By John David Cook - images & text © 2005

Scale: 1/2500 - about 2" X 3 1/2" long, 2. Almost the same scale as Warp's Earthforce Cruiser.

Parts: 10 white resin parts

Instructions: One legal size sheet of color instructions, easy to follow

Decals: One sheet of highly detailed purple patterns for the entire ship

Molding Quality: 8 - Flash on the edges of parts

Detail: 8 - The forward cannons are merged slightly with the body, but pretty good for this small a scale

Accuracy: 8- Missing some fine detail on wing pod.

MSRP: $25.00 USD (~$30.62 CAN/ € 18.86 EUR) available from Federation Models

Overall Rating: 8 - A pretty good kit for a very good price

Ah, the Whitestar: workhorse of the Resistance. A small, sleek ship armed to the teeth and made for killing Shadows. The Minbari built hundreds of them, joined with the Humans to form the Rangers, and won the Shadow War. Until recently, there has been no affordable kit of this fine subject but the new kit from Gizmotron changes all that.

What You Get

Gizmotron gives you ten well cast pieces of white resin, a legal size instruction sheet with easy to read instructions and diagrams, and a large decal sheet designed to cover the entire ship with the complex pattern that adorns Whitestars. The parts have an unusual feature for resin: alignment pins! None of the other resin kits I've built have them. Hats off to Gizmotron's mold master. All parts come in a large zip-lock bag and were well packed in foam peanuts.

Each piece seems well cast of white resin with moderate flash on the outer edges but its not excessive. There is minimal to no bubbles on the outer surface, which is also a mark of good quality.

The main disappointment of this kit is the missing cannon barrels on the wing pods. They're clearly visible on the show and Giz could have easily included a short length of wire to be clipped into barrels.

The big thing that really impressed me was that Giz is trying for almost a mass-market audience with the decal sheet. It's gorgeous. The hardest thing about any Minbari ship has always been the "organic" skin paint job. The original artwork is computer generated of a "plasma cloud" plastered over a wire frame that defines the ship's shape. This is fiendishly difficult to replicate so the decal sheet is a godsend.

Conclusion

My wife, Icie, bought this kit and was kind enough to let me write a preview of it. It's a good kit for her because the assembly is simple and straightforward with alignment pins, unusual for resin. Painting should be simple as well since the instructions call for a simple silver base coat with the decals to handle the otherwise complex paint job. Gizmotron's kit isn't the very best Whitestar but its low price, good quality, great decal sheet and similar scale to Warp's Omega Class cruiser makes it an irresistible buy. I'm sure she will enjoy it very much.