Anyone want to help me make a Space theme?

[danth]

Looks like we won't have a Space theme in 2026. So who wants to help me make one?

Idea: Pick a set or two from 2025 or 2026. Use just the parts in those sets to make Space alt builds. Spaceships, rovers, walkers, and bases. You can use multiple copies of a set to make bigger MOCs if you want. The sets are just parts packs. 

The set(s) we choose need to be readily available (not retired). Obviously we want sets with windscreens and wheels and cool parts. Between Star Wars, Ninjago, and City, there should be plenty of sets with good parts. 

This wouldn't be a contest. It'd be just for fun. And we'd vote on which sets to use as our parts packs. Then we just pick what we want to make. We can collaborate on color schemes, designs, and who's making what. 

Anyone interested?

[SpacePolice89]

I can build something if needed in a common color scheme but I won't be buying any new sets (I'll use pieces that I already own instead). 

[Stereo]

The "remix" City sets might be good for this, their main downside I see is hard to make a consistent colour theme. Maybe you could flip that on its head and say it leaves room for multiple factions from the same set. But a mix of land/sea/air means all the types of parts you need for Space.  Just scanning through "new for 2026," 76461 has the ingredients of a good ship, but I'm not going to pay retail for it.  I might mess around in Studio with its parts and hope to catch one on sale.

Edited February 22 by Stereo

[Black Falcon]

Dreamzzz and Ninjago would probably good sources for it, but I don´t think I actually own any Set that would meet the requirement of beeing still in production.

[danth]

I should probably explain my  main reasons for wanting to use new sets as "parts packs". They are:

1. so people can easily get the parts in order to participate
2. to automatically get a cohesive set of colors, logos, and minifigs
3. so that if someone comes up with a really good set, it'd be easy for others to build the set out of real bricks, by just buying the same "parts pack" set(s).

 

8 hours ago, Stereo said:

The "remix" City sets might be good for this, their main downside I see is hard to make a consistent colour theme. Maybe you could flip that on its head and say it leaves room for multiple factions from the same set. But a mix of land/sea/air means all the types of parts you need for Space.  Just scanning through "new for 2026," 76461 has the ingredients of a good ship,

5 hours ago, Black Falcon said:

Dreamzzz and Ninjago would probably good sources for it

I think the City Remix, Dreamzzz, and Ninjago are all great ideas for "parts pack" sets!

76461 is a surprise pick but I see where you're going. Definitely has cool colors and enough canopies.  

9 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I can build something if needed in a common color scheme but I won't be buying any new sets (I'll use pieces that I already own instead). 

8 hours ago, Stereo said:

but I'm not going to pay retail for it.  I might mess around in Studio with its parts and hope to catch one on sale.

5 hours ago, Black Falcon said:

but I don´t think I actually own any Set that would meet the requirement of being still in production.

Hmm. If people want to participate without buying sets, we can totally do Studio. Rendering in Studio is easy, so who needs real bricks? If we want to use Studio we could even choose bigger, more expensive sets for our "parts packs". However not everyone likes Studio and it can be tricky/frustrating at first. 

Or we can just allow any part (either in Studio or real parts in your own collection), as long you try to use parts that "fit" with the chosen sets, just to make it easy to participate. 

@SpacePolice89 and @Black Falcon, are you up for using Studio or would you rather stick to real parts?

[SpacePolice89]

1 hour ago, danth said:

I should probably explain my  main reasons for wanting to use new sets as "parts packs". They are:

1. so people can easily get the parts in order to participate
2. to automatically get a cohesive set of colors, logos, and minifigs
3. so that if someone comes up with a really good set, it'd be easy for others to build the set out of real bricks, by just buying the same "parts pack" set(s).

 

I think the City Remix, Dreamzzz, and Ninjago are all great ideas for "parts pack" sets!

76461 is a surprise pick but I see where you're going. Definitely has cool colors and enough canopies.  

Hmm. If people want to participate without buying sets, we can totally do Studio. Rendering in Studio is easy, so who needs real bricks? If we want to use Studio we could even choose bigger, more expensive sets for our "parts packs". However not everyone likes Studio and it can be tricky/frustrating at first. 

