2024 was one big love letter to Ron Cobb and the Alien Universe. With Alien: Romulus on the way in August, it seemed like an ideal time to build upon some of our earlier design work with a brand new original ship using the design language of the Narcissus, the shuttle/lifeboat on which Ripley escaped the Alien in the 1979 film of the same name.
The latest in a long line of shuttles by 2nd Dynasty, while not an official design, the Erebus is made to feel like it could fit in-universe, or be used in Star Wars, Traveller or Starfinder, any Tabletop RPG or War Game that uses sci-fi miniatures really.
Erebus is an Ursula-class shuttle/lifeboat. It has limited stores and FTL capability, but can support a crew of three for long durations in suspended animation. If the need arises, it has an under-floor storage area where an additional three cryotubes can be installed.
We wanted the shuttle to be something that found a handy compromise between playability and a claustrophobic environment. There’s plenty of room to move around miniatures, making the interior ideal for tabletop scenarios.
The Erebus is powered by a micro-fusion reactor that expels compressed carbon through up to eight rocket motors allowing powerful thrust, and can shunt the shuttle to low FTL speeds with a limited range of 3 parsecs.
The Erebus launched in our Kickstarter campaign Starship VI: Sole Survivor in Spring 2024. It included not only the shuttle itself in STL digital format, but we teamed up with JohnGames again to offer physical prints of the shuttle if you don’t own a 3D printer or if you just want a really high quality FDM print.
The model is scaled for 28mm miniatures, although it is actually about 1:59 due to 1.5 metres at full size being 25.4 mm (1″) at scale. The ship is 33 cm long, or just slightly more than 13″ in imperial measurement. At full size, the Shuttle Erebus would be about 19.6 m, or approximately 60 ft.
The shuttle was designed with playability in mind. 28mm figures can easily be placed in its confines, including in the closet spaces for engineering panels and the HVAC hardware. It will have the possibility to be expanded length-wise and width-wise in the future.
The Erebus is fully released, printable and has assembly instructions at the ready.
In addition to the base shuttle there are a number of mods available, like the hull extenders that lengthen and widen the Erebus for more interior space, a landing gear variant and more.
Both the ship and the mods are available at our distributor MyMiniFactory. You can find them, and two mini versions of the shuttle, at Myminifactory by clicking the images to the right.