I’ve created a page listing various 25/28mm Dinosaurs and other prehistoric miniatures. It’s a work in progress and but will probably grow into some sort of monster listing with pics and reviews.
This is the first time I’ve used the Page feature in Word Press and I’m sure I’m missing out on all sorts of features I could be using to make it better.
Not quite dinosaurs but close, HLBS Co have released a range of deep sea divers and ocean dwelling creatures, including several prehistoric marine reptiles.
There’s not much else available for 25/28mm scale time travellers who like to get their feet wet.
HLBS Co used to have a Tylosaurus and an Elasmosaurus as waterline models and DZ MIniatures had a very large but utterly fantastic waterline Lipleurodon. If you see any these for sale you should first grab as many as you can and secondly let me know so I can grab the rest.
Steve Barber Models do some cavemen mucking about in the water and a Carcharadon Megalodon (rough translation “fecking huge shark with fecking huge teeth”) to gobble them up.
And Flagship Games have a Ictheasaur (sic), that at 8″ must represent one of the 15m giants such as Shonisaurus.
Couple of bits of dino-mini goodness from Iron Wind Metals, who have rereleased some more of the Ral Partha Prehistorics range; and they’ve announced a deal with John Winter to produce a range of miniatures that will feature at least one dinosaur.
It seems a bit cartoony and it’s hard to judge the size but it looks like it could fall between the available Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosuar miniatures. So, Daspletosaur anyone?
The newly described South American raptor, Neuquenraptor argentinus, indicates that either the deinonychosaurs had a longer history than was thought, or that South America was not as isolated from the nothern continents. Or both. Anyway cool new dino with totally unpronouncable name.
Meanwhile, Copplestone Castings have released a Young T-Rex, which like the earlier Velociraptors seems to be heavily influenced by the Tamiya plastic kit version, and a pair of Gallimimuses.
And Jeff Valent Studios have re-released their “Raptor Like Dinosaurs” and have a very nice looking Tyrannosaur and Syntarsus available for pre-order. I’m not too taken with the Raptors which a bit cartoony and a bit Jurassic Park, but the new ones look amazing. This is the first time anyone’s done a Syntarsus in wargaming scale (or any scale as far as I know) and I was recently thinking that it was a shame that the same dozen or so genera keep on getting sculpted again and again when there are several hundred genera that have never been done. I’m not sure about the feathers though – as an early Jurassic Coelophysoid it’s a quite distant from those dinosaurs known, or even suspected, to have had feathers.
Prehistoric Times Issue 70 arrived last week. Lots of lovely pics as ever but for me the highlight was the well deserved fisking given to pterosaur crank David Peters by S. Christopher Bennett.
Finally, there’s Dino-Opoly. The complete absence of any reference to Parker Bros on or inside the box suggests that the subtle rule changes (start with $1630 rather than $1500; money from taxes, etc. go into a pot which is collected by the next player to land on Free Parking.) are a way to avoid paying any licensing fees. Sneaky.
Played one game. Lettice won. 🙁
I’ve bought nine Rebel Storm boosters in total (hangs head in shame) and in those I’ve got three Rare miniatures and six Very Rare miniatures. I’m not sure what the odds of getting a Very Rare should be but I’m certain that they shouldn’t be double the odds of getting a Rare one. If they are then the prices on eBay are seriously out of whack.
So I’m offering my services to the general public – I’ll pick a random pack off the rack for you in return for a small fee. Go on you know you want me to.
Anyway, the Very Rares I’ve received have been a fairly useless bunch:
See? No Luke; no Obi-Wan, no speeder bikes; no Emperor; no Dewback; no Boba Fett.
Here are some more dinosaur miniatures, two that are waiting to be painted and one that’s finished. The hunter figure in each is from the Foundry 28mm Darkest Africa range.
From left to right we have Baryonyx (DZ Miniatures), Iguanodon (DZ Miniatures) and Tyrannosaurus imperator (HLBSCo). Only the last of these is currently available from the manufacturer.
As promised here are some photos of my current painting projects
Lots of work still to be done.
Picked up a paint brush for the first time in ages. Working on some lovely minis from Copplestone Castings – a Nanotyrannus and a pair of Yetis. So far it all looks good. Pictures soon.
Yesterday was the SELWG wargames show at Crystal Palace. I went along for a few hours to look around and buy stuff; overall I think it was an improvement in last year’s show which I wasn’t very impressed by. Some people thought it was rather good whilst others found it not so good.
I bought Rebel Storm boosters – the first boosters I’ve bought (though I have been buying large numbers of canon fodder types on eBay). Got the very rare Princess Leia, Captive figure in one of them which was lucky. Various traders were selling boosters for prices between £8.00 and £12.99 – I got mine at the lower price because I remembered that it always pays to walk round every stand at a show before opening your wallet.
The only thing I bought were some MoFo minis from Gripping Beast – five packs of UK Falklands War troops to add to my UNIT force and a pack of SF characters based on Stargate SG1. The MoFo miniatures are little bit smaller the Harlequin UNIT troops but once based and painted up the same should fit in just fine.
There were some good games on show, the most striking being Diamond Geezers – a game based on old telly shows played over a very good recreation of a 1970s street scene.
SELWG is the last show of the year for me, there’s nothing now until Salute in April. You never know I may actually get round to doing some painting before then.
So what did I get in my box? Ten miniatures – the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader miniatures that are in every starter set plus two different stormtroopers, a rebel trooper, a rebel pilot, an Ithorian scout (that’s Hammerhead for us old timers), a Bespin guard, a Gamorean guard and a Tusken Raider.
I had seven out the ten as action figures back when I was a kid. Hmm, so I’m going round in circles. Except that these are smaller. Ever decreasing circles perhaps?
The miniatures are about 30-32mm toe to eye. This makes them as tall as many of the larger “28mm” miniatures available. However, these are much slimmer – realistic proportions rather than the chunkiness we’ve come to expect from metal miniatures. It’s not too much of a problem with the aliens and armoured figures but the ordinary humans won’t mix too well with other ranges.
From left to right: Ground Zero Games 25mm Stargrunt; Foundry Street Violence; Copplestone Castings Future Wars; Fantasy Forge Kryomek (available from Scotia-Grendel; Harlequin Doctor Who (available from Black Tree Design); Rebel Storm; Foundry Street Violence (big guy).
The miniatures are made from a rubbery plastic and spring back into shape if bent. I’m not sure whether this will make them harder or easier to convert than metal figures. Some of the poses are a little strange – The Rebel Pilot seems to be trying to “walk like an Egyptian” whilst the Rebel Trooper is leaning alarming far forwards.
The paint jobs are okay. I doubt I’ll totally repaint them but I may touch up some of the details. (The photograph above isn’t very flattering to my painting abilities – I may not be great but the flash really hsn’t helped matters. Time to buy some matt varnish perhaps?)
I think I’ll be buying some more, I’ll mostly be hunting for the common troop types – with luck the collectors will be flogging them off cheap having bought a gazillion of them to get their hands on the very rare figures.
The rules? Read them, seem okay for what they are. I doubt I’ll be using them much. Daleks vs Stormtroopers in Stargrunt II anyone?