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| Jenny's tribe chases some megafauna in Keith's Paleolithic hunting game with Wiley Games rules |
My friend
Keith is a big fan of all things prehistoric. Over the years, he has run a number of
Dinosaur Hunt games for us using a variety of rules sets. When our friend Andy bought some 28mm cavemen recently, it got us talking about a series of games set in that distant time period. Each player could control a band of hunter-gatherers vying to survive in the dangerous and wild Paleolithic era. I mentioned to Keith that I thought the
Wiley Games rules, aka Fistful of Lead series, would work great. Players could receive an extra card each turn that they could use to activate any of the animals on the tabletop, whether predators or prey.
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| A crew of cavemen and women and Keith's tabletop filled with 54mm hunters and Stone Age creatures |
As I hoped it might, that intrigued Keith. He said he would begin working on it. My interest had been piqued by the recent activity and painted miniatures folks were posting on the
Prehistoric Facebook page. Also, a number of bloggers, were posting battle reports of their games. One good example is
Vagabond's Wargaming Blog and the adventures of the
Shell Clan. You can check these out on his Stone Age themed posts. Keith worked quickly and said he was ready to run a game this past Sunday, tossing in a twist in declaring that we'd be using 54mm miniatures.
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| How hungry is my hunter? My 1st hunter advances towards the big & smaller creatures on the plain |
Honestly, I have no idea where he got all of the plastic figures in this admittedly obscure scale. I'm sure they were from a toy set sold somewhere, but there they were -- painted up and based. Each of us took control of four hunters with various weapons including spears, hafted stone weapons, clubs, and even a big, honking, old rock! Keith kept the "traits" to an absolute minimum. In Wiley Games' various rules, you can personalize a figure giving it various traits that make it quicker, more accurate, able to ignore effects of wounds it has suffered, and many, many more abilities. One figure was designated a Leader, but he was pretty much equal to all of the others in fighting power.
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| Uh-oh, 3 apparently VERY angry prehistoric giant penguins waddle onto the board near my band |
The tabletop was populated with various prey animals, from lumbering, elephant like Deinotherium
, thick-skinned Megacerops, and several smaller animals including large, Stone Age era capybera and wombat-like mammals. My apologies to Keith if I am giving the wrong names! Anyway, there was also a chance predators might appear based on our actions. I began moving my band of hunters off the board edge and towards the megafauna that was grazing in the middle of the table. We hadn't gone far when a trio of man-sized prehistoric penguins -- apparently called "Palaeeudyptes klekowskii" -- waddled onto the board very near us. My crew wasn't sure how they'd taste, but figure it might be something like chicken...ha, ha! Before you laugh, apparently these were twice the size of a modern day Emperor Penguin. My remaining two band members who hadn't moved yet sprang into action and darted forward to the attack.
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| 1st hunter vs. megafauna meetup did not go well for the hunter...oh, the names? Keith being funny! |
The first player vs. prey animal encounter had occurred moments earlier when one of Tom's hunters attacked one of the huge Deinotherium (I believe, it could have been one of the other species -- but it was big!). The hunter ended up splattered and out of action when the enraged creature defeated him in Close Combat and then rolled an "Out of Action" wound result. Ouch! This prehistoric hunting thing could be dangerous! My duo of hungry hunters duly discovered that themselves. We felt perhaps the penguins should be renamed "Beaks of Fury," as both penguins wounded and knocked down the hunter who had attacked them. Yikes! Half of my force was prostrate and bleeding on turn 1!
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| My own encounters did not go well, either -- two hunters Wounded & Down to one pissed off penguin |
Others were having a slightly easier time of it. Allen's continued his amazing string of rolls which he started last week when his
orcs stomped mine in a Dragon Rampant game. Seeing his early success, I decided to give him something tougher to chew on. One of the random predators showed up, a giant, long snouted wolf-like creature called a Andrewsarchus. To me, that sounds like somewhat you might meet at a work conference ("Hi! I'm Andrew Sarchus, but you can call me Andy..."). One of Allen's hunters was trailing behind the other three, and I used my highest card to send "Andy" off to take a bite out of him. Lo and behold, Allen continued to be an unstoppable, dice-rolling machine. He rolled a "10" on 1d10 in combat to beat it, then a "9" to knock it out of action with his big, honking rock.
