By Terry Miesle and John Lester - copyright © 1998.

Some of AoG's capital ships by Terry Miesle

The view you don't want to see in "real life".

AoG's Narn fighters by Terry Miesle

AoG's Centauri Fighters by Terry Miesle

Agents of Gaming are producing a full line of metal miniatures of Babylon 5 spacecraft, for use with their B5 Wars game. These ships are all individually approved by Warner/Babylonian Productions. This does not necessarily guarantee complete accuracy .... but so far, from what we can tell, their ships are pretty faithful copies of those seen on the show. This makes them ideal references for scratchbuilding larger models.

AoG minis come in two distinct lines: fighters and capital ships. All the fighters are supposedly in scale with each other; likewise, all capital ships are supposedly the same scale. (What these scales are I haven't figured out yet - but it's on the order of 1:14,000 for the capital ships). All ships come in small cardboard-backed blister packs, with three fighters or one large ship to a package. Casting quality is fair to good - nowhere near Ral Partha standards, but acceptable. To be fair, they have been getting better - there is a noticeable improvement between their early Minbari Warcruiser and the later versions. The white metal used appears to be of decent quality, with no ashy or discolored layers, few pits or bubbles. The weakest part of the kits are the stands - hexagonal shaped plastic disks with a white metal spike for mounting the model.

In general, construction is easy. We've found that gap-filling superglue works best for getting everything together. Metal files are your friend - you'll need a standard size file to get rid of larger chunks of metal and a good microfile to clean up seam lines. Some ships, especially the Hyperions, can be warped. One can fix this by gently twisting them into shape with a large pair of pliers (use a t-shirt or bit of cloth to protect the soft metal from the teeth of the pliers). For larger, multipart ships one may want to carefully drill a hole through the long axis of the model and glue in a brass or steel rod for extra support. This is especially true of the Omegas, which will tend over time to bow or break in the center due to their weight. A central steel rod for these can also be used to allow the center section to rotate. Fine bits, like gun barrels or antennae, are better replaced by lengths of pin or needles - the white metal is too thick to look right and too thin not to bend easily.

Terry will further expound on painting below. Whatever method you use, remember the basics. Carefully scrub the miniature with a soft toothbrush and soapy water (I use Soft Scrub cleanser on these to make sure I've got all residues off). Then apply a good primer coat - I use Krylon sandable auto primer since it goes on easily and covers well, without hiding details. The best references for painting, besides watching videos, are the Sierra Entertainment Utilities on CD-ROM and the Fleer Trading Cards. There are a number of good websites with fan-produced CGI also - including Jeff Hiatt's excellent Jeff's B5 Gaming Page.