The dark side of the brick

Today's build was the 2011 Darth Maul's Sith Infiltrator ( 7961 ).  Weighing in a 479 pieces, this should have been a relatively quick build but I kept finding I'd missed pieces so had to keep going back to the Lego Cave to get the right bricks (I'm halfway through a post on my issues with dark red vs. reddish brown and defective colour vision).  I reckon this added several hundred steps to my daily count but also probably half an hour to the build. I've still got the 2015 version (75096) to build up and I'll do a proper comparison between the various sets at that point but on a standalone basis, I really like this version.   A bit of scouting finds an image from the Star Wars Vehicle Guide: This shows that the Lego version captures the lines pretty well - my only complaint would be the join between the front and back halves of the build which leads to a gap where the original had a smooth ridge.  I love the cockpit area, though, with its great rounded design an...

I didn't have much time to build today so I reconstructed my two copies of the mini Tie Fighter polybag ( 8028 ).  I think both of these were picked up at car boots as 2012 was in my pre-dawn "darkish ages".  Apparently, this was a giveaway with the Sun newspaper so would have been pretty common.   It's not the greatest Lego set ever but retains the blue decal design of the early Lego tie fighters and has a reasonable amount of detail for the very limited number of pieces (just 44).  I thought, however, it would be fun to compare this to the full set of Lego tie fighters under 100 pieces.  I've limited myself to only "classic" hexagon wing Ties, excluding any of the bomber, advanced or interceptor variants.  I alo excluded the age 4+ Tie Fighter Attack set (75237) which does come in under 100 pieces but only because it is so simple; it went out on the grounds that it's not a mini set.  Here's what I think is the full collection: On the back row w...

1,004 part selections over 6 days and I'm now ready to build 6 more sets.  The 10179 Falcon will be built towards the end of the week but I'm going to do a few smaller sets first.  First out of the blocks is Ezra's speeder bike ( 75090 ) which I bought some years ago mainly to get hold of an Ezra minifig.   This set is from the expanded universe and therefore is one I'm less familiar with the background.  My main experience is Angry Birds Star Wars II which has a memorable Sabine Wren "bird".  A bit of background reading tells me that Ezra's surname is Bridger and he was an early figure in the rebellion, working alongside Captain Rex in the Clone Wars and a grapple with Grand Admiral Thrawn (now I did read the original Thrawn books back in the 1990s). Back to the Lego set... It took me a bit of effort to work out which of the two versions I had bought!  Rebrickable has two versions which differ in the arms of the speeder bikes.  I'd logged myself ...

This is going to be the final build for a week or so - my next job is to pick the parts for the 2007 UCS Falcon, along with the UCS B-wing and 4-5 other sets (I've found it's most efficient to dump all the parts into a long list in a spreadsheet and then pick for multiple sets at once... it minimises the number of times I go back into each box.  So I do about 1,000 individual part picks over about a week and then build for a week... and then reward myself with a couple of new builds.  Rinse and repeat.  Just in case you're wondering why I'm following this, frankly, insane regime, I set out some of the reasons here but forgot to say that I'm also aiming to have all of the Lego Star Wars sets built at once - I reckon I'll get there by about May 2021 which gives me a few months to buy the last 30 or so sets I don't own).   Anyway, on to the review... 75317 THE Mandalorian & THE Child (capitalisation apparently important in indicating singularity) is nearl...

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...

Another build from new today - I picked up the reissued Death Star Final Duel ( 75291 ) recently, after putting off buying it for a while because I feared it was going to be quite similar to the original 2015 version ( 75093 ).  And I've built that twice in the last year or so because I got a second set in a Lego job lot I bought: it was quite fun working through the fact that I'd purchased about 10 sets plus random minifigs for £52 but it did mean I became quite familiar with the set as I worked out from the bricks what I had.   As an aside, I'm still in awe of my cousin (another Lego fan) and his son who managed to pick up a massive job lot from a charity shop which included the whole Ewok village, the Ninjago Temple of Airjitzu, the 2014 UCS sandcrawler and quite possibly also the UCS Slave I amongst other sets for "pennies".  Quite apart from the fact that this equates to hundreds of pounds of Ebay purchases, I remain bemused by the fact that someone would dum...

Today's build was the 8098 Clone Turbo Tank which I finally got second hand from Ebay.  I was reasonably pleased with the condition of this one but managed to find 4 or 5 broken or seriously damanged pieces and another 10 or so missing.  Fortunately, I've managed to replace all the parts from my spares, though the replacement Ahsoka minifig (which the seller was clear was missing) is still in the post.   The build was pretty fun but not the best I've ever done.  The first section did the various extras - a mini AT scout walker, a gun rack and a command post.  The next section then did the main structure of the tank (including the wheels) and the final section did all the side panelling.  The finished tank looks pretty cool: In particular, I love the way that all of the extras can be stored securely inside - I don't recall seeing anything like the approach used here on any other set! This set also has two of the super-rare scala dishes which I want for...

My Hermes delivery driver outdid himself just before Christmas and managed to deliver three Ebay purchases just before a well-earned break.  I'll get to the others in a bit - they still need to be cleaned and sorted (and one of them is definitely from someone who smokes like a chimney!).  The first, however, was the UCS Naboo Starfighter ( 10026 ) which I've been looking out for a decent copy of at a reasonable price for ages.   My copy of the Star Wars Complete Vehicles states that the chromium finish of Naboo vehicles originates in a need for "protection from harmful rays in the planet's upper atmosphere".  While no longer needed, royal craft retained the look as a symbol - and only royal craft can carry the "hand finished chromium treatment".   Regardless of the lore, chrome lego is pretty rare and its propensity to get scratched (how many chromed lightsaber handles have damage!) means that mint condition is a rarity.  But it looks incredible w...

Review: Lego Mos Eisley Cantina 75290 Having spent the last couple of weeks rebuilding sets I've had for a while, I've rewarded myself with a new build - I've picked the massive Mos Eisley Cantina set ( 75290 ) which I bought a few months back and has been taking up the shelf space I've earmarked for the original 2007 UCS Falcon when I get around to rebuilding that. There is no doubt that this is a great set, in my view.  The detail is incredible and the sheer scale of it is awesome.  Some facts: 3186 parts 21 minifigures including no less than 9 unique ones (Ponda Baba and Garindan are my two particular favourites) Polybags labelled 1-18 (though I counted 27 individual bags + 1 with large parts and the separate dewback) 408 page instruction manual It's taken me two days to build it, though I've not been bricking obsessively through that time.  That has, however, led to repeated earworms of Cantina/Copacabana song (probably showing my age again!). Did I like it...