"Differences between FASA, 2200+ Star Trek Minis?" Topic

There seem to have been many different variations of Star Trek ship miniatures produced over the years, e.g. the FASA, Zocchi, 2200, 2300, and now the 2400 ranges, not to mention the teeny-tiny ones produced a while back for "fleet scale" battles.

I'm primarily interested in the standard sized vessels, not the little, itty-bitty ones.

I'd like to know which are best, and why?

I'd also like to know what the differences are as well, e.g. plastic, multi-part metal, all one piece metal, plain metal with no panel line engraving or other hull detailing, etc.

I'm primarily interested in the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Gorn fleets.

I own most of the mini's you are interested in; they are pretty close in size to each other and would use them all in the same game.

I never saw the itty bitty ones, but I own a bunch of the Zocchi plastic ones.

They have the saucer separate from the engines. Gluing them together is no big project with almost any flash. They go well with the Starfleet battles ships, but I prefer the plastic constitution class ships. The metal ones made by 2400 are not well done IMHO.
BUT the other 2400 ships are great I like the fed frigates the best.

I own lots of FASA Klingon ships 6 D-18's 3 D-10's 3 L-9's and one L-24 they go great with my 2400 Starfleet battles Klingon ships I have all their D-7 type ships totaling about 13. I also have FASA Romulans along with SFB Romulan warbird types none of the bigger SFB Romulan ships.

I also picked up a Fleet of SFB Gorns at my local game convention I got about 12 ships for 20 bucks. They are OK they are very different from the FASA Gorn ships.

You can also pick up Micro Machine Star Trek ships off e-Bay they are are a little bigger made from a bendy plastic.

FASA have better detailing then SFB. They also have MUCH better designs.
The Plastic Zochi ships are on the same playing field as the SFB ships.

Here are pics of some of my star trek ships I don't have my FASA painted up yet.

link

Bottom line you can mix and match with out a problem with these ships they may be a tiny bit bigger or smaller but nothing anyone would notice.

From what I remember – and this is just memory….

The Zocchi ships were sculpted by Lou Zocchi to complement Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical manual. It is from these two that we get the concepts of the dreadnought, destroyer, tug and scout. The plastics were/are 1/3788 scale. These date from around 1975.

The GDW folks used the Zocchi ships as a starting point in the design of their game, and later when they began producing their own minis they kept them in scale with the Zocchi ships.

FASA picked up with the ships that appeared in the movies – 1701-A, Reliant, Excelsior, the BOP, etc and used these ships as the launching point for their own game. These ships were 1/3900 scale. They went to that scale as it is an easier conversion from meters.

Honestly though, the visual difference between 1/3788 and 1/3900 is almost indiscernable to the eye, so size wise they mix fine. Inari7 speaks the truth though, the FASA ships are better detailed. They are harder to come by though, and watch out for recasts.

Micro machines are not made to a constant scale. Some, such as the Reliant and its variants, the 1701's, a few Klingon ships and others are at or very close to 1/3900, but others, such as the Neg'Var are way off.

VSB

"The GDW folks used the Zocchi ships…"

That would be ADB (Amarillo Design Bureau) and TFG (Task Force Games), not GDW.

ADB/TFG produced Star Fleet Battles around those miniatures, but had a license only for the original series and the animated series. By the time the movies got under way, the combination of higher licensing for newer material and the fact that SFB had its own timeline that diverged considerably after the TOS era meant that SFB has never "updated" except when consistent with its own materials.

That left FASA, who licensed Star Trek around the time the movies began, to follow the Paramount timeline and produce miniatures that looked "movie" instead of the smooth and detail-light original shows that SFB was based on.

The combination of increasingly tight control by Paramount over the RPG materials and the success of Battletech caused FASA to ditch the license with few regrets. The ST-RPG material ranges from "meh" to "wow!", with the miniatures almost always in the "wow!" category.

I'm not sure how much of the FASA fleet was from Paramount and how much actually fed back the other direction, but the tales told now would probably differ from the reality of the 80s…

That would be ADB (Amarillo Design Bureau) and TFG (Task Force Games), not GDW.

Right! Thanks… I remembered the wrong three-lettered Good-ol'days company.

Thanks!

Farstar, I have heard FASA lost the license rather than dumping it. Supposedly, they printed the Year One Sourcebook for ST:TNG without permission. This is hearsay, though.

IIRC, the word from FASA at the time was that Paramount was "increasingly difficult to work with". What that public statement is a euphemism for, I don't know.

The Grenadier Star Wars and Call of Cthulhu licenses, on the other hand, WERE yanked by their respective controllers, for, reportedly, the ugliest Stormtroopers (the Zero-G troopers) ever to see packaging and a Moonbeast with eyes, respectively. The Star Wars RPG license was also yanked out from under West End Games a few years later (around the release of Episode 1), but for (again reportedly) purposes of licensing consolidation by Lucas, not an actual issue with WEG (which did a better job than WotC has managed so far, but that's an opinion…)

Thanks for the info everyone.

I really appreciate it.