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| Always the clever, thinking gamer, I sent the first predator that arrived to attack one of Allen's men |
In revenge, Allen's brother Joel (they were on the same side or "tribe," activated Beaks of Fury again, giving my two Down hunters another wound each. Long ago, I learned not sit between the Sams brothers in any board game featuring conquest (lest you end up in a "Sams-wich"!). Apparently, that bond extended all the way back to the savannas of the Stone Age. I sent both of my two upright hunters back to gang up on one of the frenzied penguins. The first also was knocked down and wounded, and it took my final guy to take out one of those dynamite birds. However, both of my downed guys were skewered by the long beaks when they attempted to get up off the ground. My rolls were lackluster to say the least, and pretty much anyone rolling against me -- Keith as GM, Joel, or Allen -- had nearly unbeatable high dice. Extinction loomed as a definite possibility for my small band of hunters.
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| Allen was on a dice rolling tear! Here, 3 of his hunters bring down a Megacerops -- plenty of meat! |
My fellow tribe-mates, Mike S and Jenny, were having poor luck, as well. Jenny was hitting the Megacerops, but kept rolling lower on the Wound table. She was unable to deal a knock-out blow, and was resolved to chasing along behind it poking it in the back side, inflicting another shock marker. It would then flee and she would have to chase it down again. Despite being ostensible allies, Mike and Jenny nearly came to blows when he "poached" one of her heavily wounded mammals, finally killing it.
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| Two megafauna with their own collection of wound & shock markers, courtesy of Jenny's band |
My two surviving hunters finally got their act together and killed off the rest of the penguins. Oh, I forgot to mention: all that time they were beating me they were rolling d8's and I was rolling d10's! Our shell-shocked women and children broke from their stunned disbelief and darted forward to drag their bodies back to our camp, hoping there was some meat under all those feathers!
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| For sending the Andrewsarchus ("Andy") after Allen, Joel sent the penguins on a follow up attack |
For an encore, we managed to ambush and kill a giant, prehistoric capybara. At that point, my duo were willing to call it the hunting trip concluded. We were dragging four, hopefully meaty bodies back to camp. No use trying to down one of those huge elephant or rhino like creatures! And the other tribe's warriors seemed to be too scary and efficient of killing machines for us to take on. The Ancestors obviously weren't with us today. Maybe, on another day, their spirits would favor us and we would be more fortunate in our hunting.
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| My entire band had to combine to kill our 1st penguin...then my 2 guys died trying to get up! |
The game played well, though doubtless Keith will do some tweaking to how the animals appear and act. I liked the ability to send a predator after another player's hunters, though most players used the card to move a prey animal closer to themselves, instead. Maybe next time let prey animals be moved only one move distance to represent the herd's wanderings? Or have herds move in a random direction? Otherwise, it almost seems like we were whistling and calling them over, only to bonk them on the head and kill them. That didn't seem very natural or realistic behavior.
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| Meanwhile, other bands were taking down bigger prey -- a Deinotherium succumbs to their blows |
Either way, I hope Keith continues running these hunts, but allow us to create our own hunter band and keep track of our hunts in a continuing series of games. There are campaign rules which allow characters to improve or giving them a chance of dying when they were wounded or put out of action. It could be similar my
post-apocalyptic campaign that I ran for the
Sunday Night gamers using Wiley Games rules. Anyway, despite my struggles, I had fun and look forward to more games telling the story of the deadly life of early hunters on the savanna!
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| Hey look! One of my hunters actually took out one of the prehistoric capybaras without dying...! |
MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026- Miniatures acquired in 2026: 179
- Miniatures painted in 2026: 110
TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026
- Terrain acquired in 2026: 12
- Terrain painted in 2026: 26
SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026
- Scatter acquired in 2026: 21
- Scatter painted in 2026: 59
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| I suppose we won't starve, dragging this meat back to our camp -- but we lost half our hunters!! |
