Canon, Horror, and Star Trek Adventures

Does the spirit of Halloween fit in Star Trek Adventures? Can a horror story be told in the Star Trek setting? Well, various Star Trek series have aired ghost stories, zombie stories, and a Halloween episode. So I'm going with yes to these questions. Here's a look at how some episodes have handled horror and how the resulting canon can be applied in a Star Trek game. As with the Year By Year posts, I start with a summary and put my comments in italics.

Ensign Shay finds herself with a zombie problem.

"Catspaw" - TOS

A literal Halloween tale by Robert Bloch. It has all the tropes - a spooky looking castle, a black cat, a witch, a dungeon with a chained up skeleton, and enough cobwebs to make this viewer want to reach for a duster. Of course, the magic using antagonists turn out to be aliens using advanced technology in the end. It's still Star Trek, after all.

This episode uses the visual language of Halloween IN SPACE! This is the shortest path to pulling off a Halloween adventure. Just take the kind of movie starring Vincent Price, set the story on a distant planet, and say "aliens did it" to explain the use of dark powers in a sci-fi setting. Maybe even decorate the game room with paper bats, cotton cobwebs, a plastic skull, and hand out candy. Just don't try using candy as tokens. They just get eaten.

The aliens in this episode answer to the "Old Ones" - a term also used in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" for a different alien race. It is likely deliberate on the part of Robert Bloch, who wrote both episodes. A gamemaster might be tempted to throw in a reference to the Cthulhu Mythos just to see the reactions of the players. Alternately, just put some tentacled horrors in the adventure like in "Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 2" - PIC.


"Wolf in the Fold" - TOS

Another episode penned by Robert Bloch. Scotty takes shore leave on a poorly lit planet with foggy weather and becomes the suspect in the murders of multiple women. It is eventually revealed that the murderer is actually Redjac - AKA Jack the Ripper. Redjac is a formless alien entity that feeds on fear and can possess humanoid bodies and USS Enterprise's computer.

Redjac ended up getting beamed into space with a transporter set for wide dispersal. The plan was for Redjac to starve from being unable to feed after getting strayed over thousands of kilometers of vacuum. However, there's nothing stopping a gamemaster from coming up with a way for Redjac to survive and menace the player characters. Imagine the fun if Redjac takes over a holodeck or EMH!

My favorite bit of this episode is hearing John Fiedler delivering lines written for a serial killer in the voice of Piglet.


"Beyond the Farthest Star" - TAS

USS Enterprise investigates mysterious radio emissions and encounters a 300 million year old alien derelict orbiting a dead star. Kirk and company discover that the crew destroyed their own vessel to prevent a threatening entity from using it to reach other worlds. Naturally, the entity ends up on USS Enterprise and makes trouble until the crew figures out how to get rid of it.

The basic outline of the story is a staple of sci-fi horror. Follow a vague signal. Find a weird looking derelict in a creepy location. Awaken something that should have been left alone. Everything else is details. How well equipped the characters are to deal with the outcome determines the level of horror.


"Schisms" - TNG

A literal alien abduction episode. Members of USS Enterprise-D's crew experience a lack of sleep and other psychological issues. Investigating turns up physical evidence, like Riker's arm having been removed and reattached. The culprits are solanogen-based lifeforms from a tertiary subspace manifold who favor hooded robes with a metallic sheen. The crew figure out a way to cut off contact, but not before a hapless crewmember dies.

The episode plays on the fear of something happening while a person is asleep, unaware, and helpless. The aliens live deep in subspace and cannot exist outside of it. However, they can create spatial ruptures to create a pocket of normal space in their reality. This is how they were able to experiment on members of USS Enterprise-D's crew. Although they were initially drawn to USS Enterprise-D due to modified sensor emissions, they could find other ways to access the normal universe.


"Sub Rosa" - TNG

The one where Doctor Crusher falls in love with a ghost residing in a family heirloom. Who also had a relationship with her grandmother. On a colony intended to recreate the Scottish Highlands, including foggy weather and stone buildings. The ghost turns out to be anaphasic lifeform who bonds with those of compatible biochemistry and can effect technology like weather control systems.

