Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Magister Militum size comparison 10 mm animals to 15 mm caveman

Received my Magister Militum order - very quick service but if you want items best to buy by 9/26/2023 or firm may have changed hands and, maybe, closed down.  Most of what I bought is to use with my Stone Age Cave Man set up.  I figured others would like to see size comparisons.
The caveman and three skeletal mammoths.  I will remove the mammoths from their bases and use as mammoth skeletons.  Size is decent but smaller than most of my mammoths.
These are eland I will use with East Africa project.  They are definitely on the small size for such a large antelope but the only such model I've found even close to 15 mm.  Will order more to increase the herd size - or likely.
Another item for other than Stone Age, Moose.  
Not very big for "giant" extinct bison but they will work for my purposes.
These "armed" monkeys come 31 to a pack.  I think I might try and disarm some of them to use as chimpanzees for my East Africa set up.
The whole pack - with the 15 mm caveman.
The most appropriate for size, giant ground sloths.  
While these are mousasuchus and thus long extinct by the Neolithic era, I will use these as giant gharial as discovered in Chica - possibly only going extinct about 400 years ago.
A pack of 9 giant jaguars.  Decent size, will use some for my Pulp game set in Central America and the rest for the Ice Age.
Rather small for musk ox but the will serve my purposes.
A bit small to see but I bought a pack of 16 frogs, useable in many ways - apparently there is evidence that Stone Age folk ate frog legs!
Just a closer shot of the frogs.  Very small items.  Seems I missed getting a shot of the Megatherium but they are almost a match to the moose.  Another item I may order more of.



 

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Neolithic Meanderings

Somewhere along the way I added some neolithic items to my collection and now I've started working on them alongside working on a much larger French Foreign Legion project.  


The above photo is a bit washed out but the stack with the blue box on top is all animals for the Stone Age, most will be single based but some animals will have multiple per base, usually 3.  The stack on the right has all the people, the four bottom boxes have each of the four tribes which will be 42 people each based 3 to a base - and also 6 dogs based 2 to a base.  The top box in that stack has terror birds, giant eagles, and some special people and some "unusual" additions - and some figures for dead (actually the riders from the Khurasan mammoths seen above and below).  The 42 each people will include some items inbound from three recently placed orders, to include Irregular Miniatures for more mammoths than shown and another 24 people to add 6 to each already existing group of 36 people and then another half dozen camels.  An order from Splintered Light Miniatures adds more animals to include dire hyenas, more dire wolves, and more cave bears.  The third order is from Magister Militum and mostly 10 mm so they will be "smaller" animals: three undead mammoths that will be removed from their bases to be skeletal remains, giant extinct bison (see Alpha, the movie), musk ox, some megatherium and mourasuchus, and megaloceros (and some other stuff not meant for Stone Age).  The smaller animals, if too small, I will just consider 'pygmy' megafauna.  Works for me.



This gives a better sense of the mammoth figures I have - and seeing setup like this led me to understand I can operate them as three separate family groups.  



Just another angle of the above, if you look carefully enough you will see some gaps to be filled and some two part epoxy to clean up now that it has dried - used to fix in the separate tusks on the models.

Origin of the figures: Back row on the left are Khurasan, next to the right are Acheson (no longer available, perhaps?), the others I'm not sure but possibly some from MY Miniatures. 


Another angle showing the boxes again.  The three smallest ones are a bit tipsy towards the front without being on a base thus the cardboard strip holding them upright.

Those additional mammoths on order are 6 larger and 3 'baby' animals.  Of these, six will expand the three family herds to 7 each while the other three will be used as one encased in a glacier, one dead and ready to be butchered, and the other caught in a pit trap.

Except for bases for some of the stuff from Magister (need to see to know the right size to use), all of the needed bases are prepped and all of the figures are washed to work on filing, gluing to bases, priming, and then painting.  

That mentioned French Foreign Legion project is at the front of the line to be ready for a game at a convention in October but I will continue to dabble with this 'smaller' side project.