Yesterday I was sitting at my desk, thinking that I would very much like to start a new Star Trek inspired Pulp Alley campaign. We have played many Star Trek themed games in the past, it is one of my favourite genres, so it made sense to me to have a new crew for a new campaign. This would not make sense to everyone, my wife included, who would say “… but, you’ve got hundreds of Star Trek crew already”. This is true (to a degree), however as Sally 4th has an ‘inspired by Star Trek’ range (Landing Party), which includes a wide range of non-human heads, a lot of the crew are…. non-human. This is also fine, subscribing to the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) we welcome the wide range of species serving on our model starships, but humans were a bit under represented, so I decided to put together a mainly human team using Sally 4th Landing Party heads and arms with phasers, tricorders, engineering supplies etc. but to use human heads from my bits box. The heads came from Frostgrave Wizards and Stargrave Crew Two, plastic box sets.

One of the first campaigns that we played with Pulp Alley was Perilous Island. It was a huge amount of fun and it immediately hooked myself and my son Lewis into the game system. I remembered that it talked about transferring the game into different genres, so I decided that our new series is going to be titled “Perilous Planets” and it’s first season will chart the endeavours of the new crew of the Antares Class USS Yorkshire NCC-330 tasked with discovering the whereabouts of Professor Bin Th’qaarral the highly esteemed Andorian Xeno-Archeologist reported missing at the point that his efforts to unearth an ancient power source was about to bear fruition.

The crew have been assembled using the metal cast bodies and arms from Sally 4th Landing Party range plus some left over heads from my bits box which were left over from Frostgrave Wizards and Stargrave Female Crew. The figure on the right is not part of the crew. She is going to be a recurring NPC Veshia Th’qaarral, an esteemed Xeno-Archeologist in her own right and daughter of Professor Bin Th’qaarral. The model has been made using An Albedo Miniatures Female Civilian body with an Andorian Female head and arms from the Landing Party range.

The miniatures are glued on to temporary painting bases, they will eventually be mounted on clear plastic bases. They have been primed with a spray undercoat using Halfords White Autoprimer. The miniatures have then been given an all over brown / sepia ink wash. I find this helps Speed / Contrast paints do there job by exaggerating shadows and highlights. The was was made up of equal parts Games Workshop Citadel Agrax Earthshade, Army Painter Flesh Wash and Army Painter Speedpaint Medium.

Once the wash was really, really dry, I drybrushed over it with Army Painter Matt White, applied with a medium sized Make Up Brush. I use these for drybrushing all the time. They give great results and are a fraction of the price of hobby brushes.

When it comes to using speedpaints, I always drop one or two drops in to a small, hard pallet. A little goes a long way.

I always like to paint flesh first, as it gives a bit of character to the model. The humans were painted using Crusader Skin and Noble Skin depending which part of the planet they originated from. The Andorians face and hands were painted using Tidal Wave and the Bolian’s were painted Ashen Grey.

Next to assign them to Divisions. I’ve decided that our landing party is going to consist of the XO / No 1 and a Helmswomen from Command Division, a Doctor and a Science Officer from Science Division and three Security Officers from Operations Division. Ops Division gets painted Blood Red, Science Magic Blue and Ops Maize Yellow. Our civilian NPC, Veshia gets a Purple Swarm coloured top.

I like the black part of the Star Fleet uniforms to be painted black with a hint of blue, so I dropped three drops of Grim Black and one drop of Cloudburst Blue onto the palate and gave it a good stir before painting the bottom part of the uniforms. Shoes were painted straight Grim Black, and our Andorian’s Trousers were painted Dark Grey (Occultist Cloak).

A variety of browns were used to paint hair (Sand Golem, Ruddy Fur and Dark Wood).

Phasers, Tricorders and cases were painted with various greys and the Starfleet Comms badge was painted on using Gold Army Painter Warpaint.

Here we see the Away Team being briefed in the Captains Ready Room aboard the USS Yorkshire by Captain Nichola Johnson.

Figures have had a coat of Army Painter Matt Spray Varnish applied and have been mounted on to ultra-thin clear bases, punched out from Ultra-Pro Top-Loader cards using a 1″ Punch, purchased from Amazon.

Look out for a report of there first mission!