"ACTA: Star Fleet miniature review" Topic

Got to pick up Fleet Boxes 1 & 2 and took a look at the on my blog.

As a fan of TOS ships I've got to say I'm enjoying these but not without some issues.

Review here at
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I think that is a very fair review. While I may disgree on the saucer lines (I like them), the overall pros and cons match mine.

As I recall reading, the miniatures were originally designed for resin, and some like the Klingons, the joints between the main body and wings are a little too thin.

I find this to be the worst on the D6/D7/C7 models.

I try to use superglue gel to glue the wings on and then run a smoothed-out bead of quick drying epoxy on the underside to give them more strength. Another guy I know uses superglue gel on 20% of the joint to get an initial bond and epoxy on the other 80% of the joint.

I certainly won't say the models are really high quality, but once cleaned up they do the job pretty well. Some will disagree with me of course.

If you think those were a mess to clean and assemble, you should have seen the original resins. They were so bad the local game store swore off ever stocking any Mongoose mini again after having to deal with an 80% return rate on the initial order. The metals are still sub-par, but they're tons better than the bubbled, warped, and just plain broken resin junk that got shipped out. Beware the larger ships in the range, which are still partially resin.

While they aren't TOS-styled, I'll take the Irrational Studios Shapeways models and Studio Bergstrom's metal castings of same over either the ACTA or ADB efforts any day of the week:

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Amongst other things, most of them are simple one or two part models, and the Bergstrom ones even come with all the mold lines pre-cleaned for you – and they cost a lot less size-for-size than the SF and ACTA ranges.

@McKinstry – fully understand that the saucer trenches being a personal preference however it's not cannon to TOS Trek.

They are so over exaggerated that I can't see any decals fitting on it without serious issues.

@CL Rich – I would say the resin hull of the C8 dreadnought was the worst of the bunch.

Dunno, I have a bunch of Starline 2400 minis, and I wasn't impressed with their casting quality either. I picked up an NCA, FF 3-pack, bunch of Klingon ships, and a Gorn ship. The feddie ships had all sorts of casting issues, and really suffer from being one-piece castings. FREX I went and replaced the deflectors on ALL of the FFs as they didn't cast well and show quite a bit of mold wear. The Klingon and Gorn ships were better, however.

Coincidentially, I just receieved a pack of SL2500 Romulan Skyhawks, and they're pretty nice castings. I had previously picked up a Feddie CL in metal, which was well cast, same in resin which was horrible, and the Romulan fleet box, which had decently cast metal, and pretty dodgy resin cast (Condor dreadnaught). I think if you stick with metal, the casts are not bad, better IMHO than my experiences with SL 2400. I also have a SL 2200 Feddie CL, and that was a very good (if made of lead) casting, really dislike how the 2400 castings are so pushed to being 1-piece where they probably shouldn't be.

For me the SL 2500 is worth the investment, especially with the better detail and some of the shape alterations (look at the 2400 Condor, and the 2500 of the same: the latter looks much better IMHO with only small changes).

They are so over exaggerated that I can't see any decals fitting on it without serious issues.

For the "trenches" make sure you use plenty of setting solution. I've made decals conform over turret ventilators on 1/35 scale armor models, or over zimmerit for the same. It can be done

Damon.

The first resin stuff really was awful but as Bill said, the early Klingon and Fed stuff is probably the weakest of the bunch while the newer Feds (NCA,DW,NCL), Romulans and Gorn are pretty clean.

I use Tennshington Decals and haven't had any problems that Microsol can't help.

That's good to hear. I'm no stranger to decals and I did order some decals from Tennshington (side note, for those that have, how long to they typically take? I'm going on two weeks now)

I'd love to see photos of others who have applied decals. And I'll be sure to post my results once I get mine.

Ask and ye shall receive.

I have other pics, but they used prototype decals from Tennshington, and aren't indicative of the quality of current decals.

I know Tony has been super busy with real life, but 2 weeks is pushing things. I'd drop him an email if I were you, just to check on things.

Tennshington's decals are properly spaced to get the lettering on the saucer within the grooves. Nonetheless, I reccommend you using something like Microsol and I even use some liquid decal film for good measure. Once starting to use those 2 products, I have had zero decal failures on the saucer area.

@ bilco Those look awesome! Looks like the key is to get the numbers and letters to fall outside of the panel lines

It does take some gentle tweaking of the decal positioning, that's for sure.

One solution might be to spray em with a clear gloss first, put the decal on, then dullcoat em. The gloss will fill up some of the panel lines but the decal will still look good.

I always use Glosscote before applying decals. It has the added benefit of rendering the model near bullet proof.

Buckaroo – link to a Fed Heavy Cruiser I posted here a while ago. Decals are home-made.

TMP link

Martin, That looks great!

I received my Decals yesterday. I need to finish painting my Fed ships. Need to decide, grey or white?

Buckaroo – The actual filming miniature of the original Enterprise was painted grey. Actually, its a slightly greenish shade of grey, sometimes referred to as 'concrete'. Tamiya XF 12 is the best match I could find.

But really, just what colour you use is entirely up to you. Its your fleet, Admiral! I've also painted SFB ships in bare metal schemes that look rather nice.