A Mammoth Task - Tusk Battle Report

Og hunt big food. Big food drink. Og hunt big food while big food drink. Big man dead. If Og hunt well, Og be new big man. If Og not hunt well, Ug be new big man.

We played Tusk last night. The scenario was that the chief of the tribe had died and the hunter that killed the most mammoths would become the new chief.

Mammoths at the watering hole (Click the pictures for larger versions)


Ug know what to do. Ug send hunters forward fast. Og know what to do. Og keep hunters hidden. Ug's hunters drive big food towards Og's hunters. Og clever. Ug stupid.

The game began slowly with my hunters not wanting to move (low activation die rolls), while Steve's troops advanced quickly forward. The mammoths started having to take reaction tests. Most grazed, but one decided to withdraw quickly away from Steve's hunters and toward mine. I pretended that this was all part of the plan and moved my hunters up behind a low hill.

First contact


Og send dogs in. Push big food into swamp or over edge. Big food attack dogs.

While Steve was moving his troops forward I used my few activation points to send my dogs forward with a view to driving the mammoths into the swamp or towards the cliffs on the right of the table. The mammoths attacked my dogs, who fortunately survived. I think I must have had particularly irritating yappy dogs because every time I tried to drive the mammoths with my dogs, the dogs were attacked.

Hunters slow. Og lose patience. Og attack big food and kill it. Og do happy dance. Ug not happy.

With Steve's hunters advancing rapidly and low activation points I took a risk. Og is a hero and has a fifty/fifty chance of dying if he attacks a mammoth. I charged him in and he won, killing a mammoth that Steve's dogs were about to worry. Meanwhile my dogs were attacked by a different mammoth and Steves hunters were trying to bring a mammoth down with slings and bows.

First Blood!


Og happy. Og kill more big food. Ug very not happy.

While Steve's dogs worried more mammoths and my dogs irritated them more, Og attacked and killed another mammoth, and still survived! The rest of my hunters were still lurking behind their hill, refusing to come out, while Steve's hunters were advancing rapidly towards the watering hole.

Og 2, Ug 0


Og happy. Big food step on Ug hunters. Squish! Ug dogs squish too. Og not happy. Ug kill big food. Ug hunters kill big food. Og hunters still hide.

Then suddenly Steve's hunters started to get lucky. Well, sort of. First his slingers got too close to a mammoth, which killed them. On the same turn his dogs disappeared under mammoth feet too. But, shortly after that Ug, Steve's hero, and his spear-armed hunters both killed mammoths. The scores were tied and it was going to come down to the final mammoth.

Ug and his hunters hard at work


Og race Ug to last big food. Og swift as wind. Ug slow like mud. Og kill big food. Og new big man. Og make Ug cook dinner.

With only one mammoth remaining and the scores tied, our heroes were the closest to the last mammoth, so we raced as fast as we could. Og got there first and, wildly improbably, killed his third mammoth, while his hunters finally started to come out of hiding. Victory to me!

Last mammoth standing


Conclusion
This was a brilliant game. Although we got a couple of things wrong at the start, largely from not reading the rules properly, we did manage to get things sorted out and we had the rules working properly by the end. We both had a great time and the result was very close to the wire. The reaction tests for the mammoths worked well, although interpreting how they should be adjudicated sometimes required some thought because of the presence of lots of humans in the area. We shall definitely play this one again, but next time we plan to hunt dinosaurs!

Afterword
The game took about an hour and a half in total, so we had time for a game of Pirates afterwards, which Steve won. I did not photograph that because of the lack of a suitable seascape, but I plan to sort out that issue later and produce a battle report for Pirates next time we play. It was a good game and the rules were surprisingly subtle for a simple game. I definitely need more ships for next time though. Good job The Works in Beverley is selling them off very cheaply.