New Beasts

Yesterday I got out my paints and brushes for the first time in months and did a few new animals for Palaeo Diet.

First to be completed were these wolves from Slave2Gaming, part of their Grim Fantasy range. I used some of these in a game back in May, and loved the energetic poses, so I got Drew to bring me a couple of packs when we had our club Christmas meetup last week. So not only have I managed to paint some figures, but I did it within a week of receiving them.

Here's the pack.

The range actually has two different wolf packs (did you see what I did there). One is listed as Dire Wolves, and in it you get these big boys.

The other is just listed as Wolves, and features these lively chaps. They are smaller than the Dire Wolves, as you can see above.

Here's the Dire Wolves with an Irregular Miniatures caveman.

And a couple of the regular wolves as a comparison.

To be honest the size difference isn't too jarring, and I'd generally field both types of figure as a basic pack predator.

The second lot of new figures I did are based on some miniatures I acquired over 20 years ago. Over the past couple of years I've been building up a selection of Australian creatures, and in theory I have something suitable for all of the basic creature types except for the giant grazers. There's not really many options for these in the Australian megafauna, but the most obvious choice is the giant wombat, Diprotodon. So I set out to make some, since you can't get any commercially (this is a hint to any figure manufacturers who may be reading this).

Anyway, to go back to my original statement, I used some small toy bears that I acquired around 20 years ago. Their body shape is about right, as is the size, so the only real issue was their faces which, being bears, are somewhat pointer and more carnivore-like than the wombat/koala-featured Diprotodon. Milliput came to the rescue.

"You've made bears with masks", said my wife.

Anyway, a very quick paint-job later and they ended up like this.

They're not perfect - the original figures is a bit primitive, and my Milliput skills are a little shaky at present - but they'll do. I can always go back and tidy them up another day. And overall I'm happy with how they've turned out. They look the part.

Here they are with my hapless hunter.

I do have a pack of Mike Yarrow short-faced kangaroos to paint as well, which will give me more herd grazers for my collection. The next stage will be to do some hunters to take on all of these Antipodean beasties. It looks like QRF have the molds for the old Feudal Castings Koori miniatures, although they are currently listed as out of stock. If I can get hold of some they will be perfect hunters for an Australian Palaeo Diet game. Until then my new wombats will have to be hunted by my Northern Hemisphere hunters.