An anaphasic lifeform and host can be used for similar ghost stories or to explain hauntings in the Star Trek setting. Anaphasic lifeforms are vulnerable to phasers, so a direct confrontation should be avoided until the climax of the adventure.


"Empok Nor" - DS9

The one were Garak hunts and kills the rest of an Away Team aboard a station of the same design as Deep Space Nine, except that it's even more poorly lit. O'Brien, Nog, and four expendable crewmembers are sent off in a Runabout to salvage Cardassian spare parts. Garak is along since the Cardassians are poor sports and tend to leave booby traps behind when they abandon a facility. One of those booby traps takes the form of Cardassian soldiers in stasis chambers, who awaken and menace the Away Team. Even worse, the soldiers were given a psychotropic drug that amplified their xenophobic tendencies. Garak is exposed to the drug and kills everyone who isn't a recurring character.

This one turns a familiar character - who is already known to be dangerous - and turns him into a threat. This is just one of many Star Trek episodes that explore this territory. A gamemaster has a decision to make early on when using this idea. Use a NPC that the players value enough not to immediately rid themselves of when they present a threat. Or see if one of the players is game to become the antagonist for awhile. Just make sure that there are no hard feelings later if using the second option.


"Dead Stop" - ENT

A clean, well-lit automated repair station with user-friendly interfaces turns out to have a dark secret. Surprise! After running over a Romulan mine in the previous episode, Enterprise NX-01 has a gaping hole in the side that the crew can't fix with the resources at hand. They find out about a repair station, which automatically reconfigures for the ship and crew when they approach. Captain Archer agrees to trade supplies for the station's services. Things go well until Mayweather is found dead. The body turns out to be a copy and the crew finds the real Mayweather hooked up to the station's computer. The other people who are there are too far gone and can't be disconnected. They grab Mayweather and blast their way to the end of the episode.

Horror stories don't need to take place in gloomy locations that haven't kept up on maintenance or their lighting bills. Sometimes a mysterious lack of people is enough for a sense of unease even in the brightest places. As for this specific location - the episode never reveals who built the station or why. And the station was last seen repairing itself.


"Silent Enemy" - ENT

Enterprise NX-01 encounters a ship of aliens who act like jerks - opening fire, boarding the ship, shrugging off attempts to drive them off, and only communicating with demands for surrender. The crew gets them to leave only after hastily cobbling together space guns and figuring out how to overclock phase cannons.

This episode emphasizes that the Star Trek setting isn't a safe one outside of settled space. The aliens have their own agenda and are operating on their own schedule. They aren't interested in mutual benefit and have all the power early in the story. This creates a tension that is emphasized by the crew's efforts to craft an effective response to the threat. In later periods, this role can be filled by the Dominion or the Borg, but a mysterious adversary works better to play up the fear of the unknown.


"Impulse" - ENT

The one with the ship full of Vulcan zombies. It turns out to be the effects of Trellium-D. The substance insulates against the anomalies of the Delphic Expanse, but is also a neurotoxin to Vulcans. It initially removes emotional inhibitions and soon leads to insanity and violent rages. The neutral pathways of Vulcans exposed to it long enough eventually degrade to the point they become shambling wrecks.

Zombies are also featured in "Second Contact" – LD. Borg drones generally act like the "bionic zombies" that Lily Sloane calls them in Star Trek: First Contact. It's relatively easy to expose a crew to some substance or virus and kick off a zombie adventure. The questions that the gamemaster needs to address are how many hits with a phaser set to stun are needed to incapacitate one and how hard is it to come up with an airborne cure and spread it through the life support system?


Note that this is not intended to be a complete list, only some cherry picked examples. Any favorites or good examples I missed? Feel free to comment!

Alternative Armies EH03 Space Brain

Took a break from terrain making to paint up one of these little horrors. Besides, the month of Halloween seems like a good time for this B movie escapee. I had to improvise a stand for it, but I think it'll do.

Space Brain on patrol.

Alternative Armies offers these in packs of five and as suitable for a range of scales. They are very large for human brains in 28mm. However, they should work fine as big floating cyborg brains extracted from a dying species of mutated alien overlords even in 15mm. I acquired my set as a freebie with an order I placed in June 2021.

