On their way through the Lost World, the expeditionary force repeatedly encounters great and absolutely unforeseen dangers. Oh my God! What is that??? Are those dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs are poorly represented in tabletop. There are hardly any real games, at most they appear on the fringes as mounts or similar, e.g. in Drowned Earth. For pulpy scenarios like mine here, there are to my knowledge only small, not widespread systems. One of them is Saurian Safari – a fun system, but at least in Germany only few know it.
Miniatures
Various manufacturers sell isolated dinosaur miniatures. A T-Rex can be found relatively often, raptors as well, but already with further species it becomes difficult. The Honorable Lead Boiler Suit Company (HLBS) had a great offer. They were known for their large selection of beautifully designed specimens of all body sizes. They offered also lesser known dinosaurs. Unfortunately, increased white metal prices and generally increased production costs took their toll here as well, so they discontinued or phased out all white metal miniature lines. I got to know about this only at the end, so that I could secure only a few smaller Dinos – the larger ones were already sold out. Now I don’t know of any other manufacturer that has a larger selection beyond T-Rex, Triceratops, Velociraptor and Stegosaurus.
Gallimimus
From my few HLBS dinos, I first painted a small herd of Gallimimus. You surely remember the scene in Jurassic Park, where a large herd of them runs across a meadow and our protagonists seek shelter from them behind a fallen tree. Actually, I would have liked to have a slightly larger herd as well, but now I’ve been able to get the last 4 miniatures from HLBS and I’m glad I have any at all. The miniatures are almost identical except that two have their left leg raised and the other two have their right leg raised. With a little bending of the necks, heads and tails, they still look sufficiently different. After all, they run and look naturally similar while doing so. They are beautiful figures!
A few more minis from HLBS are still waiting for paint. More about that at another time.
Thank god there’s 3d printing
As for miniatures, we benefit greatly from 3D printing in terms of dinos. There are many suppliers who have at least a few files on offer. Some also specialize in it completely. I backed 3D IP Studios’ Last World Kickstarter last year and got a bunch of great files of the most popular dinos.
Included are files for 34 dinosaurs. I am very satisfied with the vast majority of them. Unfortunately, there is only one “long-necked” one, a Diplodocus. I suppose this is due to the limitations of the printing plates of most 3D printers. The parts shouldn’t be too big, otherwise they can’t be printed in one piece. I don’t find the DThe Stegosaurus was the first dinosaur I printed. With him, everything worked wonderfully right away. The body consists of two halves plus the tail and the four legs. So there were a few parts to print, but they fit together great. Some green stuff was added to avoid small gaps.iplodocus particularly beautiful either – at least I haven’t printed it yet.
Of course, it started right away with everyone’s favorite:
Stegosaurus
The Stegosaurus was the first dinosaur I printed. With him, everything worked wonderfully right away. The body consists of two halves plus the tail and the four legs. So there were a few parts to print, but they fit together great. Some green stuff was added to avoid small gaps.
And this is what the finished model looks like:
Triceratops
If I remember correctly, he only consisted of two body halves including legs plus tail. Here the print of the rear part was not quite perfect and I have helped with Green Stuff (did not see it, just to print again). I think the painting hides it quite well and it should not be noticeable.
It is unusual that he is depicted running, since one rather imagines a lumbering animal. But surely he also ran sometimes, so why not? For the painting, I took my cue from rhinos and painted him a simple grayish-brown. For me it works perfectly.
The last model of this first wave of dinosaurs was of course the king, the
Tyrannosaurus Rex
The T-Rex turned out to be relatively stubborn. I made two misprints, the second of which I tried to save with Green Stuff, only to give up. The third print worked perfectly and I got a nice T-Rex model. Some of the dinos I scaled a bit bigger or smaller, because they seemed more realistic that way. The T-Rex was made much larger by me, as I otherwise found it much too small next to a 28mm miniature. I am really impressed with the sharpness of detail though. As a solid printed copy, this miniature has now cost me about 5€ (plus less than 1€ for the file).
I glued all the dinos to magnetized washers from Stronghold Terrain to weigh down the relatively light resin figures. This way, e.g. the T-Rex stands really safe. The bases were supplemented by a few 3D prints of the jungle terrain from Cast’n Play.
The entry into the fantastic fauna of the Forgotten World has been successful. But our explorers will undoubtedly encounter even more dangers and exciting discoveries…
