I started collecting FFG's X-WING last Fall as most of you know. ATTACK WING did not go unnoticed then, but there was my first and newly rediscovered geek love to take care of FIRST...Ha, Ha!
I have shared with you friends of B6*R7, my love for STAR WARS and STAR BLAZERS... but there is one more biggie. There is STAR TREK. This was the third Sci-Fi Universe that really got my attention. Like many people, I discovered Trek-coolness in the reruns, as an adolescent. To this day I still love the Original Star Trek, and much of what has followed it on television, including the old and new films.
I have been happily collecting Star Wars and Star Blazers models to game, but with Star Trek I have remained hesitant. I love the models produced for my Sci-Fi Trinity, but I also am a gamer, I want to play with the cool toys. Ha! With Star Wars and Star Blazers that is kind of easy to do now, as I have indicated in previous articles, thanks to FFG and Bandai.
With Star Trek, well... there is some work to do! No single company makes a complete range of models in their correct relative scales...so you have to be creative. I am going to enjoy ST as much as SW and SB, so I have finally decided to get to work on this project!
I have been put off from buying into ATTACK WING due to how poorly Wiz Kids has handled the models! Then I discovered just last month that an English company know as Eaglemoss started a new series of Star Trek Models in 2013. They are not at all in relative scale, of course, and the painting and even the molding on several of their offerings is poor in my opinion, and the opinion of others as I have noticed after researching the product range. However there are some very nice models too, and these few good pieces also happen to be in the right size for my chosen scale.
Credit where it is due, seeing these new Eaglemoss models spurred me into action and now that I have done the research I know what I need to do to make my BIG Attack Wing Project a success.
Nothing is perfect... is it my friends? Hench: The Trouble With Trekking!
We will try to be close to perfect...and it will be fun I think.
We want to play ATTACK WING, but the models...the models...the models.
How do we fix this mess?
We collect 1/2500 scale models. There are a lot, in fact in my research over the last month, I have found most of the current ATTACK WING models in 1/2500 or 1/50 scale. These are very compatible scales, and on the tabletop the minor size variations are about an inch. My easy rule of thumb here is keeping within an inch of true to the correct scale. If we approach this project like some scale nazi, then almost nothing will work for us here...screw that asinine hub-bub my bubs. We are trying to have some fun!
Before we get into this article, let me say that I have spent weeks researching this information, and I have collected more than a dozen scale charts which contain all of the important ships in STAR TREK, and ATTACK WING. Many of these ships have been listed at various sizes on these charts.
What I am doing is averaging the commonly agreed upon sizes or the variants of the ships presented here. The goal being to improve vastly upon the Wizkids FUBAR models and make our ship captains proud of their vessels.
Bare in mind that my solution is not perfect either, because no one company makes all of these ships in their correct relative scales. My solution is however... damn close to being right.
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| This is a scaled image which I have edited a bit, of the Eaglemoss ships. This was posted by somebody cool at the Eaglemoss Face Book page. It is not entirely correct either, but it is certainly what I like to call "Damn Close!" :) and that is way better than done completely wrong. Nothing is perfect, but we are going to try... |
The STAR TREK ship models presented here make what I am calling: "Boss' BIG Approved" collection (Pardon me friends, but it is funny). They range in size from three to thirteen inches long, with most being about five inches. This covers ships from 200 meters to 900 meters long. Oddly enough, when the the BBA Collection approach is applied; Hero Clix, Micro Machines, and the official Attack Wing models for craft that are 100 to 150 meters long suddenly become correct in scale.
You can use the STAW Models for these small ships, or an alternate like Micro Machines, and it is all happy space battles time, because the bigger ships have now been fixed by using larger models to represent them properly.
When the small ships are on the table with their larger BBA model counterparts everything will look just fine. Now to my eye, on a four by six foot table, a dozen of these BBA ships ranging in model size from 1 1/2" to 13" long will look awesome, and play just like the standard scale game in terms of maneuvering. It Works.
If you are getting lost, just trust Boss, because he loves all of you Star Trek Babies!