Stand
I had no flight stands on hand that would work with this figure, so I ended up cobbling together one from a paper clip, some air drying clay, and a 25mm slotted base. The assembly was spray painted with Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat Black and textured with a mix of sand, PVA glue, and brown craft paint. The small hole sculpted into the bottom didn't seem quite deep enough, so I drilled it out a little more to be sure. The miniature is secured to the stand using Gorilla Super Glue.

Zombies hunting for a feast. I better get to work on the rest of the set - it looks like this Space Brain could use some reinforcements!

Primer Coat
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat White. In retrospect, a neutral color might have been better for painting gray matter.

Brains - First Coat
Reaper 092881 Brains Pink. A bottle of this stuff has been knocking around my paint collection since I got it as a backer reward from the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter. With a name like that, I couldn't resist using it for this project.

Brains - Wash Coat
Citadel Washes Baal Red. The pink turned out a little too pale and the details weren't coming through. A red wash shaded the overall color and settled nicely into the recesses.

Cybernetic Bits - First Coat
A mix of Reaper 09038 Rainy Grey and Reaper 09037 Pure Black. This mix produces a very dark gray that I used as the base color for the mechanical elements.

Cybernetic Bits - Second Coat
Reaper 09038 Rainy Grey. This medium gray was used to highlight the upper and raised surfaces of the mechanical elements.

Cybernetic Bits - Wash Coat
Reaper 09255 Black Wash. Some of the gray ended up in the recesses, obscuring those details. I used a black wash to reverse the effect.

Rosie sneaking up to perform percussive maintenance on this Space Brain's cybernetics.

This figure was a welcome break from terrain making and a reminder that I need to paint some sci-fi miniatures as well. Of course, a set of these could work as weird aliens for a Five Parsecs From Home game. Maybe as proxies for Converted or Abductors?

Stackable Trash Bash Sci-Fi Building

This is made from a piece of plastic packaging I saved awhile back. It caught my eye due to its blocky, industrial-looking shape. A couple more turned up later and I also noticed how neatly they stacked up inside each other. I stored them away until I started my most recent project - cobbling together enough terrain to play a game of Five Parsecs From Home.

Rosie dabbing in real estate.

My goals for this project were:

• Retain the ability to stack the finished pieces. This would greatly enhance the ability to store and transport them later.
• Minimal resources. That meant using what I had on hand and not spending too much time. Good enough would be good enough.
• Compatibility. They had to work with the terrain mats and tiles I had or would have ready. Muted, neutral tones would work best.

Retaining the ability to stack the finished pieces meant that my usual approach of putting glue all over something and rolling it around in my bits box was right out. Any bits sticking out too far from the sides would get in the way. The exception was the small surface on the top. There is a small gap between the pieces there when they are stacked. This allowed for thin parts to be glued to the top.

How many previous owners has this place had?

Preparation
I roughed up the packaging with a sanding pad to insure good bonds with the glue and paint I would be applying later. All surfaces were also cleaned with warm soap and water.

Assembly - Top
Some digging around in my bits collections turned up a couple of parts from a Hexagon Construction Set and a key from a USB keyboard. A test fit verified that they would not interfere with stacking if placed on top of the piece. My initial attempt to attach the parts used hot glue, but I found that Gorilla Super Glue provided a stronger bond.

Assembly - Sides
My solution to detailing the sides was using some self-adhesive warning labels I found awhile back. They add details to the sides without protruding far enough to interfere with stacking.

Finished piece and the next one with the bits used for detailing.

First Spray Coat
Krylon Camouflage Ultra-Flat Brown. This coat was sprayed for full coverage on all surfaces.

Second Spray Coat
Krylon Camouflage Ultra-Flat Khaki. Sprayed at an angle from the top to produce highlighting on the upper and raised surfaces.

Drybrushing Layer
FolkArt 480 Titanium White. This is an off-white paint with a gray tint. The stickers were too flush with the sides to catch much paint from a light drybrushing. I ended up using more and more paint to make these details visible. The more aggressive brushing did generate the worn appearance I was going for on the finished piece.

