Ultimo Avamposto's Star Trek TOS miniatures

As I mentioned in my previous post Trek Miniatures, Scale and Alternate Options, one of the coolest sets of miniatures wasn't made for a role-playing game at all, but for a boardgame. In 1999, the Italian company Ultimo Avamposto (literally "The Last Outpost", who runs the official Star Trek Italian Fan Club) released a boardgame called Star Trek Adventure: Serie Classica Set 1. According to the BoardGameGeek website, STA:SC is a strategy boardgame based on TOS for 2-4 players that includes a hexboard, cards, cardboard counters, and 17 unpainted pewter miniatures used to play the Federation, Klingons, Romulans or the Gorn. The game itself seems to be long out-of-print and difficult to obtain. It appears that it may have been intended to be the first of a series of Star Trek games (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager) based on the box (below) and the "Set 1" tag.

The tokens for the game average 34mm in length, 30-32mm from top of base to eye-level. That puts them out of scale with most (but not all) gaming miniatures, but the entire collection gives a real variety of friends and foes. They really benefit from the larger scale, too, as these are really just about the nicest Trek miniatures I've ever seen. If you're trying to get them or the game, you might want to bookmark the eBay Seller's page of grandenagus (Massimo Romani of Ultimo Avamposto). I don't know if he has anymore after 10 years, but you never know. tokens for the game average 34mm in length, 30-32mm from top of base to eye-level. That puts them out of scale with most (but not all) gaming miniatures, but the entire collection gives a real variety of friends and foes. They really benefit from the larger scale, too, as these are really just about the nicest Trek miniatures I've ever seen. If you're trying to get them or the game, you might want to bookmark the eBay Seller's page of grandenagus (Massimo Romani of Ultimo Avamposto). I don't know if he has anymore after 10 years, but you never know.

In the meantime, documented here for posterity...

The Klingons

The Gorn

The Romulans

Scotty, Orion Slave Girl, Chekov
McCoy, Kirk and Spock pictured at top of post (missing: Sulu)

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Trek Miniatures, Scale and Alternate Options

I took a huge new batch of photos of my miniatures today for future posts, and thought this would be a good opportunity to address the issue of scale between the different lines. It'll also be the first glimpse of some rarely seen miniatures other than those of Heritage, FASA and Citadel and I'll be showing more of these in the future.

And in honor of Bill's birthday (Happy 78th, Mr. Shatner!... not that he's a regular reader of Groknard) I'll kick it off with this, to the left. Here are 6 officially licensed Star Trek miniatures of Captain James T. Kirk (click for a larger closeup). In back is Heritage Models' 1978 75mm Collector Figure of Kirk (Heritage #1600). In the front, from left to right, is Heritage's 25mm Kirk (1604A), Citadel's 1980 25mm Captain Kirk Pose 1 (ST1), FASA's 1983 25mm Admiral Kirk from the Wrath of Khan Collector Series box (3001), USAopoly's pewter Kirk token from the 2000 boardgame Star Trek Limited Edition Monopoly, and the very rare Kirk token from the 1999 Italian boardgame by Ultimo Avamposto, Star Trek Adventure: Serie Classica.

Here's a close-up without Mega-Kirk (click for larger):

The Star Trek Limited Edition Monopoly tokens are really nice sculpts and I'll be posting all 8 from that game, as well as the Star Trek: The Next Generation version of the game soon. The nice thing is that they're somewhat easier to find than the miniatures from the 70s and 80s. As you can see (below), they're out of scale with 25mm figures, but pretty close to 28mm/30mm heroic scale. If you get these, then you can throw in monsters and Orion slave girls from other miniature lines. Although I had seen pics of the Monopoly Trek tokens, I couldn't find a single reference to measurements or comparative scale anywhere. Now I'll save you the trouble. Good for RPGs? I think so.


If you're looking for some 25mm miniatures for your Trek games, but you don't want to spend an arm and a leg, check out the MegaMiniatures "Bridge Crew" lead-free pewter line (PDF Catalog) of Trek-like figures and accessories. Very affordable and great sculpts that are easily modified and painted to look very close to either TOS or TNG eras. Here's one, on the far right. I think it's also a good illustration of the fact that "25mm" doesn't really tell you whether or not miniatures from different lines and manufacturers are really going to mesh well together. From foot-to-eye, MegaMinis are 28mm. Heritage and FASA minis are 25mm from foot-to-eye. Citadel Trek figures are more like 25mm from foot-to-top of head, and look stockier.

Transporters are always breaking down, so be sure your games have a shuttle available. Here's Monopoly Spock and Heritage Spock flanked by 3.5" long Galileo shuttles that aren't in perfect scale for the figures, but close enough and suitable for the game table. The shuttle on the left was one of Playmate's Innerspace series of micro ships, and the one on the right is the more easily obtained Johnny Lightning version. Don't get the Japanese Furuta import, it's barely 2 1/4" inches long.

One last one for today, for fans of TNG who probably feel somewhat left out on my blog, but shouldn't. I love the newer shows (Voyager not so much), and just haven't gotten to the LUG and Decipher eras yet. Here's Worf, one from LUG's one and only box set of miniatures for Star Trek The Next Generation Roleplaying Game, the 1998 Federation Away Team Miniatures (# 25600), along with the Worf token from Parker Brother's 1998 Star Trek: The Next Generation Collector's Edition Monopoly. More from that set later (does Wil Wheaton know he has his own mini???).

I hope this has helped some of you looking to start collecting and adding miniatures to your Star Trek RPG sessions. Look for more photos and details from all these lines over the next few months. In the meantime, coming up next, a look at years of homebrewed Star Trek RPGs adaptations for systems such as GURPS, Simply Roleplaying! and more.

But wait! There's more.....