"First Star Trek in 1:7000" Topic

Hi all!

I recently got in my head to do some spaceship combat using Star Trek ships. Mainly because I like Star Trek and I already know the universe so don't need to relearn anything.

I decided to use the 1:7000 scale for a bunch of reasons. This means buying ships off of Shapeways. Here are my first attempts and some thoughts….

2 Saber Class ships:

and an Excelsior class:

These ships are from Armadillo Miniatures.
link

The ships are small (but that is to be expected because of the scale) but I find the details to be a little soft. Still, I think they look really good in the end. Armadillo miniatures has the added benefit that if you get the version with he attack wing mounting hole, there's an obvious place to put the magnet. Also the store is the easiest to shop from because he (I'm assuming it's a he) actually takes the time to describe what the ship is and where it fits in the ST universe. Other stores tend to have ST ships but will call them other things to not get caught up in copywrite I guess. So you'll see the picture of an obviously ST ship but it will be called "Bob's Big Boy Pickle Battle Cruiser."

Ambassador Class:

and a Galaxy:

These are from Halcyon Shipyards.
link

These miniatures are REALLY good. These ships are bigger and more expensive. The Galaxy is REALLY expensive at $50 USD for a 3" by 3" piece of plastic, that's like GW prices, but I figure where else you gonna get one?

All the ships together:

I think they all scale well together.

For more pics and hi-larious prose you can check out my blog post here:
link

if you bother to read it, you will see that I am having trouble getting the flight stands to look ad feel right. So if any of you space experts have any advice on flight stands I'd love to hear it.
for example:
I was putting a magnet on the ship and the flight stand so they click together (when I got the polarity right). is that worth it?

How do you make your stands bottom heavy so that big ships don't tip over?

Circle, hex, or other for base shape.

So far my rules of choice will be Starmada Unity and Full Thrust; though I'm liking Starmada a little more at the moment. That's why the space mat from Cigar Box games has hexes on it.

Thanks a lot.
-Stew

They all look fantastic! I think your choice of flight stands may be irrelevant. The paint jobs will outshine any choice of flight stands.

Thanks Micro. Appreciate it. I'm probably just being overly picky. Just want them all consistent.

-Stew

Different manufacturers means different levels of detail. I deal with that fact painting microarmor and 15s. Compare a GHQ model to a Scotia. There's no way you're going to get the Scotia model to look as good as the GHQ model. They look as though they were made in different universes.

I went with Furuta miniatures (about 1/5125 scale) for many of my Federation ships, filling in with Shapeways ships as needed.

I did a lot of work with TNG-era Trek and Full Thrust, and never could get the Klingons to not be too powerful. The Feds weren't that hard. It got really hairy when trying to represent tech from different time periods, say TNG-era ships vs Klingon post-TNG for example, or TOS-era ships vs movie era, you get the idea. Gave up on it.

@Micro: indeed true. These differences also could be enhanced by the fictional nature of the starships; the vastly different sizes and eras. Still, I think both manufactures make fine ships.

@Billclo: I thought about Furuta but those are hard to find these days, as I am decades late to the party of trek games. and what you point out is one reason I am leaning more toward using Starmada as it has a crunchier ship design that I think scales better.