When I was eight my father took me to see the Hollywood classic (!) "One Million Years B.C." featuring Raquel Welch. The profound respect shown for palaeontological detail, together with riveting acting skills, has inspired me, after a thirty year complete lack of interest, to design a wargame based upon the same principles of scrupulous disregard of known fact and shameless pandering to the lowest common denominator. The game, so far as is possible, avoids all use of language, numbers, and reasoning faculties.

You'll need a handful of model cavemen (we'll use the least scientific term here), a miniature landscape, and a variety of other life forms; woolly mammoths and rhinos, cave lions and bears, sabre toothed cats, and any other early mammal you wish.

The realy shameless among you may incorporate dinosaurs (and why not?), ignoring the inconvenient sixty or seventy million years between the two. After all, we are told that Neanderthal Man has been extinct for thirty thousand years, but I have identified his type at quick oil change businesses and fast food restaurants as recently as this week.

THE RULES

Set up the toys according to scenario or general preference. Divide the cavemen into two or more clans', with one or more players controlling the men of each clan. Sequence of game is

One clan moves, throws things, and fights. The other clan does the same.
Beasties move, attack, run away, or graze peacefully.
Repeat the above.

A more sophisticated version of this would involve drawing cards or - better - rocks with a pictograph painted on them by the clan leaders, ideally from the skull of a cave bear, or, failing that, a paper bag. Your rock, your turn to go.

COMMUNICATION: Players can talk only in grunts, made-up words etc, as well as pointing and grimacing. Pictographs may be used by more advanced players. Generous umpires may allow communication in sentences of three words, each of one syllable. But that's it.

MOVEMENT: Walking men, and slow moving beasties move the distance between the player's thumb and index finger extended.

Running men, dogs and more active beasties move the distance of an outstretched hand span, ie thumb to little finger. This is also the range of thrown spears and rocks. Really fast things move the distance from the elbow to the extended fingers. This is the distance also of that wonder weapon, the bow.

Climbing rocks or crossing rough ground: length of little finger only.

Anyone who knocks his own figure over while moving them has inflicted a wound. Anyone falling from a height of more than a few fingers is subject to the casualty rule.

I'm sorry some of you have small hands.

THROWING THINGS: Each caveman has three rocks or spears to throw. He can throw one per turn. He is also allowed to throw one at an enemy who will reach him on his turn. This is done by actually throwing a ball of paper, made by his clan, at the opposing player at a distance agreed upon beforehand, according to the manual dexterity of the group as a whole. I'd suggest about ten feet, but base it on about 50% effectiveness. An archer has ten shots, can fire two shots per turn, and is allowed a runner band to help him propel the balls of paper. A hit means the figure in question is a casualty.

THE CASUALTY RULE: Gently knock the figure over. If he falls on his back, he's wounded and can be healed. If he falls on his chest, he's off to see the ancestors. If he flips over and lands on his feet, he's a lucky knuckledragger. Be fair about this, and don't scrape the paint off the figure, which is a big taboo in all primitive cultures.

FACE TO FACE COMBAT: Match the figures up. Three rounds of the venerable and ancient "Paper, Scissors, Stone." Lose two and you are a casualty. Lose three and you are immediately extinct. A player who loses the first round can choose to run away, a full handspan to the rear immediately. The victor may follow up, but only the 'walk' distance. Figures who outnumber the opposition count as having won the first round already. Tame dogs can attack as cavemen, but die on one lost round of PSS.

FIGHTING BEASTIES is exactly the same, except that A) All beasties 'hit' on the first won round of PSS, and those of real size kill automatically - after all, it's hard to imagine being slightly grazed by an angry Tyrannosaurus Rex. B) It takes a lot to kill the larger beasties, and they fight to the last. Numbers help: for each caveman in excess of one fighting a beast, subtract one from it's total (so three blokes on a brachiosaurus means you only have to defeat it, er, 23 times to kill it. That's why we throw things at it first. )

Suggested totals: Cave bear, buffalo, lion etc - 5 hits
Mammoth, mastodon - 10 hits Dinosaurs - 10 to 25 hits

MORALE: Don't be silly! No, if a clan loses a quarter of it's strength killed or wounded-and-abandoned, it loses the game. Dogs don't count to this purpose -sorry Fido!

BEASTIE BEHAVIOUR: In a world where the stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut, there's plenty of room for even the dimmest wargamer. As a general rule, herbivorous creatures will graze to the point of being oblivious to anything except a threat within a handspan. Then their options include flight, fighting, or continuing to graze. Things like the tricerotops might charge in rhino-like fashion. herd animals will move together, often stampeding. Carnivorous beasties will be considerably more aggressive, and will tend to view cavemen as little more tha hors d'oevres. In doubt, twirl a bone for direction, dice for choices. When I say 'dice', I mean small rocks painted with a black smear on one side and a red ochre smear on another. I know it's ridiculous.

NEOLITHIC RULES
The advanced rules!

HEALERS, usually wise women, can attempt to heal wounded men by spending a turn chanting and putting soothing mammoth dung poultices on their wounds. Roll two 'dice'. If both are red, the man recovers. Both black, er, sorry! One of each - try again. Players able to display skills at chanting or other healing activities may be given advantages.

SHAMEN are priests/magicians. Each comes equipped with three totems, which can be used to increasehunting or war magic. Use beads or bones for totems. On each turn a shaman can use a totem to increase the movement of one group of cavemen by an extra handspan, throw a missile twice, or cancel an unfortunate round of PSS. He can do this within the range of elbow-fingertips from his figure. He can get extra totems either by succeeding in the last two of these (evidently his magic's good) or by spending a turn dancing, singing and generally invoking the spirits - ie impressing the umpire by his actions. He can get one, or even two totems per turn this way; that being said, an unimpressed umpire is as good as an unimpressed God in this context (and you always said the umpire thought he was God). However, the shaman is a feeble, elderly type, and will die on the first defeat at PSS, so keep him out of danger.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN can be regarded as helpless dependents, but those of us of more than Cro-Magnon intelligence may suspect that angry women are a lot more lethal than their menfolk, being smarter and more vicious when disturbed. Women will not fight unless an enemy comes within a handspan, from which point on they count as warriors, with the addition that they can throw two instead of one rockspear per turn. The children, of course, act like present day youngsters, crying, getting under your feet, and demanding to be allowed to stay up late to watch the brontosaurus.

HEROES is probably the wrong term for those oversized idiots who throw their weight about showing off. They always move at run speed, can take three hits in combat, and have six rocks to throw.

THE ARCHER is a cunning fellow with a weapon nobody understands. However, since he's only bot a bit of wood, he also counts as having automatically lost the first round of PSS.

NOTIONAL STONE AGE HUNTING / WAR PARTY: 1 Shaman, 1 Healer, 1 Hero, 1 Archer, 6-12 big lugs with clubs and spears. Maybe some dogs.

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