Or we can just allow any part (either in Studio or real parts in your own collection), as long you try to use parts that "fit" with the chosen sets, just to make it easy to participate. 

@SpacePolice89 and @Black Falcon, are you up for using Studio or would you rather stick to real parts?

I don't particularly enjoy digital building so I'd prefer to use real bricks.

[Stereo]

I'm definitely thinking more oriented towards interesting parts and workable colours than the minifigs.  The extent I thought about figures, the plan was "get out some Classic Space figs to pose in the build."   In terms of buying a set for this purpose I guess what I'd say is that in general I'm trying to cut back the growth of my collection, so if I'm buying a set (or even multiple copies) I want to be happy with the A-model as a fallback when I'm done messing around with MOCs.  So in that regard Dreamzzz is better than a random Harry Potter display set that happens to come with canopies.  I'd just rather make specific suggestions than say "yeah that's a good idea, anything can be a spaceship."  I'm fine designing digitally but I do consider that only the first 80% of making a MOC, the last fine tune has to be in actual parts if there's anything at all functional in the build.

[Black Falcon]

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I don't particularly enjoy digital building so I'd prefer to use real bricks.

Same here. I´ve done it before, but certainly that was a more basic build than a Spaceship and has been a while anyways. I´ll just see if some set that would work is avaiable for a nice discount somewhere.

[Siroco]

Set 60430 is a great "part pack" for the theme, and its still available, but there are already so many variations of it that will be dificult to be original.

 

[danth]

15 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I don't particularly enjoy digital building so I'd prefer to use real bricks.

14 hours ago, Stereo said:

in general I'm trying to cut back the growth of my collection, so if I'm buying a set (or even multiple copies) I want to be happy with the A-model as a fallback when I'm done messing around with MOCs. 

13 hours ago, Black Falcon said:

Same here. I´ve done it before, but certainly that was a more basic build than a Spaceship and has been a while anyways. I´ll just see if some set that would work is avaiable for a nice discount somewhere.

So in general there's a preference for real bricks and/or a hesitance to buy more stuff (especially just for something like this). Totally fair. 

39 minutes ago, Siroco said:

Set 60430 is a great "part pack" for the theme, and its still available, but there are already so many variations of it that will be dificult to be original.

Agreed on both counts. I'm kinda thinking the people who like 2024/25 City Space have already bought the sets and/or built MOCs in the theme.

14 hours ago, Stereo said:

I'm definitely thinking more oriented towards interesting parts and workable colours than the minifigs.  The extent I thought about figures, the plan was "get out some Classic Space figs to pose in the build."  

That's a good point about figures. The odds are, if we're picking a "parts pack" set, it's unlikely to have good "astronaut" minifig parts, unless it's an actual Space set of some kind. 

What do people think of the new educational sets? They're Space, have astronauts, have an interesting color scheme, lots of windscreens and wheels, but don't have much in the way of official builds other than the rover. 

[Stereo]

34 minutes ago, danth said:

That's a good point about figures. The odds are, if we're picking a "parts pack" set, it's unlikely to have good "astronaut" minifig parts, unless it's an actual Space set of some kind. 

I thought about that more, and another direction to go with it could be to pick a smaller set with 2+ figures and helmets, and get uniformity through having multiple copies of the set.  As an example, 71826 could turn into "gold faction" and "black faction" and both look fine in space.  More ideally they'd have 2 actual heads so you can swap those to create variety within the groups.

[icm]

40 minutes ago, danth said:

What do people think of the new educational sets? They're Space, have astronauts, have an interesting color scheme, lots of windscreens and wheels, but don't have much in the way of official builds other than the rover. 

I'm interested in the set with the rover, but only at a steep discount. I don't have as much time and space for building and modding sets as I used to, so I'm less interested in buying sets just as fun modding platforms. The base model of the rover is decent, but I'm not as starved for Space rovers as I used to be, and I haven't taken the time to figure out what I'd rather build on the rover bed instead of the rock-kick lever.

[SpacePolice89]

One problem is that most modern in house themes have no common color scheme whatsoever. One of the few recent modern sets that I own is Dreamzzz 71487 and I used it for an alternate build a while ago (the minifig has some added pieces). That color scheme would be very suitable for a full modern Space lineup.