Dinosaur Hunters On Island X

 I got the idea for the game from the Tusk books. Two teams of hunters must return to the waiting ship, The Unconquerable, eluding tyrannosauruses and a volcanic island destroying volcano. The ship gins and crew can fire on any dinosaurs they have line of sight to. I added my own quirks to the game: a Tyrannosaurus might decide to attack a herbivorous dinosaur or another Rex.

  We played two games with hunters placed in two corners furthest away from the ship and dinosaurs in the middle.

GAME 1

Dinosaur distraction: 2 carnivores attack a Spinosaurus. A predator and the target both died.

The British Royal Marines await the return of the scientific hunting teams. A French observer can also be seen. Two 24 pounder guns will later make a mess of dinosaurs, wounding on 2s and doing D6 wound damage. (Dinosaurs have 4 to 5 wounds capacity).

Below: Two versions of The Unconquerable, demonstrating the joys of A.I!

Dinosaurs will be dinosaurs as carnivorous ones attack the herbivore. They did not have it all their own way, though.

Things get hairy for white hunters and native soldiers.

A long shot. The hunters had to get over the river (classed as shallow) and past the scaled horrors.

There was not  a lot of defence against dinosaurs in close combat.

These Rexes, all had a taste for human but they also turned on each other.

Now boys, play nicely!

A sticky end...

GAME 2

CONCLUSION. There were 11 Tyrannosauruses and they killed ALL the hunters of both groups. No-one got near the ship. mat's team was destroyed within the first three moves.

GAME 2: We reduced the Rexes to 7. The hunters did a bit better, getting off some shots and killing a few of the beasts. The dinos also attacked each other again. The ship got off some shots, killing three Rexes.

  Half way through the game the island's volcano began to erupt. This meant the hunters had 6 moves to get to the shore. TWO of my men escaped the clutches of the beasts.

 MECHANISM We used some of Warhammer mechanisms for initiative, hitting, wounding and leadership. Highest leadership was the leader who had 9 whilst other hunters were 8 and native troops, 7.  We also had overwatch when attacked by a beast from sufficient distance. However this requires 6s instead of 4+ to hit. As big targets there was an additional +1 to hit. Dinos had armor saves of 4+ reduced by 2 when hit by modern firearms. This was my adaptation as in Warhammer it is _1 for armor saves from early firearms.

  Dinosaur actions were worked out on the random results from Tusk and based on distance of humans from dinos, firing at dinos and so on. Sometimes dinos were scared away by shooting.

FIGURES

The dinosaurs were collected over many years and it can be seen how the image of Tyrannosaurus changed over time. (It is depicted as less upright and not sluggish now). The basing was last  minute and unpainted.

 The figures are a wide selection including home castings of Britains African Rifles, Charbens, Marx and ElastoWit, the latter including a Sherlock Holmes! There are also some converted copies of Speedwell hunters. On eof them has a heavy caliber rifle made from attaching a paintbrush cover.