Re: Ship minis.... from old movies and TV

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999 22:49:05 -0500 Aaron Teske <ateske@HICom.net> wrote:
> At 10:07 PM 3/23/99 -0500, Tom wrote:

>> Blake's 7 (British) also had some neat ships IIRC. There were 
actually (Corgi?) toys of them... <<

_It_, actually -- they only made the one model, of the Liberator 
(naturally), in the "Corgi Junior" range. Not too bad, except for all 
the text moulded into the main hull -- "Corgi", copyright info, etc. -- 
which is not easily removable. The weapons pylons aren't right -- too 
thick, with heavy reinforcement, but accurate ones probably would have 
bent too easily -- but overall, it looks okay and is a good size for 
gaming, and isn't too hard to drill a stand hole into.

Of course, the initial release wasn't helped by their decision to make 
it in non-authentic colours -- metallic turquoise and bright yellow 
("It's for little kids; they like bright colours!" <groan>) -- but 
later releases were in white, and at least the drive sphere was the 
right colour, so repainting wasn't too much of a problem.

I remember designing the Liberator (and its destroyer-sized 
counterpart -- wish Corgi had done one of those, and a Federation 
Pursuit Ship) for Alien Space....
 
>> They [the not-Nials] are not bad, but I wouldn't mind seeing a 
custom crafted not-Viper. And the not-Raider, both good ideas. <<
 
> Heh. I was also thinking that one of the TuffleyVerse fighters did 
look a *little* like a Raider -- it has a disk-like portion to it, 
anyway -- but it'd probably be smaller than the not-Nial, which kinda 
kills that idea. Digging out the Geo-Hex catalog, I think I'm thinking 
of the NSL Wespe-class fighter, but the photocopy isn't all that good. 
Anyone? <

Yeah, you can make a reasonable-looking not-Raider from NSL heavy 
fighters by cutting off the nose, leaving the elliptical section. Not 
perfect, but comparable to, say, using Star Tigers as StarFuries <g>. 
Add me to the list of people who want Jon, or Nic, or _someone_ to do 
not-Vipers, and I wouldn't mind some proper not-Raiders either.

I can't help thinking that matching fighter scale is not all that 
important -- the darn things are so small, anyway!

>> Now if only someone made a base-star in a reasonable scale.... the 
only ones I've seen are big plastic models.... which are planet sized 
or gas giant sized in FT.... <<

Well, Irregular make a not-Battlestar (as distinct from Comet's 
Galactica -- which seems to be based on that *&%$£! Monogram kit, and 
is thus of very dubious accuracy), and I kinda wonder if some of their 
"UFO" minis could be combined to make a not-Base Star. I'll have a look 
at Salute and let you know.

Phil
--------------------------------------------------------------
"If you let a smile be your umbrella... you'll get wet teeth!"
   -- a forgotten comedian, quoted by me: Phil Atcliffe
				(Phillip.Atcliffe@uwe.ac.uk)