Warning: This thread is pure fantasy. No historical reference work has been undertaken whatsoever!
Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten is a stand-alone set of gaming rules for recreating prehistoric animal hunts on your table top. The game models a time when humans were not yet in control of the world around them, when the landscape could just as easily give succour to a struggling tribe, as it could cripple a thriving people.
Designed with solo and multiplayer games in mind, players take on the role of the hunting party while an integral response mechanism means that beasts react in different ways in different situations.Having been in possession of Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten for a while now, with its clever activation system based on the 'Songs of..' ways of doings things the intention of getting what I need together to create the setting, but one of the things that I was stumped on for some time was: 'Which figures?'.
I wanted to do something a little different to buying some 'cavemen' and prehistoric beasts. I toyed with a few options but then it dawned on me that what I really wanted to do was use the characters from the illustrations in the rulebook. They are very much drawn in what I will refer to as an 'Asterix' style, which is always a good thing in my opinion (I love those books!
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Looking around I could not find anything that would really fit without extensive conversion work, so I decided that I would have a crack at making my own.
Contact was made with Nic Wright, the author of the rules, and Andrea Sfiligoi of Ganesha Games, who distribute them, and they have agreed with me making my own interpretation of the characters in miniature form.
Thanks, chaps!
I figured that 28mm scale bodies with oversized heads to imitate the artwork would work best, armed with the various options that the rules allow, Spear, Bow, Club and Fire. This would result in quite large figures that would be fun and easy to paint and also make them compatible with various easily accessed toy ranges as well as wargaming miniatures.
So this is where it began....
(As you can see, a 'hound' was also added to the group as the rules give you the option of adding them to your group, although they can prove quite difficult at times! You have been warned...)
The heads have been made as separate pieces so that they can used with whatever body is chosen to increase the possible number of variations to a quite a huge number. The heads can also be affixed at any angle to add a certain amount of animation to the characters.
The heads, which those that have a copy of the rules may recognise....
(Ignore the two 'beastie' heads, as they are the start of something a little different which may well also end up as critturs for the PD:EE later.
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And with the heads blue-tacked in place....
More later....