.

Here’s the position at the end of the turn. The Gomphotherium remains in the thicket, looking on uncomprehendingly.

Turn 6. The skirmish continues. At the end of the turn Brown is dead, there are no further Hunter wounds or losses in either party. But one of the Trouts rolled activation snake eyes, which triggered the Gomphotherium to “do something crazy” (a game contingency plot point, not a PDEE beast reaction). So it duly moved out of the thicket to see what all the fuss is about.

Turn 7. The appearance of the giant beast caused the Hunters to pause their fracas. The Trouts got to move this time (The GW react as if beasts. If they start cooperating they move as if all one hunting party) and they moved off towards the Gomphotherium after rolling only a pacific 8/18 for aggression. The two remaining Grey Wolfs also rolled low aggression (7/18 but they only have two dice now), so seem prepared to let bygones be bygones and get on with the hunt. The demise of that hothead Brown has no doubt helped.

Turn 8. The Hunters are now working together as a single party. Can they take down the biggest animal they have ever seen?

The three Trouts all activated well and skulked towards the beast though the tricky ground. Pointy Stick threw a spear, which bounced off, and the Gomphotherium attacked the nearest hunter, Club, but failed to cause a wound.

The two Grey Wolfs aso skulked forwards, to within spear-throwing range.

Turn 9. The Hunters attacked. The Grey Wolfs went first, throwing spears and causing the beast a first wound. But the cost was high: fails led to the beast attacking and killing Club and twice attacking (but not wounding) Pointy Stick. Axe went next, provoking the beast to Roar, and all Hunters backed off. After this Axe & PS skulked forward again, and PS threw another spear, causing another wound. So the Gomphotherium is now carrying 2/6 wounds,, but another Hunter has been lost.

Turn 10. The Hunters continued to harass the Gomphotherium. Again the Grey Wolfs moved up first, skulking into soear range ready to throw next turn. Then Axe activated, getting into contact and wielding his club. But he missed, and the angry beast attacked him, but no wound. Lucky, as Axe is already wounded from the Hunter v Hunter skirmish. Last, Pointy Stick took a shot, and also missed, causing the beast to Roar again, driving some of the hunters back. 

Turn 11. The attack was a great success - for the Gomphotherium. Red failed an activation dice, and the beast Moved Away a bit. Red followed up and threw a spear, missing, and the beast attacked Axe (still the closest Hunter) this time killing him.  Yellow went next, likewise failing on one dice, and the beast reacted by attacking Red, wounding him. Yellow closed in and shot a spear, missing again, and the beast got its revenge by killing Red with a second wound. Pointy Stick, the only other surviving Hunter, wisely activated on only 1 dice and used it to run away.

So at the end of the game we see the Gomphotherium, carrying 2 wounds, standing its ground with two squashed and/or gored Hunters nearby, Axe and Red. There are only two surviving Hunters (Pointy Stick and Yellow) left to somehow get back to their clans with the dire news.

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That’s where we leave the Grey Wolf and Trout clans for this season. Perhaps by the time we drop in again they will be regaining their strength.

Cheers from Pattaya,

Mark