Following on from my earlier post about Studio Bergstrom's Auran Dominate fleet, today I'm looking at his Zaurak Empire models, which are part of the Future Frontier line along with the ORCDef ships I've showcased several times now. This set of figs is designed to allow quite a lot of part swapping to produce your own custom ship builds, with each ships consisting of just two parts - a main body and a wing section that lies crosswise atop it. Much like the Auran Dominate ships, there are also a multitude of small sockets for weapon mounts of your choice. The Zaurak have their own range of eight varieties of weapons, which are fully compatible with the Auran range so can cherry pick your favorites from both sets.
There are a total of three main bodies (a basic 2.5" one, a heavy 3.25" one, and a carrier-specific 3.25" variant) and five upper sections (small destroyer, basic cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship, and dreadnought), all of which are compatible with each other (although the smaller body might look odd on the largest wings). The carrier main hull is only sold as a "pre-built" option (it uses the battleship wing) but all the other parts and various weapon packs can be bought ala carte, as it were. All models are metal, and the big ones are pretty hefty. I believe I based them all on finishing nails, and the dreadnought got a 2" metal hex base as well.
You'll have to pardon the lackluster 15 year old paint jobs, which are definitely not my best work by a long shot.
Group overhead shot displaying relative sizes. These are the "pre-built" options at the main link. Going clockwise from the 12 o'clock position, that's the destroyer, battleship, battlecruiser, dreadnought, cruiser, and finally the carrier (not the hanger bays on the main body).
Multi-angle shots of the destroyer. Note that the basic small body has five weapon sockets on each side (of which I only filled four), as well as four on the top section.
And here we have the basic cruiser, which also uses the small main body (this time with six of the ten sockets filled) with its own 2" wide wing section.
This is the battlecruiser, which also uses the small main body and its own 2.5" wide wing. As you can see, there are a total of 14 sockets on the wing 10 filled), 10 more than the previous ships.
The battleship uses the same main body with a 3" wide wing, which also has 14 sockets on it (all of which are filled in this case).
The carrier uses a unique main body the same length as the heavy body on the dreadnought, both of which are compatible with the lighter wing sections. As you can see, there are only 2 sockets on this variant, with most of it being occupied with carrier facilities. I prefer to think the grid of little "windows" are actually individual launch tubes for scrambling attack craft while the four big hexagonal bays are recovery and repair hangers as well as launch/landing sites for larger shuttles, dropships, etc. but you do you. Maybe the "windows" are actually for firing a massive missile broadside or something.
That same battleship wing looks quite different with a different array of weapons mounted on it.
The dreadnought's an absolute brute at 4.5" long and about 3.625" wide, and the wing section dwarfs even the heavy hull here. Between the 12-socket main body and the 16-socket wing I've only mounted 20 of a potential 28 weapon - and that without even considering more real estate for extra weapons with their pins filed off so they'll lay flush. If you really want to go crazy with gun turrets it's a good thing Drew sells the weapons in lots of six for under a dollar.
The range also includes both bomber and fighter miniatures, but since I don't have any of them painted we'll have to make do with the renders from the catalog.
Overall, I think this range accomplishes its goal of being a customizer's paradise almost as well as the
Shadow Weaver figures
Drew also sells, and perhaps even better. Not only can you produce some quite different looks for ships by simply varying your weapon choices (and again, don't forget the potential for using Auran Dominate guns as well), you can also experiment with using the heavy bodies on lighter wings. In fact, there's nothing really stopping you from using the bodies or the wings by themselves as independent ships, although you'd probably want to do some conversion work to make them pop more if you went that route.
Kind of a pity there haven't been any further additions to this range (or the other, non-modular) Future Frontiers fleets since their release, but the original designer Rob May has apparently been out of touch for a rather long time now. He used to be a regular on the forums at Starship Combat News, and I can remember him sharing drafts of his designs from before the deal with Studio Bergstrom even came to be. Drew did a lot of finishing work on the Zauraks himself to get them ready for casting, but I think he's moved on to other projects since then, some of which use the weapons created for this range.
Still, if there were a sudden surge in sales maybe that might change, eh? You could certainly do a lot toward making more bodies and toppers if there was a demand for it.
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