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Star Trek: Starships Model/Magazine Subscription

I must say I am a little disappointed in the Breen Warship. First of all it is rather small- I think they could have made it an inch larger and still had no problem with the packaging judging from my Tholian ship.
My biggest issue though is there is a marked contrast between the cast metal and plastic pieces, especially when they render the same detail. The metal is soft and blurred, the plastic crisply detailed. I know they have to keep part of these replicas as cast metal, but if they had done the arc'd cross members in metal and the long axis arc'd pieces in plastic you would not have anything to provide a direct comparison with.

This may be nitpicking, but I only buy a few of these ships and read the reviews posted here carefully. There are a few I would have gotten except for how members here reacted to theirs and I probably would have passed on this one as well. It was on sale so I cannot complain too loudly, but it is only the third one I have bought and definitely is a weak sister to the Akira and Tholian replicas...

I really liked the model for the Breen ship we got. I thought it was really well done, considering the colors they had to work with.

^ Whoa, I didn't notice that at all, and I had the Breen Chel Grett-class warship for months.

Btw, one ship I'd say we're likely to get is the Arkonian destroyer. Question is, would we get the tan Arkonian/Xindi version, or the green Tellarite one? The tan one is more prominent but the Tellarites are founders of the Federation.

I really wish they hadn't recycled a Xindi ship for a Tellarite ship just a year later...
 
My issue is not with the colors used- it is after all an alien vessel crewed by a mysterious race. My problem is with the uneven crispness of detail- the metal parts are soft and blurred, the plastic parts showing the same detail features are sharply defined. Below are two photos showing the differences- you can easily tell which parts are in what material-
http://i.imgur.com/htuhY3m.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XlfTOYB.jpg
The forward gun units are almost identical on the ship, but the ones rendered in plastic look so much differeent (better). My point is that if they had to use cast metal for part of this replica they should haev chosen ship sections which had no corresponding details with the plastic portions...
 
In the same vein of coloring, every so once in a while I notice red/green port/starboard formation lighting on CG models of alien ships. It stands out to me glaringly, as there is absolutely NO reason that earth/human nautical tradition would ever be used by an alien species, especially if it developed space travel independently from ours. Little nit...I digress...
 
In the same vein of coloring, every so once in a while I notice red/green port/starboard formation lighting on CG models of alien ships. It stands out to me glaringly, as there is absolutely NO reason that earth/human nautical tradition would ever be used by an alien species, especially if it developed space travel independently from ours. Little nit...I digress...
It could be a Federation courtesy protocol, such as changing the orientation of your ship to match the vessel you are approaching. If the alien race is a new contact then it is just a mistake on the designers part, probably accustomed to always adding the same universal detail bits
 
My issue is not with the colors used- it is after all an alien vessel crewed by a mysterious race. My problem is with the uneven crispness of detail- the metal parts are soft and blurred, the plastic parts showing the same detail features are sharply defined. Below are two photos showing the differences- you can easily tell which parts are in what material-
http://i.imgur.com/htuhY3m.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XlfTOYB.jpg
The forward gun units are almost identical on the ship, but the ones rendered in plastic look so much differeent (better). My point is that if they had to use cast metal for part of this replica they should haev chosen ship sections which had no corresponding details with the plastic portions...
Definitely noticed this problem with some of the models! The metal parts are almost always much less detailed than the plastic components. The Defiant and Voyager models suffer from this, for example. It's weird because they certainly seem to be able to make really crisply detailed metal components, like on the NX-01 or Enterprise-D.

Seen previews of the Vaklas, Enterprise-J and Suliban cell ship today. Also the ECS Horizon, which looks all kinds of awesome. (I'm a sucker for the models from Enterprise.)
 
Probably based on a number of factors, ranging from the "style" of the person building the model, to the quality of the 3D printed master, to the mass-production mold tooling, to the relative ship scale being rendered. The one drawback to having models of this size is that the details of the ships that are supposed to be bigger wind up suffering by being too largely out-of-scale. To do the detailing to-scale, you'd wind up having generally smooth models. Take the upcoming New Orleans-class, for example. The grid lines and escape pods are way too over-pronounced for that scale, for both the plastic and metal components. Smaller-scale models like the Runabout and shuttles naturally look better.
 
