1/600 Space Fighters

[Rick]

It's a great resource for the silent death ships if you're on the US side of the pond, not so great on the UK side. I've been looking to expand my silent death collection for a little while but the postage to the UK has put me off. And no european stockists, unfortunately.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

The plastics are Out of Stock, and think so for long damn, at Metal Express.

Red Shirt had them long ago, but outside of old stock, EM 4 seem to be the only ones.

That said, pewter is broader in choice, and you get exactly what you need.

Doug

Huh, so they are.  OTOH, they were also showing out of stock the last time I ordered (about twelve years ago, admittedly) and after a quick email to them they "found" a frame to sell me.  Whether that still works I couldn't say.

[Rick]

EM4 get a limited amount of stock of these in from time to time but they do sell out very quickly. Set up notifications for the ships when they can get some in and be prepared to buy them quickly - only advice I can give unfortunately.

[YPU]

Worth emailing them about maybe? its a small 2-3 men outfit IIRC so still a descent chance of getting an actually useful answer from them.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Do the pirated Chinese knockoffs of the Silent Death plastics still show up on ebay now and then?  I remember there being both the normal sized ones and a much larger set (maybe x2 or x4 size?) but that was years ago and I haven't had occasion to look since then.

[Rick]

There are no 'pirated chinese knock-offs' of the silent death ships - the sprues are all made by the same manufacturer whether they are sold as silent death ships or generic space fighters so are all of exactly the same quality - the only difference being that the silent death sprues usually came with sprues of torpedoes. As to the larger scale ships - these were produced in resin (I think) as ICE promotional/display pieces and may have been cast from the original prototypes for the smaller scale ships (I'm not familiar with the process but believe the prototypes of plastic sprues are produced several times larger than the finished product).
Hope this helps.

[The_Beast]

I quake at being contrary, but there definitely were/are knock offs, but soft, rubbery, and painted.

Larger than the sprue fighters, but smaller than the resin ones.

I THINK there were spring pull-back toys of some, but I could be conflating knock offs of Message from Space.

Doug

[Daeothar]

Do the pirated Chinese knockoffs of the Silent Death plastics still show up on ebay now and then?  I remember there being both the normal sized ones and a much larger set (maybe x2 or x4 size?) but that was years ago and I haven't had occasion to look since then.

I know the ones you mean. If I recall correctly, there were several designs from the SD/EM4 sprue, but oddly enough not all of them. They also had some other designs in there though, mostly flying saucers (?).

Came in blindingly bright colours of plastic, and usually like a cool one hundred per bag or so. I tried getting hold of one on Ebay a couple of years ago, but the shipping (from the US) made it prohibitive. At one time they were also up on Amazon, but I reckon they've long since disappeared...

[Rick]

Doug, I do apologise if I have inadvertently erred on this. I simply wasn't aware of the soft plastic versions, I just assumed Chief Lackey Rich was discussing the difference between the EM4 space fighters and the ICE silent death ships. I do acknowledge that you have valuable and pertinent information on the subject.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I know the ones you mean. If I recall correctly, there were several designs from the SD/EM4 sprue, but oddly enough not all of them. They also had some other designs in there though, mostly flying saucers (?).

Came in blindingly bright colours of plastic, and usually like a cool one hundred per bag or so. I tried getting hold of one on Ebay a couple of years ago, but the shipping (from the US) made it prohibitive. At one time they were also up on Amazon, but I reckon they've long since disappeared...

Yeah, those are the ones I was talking about.  The "other designs" were based on toys dating back at least into the late 1970s or early 80s.  I recall getting some of them out of a US "bubble toy" vending machine at the time, but those were in a hard plastic and cast (rather than painted) in more pastel tones at the time than the much later rubbery ones.  Whether they were themselves based on some show or other franchise I don't know, but at some point they got lumped in with the SD knockoff designs.

[Daeothar]

Also fun to note is that I seem to recall that the saucerlike ships surfaced in the huge boardgame Twilight Empire (I don't know which edition) as well...

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Also fun to note is that I seem to recall that the saucerlike ships surfaced in the huge boardgame Twilight Empire (I don't know which edition) as well...

Are you talking about Twilight Imperium?  1st edition used flat counters (and was the last time the main game had faction-specific ship designs), 2nd edition used these things



3rd edition used these



and 4th used these slightly fancier variants:



AFAIK all the pieces for those games were proprietary sculpts, and none of them are really saucers- the War Suns are hemispheres.

[gilesdorrington]

There were also the triple scale ones sold by red shirt games http://www.redshirtgames.com/sd.htm.

[YPU]

Also fun to note is that I seem to recall that the saucerlike ships surfaced in the huge boardgame Twilight Empire (I don't know which edition) as well...

Not twilight imperium but another astronomic phenomenon named game, might have been "Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy"
Iirc they licenced the models for use, the cover of one version even had one of the more alien looking fighters on the cover.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Not twilight imperium but another astronomic phenomenon named game, might have been "Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy"
Iirc they licenced the models for use, the cover of one version even had one of the more alien looking fighters on the cover.

Hmmm.  Wasn't Galactic Emperor was it?  Usually described (accurately) as Twilight Imperium Light, used ship minis that showed up in at least one other game (whose name is eluding me).



https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27463/galactic-emperor