Ha, Ha!
I have made a nice chart to show all of the models we can use, or that need to be replaced based on everything currently in STAW, or that is soon to be released. It is at the end of this article, as a visual review of what we are going to cover in this episode.
Okay lets start looking at the wonderful Boss' BIG Approved Ships that we all want to buy, and hold, and talk to.
"That's my mean little Birds of Prey...you are going to kick some serious butt, because you are now in the proper relative scale!"
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| I found this cool image during my research over the last month. My Birds Of Prey all arrived this week, and currently consist of two of the Hot Wheels models backing up one of the nice and stocky Corgies. Note: The Hot Wheels ships have fully possible wings. I need two more I think. All of these models are right at four inches long from nose to tail. |
The Eaglemoss Collection as it stands today, provides us with a dozen usable ships. All of the Eaglemoss standard models cost $20 each. They are well made but some look good, whiles others look great. One important point to share with you about using these models to game with. They all have a clip on plastic stand that attaches to the back of the ships and into the metal bases. If you want to have a more stable base arrangement you will need to drill mounting holes in the models and supply your own rods for the stands.
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| The two classic core Ships Of The Line, in any Federation force... and we love them both. |
There are thirty three models in the Eaglemoss collection as of this articles publication. Nine of these are right on, and will work with most of the other 1/2500 scale model kits now in production, while three are pushing the limits of our size parameters, but will still look nice on the table. The remaining ships are either way to big or to small for our purposes. Who wants a 5" long Defiant Class on the same table with a 5" long Constitution Class? Nobody.
The almost there yellow ships. I have marked them as usable because they are close to being in scale. To give you some reference to my approach, let me share some math with you. The scale of the Vor'cha is stated more often than not as being 481 Meters. Now the easy way to get a reasonable scale is to take the figure of 4.8 and divide it by 1.5. You will get 7.2, in other words the model should be about seven inches long. The Eaglemoss version is about five inches long. To small right. How much do you want to use this ship, and have it fit in with the rest of our BIG Trek Games? In this case I may be willing to fudge out of my own general within an inch of true rule, rather than not have the ship at all. Then there is the fun reality of knowing that I can buy a very nice seven inch resin version for $75...but this episode is all about reasonably affordable Die-cast and Plastic models. Lets move on.
The AMT Cadet Series of 1/2500 models gives us more ships. All of these Federation models are in their correct relative scale to each other...which is rare to see since other manufacturers toss scale right out the window.
Here are all of the AMT 1/2500 Adversary model kits currently available. Note that the Romulan War Bird is not in 1/2500 scale, but it is still a viable option that will look good with the Federation ships.
The Klingon Bird Of Prey and Ferengi Marauder are not in correct scale either, but they still conform to our BBA scale, and will look very good. Remember we are not counting rivets here gang, we are collecting super cool models that will be fun to game with!
According to my research there is a smaller 1,000 meter version of the Romulan War Birds. The math says that a model of this ship should be about 15" long. The AMT model is 13" long, and that is about as good as it gets, for $20.
There is a Playmates toy that looks very good, and is 15" long, but that thing is hard to find for less than $50. I got mine MIB for $40 delivered, but I was diligent in my EBay stalkings...Ha, Ha! I have seen them for sale used and in good shape for around $25.
Here is an image comparing the Playmates and AMT War Birds. This was posted at AST Forums, thanks for the info guys.
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| Note that the AMT model is not completed in this image, but the owner was kind enough to share the information to help people like us decide on which version to purchase. |
I have both of the War Birds pictured above, as of this articles publication. I am going to use the AMT version to make a Romulan Kerchan. I will be using the Valdore rules for this custom model, it will be cool, and it works..."All Glory To The Empire!!!"
The AMT Round 2 Cadet Series is a great option for anyone who wants to build the core TOS and TNG ships to our BBA scale. All of these kits are currently available at any good hobby shop and from Amazon too of course. This excellent series fills some of the gaps left by the fine Eaglemoss series and provides us with alternates too.
