ST:TOS Romulans

Merry Christmas!

The job-lot of 25mm ST:TOS figures by Heritage included a handful of Romulans. I tweaked the paint job and based them.

I had purchased some Victory Force Miniatures ST:TMP Klingons a few years ago and painted them as Romulans. I hauled them out, touched up the paint jobs and marched the basing.

I also finished adding some hair to the Harry Kim (ST:VGR) figure (an old Wesley). I could not get a decent shot but the result is much better than this photo suggests.

Up next: Maybe some Star Wars or maybe some Crimean War figures. We'll see.

ST:TOS Federation

As part of a job lot, I ended up with some old 25mm Heritage Federation sculpts, painted with enamels from 1978ish. I did some highlights, washed, and based them.

These are nice enough figures (slim and short by today's standards). 

Left to right above, we have: Matakishi, Innerspace, Heritage, 1st Corp, and Monopoly.

Left to right above we have: Monopoly, Heritage, Space Vixens from Mars, Heritage, and Matakishi. I'll do a more more thorough comparison over the holidays.

Up next: Romulans! 

ST:TOS Klingons and Andorrans

I finally managed to find some old (1978) Heritage ST:TOS 25mm figures for a decent price. These go for the moon on fleabay (between $10 and $35 per figure!).

These were painted with old enamels (very neatly) but had picked up some chips and were a bit dark. I highlighted, washed and based them.

For 40-year-old sculpts, these are pretty decent figures. Small and slight by today's standards, but a fine addition. I will do a comparison of different manufacturers over the holidays.

Up next: Some Federation troops and some Romulans.

Coppers

Scott very kindly dropped off a couple of sprue of "good guys from the Terminator line. I previously painted some up as generic moderns in green and grey.

 

I wasn't sure what to do with these guys so I decided to do them in blue to supplement some of the Heroclix SWAT guys I have for Gotham.

There are a pretty reasonable match for the Heroclix. A tiny bit thinner (especially the weapons) and I didn't quite get the same paint colour, but close enough.

Up next: I finally found some 1978 Heritage 25mm Star Trek figure at a price that was stupid. So I'm currently doing ST:TOS Andorians, Klingons, Federation, and Romulans. Also a couple of random micro-scale space stations. I also, rather unfortunately, dropped a BIG tray of figures (10x36") and have some repairs to do. Luckily, only two figures were write-offs.

54mm AWI Loyalists

I've been grinding away on some reinforcements for my 54mm AWI Brits and I finally finished these 12 guys. Big figures take forever! There is both a lot to paint and any mistake shows very clearly.

These are plastic HaT Prussians. I have a box of these sprues that I'm slowly grinding through. They have three different hats you can choose among. There is a sprue of troops plus there is a command sprue (not shown).

I painted these are quasi-Loyalists (no particularly historical unit in mind) with green jacks and red cuffs and turn backs. I keep them simple (limited braiding and other fiddly stuff).

Overall, they are okay and offer some extra troop options. I hope to get a game of AWI going over the holidays, COVID willing.

Up next: Some 28mm Gotham coppers and maybe more Trek?

ST:TNG Klingons

A few ST:TNG figures this week. These are toys from the Star Trek Strikeforce line that I got as part of a job lot. There were a goodly number of Worf's in this lot plus a Galron!

I crazy glued the hip joints and arms so they wouldn't move. Then I did a bit of brush work and a wash. The lot also came with some Targs (Klingon dogs?). I did some highlights and then washed them. Meh.

I had to give these guys a bit of extra height by gluing them to a small washer before gluing that to the larger washer. But they match the other Klingons I have. from left to right below:

Victory Force Miniatures TOS (painted as Romulan)

Star Trek Monopoly

Star Trek Strikeforce

Space Vixens from Mars

Last Unicorn Away Team

The Strikeforce matches the Monopoly figures pretty well. It is a bit thin-boned compared to the rest. All told, it looks good enough for my purposes. Now onto the 54mm AWI (so much painting...).

ST:TOS crew additions

So I was cruising fleabay and ran across some older Trek toys that are roughly 25mm. These shuttles and crew are from the old Star Trek Innerspace line. You'd get a ship (scaled to the packaging) and two crew. This shuttle came with a Scotty and Kirk and the lot had four shuttles.  

The figures are about 1.25" and are a bit short for 25mm. They also bend at the waist and have moveable arms so they can sit in the ship. Some crazy glue fixed the joints. I already have a good quality Scotty and Kirk, so I repainted these as generic crew (mostly red shirts).

The Kirk figures had phasers so I left this. Scotty had a communicator. I fabricated some phasers to go with them (below).

