The dark side of the brick

Today I've spent the afternoon cleaning and inventorying the UCS AT-AT but yesterday's build was one I've been looking forward to building for a while: the 2007 MTT ( 7662 ).  I've never known what MTT stood for so I've just looked it up: multi-troop transport.  Apparently, it's supposed to store 112 battle droids - but in Lego minifig scale that would be ridiculous so this one stores 16 in folded-down configuration.   Still, that said, it's an awesome set when completed: Lots of the triple-height slopes and plenty of other detail make this look really good from the outside.  It also has no less than 10 folding hatches from which come a sled, the droid racks, a gun rack and a cockpit.  There's even detail inside that you'll never really get to see.   The only disappointment on building this was that I got to the final couple of pages and realised that the otherwise very good-condition set was missing the droideka!  Parts on order... This one gets a s

Last night's build was another x-wing, but after two of the more recent vintages, I went back to the early 2004 version ( 4502 ).  In common with a few of my recent ebay purchases, this one was also missing pieces and had a range of colour swaps (mainly reddish brown for old brown and LBG for LG).  So, once I'd cleaned and inventoried it, I then spent the best part of a month slowly buying the missing parts.  I'm still not quite there (found a couple more missing parts as I built and I've still not got the chrome lightsaber handles) but I was close enough to build. The first thing I noticed about this set is that it's in old colours and must have been one of the very last sets to have been released before the full switch across.  Indeed, the set was originally from 2003 and my version is the "Original Trilogy Edition" re-release from 2004. It's an interesting question as to whether I prefer the old Lego colours of my childhood or the newer colours from

A few posts back , I talked about the droid tie fighter that I rebuilt from the 10131 Ultimate Tie Fighter Collection.  At the time when I was buying the parts for this this, I thought it was the only model from 10131 that I didn't already have a copy of.  It was, in fact, only when I came to write a post that I realised that the Darth Vader advanced tie was also unique to this set. I couldn't leave it at that so over the last month or so, I've been slowly buying up the missing parts and have now built the advanced tie too.   It was a very quick build the other week but I was still missing the two printed round tiles which finally arrived yesterday so here's the completed set (there's a Darth Vader in the cockpit but he's got a very frayed cloak so staying hidden).   So, here's the complete collection (including my copy of 7263): The main observation is how fragile sets from this period can be - the wings wobble around and just moving it around half of the t

After a couple of Ebay purchases which were missing parts and in sun-damaged condition, my latest one restored my faith... a mint copy of the Ghost ( 75053 ) from 2014.  Another one of the sets from the Rebels subtheme so I don't know much about it but I've always liked the look. The build didn't disappoint - about 90 mins all told but lots of interesting elements and some clever multi-way angling of sections.  There's also a good amount of playability in the set, and that's before I've built up my copy of the Phantom to go with it (that's in the next collection of sets to be picked and built but I keep getting distracted with Ebay purchases!).   A solid 8 out of 10. 

Today continues the AT theme with the 2014 AT-AT ( 75054 ).  This pretty much follows the format of yesterday's post on the AT-TE... a second hand set from ebay which turned up dirty, yellowed and with missing bricks.  I've managed to already replace all but 3 parts from my spares and the others are on order but it's still disappointing when you get poor quality sets.  Still, this one was pretty cheap, all told so I'm not complaining too much. Build was fine and there's a reasonable amount of detail in here.  But not amazingly fussed by it... though perhaps that's just because I'm really tired. 

I spent most of yesterday afternoon cleaning up two recent ebay purchases, both of which turned up dusty and with a number of yellowed bricks. Today, I built the first of them: the 2nd version of the AT-TE from 2008 ( 7675 ).  I already have the 2013 version (75019) but not the original 2003 (4482), which remains one of the 20 or so sets I still need to source before I complete my Lego Star Wars collection. According to the interweb, the AT-TE is an All-terrain tactical enforcer, used during the clone wars with a heavy duty mass driver cannon on top.  I remember them from Attack of the Clones which isn't my favourite of the Star Wars films, containing as it does the least plausible romance ever to grace a cinema screen and an Anakin which is even more annoying than the one from The Phantom Menace if that's possible.   Well, on to the Lego... this is a medium sized set in terms of number of bricks but works out quite large in volume due to the quite empty interior.  There is a f

Today's build was the Creator VW Camper Van ( 10220 ).  Some years ago, I went to my industry's annual conference and kept up my streak of winning prizes from the exhibitor stands but my prize was a drone which I immediately sold in ebay for £200 and used the proceeds to buy what I really wanted - the Lego camper van.  I love the amount of detail on this set which is incredibly well put together.  Almost all of the internal structure is there in little bricks including an engine in the rear, folding seats and table, a wardrobe, opening front windows and rear boot and a sun roof that lifts up. And things like the little lava lamp are very nice touches. This is only the second time I've made this up and it was a joy to see it all coming together.  I only have one quibble which is that the front wheels don't have any steering to them - I would have thought that they could have managed this. A few weeks back, I also built up one of the two free copies of the "vintage c

