Hi, new member here.
I bought a Treehouse set recently and last weekend was trying out some games with my son. One was Ryan McGuire's "Ice Age".
My question is, how can the Mastodon player possibly win?
I've tried several strategies for placing pieces, but found nothing that works. Every time, the Caveman player can take out a mastodon on nearly all the first few moves -- three mastodons down, and game over, by about the fourth move.
If real life cavemen and mastodons were like this, mastodons would have gone extinct long ago. Oh, wait.
Better to place in herds or not? In herds you need more cavemen to take out a mastodon, but four cavemen can threaten two or more mastodons at once whereas two separated mastodons need six cavemen to threaten them.
Better to place on the edges or not? It gives the cavemen fewer options to surround them, but the mastodons then have limited retreat possibilities.
Maybe there's something I'm misunderstanding about the rules?
I guess seeing an example game would help.