I put them next to some other figures for a size comparison. The giant on the left is a heroclix--notionall 28mm, but probably more like 30mm. The two yellow shirts are 25mm Monopoly tokens (Chekov and Kirk). Pretty decent fit with the smaller figures despite the wonky hip joints.

The shuttles open up for play purposes. I don't see that having much gaming utility but it is kind of cool.

The shuttle is also about 3/4rd of the scale of the figures (which is roughly what the TV sets were).

Overall, these were a nice find. I have some Klingons for a different playlet underway.

ST: Voyager crew update

I picked up some more ST:TNG monopoly tokens so I went back to fill in my ST:VGR crew. I now have all of the major characters except Nelix. My efforts to convert a figure to Nelix were not great so I gave up on that for now.

First, I went back to some figures I'd finished a few months back and re-carved Tom Paris' face (much better). I also added some more definition to Captain Janeway. These were originally Geordi LaForge and Deanna Troy figures.

From the new batch, I converted Picard into the Doctor by adding a medipad. For Seven of Nine, I converted a Tasha Yar figure. I spent a lot of time carefully cutting free her phaser hand from her thigh to reposition it. I must have cracked her neck doing so because, just as I finished painting, her head popped off. 

I caught it mid-air (which was amazing!) but somehow managed to drag my hand through white glue and red paint as I did so, covering her head and my shirt in red glue. I managed to wash everything up and, with some swearing, got her head back on. I see the Borg implants on her face got missed in the excitement. I will go back and add them in. 

I used a Wesley to make Harry Kim. He needs bigger hair so I will go sculpt that. I'm pretty happy with the Tuvok figure. I added phasers to both these figures.

I had a pair of figures left over. I painted one as the Vulcan Ensign Vorik (from Engineering) while the other might be Ensign Samantha Wildman (xenobiology). Both got phasers.

I found a small shuttlepod on fleabay (from the Star Trek Innerspace line) that seems to work, scale wise. It would look better painted but that would destroy the decals.

Up next: Some more ST:TOS figures. Then some 54mm AWI.

Scatter terrain

Sadly, no Hallowe'en gaming this year. But I did finish off some scatter terrain in the hope of gaming in the future!

These are a bunch of HO-scale track clutter pieces in metal that came with an old train village set I bought, maybe 10 years ago? I'm working hard to clear up lingering painting project this winter. 

They go fine with the HO-scale Gotham buildings I have. They show a bit greyer in these pictures than they actually are. Excepting the wooden fence, they are all too small to really work as LOS blocks but they could function as objective markers.

Up next: Hard to say. I have been working on some 54mm AWI figures but they take such a long time to paint! I also have some 28mm generic army guys that Scott dropped off underway.

DS9 Crew update

So, a few weeks back, I painted up most of the crew of DS9, using paint to convert some ST:TNG Monopoly tokens. The two biggest omissions were Garak and Quark. I managed to find reasonable figures from Space Vixens from Mars.

Garak looks the part; Quark looks more like Brunt than Quark but whatever. "This imaginary figure is NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!" Yeah, anyhow, they painted up okay. I tried to mimic Quark's 1990s southwestern sofa fabric coat. Meh. 

The biggest issue is Quark is enormous. Now, these monopoly tokens are thin and small. But Quark is still pretty over-sized even for 28mm.

Here he is with two proper 28mm figures: a Lost Unicorn Worf and a Space Vixens' Klingon.

I bought a second Quark, thinking I could lop off the head and attach it to another body to make a Rom. But no joy there. And I think recent experience demonstrates I don't have the lobes to sculpt a head freehand. So I am carving down the second quark to make a Nelix.

Back to the Future

And odds and ends post this week. I finished off an order from Crooked Dice with Doc and Marty from Back to the Future.

Nice figures. Unfortunately the lighting washed out the details on Doc's white jumpsuit. 

Marty also turned out nicely, I think.

I also ordered a few ST:TOS not-figures from Space Vixens from Mars.

The red shiorts are okay, I guess. 

The Gorn was pretty good. I had forgotten the whole lederhosen look of the Gorn's outfit. The ray gun makes going sense but a pointy piece of obsidian would have been better.

Up next: Finished off my ST:DS9 crew.

Ghostbusters

I painted up some Ghostbusters from Crooked Dice Miniatures in the spirit of the month (a little pun there, for Terry). 

These are characters from the 2016 reboot; they also have figures from the 1984(?) original movie.

These are pretty nice figures and I only see a couple of painting goofs in the close-ups.

I used movie stills to try and replicate the costumes.

I've no idea who this figure (below) is supposed to represent (don't recall the 2016 movie enough to know).

These figures are much better than the Ghostbusters I have from a game (as one would expect).

They do, however, fit in pretty well with the ghosts and ghouls from the board game.

Up next: Maybe some random Trek. Maybe some 54mm AWI? Hard to say at this point.