Historically the rhinoceros is fortunate to be an animal that man has failed to train for use in war, or indeed for any other function. Such animals occasionally graced games in the Roman Empire, and must have been awesome to people who had never seen such an animal before, but in general the rhino’s greatest danger from man was and is in being hunted, particularly for its horn.

There are five species of rhino, of which one, the Indian, has only a single horn, so the animals in this set must belong to one of the others. We don’t know much about rhino, but from various pictures we would say these are a pretty convincing and authentic set of models. The two adults stand at about 19mm (1.37 metres) at the shoulder, and while they are shorter than a man they look immensely powerful. The subtle leathery skin texture of these animals is largely lost at this scale, but the larger muscle structure is nicely captured. The animals pictured above were painted using a simple wash technique, which helps to show the good surface details well.

These animals are made in a black resin, and have a small number of narrow entry points where the resin entered the mould. Once these are trimmed off, which is easily down, the models are entirely free of flash, and their flexible mould means they have a much more natural stance than most plastic four-legged creatures. There are no obvious military uses, but these are superbly realised as ever from Nikolai.