All of these AMT kits are readily available for $20 or less. That is at most $10 per ship if you get the complete series and deal with a seller who is reasonable about their shipping fees.
Rest assured that these AMT models will work very very well with the Eaglemoss range, however there are some slight differences in the exact sizes. For example the AMT Enterprise builds to about 4 1/2 " long while the Eaglemoss Enterprise is right at 5" long. I suggest that you pick one or the other of these brands to purchase. That way all of your ships, by their classes, will be the same size.
If you only want one of each ship then the minor size deference does not matter. This variation issue will not come up much because in most cases there are a number of ship models in our scale that are only available from one company. Some important models that this applies to are; Enterprise C, D, and E, and the War Bird (unless you want to go crazy and get the rare Playmates version, as I have done).
The AMT Enterprise sets are around $15 each. To my knowledge these excellent kits are the only way to get the C, D, and E ships. Keep in mind that you can (and I will) convert these big girls into other models, such as the Sutherland or the Titan.
Well my friends these are all of the Die-cast and Plastic models that I know about that are all currently readily available and are at a reasonable price ranging from $5 to $20 each.
Keep in mind that the AMT Trio Kits are $15, so each ship equals $5. Now there are other options of course, many of the ships covered in this episode can be found as pricey collectable Di-cast series such as Hot wheels, and there are many custom Risen model kits out there. We will cover them in Part Three. Do not forget that the cute little Micro Machines offer some options for the smaller ship, and these can be found on EBay again, for around $5 each.
Now let us review what we have covered here. The STAR TREK ATTACK WING Release Schedule Chart below is the best way to do this I think. All of the models which are framed in blue are models that are already in scale as is, when we apply The BBA Collecting approach to them. Several of them may be swapped out for the more detailed Micro Machines options at our discretion. Particularly the 105 Meter Brel Class Bird Of Prey. The Federation Defiant Class, Nova Class, and NX Classes are also available from Micro Machines as well as a few others in the STAW Game.
All of the models framed in green are out of scale as they are produced by Wiz, but as we have seen in this article we have the very nice large scale models available to us, at a reasonable price, and we can buy them without having to go on a trek into the unknown.
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| We started this episode with a scaled image of The Eaglemoss Die-cast ships, so it is only appropriate to end it with a scaled image of the STAW Plastic Models presented in "Damn Close" glory...Ha, Ha! This was originally posted by someone who feels as I do, at the Attack Wing Face Book page. I have edited it to make it look nicer. This is a good representation of what should have been, and for some of us, it is what will be. |
Now we are going into the crazy Risen Nebula my friends...which is a whole new world of adventure! These models fit into our BBA Collections, but they are not so easy to find and some of them are damn expensive (Ha, Ha!) but they are all very cool and out there... for people like us that are willing to pay a reasonable collectors price for them.
I appreciate the positive responses this series has received at the various forums where I have shared my efforts I would also like to make it clear that I am in no way making fun of people who love STAW as it is produced by Wizkids. As I have confirmed, we can use many of these models to nicely represent the small scale Star Trek ships.
Resin is not some creepy secrete cult or even a shadowy aspect of the model hobby.
Resin is just another form of plastic with different properties than ABS Styrene model kits. In other words these models are still just plastic models. But because of how they are molded they require a different approach to assembly. I am not going to go into all of that now. I will detail the resin preparation methods I use when I post an appropriate modeling article.
We are talking about what is available to make the standing, and soon to be released, STAW game models a reality in our Boss' BIG Approved Collection.
In my travels online during my research, I found this very appropriate image of a fellow Trekker's collection. It contains many of the AMT plastic kits covered in episode two, and some of the resin models that I mentioned, such as the perfectly scaled seven inch Klingon Vor'Cha model (pictured top right). As I stated all of these models scale very well, regardless of what they are made of.
I talked about the Romulan War Bird by Playmates already, but this company also makes a very nice Borg Cube and Sphere model. Both of these are OOP but you can find them here and there online. The price for these collectors models are widely varied, typically ranging from $50 to $150 MIB.