Wash Coat
FolkArt 221 Real Brown mixed with Liquitex Matte Medium and diluted with water. Brushed over all surfaces. I wiped off the excess and pooling with a dry cloth.

"Yard" Texturing
Mix of sand, tacky glue, and diluted FolkArt 221 Real Brown. FolkArt 480 Titanium White brushed on to the mix after it dried for contrast. I decided to texture the surface around the building to create a "yard" surrounded by a low fence.

The test piece stacked under the others.

Overall, it's not bad for a quick and dirty project. And the test piece still stacks under the others! I'll use the same techniques on the other two, but I might experiment with overlapping some of the stickers to simulate patchwork repairs to the walls.

Cork Urban Terrain Tiles WIP, Part One

This is the first part of a project I started years ago. And "started" means "bought the materials, stored them away, and forgot about them" in this case. At the time, I didn't have a pressing need for modern or sci-fi urban terrain tiles. Now I want to get a game of Five Parsecs From Home on the table. So I dragged everything out and got to work.

Rosie inspects a new section of city, still under construction.

The concept is inspired by a couple of projects I saw online several years ago. One was on a now-defunct blog and the other was a post on The Miniatures Page. Both used 12x12 inch cork sheets attached to vinyl floor tiles. In both projects, additional cork tiles were cut down and painted gray for pavement and sidewalks. The lower cork tile surface was used for the roads. The cork, once painted, had a texture resembling concrete or asphalt. The vinyl floor tile acts as a rigid backing.

This is the first 12x12 inch tile. It contains an asphalt roadway, pedestrian sidewalks, and pavement for buildings. The plan is to make a total of four tiles - two with roads and two with plenty of space for buildings.

Examples of the materials used for this project - floor tile, cork tiles, blue foam packing pieces, and grating piece.

Base Layer Assembly
The vinyl tiles are rigid and self-adhesive. I just had to remove the protective sheet, align a cork tile, and place it down. It spent some time under a few books to make sure that the adhesive had a good bond.

Street Size
How big to make the road? I prefer terrain suitable for multiple scales. In this case, I wanted something that would work for both 28mm and 15mm. After checking the measurements of various scale vehicles, I decided that a surface 4-5 inches wide would do. That width would simulate a single lane, one-way street at 28mm and a double lane, two-way road at 15mm.

Pavement Assembly
To provide a raised surface for buildings, I cut another cork tile in half and glued it on top of the initial cork tile with tacky glue. The assembled piece spent more time weighed down while the glue set.

Sidewalk Assembly
I had some blue foam packing material that would work as pedestrian sidewalks along the street. They just had to be cut down to fit. The grating is more upcycled material. It had a hook attached, so it must have spent time hanging off a display rack at some point. I cut the hook off and used the rest as a drain cover. The piece is a little larger than the sidewalks, so I cut some additional parts to extend the walkway on that side of the street to match. Everything was glued down and spent their share of time weighed down under books.

Side view showing the layers of materials used for this project. I'll need to touch up the spots where the masking tape removed some paint.

Painting - Base Coat
Krylon Camouflage Ultra-Flat Black. I choose Krylon Camouflage over the usual ColorMaster Paint + Primer since I know that the former works on wood and other porous surfaces and wasn't sure about the latter.

Painting - Pavement, First Coat
Krylon ColorMaxx Paint + Primer Matte Deep Gray. I covered the street with masking tape and sprayed everything else gray to simulate concrete.

Painting - Pavement, Second Coat
Krylon Camouflage Ultra-Flat Khaki. The gray areas looked a little flat. That's fine for the grating, but I wanted the pavement to look a little more interesting. I masked the grating and sprayed the sidewalks and pavement to provide a little more color.

Top view, pulled back to show the whole terrain tile.

Evaluation
So far, so good. Removing the masking tape also pulled off a little paint. A close inspection also revealed a few places where the spray paint didn't penetrate into the recesses of the cork. I'll have to be a little more through with the following tiles.

Finishing Up
The next step is to touch up the bare spots with black or gray, as needed. Then I'll finish up by brushing on a medium gray to highlight the edges of the sidewalk and add a little more texture to the flat areas of the pavement and road.

