The dark side of the brick

One of the more enduring themes of recent years in the Lego Star Wars pantheon is the microfighter range.  I have to start out with the view that these aren't my favourite sets - while some of them manage a pretty good design with a relatively limited number of bricks, most of them end up quite cartoonish.  The real problem, in my view, is that the minifig is always placed on a prominent position in a way that is totally out of scale with the rest of the model. That said, I guess cartoonish is what Lego was probably going for, so maybe they've hit their mark.  I suppose these are really aimed at younger builders who probably don't have the aesthetic sensibilities that I do. Least favourite for me are the AT-ATs (and variants) with their clumpy 3x3 dish feet.  At the other end of the spectrum, the dewback and bantha are pretty good, partly because the scale is right.   So, what do you get?  In general you get around 90-100 parts (minimum was 62 with the very...

A few weeks back, I took apart the collection of Jedi Starfighters .  As a collection, I really appreciated the different design details for each Jedi's unique decoration.  A few weeks on, I'm now onto what Lego typically refers to as the "Jedi Interceptor".  In full-on lore, the terms "starfighter" and "interceptor" seem somewhat interchangeable but these are models of the Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor .  Smaller than the "starfighter", it apparently packed more firepower and is faster.  So, I know which one I'd want in a fight! Actually, I am much less keen on the interceptor than the starfighter, as a Lego model.  Maybe it's just that all of them are pretty similar?  Over 15 years, Lego really hasn't innovated very much with the design - the same hexagonal flags as wings and - almost - the same cockpit canopy (on closer inspection, there are some very subtle changes to the print design).  And there's not the varia...

Today I've gotten to Cad Bane's speeder ( 8128 ).  This is a set from Lego Star Wars' 2nd phase (one day I'll write up my contention that there were broadly 3 phases), with a wide selection of bricks used to good effect and the "large face" minifigs from that time.   I'm not a massive fan of the set: it's somewhat simplistic and has limited play features.  That said, the underside has more detail than is usual for a set of this type and there are some unique minifigs (though not Cad Bane himself as he also comes with the 8028 Turbo Tank). Overall, 6 out of 10.

Final post of the day... lots to catch up on, it seems.  Next off the shelf is the Droid Commander set from 2019.  I eagerly purchased this straight off as the concept looked really interesting and I was keen to see how it actually worked out in practice. What you get is enough bricks to build three droids: a really nicely detailed R2-D2, a pretty good Teal gonk droid and an afterthought of an imperial mouse droid.  Plus a number of random parts to build into targets and implements.  And a single control unit that you have to swap between droids. No instructions, though: they come with the app.  Which is where I started to get a bit bogged down.  I'm generally a pretty fast builder and the app wanted me to do one piece at a time before I could move to the next.  I spent the whole time pressing the "next" button which was pretty frustrating. You can also only build the R2 unit first and have to leave the rest of the parts bagged up until you've passed e...

After the Flash Speeders, I went for two sets that I've always thought were disappointing.  First up was 75216 : Snoke's Throne Room. From 2018, this is a Last Jedi set, which I've often thought is a weak film.  The set is in keeping. The pros: the minifigs aren't bad, there is quite a bit of incedental detail which just about saves the set, and there are a couple of pretty interesting pieces (30987 jumps out).  The cons: boring overall design, somewhat rubbish play features, lots of bricks wasted on sub structure.   The next one is similar vintage and from the same film: Defense of Crait ( 75202 ).  Part of my aversion to this set is the absolutely ridiculous scene from the film: your enemy is holed up on a planet with no hope of getting to orbit and in the middle of a desert.  You have complete air superiority.  What do you do?  You land some walkers some miles away across the desert, giving the plucky rebels time to launch some weird, rams...

Last week was something of a write-off with work and the weekend was spent seeing my uncle for his 75th birthday, so relatively little Lego-ing was done.  My grand deconstruction did, however, encompass the two Flash Speeders.   First up was 7124 from way back in 2000.  With only 103 bricks, this is a surprisingly good set.  Lots of parts that are now pretty rare and expensive, I got mine for a pretty good price, I seem to remember.   Lego waited 15 years to release the follow-up: 75091 . With 3x the number of bricks, the detail is obviously ramped up and this is, indeed, also a nice enough set.  Neither will go down in history as my favourites but both pretty good.

On the same theme as my earlier post, this evening I took apart the Venator-class Republic Attack Cruiser ( 8039 ), mainly because it was taking up quite a bit of shelf space.  I actually quite like this set and I like it more than the similarly sized ISDs.   What's to like: It looks pretty good (not as good as Anio's version but that's UCS scale) Lots of play features (I particularly like the bomb bay) An unusually good Palpatine figure (the big eyes from this period actually work on this minifig) Some good rare bricks It's pretty robust and I like the way that the front section hinges up  

Having created shelf space with the deconstruction of the Slave Is, I've spent much of the last week sorting bricks and rejigging my storage.  I'm in fact almost at the point where I have enough shelf space to contemplate building sets in anger again - I must have 10 sets still to build as I've barely started on the 2022 releases and still have several left over from last year. To help create space, I'm going to take apart my remaining mid-sized star destroyers.  I've written about the two UCS sets here when I took those down. I thought I'd already posted about 6211 and 75055 and didn't write about them when I deconstructed them a few weeks back.  In an oversight, I didn't even taken any photos!  To be fair, while both are pretty good playsets, I don't love either.  Not really sure why but I just found them bland.  And 6211, while looking ok for its time, feels really flimsy.  So, on to today's deconstruction: the First Order Star Destroyer ( ...

I've been trying to clear some shelves on one side of the cupboard of Lego because I need the space for my wedge plates, which are currently in a whole range of places.  Yesterday I took apart the Saturn V rocket ( 21309 ) which had been sat at the back of said shelf for some years (probably nearly 5 at a guess) as I think it's the set that has been made up for the longest.  In front of that was my collection of Slave I sets. By my reckoning, excluding the UCS edition, there are 4 "large" versions and 3 smaller ones.  The oldest is 7144 from way back in 2000.  Dating from the days of limited brick pallettes (both types cand colours), this one rocks a green and brown vibe.  It's actually a pretty similar size to the latest version ( 75312 ) which is now renamed "Boba Fett's Starship" presumably in an attempt to be politically correct and the version that came with Betrayal at Cloud City ( 75222 ).  And the old 2000 edition only has a tiny 166 bricks!...

Last weekend saw me deconstruct 75192 but this week seems to have gone by without much Legoing.  That's perhaps not quite true as I bought most of the parts for two MOCs which I'll finish off and build at some point in the next couple of weeks. However, tonight's challenge is to deconstruct the three largest non-UCS TIE fighters:  9492 from 2012 with 413 parts 75101 (First Order Special Forces TIE) from 2015 with 530 parts 75211 (Imperial TIE fighter) from 2018 with 519 parts All of these look and feel quite similar, mainly due to the fact that they all share the same basic wing design.  As such, they're all exactly the same height and depth.  That said, they are all very slightly different widths, with each slightly wider than the previous iteration. They all come with excellent detail packed in to a relatively small number of bricks and interestingly the 2018 set returns to the old printed 4x4 hatch dish that hadn't featured for years.  Equally, all have ex...