To Boldly Go...

 

Back in December I spotted that Mongoose Publishing had written some new Star Trek rules for their "A Call To Arms" system.  I'm a total Trek fan, especially for the original series, so I knew I had to buy the rulebook.  A few years ago, I'd bought some Federation Commander boxes and the models were cool but pretty expensive for what they were.  The new miniatures that Mongoose were working on were in collaberation with ADB (who made Federation Commander) but they were redesigning the models into a slightly larger scale (1:3200) and with much better mouldings.  Mongoose had planned to make the whole range in resin but, due to some manufacturing issues, they've returned to metal for most of their range.  Some of the Romulan vessels are planned to be made in transparent resin - cloaked ships!  Fantastic.

I had held out on buying any minis for this new system until I went to Salute in April - but the temptation of being able to chat with the Mongoose guys and buy their models in person was too great.  I walked away with a Federation Squadron box and a sheet of their new Federation decals.  At Broadside (a fairly new wargames show in Kent), Mongoose were there again so I took home their new Federation Reinforcements box plus a pack of War Cruisers and a Fast Cruiser.  That still didn't seem like enough models so I started looking around for the best place to get one of the big fleet box sets - and found a seller on Amazon who was selling them at £50 - which is now £40 cheaper than RRP!  So, I bought a Federation and Klingon fleet box to give me lots of toys to paint.  The only model in the current range I was missing was one of the Manta Ray class ships (a New Fast Cruiser) but bought that from Mongoose just recently along with a ship that was a limited edition model until a few days ago, a Heavy Command Cruiser.

As I've got more than enough models to get busy with, I have dug out everything and taken pictures of them in their unbuilt state - and I'll add more pictures once they're built and painted.  Here's the models!

Federation Fleet Box - 16 ships, six shuttles and a mini rule book

Six shuttles - great little models on their own!

Burke-class Frigates.

Ramius-class Battle Frigates

Callahan-class Police Cutters

Texas-class Light Cruisers

Kearsage-class New Light Cruiser

Ortega-class War Destroyer

Chicago-class New Heavy Cruiser

Prometheus-class Strike Cruiser

Wolverine-class Fast Cruiser

Kirov-class Battle Cruiser

Federation-class Dreadnought

Constitution-class Heavy Cruiser

Manta Ray-class New Fast Cruiser

Lexington-class Command Cruiser (upgrade option for the Constitution-class)

*edit*

I recently bought a couple of new release ships for the Federation - the Star Tiger Class New Light Dreadnought arrived but I'm still waiting for the Mars Class Battleship to be sent.