To go boldly…

I’ve had my eye on the Lost Heresy Away Team Red range for some time now. I was having a hard time coming up with an excuse to pull the trigger, but then two came along all at once. I showed the Lost Heresy website to a friend who immediately wanted to order the Neo-Aquilons (stand-ins for Star Trek‘s Romulans), so we decided to take the opportunity to try out the Red Alert skirmish rules that are included in one of the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures RPG books. My friend would do the Romulans and I would do the Federation.

Then, it occurred to me that an original series themed away team might make a fun entry for the UKGE Sir Coates painting competition. I don’t harbor any illusions about winning, but since I’ll be travelling all that way, I might as well make the most of it. Plus the 3-D printed miniatures are very lightweight so getting them to the convention shouldn’t be too much trouble.

I ordered three of the Away Team Red figure sets. I don’t do 3-D printing myself, so I ordered the printed models, and after a bit more clean-up work than I was expecting (I’ve never had to cut 3-D prints off of supports before — I’ll never complain about a Shatterpoint sprue again), I’ve got 24 crewmen ready to be primed and painted. My plan is to paint as many of them as I have time for, and then choose the 6 best for the contest.

According to the very limited research I’ve done, it appears that most squad/unit contest entries use some kind of single display base, usually round and made of wood.

The obvious choice for my away team is the transporter room. I don’t want to overthink this, so I’ve got a 6 inch round piece of plywood and some #46 cap thread gaskets. I’ll base the miniatures on clear 25mm bases, which will just fit the interior of the gaskets.

I think I’ll paint the red part of the base before gluing the gaskets into place, that way I won’t have to take time painting around them, and the join between the colors will be sharper. I’ll paint the gaskets pale yellow, then glue them down and paint in the recessed area.

I’ve got the display stand finished, as well as a few test miniatures painted and based on clear bases. I think the stand came out well, although when compared to the miniatures the stand is quite a bit bigger than the actual Enterprise transporter pad. I have to remind myself that it’s a display stand, not a pinpoint accurate scale model. Or maybe it’s the transporter room from Strange New Worlds, where everything on the Enterprise is twice as big…

Painting models for a competition has been interesting. It was stressful at first, and I’ve learned that I am definitely NOT a competition-level painter. I’m much more of the “get it done and move on” school. I’m also remembering why I don’t do commissions — I paint to relax and because I enjoy it, and painting to someone else’s standards (real or imagined) is not very relaxing or enjoyable. I’m entering this contest because attending the UKGE is likely to be once-in-a-lifetime for me (given the travel involved), and I think it will be fun to participate, but I’m going to paint to my usual standard, and focus on enjoying myself rather than trying too hard to win.

The goal is still to paint as many crewmen as I have time for, and then choose the six best. These three were basically a practice run to get used to the models and the colors I’m working with. I’ve got seven more basically done (just in need of varnish and basing), and an additional six about halfway done. Out of those 16, I’ll choose the 6 best for my away team.

I’m making progress on getting models painted, with all the red uniforms done and the rest of the yellows just waiting to be based.

I’m starting with a grey drybrush over black primer as a base coat, and leaving that for the uniform trousers and boots. I’ve been doing the faces, hands and shirts in full-on Kevin Dallimore triad style, and only resorting to my usual final drybrush to highlight the hair. The weapons and equipment are, for the most part, either gunmetal or silver with a dark tone wash. I don’t know if it’s competition quality, but I’m very happy with the results.

I had varnished these with Army Painter Matt varnish, which leaves more of a satin finish that was coming off as a little too shiny. So I went over everything except for the weapons and boots with AK Interactive Ultra Matte, which really is very matte — it leaves a nice, almost textured finish that looks a lot like the velour shirts from the original series.

Here are the original three test models, getting the colors, techniques and basing down, along with a fourth test model that I painted up as Captain Pike from Strange New Worlds.

I’m going to try to get six more figures done for this, then move on to my second UKGE contest project. If I can get that done with time to spare, I’ll see how many of the remaining 8 Away Team Red models I can get done — I want to to have as many as possible to chooses from for the final six-man away team.

I intentionally saved most of the named characters for last, so I would have a chance to get the technique down and hopefully only screw up nameless security officers. Here we have the hero characters, and all in all I’m pretty pleased with the way they came out.

I painted these the same way as the first ten, starting with dark grey drybrushed over black primer, and filling in the colors using triads.

I’ve now got 16 figures done for this project, and I only intend to enter a group of six into the UKGE contest, so I have more than enough to choose from. However, I do have a set of alien crewmen that I’ve started on, so I’m going to see if I can get a few more done before I leave for the expo. In particular there’s an Andorian that’s looking pretty promising…

I managed to get five more crewmen done, giving me 21 in total to choose from. I have 3 more unpainted models, but they are fairly uninteresting, and I’m out of clear bases anyway so this will be it. The alien characters were, of course, a lot more fun to paint than the humans. The real challenge was matching the uniform colors to what I painted previously. I think I got the yellow and red down, but the blue one looks a little light. Ah well, we can call him part of the medical staff, they sometimes wear a lighter blue tunic.

Now I have to choose which six will be joining the away team to Birmingham…

And here’s the final away team. I took eleven figures to the event, and didn’t actually decide on which ones to use until the very last minute, as I was dropping off my contest entries. Truth be told, I was also hedging my bets in case any of them got damaged in transit…

Apparently, some of the fellows who were taking in the entries (all of whom were extremely friendly and helpful) play in a Star Trek Adventures RPG campaign, so they were particularly enthusiastic about my entry, which was very kind and encouraging. This project was a lot of fun to work on, and I would probably do it again given the chance.