Sunday, March 3, 2019

Prehistorics: Paleo Diet Review

Last Friday we played the first of the prehistoric rulesets. I chose Paleo Diet by Ganesha Games as the most promising.



Instead of picking one of the 10 scenarios provided in the PDF we played a generic mammoth hunt. Three groups of 3 hunters and a dog each (I watched the movie Alpha recently so the dog was a must) sneaking up to a herd of Mammoth.


One group would drive them towards the other two groups with fire. The other two groups would hen try to kill at least 2 of the giants.



Activation works per figure or per small group placed close apart. Roll 1, 2 or 3 dice and to Activate (and get as many Actions as successes rolled) and the failures give Actions to the beasts. The more failures, the more beasts get Actions. This mechanism is a staple phenomenon in games from Ganesha.

Another one is the pleasantly simple measuring system. Three measuring sticks (Short, Medium and Long) take care of all distance measuring for you.



Which action the beast takes is determined by its type, its surroundings (fire or hunters nearby for example) whether it is wounded and finally a D6 roll on the correct table. It might for example just move away from the hunters, roar to chase them away or even attack them!



Attacking is a simple affair. Roll a D6 and overcome the to hit number of the beast. A hit takes away a hit point or Bulk point. Once reduced to 0 Bulk the beast dies and joins the Paleo Diet.



It produced a quick and pleasant game where the mammoth were indeed driven towards the hunters. Killing mammoth however proved not without its risks as two hunters were trampled. 4 mammoth were killed nevertheless, so the hunt was bountiful!



The rules set in my case is a pleasant 58 page PDF acquired for $10 with cartoonesque illustrations and clear explanatory diagrams. It provides rules for prehistoric hunts, as the above would suggest. Hunters can be equipped with various weapons like spears, clubs, bows-and-arrows and stones.

Beasts and prey are grouped in types: giant grazers, herd grazers, apex predators, pack predators and individual critters.  Each type behaves differently when confronted with humans.



Things like fire, terrain effects and even a campaign mode are included in the game, so you can collect, buy, paint or build paleolithic terrain, hunters and wildlife to your heart's content.

This game will certainly be played again. Recommended!

Next one in the preview queue will most likely be Prehistoric Settlement by Steve Barber.




5 comments:

  1. Looks good; I'm keen to try this myself.

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  2. Hi, where did you get the figurines from? Looks great!

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  3. Thank you. Arcane Scenery and Models sells most of the animals which are made by DeeZee. The hunters are made by Lucid Eye. The sabretooth is by Steve Barber I think. There are some Foundry bison.

    Check out the tag pre-historic below the blog article to find more.

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  4. Very interesting and it looks wonderful too!
    Great review

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