BUMP!
So I was visiting my folks over the holidays, and I stumbled upon my partial Centaur build - years back, I learned that the Centaur was a kitbash of a bunch of AMT kits, so I bought three of them (excelsior, reliant, maquis) and intended to reproduce the ship myself. But, of course, life gets in the way and I never progressed further than obtaining the model kits.
Originally I was going to put some of the maquis "greebles" on the bottom of the saucer and call it a day! But, holy cow, I found this thread and saw that Adam Buckner himself had given us actual shots of the original model. Kudos to Barnstormer, stevielewis, and others in this thread for your sleuthing, fantastic work.
I didn't see a definitive list here on what models are required to build this since Adam posted the new pics, so I thought I'd do that so anyone who wanted to make the Centaur themselves would be able to do so. The originals are all still relatively obtainable. I think you folks have already pieced together everything, so intent here is just to put it all in one post. Will likely put this on reddit too, just so people can find it. I'll use scalemates a lot as a reference, which has a lot of details on each model kits' history.
Adam, if you ever see this... how did this all come about??? Did you just have a lot of model kits lying around, including duplicates? Did you have a budget to go buy a bunch of kits in order to cobble together ships for the show? I'm super curious how you came to use such a random assortment of model kits to build the Centaur, especially the strike eagle, Flak gun, and a single part off an M2 Bradley!
Model picture compilation, including references and model details:
USS Centaur
Models required:
1994 AMT 6630 USS Excelsior
note1: you need 4 total bottom halves of the nacelles and the AMT Excelsior only has 2 - a port side and a starboard side. There's a couple options: you could buy two Excelsiors, you could buy both Excelsior and Enterprise B kits, or you could make a mold - up to you
note2: AMT has released a
new Excelsior model - I don't have it, but looking at pictures it does look like a pretty good match to the 1994 model. But you can still get the original for pretty cheap on eBay still, and used condition would be fine -
Dettol is a great paint solvent!
1995 AMT 8762 USS Enterprise B - optional, aftermarket options available
note: this one's optional because there's some aftermarket options out there. I haven't bought this model myself, I plan to make a mold of the Excelsior nacelles and buy aftermarket warp deckoids from
this site. You'll need 3 total dekoids, so either you need to buy two of these sets or, y'know, just buy the aftermarket parts!
1995 AMT 8766 USS Reliant
note1: you do need two docking port (aft part of the bridge) parts, so either buy 2 of this kit or make a mold. Likewise for another saucer greeble part (tringular shaped pylon cover) - the kit only has 2, but you need 4.
note2: all that being said, if you don't want to make molds or buy aftermarket, you'll actually need 1 Excelsior, 2 Enterprise-B (for the 3 warp dekoids), and two Reliants (you need two docking port parts, and 2 sets of the triangular shaped pylon cover greeble). That all gets pretty expensive without some pretty cheap molding or aftermarket sources...
1995 Monogram 3605 Maquis Ship
1985 Revell 4719 F-15E Strike Eagle
note: looking at the instruction booklet I do believe you can buy the more recent 2010 Revell "F-15D/E Eagle" kit, 85-5715, and still get all the parts you need
1979 AMT S971 Klingon Cruiser
note: AMT has reboxed this over the years, you can use Matchbox/AMT PK-5111 (1980), AMT/ERTL 6682 (1985), AMT/ERTL 8229 K'tinga Klingon Cruiser (1992), or AMT 794 Klingon K't'inga class (2012). I suspect Adam used the 1992 model. DON'T use the D7 model, the warp nacelle ends that are used on the Centaur's ventral saucer are different
1977 Tamiya MM191 20mm Flakvierling
note: also been reboxed a few times over the years. DON'T buy the similar 20mm FLAK38, it doesn't have the greeble parts you need
1995 Dragon 6015 Panzer IV/70(A)
note: looks like a very particular type of panzer tank track was used. You can see the difference here:
wrong:
ATL-05 PZ III/IV • Friulmodel webáruház
correct:
ATL-28 PZ III/IV • Friulmodel webáruház
proof:
Imgur
The big difference is the track horn has a thin section running down the centre and the interlocking tracks are slightly wider in the middle. My best guess is Adam used the 1:35 Dragon brand Panzer IV/70(A) 6015 from 1995 - the tank tracks match perfectly to the close ups of the Centaur model. Fortunately you can get these
aftermarket, so you don't need to hunt for the model. Mine are on order right now, will report back how they look
199x Academy 1335 1/35 M2 Bradley
Note, M2 or M2A2 both appear to work, you just need the one part from the aft part of the missile launcher optics. It goes directly forward of the saucer's ventral sensor dome.
Thoughts, anyone? Would love some extra eyes on this - if I have anything wrong, let me know and I'll happily correct.