Death Star Final Duel - 75291
Another build from new today - I picked up the reissued Death Star Final Duel (75291) recently, after putting off buying it for a while because I feared it was going to be quite similar to the original 2015 version (75093). And I've built that twice in the last year or so because I got a second set in a Lego job lot I bought: it was quite fun working through the fact that I'd purchased about 10 sets plus random minifigs for £52 but it did mean I became quite familiar with the set as I worked out from the bricks what I had.
As an aside, I'm still in awe of my cousin (another Lego fan) and his son who managed to pick up a massive job lot from a charity shop which included the whole Ewok village, the Ninjago Temple of Airjitzu, the 2014 UCS sandcrawler and quite possibly also the UCS Slave I amongst other sets for "pennies". Quite apart from the fact that this equates to hundreds of pounds of Ebay purchases, I remain bemused by the fact that someone would dump all of this on a charity shop. My only conclusion is that it was revenge from a jealous partner... in which case the lesson is that your wife (or husband) should be allowed their own (expensive) hobbies too!
Anyway, back to the main point of the post... the Death Star Final Duel. A bit on the build below but straight on to what I thought about it. If you missed the 2015 version, this is a good play set and it has a number of little features to play with. The stairs "force" flip out, there's a lever to "force jump" the characters, one of the balconies can be collapsed with a well-placed lightsaber strike, you can drop the emperor down the tube to the central core to kill him (or not!) and the whole thing opens/closes, presumably for stability of transfer/storage. This is quite a bit of play for a set of ths size and more than you get in many sets.
There are a couple of new(ish) parts in here too: the latest computer print tile appears twice and I don't believe I've seen the 4x4 cutout plate before (and this is certainly its first appearance in dark red). I think two of the minifigs are exclusives - Darth Vader has printed arms and, while the emperor looks very similar to the 2015 version, there must be something slightly different about him. This alone will keep the resale value of the set up as these two minifigs are often among the most expensive (though not a patch on Captain Rex!).
However, if you have got the 2015 version, it's not much of an enhancement - there is a bit more detailing, the set has been inverted and the floor changed from DBG to black. But really, it's not very different and the mechanism for the stairs is literally identical. I'm slightly disappointed that the Lego designers couldn't think up anything new for this!
Some comparison photos (note, this is my joblot version and it was missing Darth Vader's correct head and one of the guards):
The build
The build took about an hour and half with various distractions (it was New Year's Eve and it was my turn to cook). First out of the box in bag 1 was the central base along with DV:
I think this Luke figure is identical to the old version and he's standing on the wrong stair! Bag 3 delivered the right-hand section, complete with collapsing walkway:
Bag 4 was the left side:
Bag 5 gets you the Emperor and his throne area. No lightsaber throwing device in this version (not that I could ever get it to work in the older version).
And finally bag 6 does the entrance and the two guards:
This one also does the blue consoles - I love the design of these but my god they're annoying to build! However, the biggest advance of this set is to include a technic disk in there to act as a guide for where they need to be angled to (note, I only spotted this after I took the photos... duh!).
One more obligatory photo of some lightsaber action.
[Final note - just in case anyone is wondering, I never apply stickers. In fact, I try never to open up the instructions if I can avoid it. Flexibility and maximisation of eventual resale value.]
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