Blogging backlog

So, after a couple of years of steady blogging, the last 8 months have been a bit of a drought... Three things have conspired to take my attention away from Lego Star Wars: firstly, my uncle died in July last year - you can pretty much see exactly when.  Sorting out his estate has taken me quite a bit of time, not least because I inherited 2,000+ CDs, 378 LPs, c. 1,000 DVDs, boxes of cassettes and hundreds of books.  It's actually turned out to be pretty valuable in parts and I've been selling individual items on ebay for upwards of £100, though a large part of the DVDs went to resellers for pennies. But listing and posting 1000+ items takes time.

Secondly, my new role at work last year has meant significantly more travel - I'm now on a plane to Asia once a month and - like the last few weeks - twice in quick succession.  This takes out a lot of nights at home.  Finally, I also spent quite a bit of time playing back through Skyrim on my xbox... and am likely to lose time to Starfield when it is finally released.

So, back to the topic... Lego builds but mostly deconstruction.  Here's a big catch-up in a single post.  

Firstly, some time ago, I took apart the collection of random black tie advanced / unusal fighters.  This includes:

• 75082: Tie Advanced Prototype from 2015.  A nice set with some good minifigs and early examples of side-on slopes
  
• 8017: Darth Vader's Tie Fighter from 2009.  Relatively simple to the modern eye but not a bad set
• 75150: The tie advanced from this set in 2016.  Not as good as the 2015 set but comes with an A wing.  
• 8087: Tie Defender from 2010.  A nice but not outstanding set in my view.

Here are some photos:

 

These were deconstructed in July but there was then a very long break before I got around to taking apart The Arrowhead (75186) from 2017.  This was one of the early sets I bought when I started trying to complete the full collection of Star Wars Lego and it nearly stopped me.  It's honestly not very exciting - falling half way between not-quite display quality and not-good-enough play features. 
 

Next up is the set of three Droid Trifighters:

• 7252 from 2005
  
• 8086 from 2010 and
• 75044 from 2014.

Based on that frequency, we're well overdue a new version of this - and it's an interesting model too.  They're all pretty good but as I love the sand blue sets (they're just different from the now default Star Wars palette of LBG / DBG) 7252 gets my vote as the best, despite my copy having some very dodgy stickers.

 

I also took apart the original Trade Federation MTT from 2000 (7184), which, like many of the sets from that time, is actually really good.

 Next up was the full set of droid carriers:

• 7126 from way back in 2001
• 7929 from 2011 (called "The battle of Naboo) and
  
• 75086 from 2015
  

Clearly, these improved with age and, while 7929 is good, 75086 is by far the biggest and best of these sets.

 

Brick Sketches looked like a great idea (I think they took inspiration from some popular MOCs) but have clearly not sold at the rate that Lego hoped, given that they've been on perma-sale for ages.

I quite like them though - clever use of plate layering creates a nice 3D effect. 40391 (Stormtrooper) and 40431 (BB8) are the only two in the Star Wars range.

I also took apart the two Gungan subs (7161 from way back in the first release of Star Wars Lego in 1999, and 9499 from 2012).  Interestingly, the two sets have relatively similar number of parts and they're very similar in size.  The earlier version has more playability but, obviously, 13 years of new parts makes the later version much prettier to look at for a set which is supposed to have fluid lines.

There we are - caught up to today's deconstruction.