The Next Tile
I'm still undecided on whether to make another street tile or a flat one just for buildings next. The second street tile likely won't have another grated drain cover. I have another part for it, but matching the sidewalk to the first was a little too fiddly. I'll also have to think about how to add some detailing to the flat tiles. I could just glue a couple of tiles together, paint it, and call it done. However, the result would be a little dull looking. Maybe the second drain cover can go on one of them.

Hexagon Construction Set Sci-Fi Industrial Towers

An inventory of my 28mm sci-fi miniatures and terrain suitable for Five Parsecs From Home revealed some gaps. I have plenty of sci-fi miniatures for a crew, but would have to proxy some of the aliens. Likewise, most of my 28mm terrain is fantasy, so I need more sci-fi terrain if I wanted to set up a table. I considered going with 15mm, but ran into the opposite problem - enough terrain, but a lack of miniatures. Besides, I could also use 28mm sci-fi for roleplaying.

Sarah keeps an eye out while Rosie performs percussive maintenance.

Fortunately, I have some solutions for my sci-fi terrain shortage on hand. There's the Power Plant Construction Set featured in a previous post. I also have boxes of materials to scratch build or trash bash something together. And I own two Hexagon Construction Sets - the remains of one with some choice bits still on the sprues and an unopened box I bought last year. Like the Power Plant Construction Set, these are made by Tehlog in Russia and distributed by Pegasus Hobbies in the USA.

Wanting to save the unopened box for later, I dug through what was left of the other one and cobbled these two pieces together. My goal was for the completed pieces to look like functional parts of some industrial system. There are features that look like hatches for accessing internal components to perform maintenance and repair. The sides have ladders to climb to the upper parts. The safety railings also provide plausible cover for any figures placed on top.

Sarah: "Did you hear that?" Rosie: "WHAT?! All I can hear is ringing! I've been hitting this thing with my wrench!"

The paint scheme is the same as the one I used for the red areas of the Power Plant test piece.

Underlayer
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat Black. An even coat on all visible surfaces.

Base Color
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Matte Poppy Red. This is a bright red on its own, but is significantly darker when used over a layer of black. This layer was sprayed down from above. This leaves some of the black underlayer showing for a shading effect.

Dark Wash
I applied a dark (gray-blue) wash mix on all surfaces and wiped off the excess with a sponge. This produced a further shading effect.

Brown Wash
The final touch was applying a brown wash mix using the same technique as the previous step. This gives the piece a more weathered appearance.

"Bug Spray" joining Sarah for some target practice.

These work as generic 28mm sci-fi terrain and should fit a variety of game settings. I might go back and add some weathering later, but they look good enough for now. Besides, I need to get more stuff like this finished so I can get a game of Five Parsecs From Home on the table.

These items are Mark I and Mark II McQuary-Mead Industrial Infrastructure Support Units. These models reliably serve many frontier colonies and installations, although they have been superseded by more advanced equipment in more settled areas. They are commonly used in atmospheric processing or temperature control systems. The Mark II can be distinguished from the Mark I by the additional equipment module. The improved range of features and performance of the Mark II come at the cost of higher operating expenses compared with the Mark I

These specific items are part of a larger shipment of recovered equipment sold off as surplus. The anti-corrosion coating are intact, although there is some surface discoloration. Each unit sold comes with an inspection report from our factory certified technicians. Our agent would be happy to discuss providing a service agreement during the sales process.

- Kessler's Upcycling Sales Catalog

Five Parsecs From Home - First Impressions

I bought myself a present the other week and wanted to share my initial thoughts now that I've finished reading it. This post isn't a review. There's worlds of difference between perusing a set of rules and actually playing the game.

Pew! Pew!

Five Parsecs From Home, Third Edition is tabletop sci-fi miniatures wargame designed for solo play. My interest in alternatives to face-to-face play rose dramatically over the past year and a half or so. I explored online play, used the time to press forward on various related projects, and encouraged my family's interest in tabletop games. Why not try a solo game at this point?