Eaglemoss comes back into this series, with their special collectors reward model of the First Contact Cube. I am not sure how much they are charging for it, or if you can even buy it directly from them. I suggest that you simply contact Eaglemoss and see what they will do for you.
There is a huge resin model made somewhere in the UK. All I know about it is that it is in scale for our purposes, to represent a Scout Cube. I think it cost $200. I am certain that it would be a monster to build.
I have decided to use the Eaglemoss sphere as a smaller version of the scout, and I am probably going to scratch build a variant Tactical cube from a plastic storage crate The Borg are the hard faction to upgrade to BBA status. I am going to play the faction however because I have other plans for my Borg, that do not require using the typically seen boxes and balls. More on this later...
The models pictured below are pretty straight forward quality resin kits. They are priced from $40 to $120. All of them are of course1/2500 scale, Boss' BIG Approved, and need little more explanation from me. What you see is what you get, and what you get is serious TREK-Awesome!
I am eventually going to purchase all of these beautiful ships!
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| This is a lovely model IMO. It is $40 worth of awesome. The Eaglemoss version is $20 and looks very good too. |
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| The size options we have for this ship are kind of cool. I may get both versions to have some variety on the table. |
To sum up what we have covered as we did at the end of part two of the series, here is the updated STAW Model Chart which now includes the resin models presented in this episode. I also included other ships that I have researched fully now, that I was not certain about when I wrote the previous episode. The only ships that are still giving us problems are framed in yellow . There are of course the problem children, the Borg, and the rest of the ships are in question also.I have to investigate further before I present them as available. The Bren ship may very well be released by Eaglemoss at some point. Their ships are about five inches long thus I am pretty sure that their version of the Gor Portas and generic ships of it's class will fit into our BBA Collection. Monogram made a Kazon model kit years ago, and you can still find it on EBay. I think this ship is about half the size it should be, but it is still a large kit, and like the Borg alternate models I have talked about, this Kazon model should still look good on the table.
I will update the status of the remaining yellow models if and when I have more definite information for you friends.
Boss out!
FALL 2014
New models have been released since my Spring research. I am working on a full update coming soon...
It has been seven months since I made the closing post of my Spring Series. New models have been made and several of them are now available to us, with more coming soon. It is time for an update to this ongoing project!
Boss' BIG Attack Wing FALL Update!
The Borg have been the most difficult faction to bring into the BBA Scale. Now that I have done some more research, and Wiz Kids has announced their forthcoming Over-sized Cube Expansion, the Borg fit right into the damn-close and good enough for games category.
At the time of writing my Spring series, I had not watched STAR TREK DS9 and Voyager in years, but since I reopened my Netflix account again, I have watched the entirety of both series. There are some awesome episode in that 14 seasons of Trek-goodness.
The Borg Cubes changed in size often during the Voyager series. We all know that. I am chilling on the whole scale thing, with certain models, because I have the images from the shows fresh in mind again, and this is all supposed to be fun. For the most part all of the important ships are available in 1/2500 scale, as for the rest; the tiny and the huge ships... I am willing to let it go now and just enjoy my cool toys in the game.
Believe it or not this cool version of Deep Space Nine is very accurate and close to the right scale concerning small ships like the Klingon BOP and Jimmie BUG. I am adding this DS9 to my collection because I like it of course, and the little ships are in scale with it. Since most of my BBA models are in scale with the little ships it will all work together well enough.
Is the new DS9 Expansion perfect, or even mathematically accurate to scale with other 1/2500 models then?
Nope... but it will look close to right, and that is good enough at this point.
Like I said above, I have re-watched DS9 and that station and all of the ships around it changed size about a million times in seven seasons.
Go figure... I did, and I am cool with it all now. It will be a lot of fun to battle around with these wonderful models.
