This is the cover for Border Box 5, which is basically an uber collection of Tholian and Seltorian miniatures that ADB is going to be selling. As always, comments are welcome:
Good looking showdown, putting the Tholians in the foreground is the right decision, a) Most folks are more familiar with Tholians and b) The copper and red ships are eyecatching, as a spot of color they dominate the scene. I'm not as familiar with the Neo Tholain ships... from what I see at first they all look to be the same class, but I look at the picture some more and I see the leading vessels have narrower aft sections and a different impulse engine. If one of the frigate/ destroyer ships ( is that what they are? ) were close to one of the cruisers in the near foreground a casual viewer would see they are getting more than one Neo Thol class in the box. The photos on the back of the box often aren't the clearest so you have to assume the buyer is making much of his/ her purchase decision from the front box art. Aha! I looked at the picture some more... the Neo ship in the fore center has a different 'wing' shape than the rest, it curves back... and the ship in front of that CW on the left has an aft hull that sweeps back into the engines. I honestly don't know how many SFB mini sales are online SFB store orders and how many are impulse buys in game stores, but this cover really grabs your attention. I'm familiar with many So Cal game stores and can imagine how this box would look on their shelves... Ten Seltorians and fourteen Tholians... I can guess the price point they are looking for.
Thanks, Michael_One. You pretty much understand my thinking in how I laid out this cover. As far as the Neo-Tholian ships go, the original designs for them were very plain. They all looked the same, and it was very hard to tell them apart. They were pretty much curved boxes with two boxy engines and a trianglular forward section. They were just different sizes and had more or fewer weapons. So while I couldn't change the essential functions or layout of each design, I took a little bit of artistic license to make them more unique. Here's a picture I made that shows a comparison of the different classes: The forward sections are exactly the same between the different ships because they are a standard module that is interchangeable and capable of functioning as an independent vessel if need be. There are two different sizes of this module; frigates and destroyers use the smaller one, while cruiser sized and up use the larger one. Thanks for your feedback!