Yesterday I found a nice little bargain whilst running an errand, and today I returned to clear the shelf. And what was this bargain? Dinosaurs. Thousands of them. Well, maybe not thousands, but quite a few. Enough for a proper looking herd (for a change), and all at a very reasonable price indeed.
Plastic dinosaurs are usually badly made, the wrong scale to game with, or (often) both. These ones are rather lovely pachyrhinosaurs from the film Walking With Dinosaurs 3D (Warning! If you are more than 5 year’s old you may want to turn the sound off on that trailer).
I’d never heard of that film, but I do have the various earlier BBC series of Walking With… XYZ and they are very good. Being based on that the models are unsurprisingly well-researched and well-made. Luckily, the ones I got were a good scale too. Sadly, the rest of the range is of no use, but let’s not look this gift horse in the mouth.
Here they are, just out of the packet and not cleaned or repainted. The figure doing the dangerous job of providing a scale is a Foundry ACW trooper.
When I say a whole herd, here they are from above. The circle at the bottom is the ACW model. On a 3×3 or 4×4 table they have quite a presence.
So what do I have in mind for these? Well, I think that dinosaurs would make a great Twist for Eternal Battle. You could add them to modern Settings (Jurassic Park style), Victorian Lost Worlds, “Caveman” games or anything else. This last shot is a bit blurry as it’s from the dawn of film in the late 1860s.
Somewhere in Arizona…
There are a number of metal ranges of dinosaurs, and some lovely models among them. My issue with them is really only one of price. Ones and twos of high end predators is fine, a few of this or that of the smaller dinos for colour is great too. But all the most memorable of the imagined prehistoric vistas I’ve seen since childhood have been dominated by herds of the big herbivores, and though pachyrhinosaurs aren’t enormous they look grand en masse and really set the scene. Now, having saved on this broad canvas, I can root through the metal ranges for some additional details. Who knows, I may find something at the show on sunday. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Quirkworthy 
Judge Dredd, Cursed Earth has dinosaurs.
Just saying…
Do you know the Dinosaur Cowboys Skirmish?
http://dinosaurcowboys.com/
Personally I saw not much metal dino’s.
I’m thinking to get a few 1:40 scale Dinosaurs from CollectA (Deluxe version), Papo and Schleich. Especially the first too have good detailed and painted products.
They are out of scale, but as long there no better versions for a good price, I will need to get them.
I wish a producer would start a Kickstarter with Dinosaurs with and 28mm scale (I would even like a scale if it would be till 35mm).
In germany we had in the nineties a game with over 64 Dinosaurs used as mounts on a battlefield:
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1081/die-schlacht-der-dinosaurier
I’ve been playing around with a dino hunting game based on your deadzone rules, using dinos from Invicta, collecta and safari being hunted by Victorian explorers mainly from foundry. I can’t get the AI to work properly for the dinos though, so looking forward to your AI deck for deadzone for ideas.
Were these bought with nostalgic glee Jake?
Remember it’s sometimes better not to revisit some of our childhood joys… then again there’s always Machiavelli. 🙂
Cowboys + Dinos = Valley of Gwangi! 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRkwR9zDRc
I stumbled across these myself, earlier in the month. Home Bargains, right? 😉
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=64191.msg802785#msg802785
“I’d never heard of that film”
Many dinosaur fans ‘more than 5 years old’ wish they hadn’t. It was all set to be the greatest non-monster dino movie, with some top palaeoartists working on it (judging by telltale horizontal lines, these models were printed from some version of those artists’ animation models) then at the last moment they stuck inane banter in it to make it ‘good’.
“Sadly, the rest of the range is of no use”
Wot, not even the gorgosaurs?
“though pachyrhinosaurs aren’t enormous”
They got pretty close to triceratops size though, which isn’t to be sniffed at. Larger than these models at 28mm ‘scale’. But that’s okay, Price and availability more than makes up for it.
Oh, and…
“Now, having saved on this broad canvas, I can root through the metal ranges for some additional details. Who knows, I may find something at the show on sunday. Does anyone have any suggestions?”
The late Dennis Mize’s Carnotaurus and raptors from Reaper, and his similar velociraptors from Ral Partha Europe, are the best. The tyrannosaurs from those two companies and the triceratops from Reaper are passable too. Most else is iffy or downright horrible.
Or, you can scrape your pennies together and go to shapeways to find some ~1/48th dinosaurs. There are some great ones by one of those palaeoartists I mentioned – David Krentz – although maybe not so many close to 28mm. Some great and suitable feathered raptors though, IIRC.
Nice. Could do an amazing game based on the old 2000ad strip Flesh with these. You’d need some armed dinosaur farmers (think old west stuff would work) and a horde of carnivores.
Dino farmers 🙂