The Cadet Series has a new boxed set due to hit stores this month. The Cardassian Galor is the star of this show in my opinion. The Saratoga is an older model that is newly released, while the Defiant is the same model that came with the DS9 kit. In this set the Defiant is molded in gray rather than clear. This set is priced at $23 and if you want to own multiples of the trio, it is a nice option for building fleets. The only other good Galors are priced at $20 to $40 each.
In my opinion the Federation Models version of the Galor is still the best model of the ship. I have two of the Galor/Keldon kits coming to me this week, with some other goodies. The Cadet set is due in later this month. I will compare the Federation Galor with the AMT Galor, and share my findings with you later. I want a large Cardassian-Dominion Fleet, so I have to decide what to do. I may go crazy and buy three more of the $40 FED sets, or be cheap (Ha, Ha!) and get five of the $20 AMT sets. Dunno yet...
The Defiant was less of a challenge to buy on the other hand as there are plenty of nice versions out there already and five of them are in BBA Scale... Ha, Ha!
Eaglemoss has been keeping busy since my last article too. You can visit their archive page to see the ships that are available now or soon will be. You will notice that some of the Enterprise series ships are coming, namely the Klingon Early BOP, and a wonderful Andorian Cruiser. Both of these models are in BBA Scale, but are not a part of STAW yet. I will leave it to you to decide if you want to pursue them. I am going to, because it is just cool in my view to build a collection for that era.
Below you can see the nice big Eaglemoss ships that are in Attack Wing. You might need to own them...
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The Eaglemoss Stargazer is beautiful and newly available this month. She is worth $25 in my view. It is going to be a fun ship to have in games, to be sure! I find it very amusing that random chaos decided to make the STAW and Eaglemoss versions of this ship became available in the US at the same time!
The Eaglemoss version of the Surak is also very nice and right on the $$$. The scheduled release date is January.
Eaglemoss is gearing up to release several cool new models in the next six months that fit very nicely into our BBA Scaled collection.
The Eaglemoss version of Bioship Alpha is a bit large, but that is fine because my research indicates that there are two types of this design, as well as the planet killer ship. The standard Bioships are the small versions that are accidentally in scale as released by Wiz. The larger combat ship is almost three times the size. This is the bigger ship that was in some of the Voyager episodes.
The current model in STAW is the smaller version that was in all of the Species episodes. The forthcoming Eaglemoss version is perfect to represent the larger craft. You can have fun with this by naming them as you like; Bio Alpha, Beta, and so forth.
It would not be hard to convert the Planet Destroyer ship from this larger Bioship model.
The Andorian Cruiser will count as a new Boss' BIG Approved addition to the game. There is no indication as of this article that Wizzie is going to bring Andorians into STAW, but I am most certainly going to include them and their cool ships!
The Eaglemoss ships I have discussed in this article are available now or scheduled for release this Winter and next Spring. This timeline is fine because many of the ships will not be officially in Attack Wing until then either.
NEW FALL 2015 STAW EXPANSIONS!
Good ole Wizzies has accidentally made five new STAW Expansions that fit our BBA Scale just fine.
STAW WAVE 19 & 20 are adding five new Boss' BIG Approved models to our STAR TREK Fleets! It has been a while since Wizzies made some cool ships that fit into our upgraded scale. I like that these are here for Autumn... very nice!
October Wave 19 includes the Federation Delta Flyer, Klingon Bird of Prey IKS Rotarran, and Romulan RIS Talvath.
Wave 20 is coming in November and includes the Federation Constellation class USS Hathaway, Kazon Raider Halik, and Romulan (Reman) Scorpion class fighters. The Delta and Scorpions are new models and they look great in this tiny scale too.
Well gang that is about it for now. There are no exciting models coming out that we have not already shared, but it is nice that a handful of the smaller STAW goodies still fit into our fleets.
SPRING 2017 EAGLEMOSS D4 BOP SPECIAL EDITION!
The Blingons are dumb... but after I took a better look at their D4 BOP I realized it had way more Romulan old school goodness in it's design than you could see in the terrible films depiction of the ship! I have added The Special Edition D-4 to my Boss' BIG Romulan Fleet!
More to come...
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