Trek Minatures (Was: Paint Schemes)

Jon T wrote:

"AFAIK the plastic ones [Federation starships -- CA (aka USS
Enterprise), DD,
SC, DN and Tug models] are almost certainly those made by Lou Zocchi for
the
Star Fleet Battle Manual, yet another early ST rules set based on the
same
Franz Joseph technical manual as the SFB universe is based on. The
Zocchi
plastics are still available from some sources (probably
Zocchi/Gamescience
themselves) and come in plain off-white, glow-in-the-dark (!?!) and even
transparent (for "cloaked"...) plastics."

This is quite right, but the SFB people got a licence or made a deal or
something and brought the same miniatures (the normal ones, anyway -- no
glowing or "cloaked" ships) out as part of their "Starline 2200" range
back in the
80s. They also brought out the SFBM Klingon, Romulan and Tholian ships
(metal) as well, although I _think_ the moulds were reworked a bit. All
the other
SFB ships were metal.

I believe Zocchi/GS kept selling the plastic ships in their own
packaging at the
same time. When Task Force stopped making miniatures, Lou just kept
going
and still is to this day if Jon is right (and why wouldn't he be?).

When TFG Mk 2 re-introduced SFB miniatures, they decided not to use the
GS
ships again, instead producing a metal version of the CA which, I
believe, is still
available.

Meantime, FASA had a licence from Paramount to do the ST RPG, and they
brought out their own line of miniatures (in metal). Most of their
designs dated
from the movie era (so their Klingon battlecruiser was the detailed
version from
ST:TMP rather than the smooth tv version), but they too brought out a
TOS
"USS Enterprise", and a Romulan Bird of Prey that was considerably
larger than
the one that TFG had (different references, different size ship).
Fortunately, the
nominal scale of the FASA ships (1/3900) was close enough to Task
Force's
(1/3788) to not be a problem.

In the UK, Citadel Miniatures got a licence to manufacture the FASA
ships.
Unfortunately, they messed around with the moulds, apparently (my
opinion,
based on the nature of the changes) in order to simplify the production
process,
and maybe packaging and assembly as well. This led to a loss of some
detail
and the odd heavy blob of metal appearing where it wasn't on the
American
models, e.g., on the Excelsior, the FASA miniature has a separate pylon
piece
to attach the engines to the secondary hull; the Citadel version has
this
moulded as part of the hull, which means that the gap between the pylon
and
the hull (several millimetres wide) is filled in with metal -- quite a
noticeable
difference.

The FASA miniatures, as has been said before, had considerably more, and
very fine, surface detail on them, and were nominated for a Charles
Roberts
award for best SF miniatures range. They were good stuff; about the only
inaccuracy that I ever detected in them was the Reliant's "roll bar",
which they
made too narrow, causing much sweat and cursing as I fixed it.

They were also the only way in which you could get any of the movie
ships prior
to MicroMachines coming on the scene, and, if you can find any, are
still the
only way to get ships like the Excelsior in anything like scale with the
smaller
classes. Now, if only Paramount hadn't insisted on those peculiar
changes to
the design of the Enterprise-B... :-(

Oh, and FWIW, the die-cast metal Enterprise-D that Galoob brought out
around
1988, and the AMT TNG Adversary Set (TNG Rom Warbird, Ferengi Marauder
and a Klingon BoP) are also roughly in scale with the TFG/FASA
miniatures,
and there are (or were) a few resin models of ships like the Nebula
class that
were supposedly to 1/3900 scale, so TNG and even multi-era games are a
possibility...

And finally, a question for Jon T. (so everyone else can stop reading
here): I'm
interested in getting one of those GeoHex starscape mats (the
hex-gridded
kind). Do you have any in stock at present? I tried sending e-mail to
you, but it's
been nearly a fortnight and no reply, so something must have gone wrong
-- not
unlikely, given the vagaries of the mail system here...

Phil, who refrained from boring everyone with the story of the various
ST game
_rules_, and who really wishes that Gamescience had brought out that
line of
"Alien Space" miniatures that they planned once. I want a Kuzi! And a
Dort, and
a Zark, and a...
--------------------------------------------------------------
"We gotta get out into Space,	     | A sentiment echoed by:
 If it's the last thing we ever do!" |	   Phil Atcliffe  
   -- Return to the Forbidden Planet |	(p-atclif@uwe.ac.uk)