Birds And Beasts

I finished some more 15mm beasts for Palaeo Diet over the weekend. They were mostly part of a pile of figures I ordered from MY Miniatures last year - the first batch I painted were the horses, rhinos and sabre-tooth cats you've seen here over the past couple of weeks. This is the final batch.

First up are these Bullockornis, also known as the 'Demon Duck of Doom' and possibly simply a species of Dromornis. These are massive (over 2.5m tall, and weighing 250kg) Australian flightless birds, originally thought to be carnivores because of the large skull and impressive beak but now thought to be related to ducks and geese and probably herbivores. In Palaeo Diet they can be run as herd grazers, or pack carnivores if you subscribe to the earlier ideas about their diet.

Here they are with a hunter so you can get an idea of their size.

The second lot of birds are what MY Miniatures describe as 'Large Walking Vultures', and they are simply that - vultures that are walking rather than flying. I got them to use either as angry critters or possibly raptors (from Palaeo Diet: Pulp).

They are quite large compared to a hunter.

Back to Australia for the next pair of figures. I got a couple of Megalania, because Australia's extinct giant monitor lizard has always fascinated me. These will certainly be apex predators in any game in which they appear.

They are big. Estimates put Megalania at 6-7m long - about twice the length of a Komodo Dragon - and as having a weight of up to a tonne. And they were contemporaries of modern humans.

And I did some more predators - a couple of cave bears. These aren't MY Miniatures figures. The rearing bear is from Peter Pig, whilst the running bear is a GW plastic wolf with a few minor modifications.

Compared to what's known about cave bear sizes these figures are probably about 25-30% bigger than they should be (more suited to 20mm figures I reckon) but they look impressive and will certainly make a challenging foe in games.

So here's the latest batch of beasts, painted and ready to hunt or be hunted.

My collection of animals is rather diverse, both geographically and temporally, but I won't let that worry me too much. However I now have Australian representatives three of the four basic beast types - I just need to find a suitable giant grazer - and am considering getting some 15mm Koori from QRF to maybe do a proper Palaeo Diet Down-Under setup.