Paint. Play. Repeat!: Modiphius Entertainment Sci-Fi 32mm Miniatures Images

Why

Because Star Trek. Not a trekkie? Then, because these are good miniatures that you can use on their own or to simply collect them or in role-playing games and wargames.

How

The miniatures produced by Modiphius Entertainment are made from resin, measure 32mm in height, come unpainted and not assembled. They are used especially for the role-playing game Star Trek Adventures, produced by the same British company, game which is based on the Star Trek legend sci-fi show. Along the miniature that I have painted, an 8mm cube was place in order to facilitate comparison with other miniatures. Miniatures need assembly of one or more parts - especially arms. I have to do a little documentation regarding how to paint the miniatures, especially the color code from The Original Series (TOS) as opposed to The Next Generation (TNG) and later shows. The colors are corresponding to the different roles the crew has on a starship: in TOS blue is reserved to the science officer and medical member, red to engineer and communication crew and yellow (initially designed as green) to captain, while in TNG, red is for captain and higher ranked crew, yellow for lower and operational crew and only blue retains its TOS meaning. Of course, this applies only in general terms, as the color and uniform types changed a lot throughout the decades since the first Star Trek episode, wayback in 1966.

Results

The miniatures produced by Modiphius Entertainment were assembled, painted and organized to be photographed and arranged in their own sets and finally, a gallery of images and a review was prepared.

Review

There are few unwanted parts that need to be removed from the miniatures and they require only a fast washing with liquid soap, before preparing the miniatures for painting. Painting sticks well, and the level of details on the miniatures is impressive. The miniatures also come with a base, also well designed. It is Star Trek in each and every aspect. This comes with a price, but you can use the periods of price reduction or you can save some money for some months or from not buying other miniatures, in order to buy them, because painting them is fast and a good experience. If you want to add gradual levels of painting details, corresponding to time and effort you want to invest in painting the miniatures, you will see that the partial or end results are more than satisfying. You can use them as a collection exhibits, in wargames or in role-playing games, and why not in the Star Trek Adventures RPG, a very good RPG, also from Modiphius Entertainment, and based on their successful 2d20 RPG system.

There are eight sets of miniatures to be collected. More will appear in the future, but until then you can collect Borg, Klingon and Romulan (with different ranks) along with Iconic Villain Characters and TOS and TNG crew, heroic characters from the bridge crew and general crew members (away team and landing party). Bridge crew and Iconic Villains sets come with only 8 miniatures, the other sets with 10 miniatures. Well details, as already written, and each miniature from the sets is unique. The bases from the Iconic Villains are great (that for Khan, for example), but also the other base are doing a well job to provide the Star Trek atmosphere.

The assemble process is not complex, but mistakes can be made. For example, when assemble the TOS Bridge Crew set, I swap one arm from bones to Nurse Christine Chapel. A more muscular arm resulted thus, for the Christine Chapel (the same actress that portraited Chapel, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, wife of Gene Roddenberry, none other than the creator of Star Trek, also provided the voice for starship computer and the later played the Lwaxana Troi, Betazoid unforgettable character appearing in many Star Trek episodes across different shows - TNG and Deep Space Nine). The later information is not to spam you or just to show off my fluency in Star Trek knowledge. The sci-fi show is fundamental in buying and investing time in these miniatures. Star Trek is a powerful franchise which has many fans across the whole world, so in this case all the activities around these miniatures are covered with a lot of fluff and a good energy for everybody who likes Star Trek. If you do not know anything from the show, I think the quality of the miniatures will convince you that you should take a look at one or more episodes or at least find out more about Star Trek, even beyond the information needed to paint the miniatures and convince you the the effort to paint the miniatures is well invested. It a fun activity and hobby, maybe the "effort" word is not well placed, but nothing is done without some work, and this is important to specify - do not look at a Star Trek episode and then at your not assembled miniatures and think that everything will be completed by a miracle or clapping of hands, the hobby of painting miniatures is fun, but serious, so do not come from the activity of watching the show or reading Star Trek books, thinking that painting some of the miniatures will be easy.

A review will not be complete or you will not receive too much credit, if it did not showed the minuses along with pluses the product reviewed has. On the cons side, the price was already highlighted, but also means too at least reduce its importance, but other minuses can come the burden that such a franchise like Star Trek can come with: Modiphius needs to develop more the Star Trek range of miniatures with other alien species (Jem'Hadar, Ferengi etc.), sets from other shows (Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, Voyager etc.), terrain accessories (computer consoles, weapons), recurring characters from the shows (Morn, Rom, Slade, the mentioned Lwaxana, Reginald Barclay) and other interesting instances from the shows (for example, the Alternate Realities - Mirror Universe).

The miniatures produced by Modiphius are not the first and for sure not the last sets of miniatures to be produced from the Star Trek universe. Now it is a good time to have and paint Star Trek miniatures, as the level of details is very high, the painting tutorials good in order to help you painting miniatures, as well as paints and accessories to help you in this process and currently there are Star Trek shows that run (not to mention different other types of products based on the sci-fi show that are produced) and information regarding the past shows is more than accessible to all of us.

So, a very good time to have Star Trek miniatures, a very good job done from Modiphius and all in all, a very good time to be a trekkie.

Click on the links to access the galleries of the ranges of miniatures, totaling 50+ miniatures and thousands of corresponding images.