The dark side of the brick

The Great Work is nearly done - every Star Wars set that I intend to build is, in theory, now built!  I've managed to achieve this about on target - I was aiming for Saturday but missed it by 3 days because I took the wife away for the weekend (more important than Lego!). I do have a couple of missing pieces on the Cube Dudes that I discovered the other day and they are in the post.  But I have no sets left unbuilt and nothing remaining "in the boxes".  Rebrickable tells me that I therefore have 868 sets built up - something I'm going to have to verify over the coming days.   Sadly, I somehow managed to leave one of the more disappointing sets for (nearly) last: the "UCS" Assault on Hoth ( 75098 ).  Lots has been written about this set and I'm sure it's the reason that Lego introduced the "Master Builder" series to make a distinction between the true UCS sets and what are effectively very large playsets.   The AoH is not intrinsically a bad

Tonight I took the wife out for dinner - important to get away from the Lego from time to time! - and hence building was limited. However, I did manage to find time to build up one of the two very limited release sets from last year that I missed and had to purchase from ebay: Yoda's lightsaber . At only 140, mostly fairly common parts, you're really paying for the box and the limited edition printed tile.   Rebrickable has had a large range of lightsaber MOCs over the years so it was only a matter of time before Lego decided to release one of their own.  This is small, totally within keeping of the MOCs and I would have been very happy to get this free.  I'm slightly peeved at the price I had to pay because I was too late to the party on Lego.com.  And I think this is one of those rare sets where I will be putting it straight back in the box and pretenting I never opened it. Yesterday, I started on the last of my big technic sets but I also found a bit of time to build the

Well, this is the longest I've gone without posting since I started this blog! I had a very busy week with work and, being back in the office, had a couple of nights out seeing friends and colleagues.  All excuses! Anyway, I spent some days building the Mercedes Benz Arocs technic set up but have found time for a couple of Star Wars builds.  The first was an old one: Hoth Echo Base ( 7879 ) from way back in 2011.  I amazingly picked up a BNIB version for a very reasonable price.  The set is nothing to write home about, in my humble opinion - basically just the base with a few play features and some reasonable minifigs.   The second set I managed was the 2021 Luke Skywalker x-wing ( 75301 ).  I liked this one much better - as well as a number of parts that were new to my collection, I also think that this fills a niche really well.  Most of the x-wings in recent years have had more parts, more detail and been twice the price.  This one delivers pretty much everything you would want

Last night I uncovered another promo set that I had somehow managed to overlook so I spent the morning buying bricks to complete the SDCC 2010 Cubedudes . This puts me back a day in the overall aim to finish building but, despite a break midweek, I'm still on target for completion in about 2 weeks.   Today's build was therefore a relatively quick one... one of the older Y-wings (the Gold Leader edition from 2012 - 9495 ).  There's nothing all that special about this one, though its a fine mid-sized set.  The Leia figure is a standout.

A big day in the Lego Star Wars collection... today I took delivery of the last of the UCS sets that I didn't previously own.  In fact, barring a couple of really rare minifigs (e.g. the chrome C-3PO), my collection is now as complete as I intend it to be! What came?  Vader's TIE Advanced ( 10175 ) arrived from Ebay.  I am not going to say how much I paid for this but it was definitely the most I've shelled out for a second hand set (though less than the most expensive ones you can buy from Lego today).  I rationalised it as ok because it was being sold by a charity so I've contributed to something useful. The set came really well packaged with box and instructions in good condition.  And the set itself is in really tip-top condition, albeit with 6 pieces in old light grey rather than new LBG (all replaced from spares) and a plate substitution (again sorted from spares).  And, while it was a bit dusty, I was able to clean as I built so it was a pretty pleasing process t