Valley of the Mammoths

[Zarniwoop]

The game pieces have some wonderful cartoon graphics which are very suitable for this game.
This game consists of 3 summer turns and 3 winter turns.

Each turn consists of the following phases:

Events: Draw a season event card (except in 1st summer) this effects all players.
New animals: 4 appear in summer turns, 2 in winter (6 on the 1st turn). For 2 or 3 players: 1 less animal.
Movement of animals: A dice is rolled for direction, only animals not on human spaces can move; they stop when encountering humans or obstacles.
Movement of tribes & camps: Humans move a maximum of 2 spaces, stopping if they land on a mountain space. If a at least 1 warrior and 1 female are alone, they may set up a new camp.
Combat: Roll a single die per group, modified as follows:
A single warrior gets a +1
Warriors +1
Friendly camp +1
Friendly cave +2
Animal +1 (summed up if several same-type animals)
A female can only fight animals. If alone against enemy warriors, she is captured by the enemy warriors and joins their tribe.
Survival : Collect food 1point per hex of wood (summer only), 1 per hex bordered by water (all year) and if last summer turn, you can harvest crops 8 points of food for intact fields or 4 points for partially tampled fields. Then for each tribe member you have to pay 1 point of food, for any you can not or do not want to feed they are eliminated.
End season events: Each female in a camp/cave births(max 2), Roll 1 dice:
1 or 2: a female is born
3, 4 or 5: a warrior is born
6: twins are born! (Roll dice again this Time a 6 is a warrior)
Each player now takes one Fate card. Each player can only have a max of 5 cards (or 4 for a 5-6 player game)
Crops cost 1 food pt, last winter turn only
End of turn: If someone has 4 camps they announce it. If they still control then at the end of the next turn they win the game.

Those tribes wiped out before the end of the first year get a chance to be resurrect their tribe (starting with fewer tribe members than the normal start)

There is an additional variant that uses Fire, this adds an additional victory condition of possessing fire at the end. It also makes winter harsher as it now costs 1.5 points of food (rounded down) for those not in possesion of fire.

Those posssing fire also get a +1 in combat against animals.

This is a fun game and has lots of player interaction and devious strategies. I would recommend this game to anyone the rules are simple to pick up and with the game board having two halves with different layout's on each side there is lots of replayability here.