3788 Scale Old Galaxy Pirates Pirate Raider MGL

The M81 Galaxy is the original home of the Tholians, before the Seltorians rose up in a genocidal revolt. It is sometimes called The Tholian Home Galaxy; the Tholians located in the Milky War Galaxy have been known to refer to it as the Old Galaxy. While the concept of “space piracy” has a long history in the M81 Galaxy, the origins of the High Pirate Bands known as the “Old Galaxy Pirates” stem from the Great Martial War: one of the conflicts fought by the Tholians during their rise to galactic dominance. One of the three main enemies of the Tholians in that war were the Nebuline, who had established colonies within active nebulae across the M81 Galaxy. When the Tholians won the Great Martial War, the Nebuline were swept from open space, but a number of their colonies remained unconquered.

The surviving Nebuline holdouts adapted some of the ships of their defense fleet into “winged” hulls suited for privateering, and sent them to raid numerous convoys and colonies in areas under Tholian occupation. The oversized port wings on these raider vessels were designed to enable them to dock directly to captured freighters and to carry them off in their entirety. The warp engines added to these wings could only be used for warp movement once a freighter was docked, yet still provided these raiders with high power curves even when not docked to a freighter. The remaining Nebulline ships were kept in their “wingless” configuration, and used to fend off the occasional forays by Tholian and/or enforcer species incursions which the Tholians found to be a significant challenge, as their vaunted web caster lost most of its functionality when fighting inside a nebula.

Eventually, the Nebuline provided “export models” of their military-grade Raiders and Raider Destroyers (stripped of key Nebuline technology) to bands of exiles and outcasts from Tholian-controlled space. With this, the first true High Pirate Bands were born.

This hull type was first used by Nebuline privateers, for whom it was the most commonly encountered raider vessel. This is an “export model,” stripped of key Nebuline technology; data on the Nebuline-operated incarnation remains to be decoded from the U.S. Air Force data tapes. The High Pirate Band-operated version possessed four phaser-1s, two phaser-3s, four forward-mounted option mounts, and a fifth wing-mounted option mount (which is not considered to be a "wing mount" as an Orion pirate ship would consider it). The ship is capable of docking to either a large or a small freighter, or to the M81 Galaxy equivalent to a Free Trader or Armed Priority Transport. A Raider equipped with phaser-1s and/or particle cannons in its option mounts could be used to assassinate a troublesome Tholian or enforcer patrol unit, while a Raider equipped with shield crackers could more effectively leverage its complement of 18 Marine squads to further its ship-capturing operations.

The ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.