Starship Troopers: Miniatures Resurrected

The other day I bemoaned about missing the excellent Starship Troopers miniatures game that left us far too soon due to licensing disputes. The game was only in production from 2005 to barely into 2007, but had one of the best wargaming rulesets I'd ever played. The initial models were based mostly on the CGI Starship Troopers cartoon from the early 2000s (yeah, unfortunately that CGI has NOT aged well). But the minis held up pretty good!

Come on you Apes, you want to live forever?!

So I decided to dig out any old Starship Troopers minis I still had and see what kind of shape they were in (after being in a box for ten years and three apartment/house moves). Figured I'd show a few pics of the resurrected minis below.

Skreeeeeeeee!

All in all, they weren't in too bad of shape. I had to do some repairs on a few of the bugs, but it wasn't anything out of the question for how poorly I've treaded them over the last decade. 

Bits had broken off (legs mostly) of the Tanker, Plasma, Firefry, and a few Warriors. Still need to fix and paint a bunch of the Warrior Bugs yet.

 As I noted before, I was mostly an Arachnid player, so have quite a few bugs. I have to say that my painting skills from ten years ago could still be considered "table-ready." I'm not in any hurry to repaint them anyway.

Collect 'em all! We have Blister Bugs, Blaster Bugs, Brain Bugs, Firefry Bugs, Control Bugs!

Hopper Bugs, Burrower Bugs, Tanker bugs, Imposter Bugs, and all the Warrior Bugs you could eat!

I never actually played with two Plasma bugs, only have the second because the gamestore gave it to me when SST went under.

Then on the Drop Troopers side, I only collected and painted the Roughnecks squad and a few Skinnie Troopers.

Not a large force, but with the Roughnecks book and buying some key Trooper skills this could still be a formidable force.

Rico is the one with the helmet off on the left there.

A Marauder Suit with some Skinnies, ready to kill Bugs!

After pulling out/fixing all the painted minis, I decided to put together the Mobile Infantry Sprues I still had. Found out I have a bunch more Warrior Bugs, and another Marauder Suit and a Chickenhawk to paint. I also always wanted some Light Armor Mobile Infantry (molds based on movie troopers rather than CGI cartoon show), but they came out right before Mongoose dropped the game, so official boxes of the LAMI are rare and cost upwards of $95 (if you can even find them)! However I recently found out that a company called Rebel Minis bought/obtained the mold for a lot of the Starship Troopers minis, so I ordered a set of the Light Armor Mobile Infantry (called "Earth Defense Force" on the site) to see how they looked.

Pic from Rebel Minis site for their "Earth Defense Force."

When they arrived, I cleaned and filed them. I found a slight problem was that the slotted bases they come with don't actually fit them well because of the raised "Rebel Minis" stamp on the mini, so you have to do some filing to get them to fit in the slot. Still, its worth it to get a box of Movie-style Starship Troopers minis for only $25!

 

Still, they look good once filed and cleaned, and I can't wait to paint them!

Marauder, Chickenhawk, and Light Armor Mobile Infantry that need to go through Basic Training and get painted!

Next on the agenda: Paint these up and build a Klendathu-style Utah desert table! Oh, and I should probably find someone else to actually play this with as well, right? I get so wrapped up in painting/prep that I usually forget to actually carve out time to play these games!