New Starships Collection ships announced

Over the weekend at Destination Star Trek in London, The Official Starships Collection had a stand to display some of their latest ships, and the series manager, Ben Robinson was on hand, and gave a presentation, revealing lots of new information about forthcoming issues. Ben also posted some of the major updates on The Collection's Facebook page. Loads of information and updates below, starting with the five newly announced ships, which Ben posted renderings of:

#51 Hirogen Hunter
The most commonly seen Hirogen ship, first seen in Message in a Bottle, and then cropping up quite regularly in Voyager with subsequent Hirogen episodes.

#52 USS Centaur (NCC-42043)
The snazzy Excelsior class variant as seen in DS9's A Time to Stand.

# 53 Klingon Attack Ship
This is a pretty obscure one, the small Klingon fighter used by the Klingon augments in Enterprise's Affliction and Divergence.

Ben posted a whole load of orthographic views of this one, which ahead of the magazine release is the most information ever released for this design! (Continue after the jump, to see those, and much much more)

#54 Steamrunner class
One of the new Starfleet designs introduced in First Contact, and subsequently seen many times in DS9 and even Voyager.

Ben has previously noted this will be one of the larger ships in The Collection, thanks to the design fitting neatly into the dimensional constraints of the models in the series.

#55 D'kyr class
One of my all time favourite Star trek designs, the beautiful Vulcan ship seen many times in Enterprise, making its first appearance in Shockwave, Part II.

At the Starships Collection panel Ben also confirmed several other ships. Dennis Mosselmans, who posts regularly on The Collection's Facebook page, was on hand to note down all the news, and relayed lots of updates from the panel:

• The USS Kelvin was confirmed as the fifth special issue.
• Both Earth Spacedock and Deep Space Station K7 are apparently under consideration as future specials after the Kelvin.
• A Borg Cube was also discussed as a potential special issue, with the idea being to make it very detailed. Dennis described it as "a cube within a cube", with lots of detailing on top, not just raised surfaces. From talking with Ben before, I believe he's hoping to make an original TNG cube.
• The Norway class was confirmed as a future issue, with a new CGI model being built to replace the long-lost original.
• The NX-refit is confirmed, and will be released as a regular issue.
• Kazon ships will be coming, but not for some time, as these also need new CGI models to translate to models, as the on-screen ones were all physical miniatures.
• Ben is apparently investigating the possibility of including moving parts on a model of the Jellyfish.

Dennis also snapped a picture of a poster at The Collection's booth, with details of the launch in new European markets. January will see the first issues arriving in France and Germany, with Spain and The Netherlands following in March. All but Germany will be online only though apparently.

Aside from announcements Eaglemoss also had a load of new models on display. Many seen for the first time. Here's a picture of the display by Dave Combe, who along with Dennis, got a pretty comprehensive collection of images of the ships.

The centrepiece of that display is of course the huge new USS Vengeance model, which is coming soon as the third special issue in The Collection. The UK release date was confirmed at the event as the 30th of October, so not long to wait!

One image above by Craig Dollars, as well as those by Dennis and Dave. Ben also posted a bit of behind-the-scenes artwork to look forward to from the magazine, showing the Vengeance's phaser-balls.

Of course there were lots of regular issue models on display too, so in reverse release order (ie, the ones we've not seen before first), here are some of Dave and Dennis' shots of the models:

#43: Species 8472 Bioship

#42: USS Pasteur NCC-58525 (Olympic class)

 

#41: Klingon Raptor class

#40: USS Enterprise NCC-1701-B (Excelsior class refit)

#39: Romulan drone

#38: Delta Flyer

#37: Kumari (Andorian cruiser)

#36: USS Grissom NCC-638 (Oberth class)

#35: Klingon Bird of Prey (22nd century)

#34: Vulcan Surak class

#33: Cardassian Hideki class

#32: USS Orinoco (Danube class runabout)

#31: Romulan warbird Valdore

You can see even more photos of the ships on Facebook. Photos from Dave, here, and here, and from Dennis here. And a big thanks to the both of them, and everyone else who attended Destination Star Trek and reported back news.

One other thing reaffirmed by Ben at the convention was the offer to produce a USS Titan model, if five-thousand people willing to sign-up to pre-order can be found. Which is exactly what I've been trying to do with the USS Titan petition. If you would like a model of the Titan, add your name to the petition, and once we've got the five-thousand I'll forward on all the details to Ben and the Luna class will be in our hands! We're already a third of the way there, but that means we still need more than three-thousand Titan fans to make it happen. So tell all your Titan-loving friends!

Finally, in other Starships news, Germany retailer X-Comics have posted higher resolution versions of the official images of the Hideki and Surak class models. Check them out:

For a listing of all the ships in the Starships Collection, including links to all my previous previews and reviews, see my index page.