The dark side of the brick

Another belated post - back in early December, I took apart both of the UCS Y-wings: 10134 which I've owned from new since 2004 and 75181 from 2018. Back in 2004, I remember being slightly disappointed with the Y-wing: it was my second Lego Star Wars set after the incomparable 10030 and it didn't quite measure up in terms of scale and scope.  However, revisiting it now, I think it really holds up and delivers tons of detail for its part count.  The only bit that I still hate is threading all of the short bits of tubing onto the white 12l axles.   75181 is, of course, better detailed and takes advantage of 14 years of new Lego parts.  That said, I'd be hard pressed now to separate them in terms of which I like the best.

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.

Another grey/cold/wet winter's day, another build... today's was a second hand version of Anakin's Y-wing fighter ( 8037 ) which came from Ebay.  Specifically, from what must be the smokiest home I've ever purchased Lego from.  Even after airing it for a week and then cleaning every part thoroughly, it still smells!  There were the usual missing bits and part/colour substitutions but nothing I couldn't fix reasonably quickly from spares but I have to say that the pong cast a pall over the entire build process. This is, however, a unique set to date and therefore something to be celebrated.  It's also not based on anything from the films so is therefore a bit of a mystery to me.  A bit of googling tells me that this is a "BTL-B" variant of the Y-wing and is a heavy fighter/bomber with a crew of two plus astromech droid.  And this version is based on Anakin and his apprentice Ahsoka face off against the Malevolence.  Here's an image: As such, I think...