It's probably no secret to anybody that I'm a massive sci-fi fan. I don't know how the most minute details of my favourites, but things like Star Trek and Star Wars have always appealed due simply to the massive size of the universes that they allow the imagination to inhabit. When Fantasy Flight Games came out with X-Wing Miniatures, their starfighter combat game, I was hooked pretty much immediately to a game which now sports dozens of vessels and limitless ways to play.

WizKids have recently entered the fray with their licensed take on the FlightPath system, Star Trek: Attack Wing. The system plays similarly to X-Wing, funnily enough, but there's some very subtle tweaks in how things work to make the ships feel that much bigger, as true capital ships ought to. The one criticism that keeps coming up, however, is that the WizKids ships for Star Trek just don't look as good as Fantasy Flight's offerings for X-Wing. The moulding on the ships is a little roughshod in some places and the paint jobs simply aren't in the same league, which is a shame, though it doesn't really detract from how the game plays.

Luckily, I've got a few paints and brushes handy...

On the left side of the image is a slightly blurry image taken of the Miranda-class USS Reliant which shows the original paint job. It's blocky, ugly and I really can't understand why the ship is blue. The right, I'm sure you can guess, is what she looks like after a little TLC! The patchy look isn't 100% intentional, though I decided to touch up a few of the plates in order to try and replicate the so-called 'Aztec pattern' in ships of the Wrath of Khan era movies. I struggled to find a definitive colour scheme for the ship, though there's so many conflicting sources I decided to go ahead and just paint her up how I thought it looked cool! This is a pretty close-in shot of a ship that's actually only a little smaller than two inches long, so it might still look just a little wonky... But honestly, I'm pleased enough with how it turned out, and she's a damn sight nicer-looking on the table than before!