My personal experience with solo tabletop wargaming began with Star Fleet Battles. SFB single player scenarios frequently feature a "space monster" running on simplified rules - no energy allocation, attacks and movement determined by automatic processes, etc. SFB "space monsters" often present a tactical puzzle for the solo player - attacks that ignore the ship to kill the crew directly, a requirement to collect enough scientific data to find a way to stop it, etc. Playing these scenarios were not as memorable as an all-day fleet action or a starship duel with a skilled opponent, but they still offered an interesting challenge on a slow afternoon. I've tried solo games from time to time since then, but it's not something I've put any focus on until now.

The Concept
Five Parsecs From Home is built around campaign play. The player runs a spaceship crew doing odd jobs involving violence for people who don't ask questions about how the job got done. There are many persistent elements. Members of the crew acquire experience and better gear - if they survive. If not, then the crew may find themselves shorthanded for the next battle. Rumors can be tracked down, becoming Quests for the crew to follow. The opposition for one job may become Rivals and reappear looking to settle scores. There is no point system to balance the battles. One might be a milk run and the next may be a struggle that the crew barely escapes.

Production Quality
I purchased a physical copy out of personal preference. The book is a hardcover printed in full color on glossy paper. It measures roughly 9 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches. The compact size and sturdy cover make it ideal for my kind of tabletop gamer life - in other words, tossing it in a backpack on the way to a game or finding shelf space for it at home.

Scale, Measurements, Table Size, and Dice
Five Parsecs From Home works with a variety of scales. 28mm works as written with all measurements in inches. Using smaller scales in the game involves exchanging inches for centimeters. The recommended table sizes range from 3x3 feet (to allow for maneuvering) to 2x2 feet (for a more intense fight). The system uses six- and ten-sided die.

Currencies
The abstractions to track and spend in the game are credits, experience points, and story points. Credits are in-setting money used for expenses and purchases. Experience points are used to improve characters. Story points are handy when the dice aren't cooperating.

The Crew
Much like a roleplaying game, the book opens with a basic description of the game and then jumps into character generation. There are various methods of creating a crew, depending on the player's level of experience. Characters can have a variety of origins and classes. Equipment is generated as a pool and assigned to the characters at the player's discretion.

The Ship
The rules for the crew's ship handle it as an abstraction. The existence of the ship explains how the crew gets around. There are events that occur during interstellar journeys (including boarding actions), but there are no rules in the book for ship-to-ship combat. The ship supports the crew in various ways - injured characters go to sickbay, it provides secure storage for equipment, etc. However, the ship rarely appears on the battlefield and even then only as an objective for the opposition to capture.

Combat
This is a skirmish level game - the half-dozen members of the crew going up against opposition that may slightly outnumber them. Setting up a battle involves determining objectives, generating the opposition, and placing terrain. There is solid guidance on running the opposition. Different types of opponents will behave differently on the battlefield - some cautiously remaining behind cover while keeping the range open, others boldly advancing, and still others maneuvering tactically for advantage. The rules for fighting it out appear to be straightforward. I'll reserve judgment on how well the rules work until I get a few games in. However, the game seems to avoid the trap of adding complexity for the sake of covering every conceivable exception and edge case.

The Campaign
There are plenty of options for setting up and running a campaign. I'm tempted to borrow some of the rules for my next sci-fi roleplaying campaign. The campaign rules break things down into steps. There are world generation rules if the crew is trying their luck on another planet. The rules detail what each member of the crew is doing between battles - recovering from the last fight, getting into mischief on their own, training up, etc. Generating jobs may result in a crew having multiple offers on the table. Deciding which job to take is up to the player - unless a Rival catches up and ambushes the crew, causing them to miss the opportunity to get the job done.

Setting
There is enough setting presented to explain why spaceship crews are wondering around looking for the kind of work best depicted with miniatures, terrain, and dice. The eight pages of text conveys the feel of the setting without getting lost in the details. The idea of a spaceship crew operating on a frontier and being hired by various groups that would rather no get their own hands dirty should be familiar to most readers.

Layout
There is a table of contents, but no index. I'll have to see how easy it is to find things during actual play. However, the fact that each chapter is color coded should be helpful. The back of the book contains several handy appendixes - how to play the game on a grid, taking Red and Black Jobs if the campaign is getting too easy, adding more narrative elements, and various bits of advice.

