Your miniature Star Trek adventures are about to get villainous, thanks to the latest miniatures from Modiphius! This “Iconic Villains” set for the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game we caught up with earlier this week includes unpainted, 32mm-scale versions of eight iconic Trek adversaries to spice up your tabletop gaming action.

Admittedly, I’ve never painted Modiphius miniatures before, so I was particularly excited to get my hands on this set. Earlier Star Trek Adventures mini sets include the primary crews of the Original Series and The Next Generation, along with Klingon, Romulan, and Borg alien sets — but a set of Trek bad guys all in one box was too interesting to resist.

Each miniature villain — Khan, the Borg Queen, Locutus of Borg, Gul Dukat, android Lore, General Chang, the Gorn, and of course, Judge Q — attached to a sprue, which I appreciate because it makes priming and painting the character and base quite a bit easier.

I personally prefer to prime and paint a mini and the base separately, and while most of these figures didn’t need assembly outside of attaching them to their base, Locutus, Dukat, and the Borg Queen did have arms to attach. With just a few quick flicks of my X-ACTO knife to clean off some flashing and mold lines, I was ready for priming. 

I typically paint miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons, and have dealt with a wide spectrum of quality when it comes to miniatures. I am impressed at how finely detailed these resin minis are — none of the detail work felt muddy at all. You’d think that the Borg characters would be the most complex, but Khan is the mini that impresses me the most because of how detailed his chest and belt are. It’s a great sculpt!

If these minis had been made with the typical economical plastic, they wouldn’t have looked anywhere near this good — but it’s also probably why the price point is slightly higher than similar sets at $49.99 USD.

The first mini I decided to paint was the Gorn captain from “Arena,” because to be honest, most of the other minis intimidated me a bit. Faces are hard enough at 32mm scale, much less iconic faces of real people that you’re trying to replicate, so I figured I’d start with a non-human.

I primed my Gorn using a Krylon matte white spray paint, and then largely used Citadel’s new Contrast paints for the base. I did use some Vallejo paints for some of the detail work on the base, along with some terrain from The Army Painter. 

My only criticism about this Gorn miniature is that the tunic was sculpted to look more like a draped fabric toga, and wasn’t quite screen accurate — that said, the skin of the Gorn had a lot of great texture for the Citadel Contrast paint to settle into, which really helped sell the illusion of this being a scaly creature.

The next miniature I decided to paint was the Next Generation fan-favorite: the antagonistic Q, who has had a slew of great costumes over the years, but comes here in his famed ‘Judge Q’ garb, as seen in “Encounter at Farpoint” and “All Good Things…”.

(Considering this is the “Iconic” villains set, the judge costume was the natural choice!)

I used the same primer and Citadel Contrast line to paint this miniature as well, and then used some Vallejo metallics for the necklace, face, and hands. The hardest part was the face.

Looking back at the episodes, you can see that actor John de Lancie is wearing some pretty heavy makeup at times, and trying to replicate that on this small a scale is not my strong suit. That said, it’s a solid sculpt, and the fact that it actually looks a bit like the actor — despite being so tiny — is impressive. I’ve seen much larger action figures that look less like him.

Finally, I decided to give Gul Dukat from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a try. There is a lot of texture and detail here, which is perfect for my Contrast paints. They essentially give you a base coat and highlight in one pass. They are a bit thicker than a wash, but thinner than typical paint. The more texture in the mini, the better they seem to work.

The challenge for me here was in getting Captain Sisko’s baseball just right, which the mini holds in his hand in a moment straight out of “The Sacrifice of Angels.” But overall, Dukat proved to be another great sculpt that was relatively easy to paint. 

I’ll eventually work my way through the rest of these miniatures, but I’m quite happy with the ones I’ve painted thus far and am definitely curious to see how far the Star Trek Adventures line of minis will expand.

Have you been using the Star Trek Adventures character figures in your gameplay? If so, what has your experience been like? Let us know in the comments below!