My issue is not with the colors used- it is after all an alien vessel crewed by a mysterious race. My problem is with the uneven crispness of detail- the metal parts are soft and blurred, the plastic parts showing the same detail features are sharply defined. Below are two photos showing the differences- you can easily tell which parts are in what material-
http://i.imgur.com/htuhY3m.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XlfTOYB.jpg
The forward gun units are almost identical on the ship, but the ones rendered in plastic look so much differeent (better). My point is that if they had to use cast metal for part of this replica they should haev chosen ship sections which had no corresponding details with the plastic portions...

Oh, the instant I clicked on your links, I knew exactly what you were talking about. I can definitely confirm that this is an issue that has affected the Breen Warship model, although certainly not all of them. I don't know if you noticed my link to my Facebook page and the images that I took (I embedded the link into the text in my previous post, so in case you missed it, here is a much more obvious link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1197781990305509&set=pcb.1197782210305487&type=3&theater). There are three photos in total. As you can see from mine, the metal sections are far less blurred and soft. Since Eaglemoss mucked up and sent me multiple Breen Warships, the issue with yours is present in some of the extra ones I have (still fully packaged), although two of them are just as good as the one I opened. If you lived in the UK, I would offer to send one of those two to you so you could have a decent model of this ship, but the postage might be a bit expensive (but I wouldn't need to charge you for the ship in addition to the postage - afterall, I did get these extra ships for free...).
 
Just ordered the Special Edition NX-Refit- it has been on my want list for a while and it was on sale this week. I have the 1:1000 Polar Lights model kit but I am going to paint that one like the TOS-E, the Eaglemoss edition is in the silver/platinum aztecing which I hate to have to paint.

At around 7" long it looked like it had pretty good detail- saving a space on the shelf for it now...
 
Just ordered the Special Edition NX-Refit- it has been on my want list for a while and it was on sale this week. I have the 1:1000 Polar Lights model kit but I am going to paint that one like the TOS-E, the Eaglemoss edition is in the silver/platinum aztecing which I hate to have to paint.

At around 7" long it looked like it had pretty good detail- saving a space on the shelf for it now...

You won't regret it. It's a beautiful model. Very nice coloring apps and at a really nice size. One of the best Eaglemoss has done IMO.
 
That is great news- I usually try and wait to see reviews posted here before buying. Now I am really looking forward to seeing this in person.

Can anybody post some photos of the side and new engineering hull? All the pictures I have found so far just show it from the forward top angle...
 
Can anybody post some photos of the side and new engineering hull? All the pictures I have found so far just show it from the forward top angle...

I'm afraid that's beyond my capabilities at the moment. But I found these links. I hope they are somewhat helpful:

http://griddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Eaglemoss-NX-01-Refit.jpg

https://www.google.gr/amp/s/startrekstarships.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/enterprise-nx-01-refit/amp/

There are also many video reviews in YouTube like the one below (ship review starts at 8m20s):

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^ The D is one of the best models of the collection. I can't fathom how awesome a larger, even more detailed model of it will be.

And it's certainly the kind of love (size) the E is in desperate need of.
 
^ The D is one of the best models of the collection. I can't fathom how awesome a larger, even more detailed model of it will be.

And it's certainly the kind of love (size) the E is in desperate need of.

I couldn't agree more! On both counts!

The "D" was their first impression; their "foot in the door", so to speak, so it makes sense that they'd take the most care in getting that one as close to perfect as possible.
 
As we're getting the ISS Defiant as M3 issue, I wonder if there are chances to see the NCC-1764 as part of it, and the mirror Warp Delta/Ganges-class. :drool:
 
Looks like the Ten Forward and similar windows are much better modelled. However, I have no idea of the size of the model from the linked image as I don't know the size of those other figures. Something like eight times the volume (twice in each linear dimension), perhaps?
 
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