Not long after I got my copy. I love that new book smell!

Outro
My first reading of Five Parsecs From Home did what it was intended to do. I'm looking forward to starting a campaign. I just need to get enough miniatures and terrain assembled and painted to put on the table. I hope that you've found this quick look at the game useful.

Reaper Bones Zombies

I had a fit of Halloween enthusiasm and painted up all of the zombie and zombie-like figures in my Reaper Bones collection. Fortunately, I didn't completely lose my mind (any more than usual) and decided to use a common paint scheme for all of them. After all, rotting flesh covered with a few scraps of decaying clothes would look about the same on any animated corpse after being out in the sun for awhile.

Like a scene from a horror flick.

Notes on the paint scheme I used are presented first. Comments on each set of miniatures follow. All figures are from the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter.

Preparation
The usual steps I take for Reaper Bones, as described here. I used FolkArt 231 Real Brown as an undercoat color.

Base Coat
FolkArt 231 Real Brown. I brushed on some additional brown to guarantee an even coat over all areas of each miniature.

Dry Brush Layer
Reaper 09293 Alien Flesh. This is a medium gray with touch of warmer color - brown or maybe red. Dry brushed over each figure to provide highlights.

Black Wash Layer
Reaper 09255 Black Wash. This is a basic black wash. It does the job of settling into the recesses, but otherwise unremarkable.

Brown Wash Layer
Reaper 09254 Brown Wash. A wash that works for flesh or cloth over a black wash. This is the final coat applied to the cloth and hair.

Green Wash Layer
Citadel Washes Thraka Green. A long out of production product that I'm trying to use up before it dries up. It was applied only to the areas of exposed flesh. This coat turned out to be too green. I was going for "necrotic" not "the expression of Bruce Banner's anger management issues" for the flesh tones.

Green-Brown Wash Layer
Secret Weapon Wash W008 Baby Poop. My choice for Cthulhu-related projects. It produces an unhealthy looking tone when applied over a neutral color. The sickly color turned out to be a perfect fit for this project. Again, it was used over the flesh areas only.

Reaper Bones 77053 Zombies

Reaper Bones 77053 Zombies
These resemble the "shambler" zombies common in media depictions. Slow mobs of decaying corpses that shuffle towards potential prey. Sold in packs of three.

Reaper Bones 77014 Zombies

Reaper Bones 77014 Zombies
More "shambler" zombies, although I'm tempted to refer to these as "disco" zombies given their pose. They provide some variety when combined with 77053. Sold in packs of three - I received the two pictured as a Kickstarter reward.

Reaper Bones 77159 Ghast

Reaper Bones 77159 Ghast
Although "Ghast" is Reaper's name for this figure, it's handy as a variety of undead threats. It could represent a more powerful zombie, a ghoul, some kind of wight, a vampire that hasn't feed for awhile, or other abomination with a hunger for flesh.

Reaper Bones 77169 Flesh Golem

Reaper Bones 77169 Flesh Golem
This big guy is clearly inspired by popular adaptations of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. This figure could represent the creation of a mad wizard or ambitious scientist, a "boss" zombie, or some other physically powerful undead.

Overall, I'm happy with how this mob of undead turned out. They'll be menacing some adventuring party or other group of player characters soon enough. Although I might need to find something to feed them in the meantime...

Playing with Power (Plant Parts)

Recently, I realized that I could use more 28mm scale sci-fi terrain. Nothing to do with a new game I want to try out. It just came to me out of the blue.

Honest.

The box is a little worse for wear, but the plastic is fine.

Digging around my pile collection, I came across a Power Plant Construction Set. Like the Hexagon Platformer Construction Set, it was manufactured by Tehnolog in Russia and distributed in the United States by Pegasus Hobbies. It's been awhile since I last saw a Power Plant kit on the market. I was kinda saving mine, but this seemed as good a time to put it to use as any.

Looking over the Power Plant sprues, I decided not to go with the build seen on the box. It would use up all of the parts in the kit for a single piece of terrain. Besides, the pipes, antenna, and other bits would be handy for other projects. But the generators and structural components looked promising for my immediate needs.

