What is there to say about this product? One of the smallest sets we have ever reviewed, yet potentially one of the most widely useful. After all, what army until quite recent times did not use teams of oxen to pull artillery or some of the many wagons that accompany all armies?

In this set you get two different animals and a yoke. As you would expect from Nikolai the animals are beautifully carved and entirely realistic. We put bases on them to facilitate painting them (as they are only supplied in jet black resin), but they come without bases, yet stand perfectly happily nonetheless. As can be seen, the yoke comes as a separate piece, so if it is to be placed around the shoulders of the animals then the loops must be broken. This must be done with great care as the resin is very thin and will break easily. However once the assembly is complete (which must be glued as there are no pegs etc to hold the pieces) the result is very pleasing, as can be seen from the box illustration.

The only trimming required on the oxen is the one point where the resin entered the mould, but otherwise there is no flash. On the yoke we found the loops had a solid but ultra-thin film of resin filling them, so this will need to be carefully carved away.

So another great product and so many potential uses for military modellers that there is no point listing them here. The delicacy of the resin produces great detail but does not suffer rough handling, so this will always be a fairly fragile model (basing the whole team would help strengthen it), but if you can live with that then you could find yourself needing large numbers of these beasts.