The dark side of the brick

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 a...

Today's post is actually from yesterday's build... continuing the theme of recent posts, I've been back on the 10179 build today (9 more sections done with only 7 elements to go).   Another of the recent purchases was the second version of Jabba's sail barge - the 2013 version ( 75020 ). Apart from the fact that the box arrived a little bit damaged and it was missing the usual 2-3 pieces, it was in generally very good nick, apart from being dusty.   Once cleaned and rebuild, I'm very happy with the purchase.  The build took about 90 mins and was pretty interesting - the symmetric duplication was fully bearable and it therefore felt fresh throughout.  The minifigs are also interesting: Leia has unique braided and coloured hair which is actually rubber: There are also unique Max Rebo and Ree-Yees minifigs in the set which my 7yr old niece (who loves her Lego) found really funny (she liked Leia better, though).   There's a surprising amount of detail...