Federation Commander

[Jean]

Get a Pound of Ships!

Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. is running a deal on "factory second" ships. These ships will have all the major parts (engines, struts, etc.), but the ships themselves will have defects, be it missing metal, too much metal, or missing detail. Each bag will usually have over 20 (a few more if the ships are on the small side) that add up to a pound in weight, so you are paying less than $3 a ship. These ships are all from the Starline 2400 series and do not include stands. (Stands are sold separately: http://store.starfleetstore.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=S&Category_Code=O )

The pound of ships will be packed randomly; we won't know what is in any bag, but we won't stick you with ships of all one empire. For the price of $49.95, we won't be able to pack a bag "just for you."

Many of our fans have found that these ships are good for taking to gaming sessions or for starting their miniature-painting career. These are also good for creating battle-damaged ships. Somehow it doesn't "hurt as much" to further damage an already less-than-perfect ship.

This is a special offer -- when we run out of factory seconds, then we run out of pounds. This deal is only available direct from ADB: http://store.starfleetstore.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=S&Product_Code=0040&Category_Code=14
_________________
Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

[Steve Cole]

These are an incredibly good deal. I counted three bags and got 22, 25, and 26 ships. Just depends on how big they are. One massive battleship can weigh as much as 20 romulan eagles.

Every bag will include Feds, almost every bag (if not every bag, I'm hedging because I didn't watch that closely) will include Klingon, Romulan, Kzinti, and Hydran. Most will get a gorn and almost every bag (if not every bag) will get a battleship (some of them two).

For a cheap price, you can quickly acquire a smattering of many empires, giving your fumble fingered opponents a ship to borrow that isn't one of your really perfect nicely painted ones.

These are factory seconds. You'll find missing metal, excess metal, mis-shaped or missing sensor dishes, divots, cracks, and so forth. We made sure that they had all of the pieces except maybe sensor dishes in some cases. I will remark that we had a bucket of Fed saucers (cruiser, command cruiser, fast cruiser, survey scout) and a shoebox of Fed BC and CS hull/engine pieces, and most bags have one "cruiser" even if it's not a cruiser actually in the official inventory (fast strike cruiser, anyone? fast scout cruiser?)
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Jean]

It's back! Steve just weighed out 20 more bags! It is first come, first served, so order quickly!
_________________
Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

[Steve Cole]

I'm not going to make an iron-clad guarantee just in case I missed a tray of ships sometime, but I think that every bag will have Fed NCL and DW, two or three different Kzintis, two different Gorns, a Hydran or two, a freighter, and some kind of Romulan, and probably at least half of them have some kind of Klingon.

The way I do these is to take the plastic shoebox "trays" and "Tubs" and "cups" that Mike gives me, put them on all the left side of the conference table. In some cases, a container has only one kind of ship. In others, it has "all the Gorns" or "all the Hydrans". In other cases, it may be a mixed bag of small quantities. Fed ships with saucers and engine mounts are tricky (to many pieces) so those are individualized and one goes into each pot until I run out (about six).

Then I get five empty identical tubs, put one on the scale and the other four next to it, and set the "tare" on the scale so that the tubs don't count on the weight. Then I take each container of ships, take out five (sometime ten) and put one (sometimes two) into each tub.

By the time I have moved every container of ships from the left to the right side of the table (or vice versa), the tub on the scale is at 14 or 15 ounces. So I then randomly grab something(s) and make the tub on the scale hit 16-to-16.3 ounces. Then I hand that tub to Jean, and put the next tub on the scale and it will be somwhere between 14 and 16 so I "finish" it and then the other three. Then I do it all over.

After doing 20, I was out of the ships I just had a few of and down to the point that bag #21 would have 24 ships but only 10 types of ship (bag #20 had at least 12), so I stopped. Mike put the others all back in the storage room and Jean bagged up the 20 tubs.
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Jean]

It has been over three years since we have run this deal.

Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. is running a deal on "factory second" ships. These ships will have all the major parts (engines, struts, etc.), but the ships themselves will have defects, be it missing metal, too much metal, or missing detail. Each bag will usually have over 20 (a few more if the ships are on the small side) that add up to a pound in weight, so you are paying less than $3 a ship. These ships are all from the Starline 2400 series and do not include stands. (Stands are sold separately: http://www.starfleetstore.com/miniature-stands-c-105/ )

The pound of ships will be packed randomly; we won't know what is in any bag, but we won't stick you with ships of all one empire. For the price of $49.95, we won't know what is in any bag, but we won't stick you with ships of all one empire. For the price of $49.95, we won't be able to pack a bag "just for you."

Many of our fans have found that these ships are good for taking to gaming sessions or for starting their miniature-painting career. These are also good for creating battle-damaged ships. Somehow it doesn't "hurt as much" to further damage an already less-than-perfect ship.

This is a special offer -- when we run out of factory seconds, then we run out of pounds. This deal is only available direct from ADB: http://www.starfleetstore.com/damaged-c-12_100/pound-of-ships-p-1196.html
_________________
Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

[Steve Cole]

What happens when we do this is Mike brings me all of the "seconds" ships, which are in cups, tubs, boxes, and bags, collectively called "bins" for some reason. Each "bin" is usually one empire and often just one class of ship. I weigh them all and check the total weight, then go get that many plastic tubs and zero the scale for that "tare". In this case it was eight.

I then looked a the 20 or 30 "bins" and if I see one that has less than eight ships I set it aside and combine it with other "short bins".

I then take each of the "bins of seconds" and spread its contents evenly across the eight "tubs" I have before me. One of the tubs is sitting on the scale so I know how close I am getting to a pound. Each "bin" may contribute one or more "ships" to each of the eight bins. If a "bin" is found to have more than eight but less than sixteen ships, I put the surplus aside as "overflow". So, say I pick up a bin of some empire's cruiser and put one in each "tub". Then I look at the "bin" and if there are a lot more I put another cruiser in each bin. If I do that and don't have a ship for the last "tub" or two I get something about that size from the "overflow". If I have less than eight ships left those also go into "overflow".

Sooner or later I have been through all of the "bins" and then I check the "tub" on the scale. I get an extra ship or three from overflow to get it to a pound. Then I check each of the other seven bins (which will be close to what the first bin was) and add ships from the overflow until each "tub" is a pound. Then I look at the last of the overflow and divide it and throw something into each "tub". This time around there wasn't much left so the bags will be 1.00 to 1.02 pounds.

Then Jean picks a bag at random and takes a photo.

So every bag gets a fair distribution of ships. There won't be a bag that is 60% Kzinti sitting next to a bag that is 54% Gorn.

Just because Jean told me not to, I didn't even count the number of ships in a sample bag. I don't really know, but 20 is a pretty good minimum.
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

Five of the eight have been sold.
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Jean]

All the Pound of Ships have been sold.
_________________
Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.