Recently, the question has come up of whether or not I’m going to be living in St. John’s for much longer, and if I do end up moving there’s a good chance it’s going to be overseas. Naturally, I found myself asking what I was going to bring with me miniatures-wise. My Eldar are a must-have, as are some of my Death Guard and some of my paint supplies, but I’m likely going to have to cut down a lot on the clutter and on what armies I keep from here. Skirmish games are an awesome solution to that problem, and I’m head over heels for Snarling Badger Studios’ Space Station Zero.

KinpatsuSamurai introduced me to this game and we both threw together a Star Trek-themed crew, since we split a Star Trek: Adventures miniatures pack of characters and since he had a pack of Borg put together too. His setup, as always, is immaculate and has given me tons of ideas for setting up a similar modular gameboard thing in the future. We’ve been running our crews down through the station for close to six months now and I’ve found that this is a great, healthy medium between a strategic wargame, a casual board game, and a customizable tabletop RPG. It checks a lot of boxes for me and because it’s a miniatures agnostic game the sky is the limit on what you can include.

We’ve used Star Trek as a springboard for this campaign but I could absolutely see Warhammer 40K miniatures working in this kind of setting, and I hope that at some point I get to try a run through this game with XenonMage and her Tyranids. (It’ll be like a trust fall but instead of hitting the ground all of my space elves get eaten.) My crew are plucky Lower Decks-esque scientists while KinpatsuSamurai’s team are dedicated soldiers, and we’ve been through some crazy stuff. Tons of environmental hazards, monsters, prison guard robots, collapsing ceilings, and one of my favorite boss fights ever. And so far, we’ve only each lost one of our crew (and they were both wearing red!)

The game is really well-balanced and it’s clear that Adam and Vince from Snarling Badger Studios put a ton of love into this. I can already seeing this having a lot of replay value and I feel like depending on the kind of crews you select you could have totally different game experiences, with scenarios testing the limits of your crews in different ways. I can’t say enough good things about their work, and I’m leaning towards getting myself a copy of Reign in Hell and Majestic 13 before the big (potential) move to replace some games that are heavier on model count.

My last closing thought: follow KinpatsuSamurai on Instagram. Seriously. All the terrain you see here, including that awesome shuttle that got used as a boss encounter, he’s probably posted somewhere on his page and his work with kitbashing, fluorescents, and other miniature mad-science are incredible. Whether the move happens or not, this is a campaign and a boss fight I’m definitely gonna remember for the rest of my tabletop days.