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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Cavemen, Nazis and Saucers Oh My!

We had our local convention last weekend, Conquest Sac, at which I ran a couple of games.


Caveman!

First off was Pulp Action Library's Caveman game, a very fun, quick & simple game about prehistoric warfare. The things that sold me on this game were:
  • Players actually threw "rocks" at the other players (not the figures) to see if they hit with their missiles.
  • Combat is determined by rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissor (originally Cavemen played Rock, Rock, Rock, but that lacked the sophistication to provide a suitable resolution for the wargame rules).
  • The only "dice" used in the game are flat rocks with red goo on one side & black goo on the other. Red is good, black is bad, since it's better to be red than dead.
  • The players are expected to actually dance & chant to get the favor of the Gods (GM), & only communicate in grunts & hand gestures.

3 people played the game. I called them Lar, Atouk & Gog since they couldn't talk. This is the board laid out. Each tribe of cavemen came in from one of the corners, with the objective of getting food.


The food is a family of mammoths, with a saber tooth tiger stalking them in the bushes.


A few pictures of the different tribes.


They are the Tim Mee 1/48 scale plastic cavemen that you can still get on Amazon.


& these are the tools of the game: magic yellow totems used by the tribe's shaman, "rocks" for throwing made out of foam, & cave "dice". The caveman on the right is the shaman since his blonde hair is obviously magical.


The tribe converge on the Mammoth family...


The Mammoths scattered, but the cavemen quickly realized ganging up on the Mammoths is the way to go.


One tribe killed & drug off the saber tooth tiger, but another tribe finally killed one of the Mammoths, winning the game.



Eat Hitler

The 2nd game was another by Pulp Action Library, Eat Hitler. In 1945, Hitler & his senior staff try to travel back to 1939 to do it right the 2nd time. But they have a faulty ocillation overthruster & instead travel back to the Jurassic era (which looks strangely like the Paleolithic era where the Cavemen live).


In the game, you play dinosaurs trying to get through the crunchy Nazi shell to the soft chewy Hitler center. There are dinos from T Rex down to Raptors & Pterodactyls. The players also move the Nazis & herbivore dinosaurs to either get them in the way of the other players, or move them out of the way of their own dinos.


We had players from 6 yrs old, on up, & all had fun.


First on the officer buffet was Himmler with all the Raptors joining in.


The Pterodactyls gobbled up a trooper before confronting Hitler. But once they finally grabbed him to take him back to their aerie, the Raptor player used his Nazi activation to shoot the Pterodactyl & make him drop Hitler.


Then the Allosaurus gobbled Hitler up before the other 2 could move again.


You can barely see Hitler throwing his Heil Nazi gang sign before greasing the Allosaurus' gullet.


& here is the final count for the Pterodactyl's larder to feed their young.


The Allosaurus won since he ate both Hitler & Goering, & immediately went to the Dinosaur Emergency Room with severe stomach pains.


DUST Rumble in the Jungle

The final game was a joint effort by my local club. I was one of the assistant GMs & helped a bit on the terrain.


We played a big game of DUST Warfare simplified for the convention. For those not familiar with the DUST family of Weird World War 2 games, it's the 1950s & WW2 is still going, but with alien and advanced technology. The game includes rocket jump packs, zombies & gorilla troops, plus a variety of walkers.


Our game centered around an alien flying saucer that crashed into the African jungle (& there also happened to be dinosaurs in the area).


The saucer was built by one of our club members. He used 2 plastic snow saucers, & put flickering LED tea lights the smoke to make it look like it was on fire.


He even put bits & pieces inside the saucer to make it look completely alien.


Allied rocket troops fight with Axis gorillas over control of the saucer, with the rest of the troops try to pick up the alien debris scattered behind the crash.


We ran 2 games for 10 players each & both went well. We'll be running the game again at Kublacon & Pacificon if you're interested in trying it.