Federation Commander

I just received my first SFU miniature, the Federation Battleship, and I have to say I am very disappointed.

On a scale of 1-10, the overall quality of the casting is a 6 at best.

Excessive flash ringed the lower hull, all 4 nacelles were warped (no pun intended) to various degrees, the goose neck was bent about 20 degrees to one side and the saucer bears a striking resemblance to a wavy potato chip.

If this is an indicator of the miniatures line as a whole, ADB has lost a customer in me.

I purchased the Fed BB mini as part of the Fed Fleet Box #3, and it and the other minis in the box arrived in good shape. A bit of flash is to be expected.

Did you purchase the mini in a blister, or in a boxed set? If it was in a blister, it could have been crushed during shipping. I've received a few blister pack minis that were pretty obviously warped during shipment to the store. I don't see how the dorsal could have been bent except excessive pressure during shipment.

I have two of these and the only similarity I can note is flash on them (in my case on the saucers). Sounds like a dud made it through or like toastie said, it got mashed in-transit.
ADB are pretty amazing at "making good" - I'd contact them (sales@starfleetgames.com) and ask.

Being slightly obsessive as I am, I've managed to get the mini back into usable condition but my general concern remains.

The mini was a single blister and the package had no sign of shipping damage.

Maybe I got an older casting from a mold that was due for retirement?

The minis I've ordered from ADB have been excellent. The "warped saucer" problem you mentioned is something I've encountered with the Galoob vinyl minis, but never on a pewter mini. And the really weird part of all this is that the only minis I've ordered have been the "seconds" bags...the ones that have slight imperfections. I guess I don't have an eye for detail like most do, but these have all looked pretty good to me!

If you contact ADB about the problem, they'll make things right. I've seen more than one account of that happening on this board.

Please be aware, the "person who will make things right" (Leanna Cole) doesn't read this board or the other bbs. You need to email her for her to know you have a problem. SVC, who does read this board could pass the message on - but he has 1,000,000,000,000 other things going on and the message might understandably slip his mind.

Take from someone with over 700 SFB minis: That is not the typical quality you receive fro ADB. It sounds as if the store that caried the mini or the shipping company did some type of damage to it.

Email Leanna Cole (sales@starfleetgames.com) and let her know the situation. She'll make it right.

Just fired off an email, we'll see what happens.

The ship you received is definitely not typical of ADB quality. I have one border box where they manage to pack 24 ships into a VCR Tape cases sized package and the only issue I had was one D7 had a bent boom. I've bought 2 bags (20 ships) of the factory seconds and the quality on those was better than I expected; the new ships I've bought have all been fine.

Note: I've been painting since the mid-80's and think that the lead figures were better...even though they were toxic. They didn't affect <twitch> me in any way.

I've never had any bends in ADB miniatures which weren't very minor and easily fixed without any special equipment. I'd suggest you got very unlucky with your ship. Hope you can get it sorted out.

Got an email from SVC regarding the mini.

Things are looking up.

Assuming that DK is not just the pickiest collector on the planet, it seems most likely to be shipping damage. Nothing can get out of here with a "bent dorsal". It's just not possible. It's not that hard to damage a ship inside a blister and leave the blister intact enough that it looks undamaged. I asked DK to send it back to me as I want to see the thing.

If anybody ever get a ship this screwed up, DO NOT try to fix it. Contact me.

It'll be going in the mail today.

And it is entirely possible that I'm just picky as all hell. I'm probably kind of spoiled when it comes to ship minis.

For the record, I'm using old AoG and new Brigade and Ground Zero Games items for comparison standards.

Steve Cole wrote:Assuming that DK is not just the pickiest collector on the planet, it seems most likely to be shipping damage. Nothing can get out of here with a "bent dorsal". It's just not possible. It's not that hard to damage a ship inside a blister and leave the blister intact enough that it looks undamaged. I asked DK to send it back to me as I want to see the thing.

If anybody ever get a ship this screwed up, DO NOT try to fix it. Contact me.

Its in the mail and should be in ADB hands Friday or Saturday.

Got it, but couldn't tell much as he'd already fixed it. Sent it back to him with some freebies for his trouble.