Well, specifically, the lower part of his palace - the Rancor pit ( 75005 ).  Another ebay purchase, interestingly from the same source I got the upper part of the palace from.  I mentioned how good the condition of the main palace was and the rancor pit was pretty much the same.  I can tell that someone had already given it a good clean - probably with a toothbrush, though as there were some very faint scratches on the bricks.  I now use a cloth to do all my brick-cleaning to avoid this. So, this is a relatively simple set, with 381 parts, though it does pack in some playability.  The big gate comes crashing down to spear the rancor, there are some hidden caches (one behind a pillar, one in the floor) and the rancor minifig is pretty articulated.  Nowadays, though, you're pretty much buying this for the minifigs... and I passed up on several auctions because the minifigs were missing or incomplete.   I also did something new and submitted Luke and Malakili to the Rebrickable phot

Another day, another X-wing... today was the Resistance X-wing from 2016 ( 75149 ).   The build felt very much like deja vu from Saturday... the dimensions are exactly the same as those from the 2020 X-wing and they share quite a bit of the structure.  Key differences are obviously the foils and "air intakes" (I've just looked it up in my Complete Star Wars Vehicles and apparently they are retro thrusters) and the colour scheme but they are really very similar.   I'd have given this one a 4 for being higly derivative of the black Poe X-wing but I'm going to upgrade to a 5 on the grounds that I like the sand blue detailing.  Oh and the foil opening mechanism is better than the 2020 version. 

So, having predicted that I would get sidetracked by work two weeks ago, that really caught up with me last week and I managed very little building.  I did manage, however, on Friday night and Saturday morning to build the 2020 Poe's X-wing ( 75273 ).   I had grand plans to take photos through the build but was too tired to keep it up (and was distracted by things like Friday film night and Saturday supermarket shopping).  So, just the one photo that's worth posting... This is the first of a number of X-wings I'm going to be building over the coming weeks - I have a second hand copy of 4502 with a few pieces still missing (most on order) plus the near identical 2015 Poe and 2016 Resistance X-wings.  However, this one was on the top of one of my piles of new sets (somewhat ridiculously, I have 49 sets still to open!) so I went for it.   I like the colour scheme (orange is my favourite Lego colour!) and the things that always looked suspiciously like air intakes (on a space s

I'm back into picking bricks from the store for the next 8 builds so limited building going on.  However, I did give myself a break yesterday and cleaned / built the copy of Ahsoka's starfighter ( 7751 ) I picked up from Ebay.  This arrived filthy dirty but after an hour over the utility room sink, what emerged was a near pristine set of bricks with stickers generally well applied.  It was missing a few parts, most of which I had spare in my collection - just a pair of droid legs to pick up on a future Bricklink order.  Oh and it was missing the instructions but I managed to get hold of the only set of these on Bricklink!  The set comes with a vulture droid and two buzz droids, as well as a relatively common Ahsoka minifig and a unique R7-A7 droid.  The starfighter is pretty standard in its overall shape though has an interesting mechanism underneath for firing the missiles (until I finished the wings I wasn't sure what this did!).  There are a couple of printed parts and a

Despite not expecting to have time for Lego, I've squeezed a quick break into work for a 30 min build and quick set of musings on the new 2021 set - Trouble on Tatooine ( 75299 ).  Weighing in at 266 parts, this is definitely a play set, though the aesthetics are, on the whole, very nicely done.   It comes in three bags with the first building the Mandalorian's speeder.  It's nice to see a different design for the front spars and there is plenty of detail.  Pleasingly, there's also somewhere to store the large gun which I also appreciate.  The speeder also has a baby carrier for the much talked-about tiny child minifig.  I am pretty sure that this is the smallest official minifig I own!  One disappointment was the black head for the Mandalorian.   The second bag does a tusken raider's hut which opens out.  Not quite sure what the benefit of this is as there isn't really very much detail inside.  The tusken raider is a relatively standard minifig now, though.  Th

Today's Ebay delivery yielded not one but three more sets, getting me somewhat closer to completion on my goal to have all Lego Star Wars.  My spreadsheet tells me that - right now - I only have 29 sets left to obtain.  One of the Ebay sets is a brand new one so that went into the stack of sets to do at a later date; one was so hideously dusty that I couldn't face it... especially as I already knew that there were some missing pieces and I couldn't face finding more after checking through the copy of 4502 that arrived late last week, only to find that someone was even more colour-blind than me and couldn't tell their old and new Lego colours apart. So, I got the third one out, which is a near mint and very clean version of Jabba's palace ( 9516 ).  It's always pleasing when sets arrive in this condition and so with a minimum of cleaning as I went, it was rapidly deconstructed (it came in sections) and rebuilt. While it comes in at quite a size, this set has rema