"My Starfleet Marines" Topic

Just a little update on my Star Trek minis project.

TMP link

I just finished up the collection of Marines that I've had in storage for some time now. I've accumulated them a long time ago. They're official Starfleet Marines from Task Force games, I assume to support the original Prime Directive RPG. They were made by Harlequin Miniatures and sculpted by Kev White.

When I first got them, I never really considered them much for Star Trek as the weapons looked a bit too contemporary and not too keen on some of the poster'ish SMG in each hand poses. However the rest of the started to really grow on me and I dove into the Starfleet lore in some Captain's Log magazines. So I pulled them out of storage and painted them along with my VFM stuff. To try to keep some sort of cohesion, I painted the clothing under the armor plates the same as the standard red shirts (black pants and red shirt). The dark blue grey armor was picked as it reminded me of the wartime uniforms during DS9 and TNG era and the colors just seemed to work.

I've still got some of the VFM minis in space suits to finish up. I'm going to paint these using colors from the Marines to to tie them together.

I like them. Nice vibe to them.

cool 8)

I love the StarFleet insignia on the "belt buckle". You are right though, the armored figs don't really say "Star Trek" to me (but SFB is not exactly Trek anyway)

Very nice indeed. I can see all sorts of uses for them. Excellent painting as well.

The Few, The Proud, The Unusual-Starfleet Marine! To me, the 'armored' suit is a vaccuum 'skinsuit' augmented for impact/melee/projectile fire with a forcefield belt for defense against energy weapons-look at MasterChief in Halo:armor plus shield. Seems reasonable for the tech level portrayed in the various versions of Trek.

Thanks everyone. Actually there's also a nice big Enterprise Arrowhead cast in on the Left Shoulder Pad of each Marine figure as well. I'm surprised I didn't have any posed to view them. I even took time to draw an anchor in the center of each (based on SFB material, the Marines department had an anchor in the center of their department insignia).

I've got some fully armored 'battle suit' marines in the works as well. These were also some of the official Starfleet figures. No photos of them yet.

My intention is to use all of these with a miniatures skirmish mod I've been working on using the AE-Bounty rules but set in the Starfleet Universe.

I am more of a "classic Trek" guy and the weapons even the Phaser II could disintegrate a person pretty quick there were not too many times where there would be a back and forth battle, unlike TNG. When you were hit you usually turned bright white and disappeared. I never knew why they started wearing armor in the movies.

Overall, I'm going for the Starfleet setting based on the Prime Directive RPG material.

Well in the movies, and even in TNG, most of the lethal shots simply burned a hole in the target. Some resulted in wounds rather than kills. It was only sustained hits that disintegrated the targets. Body armor probably could have helped in these situations, and body armor was present in several of the movies (STMP and ST3).

Only in the TOS where hits always seemed to disintegrate the target. That may have been a matter of the level of special effects available or the cinematic style. Even in the Enterprise episode when the Mirror Universe Archer used a TOS era phaser-II on a lethal setting it left a burn mark in the target much like the TNG and movie era effects.

I've got plans for rules for a disintegrate setting for the phasers. They require more actions to fire, thus representing a sustained shot, and pose a significantly greater damage potential. If the target is reduced to 0 wounds by a weapon with this type then it is gone, outright, no last minute hypospray saves from a nearby Chief Medical Officer. Furthermore any objective, loot or gear the target had is gone as well. Which may make the shooter reconsider using the Disintegrate setting on every target.

Don't get me wrong, playing that phasers don't disintegrate the target makes for a more interesting game then TOS did. I was just commenting on the change from TOS to other Treks. I do think in the future 23rd century TOS phasers would probably be more plausible. The wounds in TNG would almost be the same as someone shooting a gun.

I think the armored figs may have been inspired by some of the Star Trek movies where they had security officers wearing armor and maybe even by some work done by FASA regarding Star Fleet Marines in a supplement that, to my knowledge, never even made it into release.

-Eli

I do recall seeing the cover art of the Fasa Starfleet Marines game in an old Fasa catalog. I so much wanted to get that game too. BTW, not only did it have a Marine in full battledress but a grav tank in the background.

ADB is coming out with a board game for marine actions. They've been posting some of the playtest sessions. So far everything is planetside based. The game is clearly not miniatures based and more of a cardboard chit type game that resembles something like Squad Leader or something from Locked N Loaded. The proposed cover art is really cool looking showing a bunch of Federation Marines in front of a Grav Tank.

Some of the body armor does resemble some of the artwork seen in the original Prime Directive RPG rulebook, which came out around the time those figures were available. Quite a bit of the work in that book had a harder, gritter military feel than the canon Star Trek TOS.

In one of the more recent Captain's Log issues, I think about a year ago, there was a short story in there that involved a Federation Marine unit that was beamed onto a crippled Romulan ship. Their objective was to destroy the plasma torpedo tube, which had a partially charged torpedo in it, before the Romulans can get enough power allocated to it to fire. There was several drawings along with it. One of my favorites is a pair of wounded and very distressed marines sitting on the transporter deck looking like they just came out of a very hot extraction. The helmets in the drawings very closely resemble the helmets on these figure.

BTW I have 18 blisterss of these figures if anyone is interested pm me