Desperately hoping my food and booze will last out until the second dwarven caravan.
I embarked on a freezing glacier with the standard 'play now' settings. Those settings really don't work for this environment. The only logs are those that make up the wagon and there isn't quite enough food and drink to last until the caravan. Another source of food/booze is required. After digging a rudimentary shelter -- so cramped I have to keep deconstructing and rebuilding workshops -- I started digging down looking for the caverns and magma sea. Well I didn't find any, so by the start of the first autumn, all 15 dwarves were thirsty/dehydrated. I neglected to brew all my plump helmets but I'm not sure it would have helped having starving dwarves instead.
Late autumn is when my dwarves started dropping dead of dehydration. So when the caravan arrived I put all 15 dwarves on hauling duty, hauling stone junk up to the depot one item at a time (no wood for bins, no magma for metal bins) My expedition leader keeled over in the middle of talking to the outpost liaison. "A diplomat has left unhappy". A replacement expedition leader tantrummed, started a fist fight and attacked a guard dog chained up by the entrance... with his axe. I was down to three dwarves (from 15) before I managed to get any trading done. And one of those, yet another expedition leader, had taken to "resting" in the one bed, a second was waiting at his bedside with "attend meeting". My sole remaining useful dwarf managed to complete a trade for the single barrel of booze the traders had brought and immediately quaffed some booze, the bedside hoverer then went up to the depot, berzerked, and was dealt with by the caravan guards. The bedridden dwarf expired.
My single survivor (I renamed his profession "survivor") spent the winter hauling food from the depot to the stockpile, building native gold coffins and burying the corpses.
And then spring came and twenty-two migrants arrived. *facepalm*
With the replacement miners occupied with s..l..o..w..l..y digging exploratory passages, the living and working quarters are still cramped. Despite the mass dumping of lots of dwarven clothes and stone goods, getting them closer to the depot in the process, I have lots of idle dwarves. That led to three marriages, one of them including my survivor -- a very rapid courtship!
I had a load of plump helmets from the caravan and just enough logs to turn into barrels to restart booze brewing. Of course the elves and humans didn't show up. Autumn has begun and the dwarves haven't run out of booze yet but it's going to be close.
It's the most fun I've had with a fortress in ages.