Well, that’s where the hawks come in. Your buffalo isn’t going to be charging around stomping rats if it’s got hawks diving on them going for their eyes. There are only 7 buffalo after all. Also, these buffalo are supposedly going to be focused on attacking you, not getting away from the rats.
Normal animal behavior is obviously going to be tossed out the airlock in this thread.
+1 qft
While I think the females do hunt in packs I envision that they would go with male lions for this scenario…and they don’t generally hunt in packs very well (though maybe I’m misremembering). But there are only 4 lions. The 15 wolves would definitely be a bigger risk IMHO. It’s the one other thing besides rats and hawks that I seriously considered since there are a lot of them (ok…I also wouldn’t might the whole guy on a buffalo thingy too ;)).
Well, I easily admitted that it would take a while for a rat to successfully get a grip, make the climb, and get to the eyes - as in, I thought the buffalo would charge right through the rats, kill you quite dead, and then eventually find the rats to be a problem as one eventually got to his eyes or he just got tired. (I figure everything smaller than the buffalo is going to have more problems with the rats due to lower speed or being lower to the ground.)
I honestly don’t think you have a prayer in an open field - the buffalo would steamroll you, the rats would slowly catch up with and wash over you, and the hawks would be able to harass you (and your defending hunter) enough that one of the bigger animals would get you. Under defensive terrain you’d have better luck - and most land-based defensive terrain is bad for the larger animals and good for the rats.
I’m assuming the defending animals will be under my control to the best of their ability. A small dog may kill a bunch of rats who are largely trying to get away from the dog and I assume 10,000 rats left to their own devices will spend their time trying to become 1,000,000 rats. But 10,000 rats uniformly set on killing something would be more threatening.
Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter because you’re just going to die no matter what. I’m still going for my Rat Mountain plan since the buffalo need to actually reach me to gore me and climbing up a squishy pile of 10,000 bitey rats who now have access to bite your face is harder than just charging across a field of rats. I’ll die as well but my plan has panache.
Just voted. Guy on a buffalo, six more buffalos stomping, ramming and goring, 50 super annoying hawks harassing and diving at speeds of more than 120 mph (yes I checked) for the win.
I think you need the hunter on your side. Think of it this way: You are the hunter. Some other guy gets his pick of any 2 of the above animal groups and you get the rest to do your bidding. Oh, and the other guy doesn’t have a weapon. If I’m the hunter, I just surround myself with whatever animals are on my side, use the gun liberally against attackers, and I feel pretty good about my odds of getting through to the other guy.
AFAIK, the other hunter isn’t actually directing the other team…he’s simply part of it with some imperative to kill you.
And the rats swarm you and your defenders by the thousands and while you’re shooting desperately at the ground the hawks dive in and claw off your face! Yaargh!
I’ve been operating on the assumption that the various animals are working together (at least enough not to kill each other) and are allowed to at least coordinate their attacks enough to attack all at once or in extremely rapid succession rather than in disparate easy-to-kill forays. This would be the same whether or not they actually have a human on their side.
Wolves and rats.
10,000 rats - that is a huge number of rats. I think they could take down almost anything, including the hunter.
15 wolves - they hunt cooperatively. I can see them working to take down anything that the rats missed.
The only thing I don’t have answer for in this pairing is the hawks. I guess they’re on me. Better work on my long range weapon skills.
I was about to ask “What weapon?” but then I realized - you’re going to throw rats at them!
Sure, the buffalo could just trample the swarms of rats in their path… but that ends with a win for the rats, not for the buffalo. A dying rat is not very stable footing, and a buffalo that’s trampling over rats is going to twist an ankle well before killing a thousand of them.
And even if wolves are just as good as terriers at doing the exact thing that terriers were specifically bred from wolves to do as well as possible, it still takes time, a lot of it, to kill ten thousand rats. Fifteen wolves, each killing a rat every second, would still take over ten minutes to finish off all of them. How much damage do you reckon the rats can do to you in ten minutes? Plus, of course, wolves that are busy killing a rat a second aren’t doing anything to defend you from anything else.