I put this piece together as a proof of concept and liked it enough to paint it up. It works as stand alone terrain. However, I may make similar piece with other parts from the kit and connect the two using some of the pipes.

As with the Hexagon Platformer parts, the plastic takes Krylon spray paint well. I disassembled the piece before painting so that I could use more than one color without the need to use masking tape.

"This one? She's a beauty, isn't she? Sure, there's some wear and she could use a good cleaning, but we've been running our local operation on her output. Not only that, but we've been making a pretty credit off selling the excess to our energy provider. Rumors? What kind of rumors? Well, nobody's really sure where it came from. The crew we bought it from wouldn't say. Wait! Where are you going?!"

- Sales representative, name withheld, Kessler's Upcycling

Rosie gives this bit of tech a once over before making an offer.

Underlayer
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat Black. All parts of the disassembled test piece got an even coat on all surfaces.

Red Parts
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Matte Poppy Red. This bright red darkened up when sprayed over the black to produce a nice industrial looking color. I sprayed the parts at an angle to produce shading when the piece was reassembled.

Metallic Parts
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Metallic Aluminum. A couple of light coats produced a smooth, shiny metallic finish. Again, the parts were sprayed at an angle to help generate the appearance of shadows on the finished piece.

Dark Wash Layer
The colors on the reassembled piece seemed a little flat in places, even with the shading that was already there. I mixed some dark (gray-blue) wash and brushed it over all surfaces. The excess was wiped off with a sponge to prevent pooling. The result provided additional shadows and brought out the recessed details.

Brown Wash Layer
Even with the dark wash, the piece still looked a little too new. A brown wash mix applied the same way as the dark wash layer gave the piece a more used look.

"We have no idea what it is, how it works, where it came from, who might come looking for it, and some junk yard wants to sell it off as salvage?"

- Doctor Solheim, Xeno-Archeology Department, Miskatonic University

It just fell out of orbit? Sure, pull the other one.

This piece started out as a test, but turned out well enough for the tabletop. I could add more weathering later, but I'd like to see what more I can do with this kit first. Before that, I have some other terrain ideas to pursue with the other materials I have on hand.

Reaper Bones 77067 Virina, Female Demon

Halloween's coming up, so it's a good time to get projects like this nice lady with the horns, wings, and tail done. My players don't react well to demons, devils, cosmic horrors, or undead. A dark color scheme seemed the best bet. No point in being subtle. With that in mind, I decided to experiment with layering coats of color over black for this project.

Painted in Chaos Black, Spattered Crimson, Gory Red, Blood Red, and Fresh Blood.

Preparation
Details on my approach to working on Reaper Bones miniatures are posted here. The base color is Citadel Colour Chaos Black. With that name, it was the most appropriate choice.

Basing
I used black instead of using brown to color the basing material and followed up by brushing on some gray. The intended result is "burnt out ground covered in ashes" rather than the "dry soil" I usually shoot for.

First Color Layer
Reaper 09277 Spattered Crimson. I left more paint on the brush than I usually would for dry brushing and tried to cover everything but the recesses on the figure.

Second Color Layer
Reaper 09278 Gory Red. This still used more paint than most dry brushing techniques, but wasn't as heavy as the first layer. The goal was to partly cover the areas previously coated, producing a highlight.

Third Color Layer
Reaper 09003 Blood Red. I partly covered the previous coat with a dry brushing of this color.

Fourth Layer
Reaper 09279 Fresh Blood. A light dry brush layer to provide a final highlight.

Wash Layer
Surveying the results so far, I saw that I was a little too aggressive with brushing on the red layers. More paint got into the recesses than I intended. The fix was a coat of Secret Weapon Wash W001 Soft Body Black diluted with a drop or two of water. It brought back the recessed details and helped to blend the layers of red together.

Demon lady in red.

The results are alright, but aren't as neat as I'd like. Dry brushing works, but isn't particularly tidy. If I were to do this project again, I would try a more controlled approach to layering on the red for a cleaner result. No big deal, though. Learning new things is the point of experimenting. This demon lady will menace dungeon delving adventuring parties just fine as she is.