The EAS Agamemnon is an Omega-class destroyer from the popular television show, "Babylon 5." The spacecraft, according to its entry at Wikipedia, "is a heavy warship which serves many of the primary functions for the post-Minbari War 'Earth Alliance' military." I just think it looks cool. (With its rotating center section, it is also vaguely reminiscent of the Leonov from "2010.") The rotating section provides a 1-g simulated gravity environment. The ship is heavily armed, and carries several squadrons of Starfury fighters. And did I mention I think the ship looks cool?

This model, offered by Jaybats (http://www.freewebs.com/jaybats/) is the first card-model offering of the Omega-class destroyer. Jay's approach to designing and offering card models is fairly straightforward: His models have varying degrees of simplicity (or complexity) and sometimes represent detail that could be 3D with simple textures. But for many of the card models he offers, he's the only game in town.

The model was built with quite a few modifications and scratchbuilt detail. The detail isn't 100-percent accurate, but I did the best I could with the online references I could find, and what I couldn't find, I faked with "busy" detail. For a lot of it, I took Shep Paine's "creative gizmology" approach. The center section rotates on the model, and I used a model rocket tube internally for the section to rotate on. The antenna farm was scratchbuilt, as were the external weapons. The engine detail is greatly simplified; I'll probably go back later and try and add some bits and pieces there.

Built "straight from the box" (or, more accurately, "straight from the download") it builds into a decent model. But a little additional detail can go a long way to make it look better. It was a challenging build in some respects, but I think the finished product -- which measures 23.5 inches in length -- has the lines of an Omega-class destroyer.

(Some of the photos show it with the EAS Breheny, a Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, that I also built out of card.)

This model originally appeared as a Model-in-a-Month submission in May, 2007