The only thing that might be able to kill the rats quickly enough is the hunter, and that’s only if his magic shotgun is one of those crazy full-auto ones with preloaded 20-round drums.
Here are my preferred parameters for animal intelligence:
If we figure animals act like they normally would, this scenario suddenly becomes much, much easier, because none of these animals are, in general, going to attack me in the first place. I’ll choose the hunter and the hawks to defend me. The hunter will fire the shotgun as rapidly as possible into the air, and all the animals will flee the boomstick. The cape buffalo might decide to charge the lions; the hawks might decide to snack on a couple of rats. And that hunter firing the shotgun might find himself on the wrong end of an irritated buffalo. But I’m not seeing much danger for myself.
No, we gotta figure the animals acting contrary to their natures. I think everyone’s gotta want to fight to the death, with murderous/suicidal attackers and loyal/suicidal defenders. And I gotta have some ability to control the defenders, or else it doesn’t make any sense: why are the defenders even there, and how will they know to act defensively?
Given these parameters, the question makes most sense to me.
Sorry for the delay but this one took some thought and a few phone calls ------
Advanced versions of the H-K/Winchester-Olin selectable-automatic ----- CAWS.
I actually got to fire a couple and they really etched themselves in my brain. I saw a version tested once that allowed you to fire from a self-disintegrating belt through the butt from a backpack -------- much like the mini-gun version in Predator. I checked a couple Class III dealers and while no-one had a phone number handy, two felt they could come up with one (or something so close not to matter) for about $50,000 or even less.
Which now gives me something else to add to my “if I hit the PowerBall” list. 
300 rounds per minute sounds like it could slow some of these attackers down. How easy would it be to swap belts?
I’m thinking if the hunter could swap out belts in 3-5 seconds (I have no idea at all if that’s close to right), then using slugs on the big animals, and shot on the smaller animals, could be effective.
Any shotgun I had had to be reloaded after 3 shots. How many hunters would be able to decide quickly enough which load to use?
The only reason to pick the hunter is to keep him from shooting me. If the animals are going to try to take him out as well I pick the hawks and the rats.
The one linked to has a 10-magazine shot–but I’m assuming we can afford the belted version for the $120,000 I budgeted totally for good reasons and not arbitrary ones. Hell, if we could bend the rules to get two of them–one loaded with shot and one with slugs–I’d chip in to buy the hunter a cigar to hang out of his mouth while he roars maniacal laughter and holds a shotgun in each hand.
Whatever happened, I’d die happy.
Not sure. I didn’t get to play with any of the really advanced models and they never demonstrated/discussed that part that I heard. I believe the pack was 500 rounds but it could have been less. One thing I do remember about the regular clip version is that you could mix rounds within the clip. Some autos are fussy about just wanting one kind a bullet at a time ---- hollow-points, fine and ball, fine but mix the two and jams happen. These because of how the shells are allowed you to really mix things up a lot.
You would be surprised. My over/under has selectable barrels and I often carry two different shot sizes in small game for different ranges and situations. I can pick what I want basically as I throw off the safety and only add a half-second at most.
(Beretta Essentials, older model, for the very curious among you)
Woah–holy crap! So I’m thinking a mix of something like three slugs to two shots. Every second you’re scattering a double-cloud of pellets in the direction you point, plus sending three rounds. Would that be accurate?
For the large beasts, the pellets won’t do much except sting, unless you get lucky and hit an eye or inside of mouth–but those slugs are gonna hurt. For the rats and hawks, the slugs are going to be ineffective, but the clouds of pellets are gonna be a lot nastier. And the hunter, with a 500-round belt, has about 100 seconds of fun.
Anyone who voted against the hunter want to change their minds, with these armaments? (I fully understand they’re not in the spirit of the original, but I don’t care, it’s too much fun).