PRESS RELEASE for LEGO 75222 - Betrayal at Cloud City Announcement

[nymmerod]

I asked in the Rumor thread but that has conversation has been shut down by the mods. Does anyone know why Lego is listing Lobot’s cybernetic band as an accessory? What do they mean? Is that just a reference to a new head print for Lobot? I can't see any accessory in the photos. I'm confused.

[Dukeside]

Can't believe people are really complaining about lack of Willrow Hood. Lego sells toys, not memes. I think the set itself is rather good. The landing pad seems like a bit of a waste, maybe a good chance to create a closed quarter of cloud city there instead. I searched a ton of CC images a while back and I didn't think any of them were very good, this is about as good as I've seen. A bottom section would have been nice but I think we will see some customs for that as well.

[Only Sinner]

I think the cloud car is a good size. Much bigger and then it would probably have been oversized. That would be a great set of it’s own.

[dvogon]

Looking at the photos with more detail, I'm getting convinced that the idea of having just one deck isn't a good one. There are many small rooms that could be better placed in smaller decks up or down the main floor. It could lead to a more logical arrangement of rooms, like Leia's room at the top of the city and the trash room at the bottom.

I realise looking at this set how good the Death Star design is. It has no cluttered rooms. Each section has a clearly separate room, with ease access to increase playability and scene display value. There is a central elevator to tie all together. The set is equally rounded no matter from what point of view it's seen, and every angle is a good one. In this set the landing pad just break the rounded structure. The freezing chamber/bridge room doesn't help neither.

Being taller with more decks means also more options to give depth to the set, which is something this set really lacks. It happens, for instance, with the broken bridge scene in the Death Star with Luke and Leia and the stormtroopers at different deck levels, which was greatly designed in the set. Here there is a similar deep scene with the duel of Darth Vader and Luke, but there is no place to fall down nor any way to get sucked by something below in the city.

They missed the opportunity to recreate the iconic freezing chamber scene. The lack of the upper part of the freezing device and the stairs (as pointed out by others) are important for the depth of the scene. The stairs should run downwards (instead of upwards as in the Freezing Chamber set). It also should have a floor somewhere below. However in the CC set the chamber just float like the bridge in the scene close to it, giving a weird impression. That's another problem of mixing scenes in the same section.

Can't wait to get it to mod it 

[Borex]

9 minutes ago, Only Sinner said:

I think the cloud car is a good size. Much bigger and then it would probably have been oversized. That would be a great set of it’s own.

A twin pod cloud car UCS could be nice. Think of all those orange bricks!

[Scarilian]

*Old set for comparison

Pros;

• Inclusion of the Freezing Chamber, Dining Room, Torture Room and The Battle with Vader all make sense to be included and are all improvements over what was included in '10123 - Cloud City' in regards to colour scheme, design and display along with prior versions we have gotten in sets.
• Vehicle designs are well done, very smooth and the Slave One is an improvement over other variations we have had in the past
• Inclusion of a large amount of figures

Cons;

• Allocation of parts and pieces is disasterous with aspects that are not needed getting more pieces and development than aspects any fan would want to recieve focus on
• Slave One should have been a seperate set, the inclusion of a massive segment devoted to a landing pad is unnecessary and adds to the price, it makes no sense for it to be included here rather than as a seperate set
• Some of the rooms feel like a 'first draft' as they are incredibly empty and lacking.
• Colours clash terribly with no sense that they all belong to the same location, no real sense of connectivity between the segments.
• Addition of the roof segmented is not only innacurate in regards to scale, but very price consuming for something that is utterly useless - in regards to structual integrity, display and playability
• Price is awful. Especially considering the lack of strength Star Wars has had as a brand in recent years coupled with comparisons (Hogwarts Castle is similarily priced for 6020 pieces) while some may bring up the figure difference, they are primarily not new figures and many lack printing 3000+ pieces should not equate to the cost of 14 extra figures.

Overall;
The idea of it being entirely playset focused in the current age was a bad decision. Unlike the Death Star, this is not impressive to look at nor does it feature enough of a display aspect to warrant keeping these rooms connected if brought. The iconic aspects of Cloud City are featured with varying levels of focus and detailing. The previous Cloud City was released at a time where the primary audience was younger however the main interest for cloud city nowadays comes adult fans or older fans. Those are also the primary audience capable of actually purchasing this set, especially given the state of Star Wars currently in regards to it's decreasing popularity. The set has a lack of focus with some rooms getting more focus than others - the main aspects being focused on being the vehicles, roof display, sensor room, freezing room and torture room. While some of the designs are interesting, they do not work well together and should have almost certainly been seperated into vignettes or potentially seperate sets in regards to Slave One. This is not a set i am interested in getting, as it fails as a playset by having the focus put on aspects that the playabiltiy would be limited or non-existent on and failing as a display piece given most the rooms look and feel empty and have colours and designs clashing.

4 hours ago, Dukeside said:

Can't believe people are really complaining about lack of Willrow Hood. Lego sells toys, not memes.

Even though i was unfamiliar with the character, it provides something a little extra and generally build on the idea of Cloud City being a 'city' rather than just a place all the iconic characters are hanging out. I would have preffered to have a different character instead of just variations of characters i already have, such as another Han and Leia in Hoth Outfits. It would also be another dark skinned character, this time with a moustache - which could result in a new facial print or a re-use of the facial print used in the Ghostbusters and Jurassic World sets - either way, a facial print that many want to have. Couple this with the idea of the figure being exclusive to the Cloud City set, adding extra appeal to justify the pricing.

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by Scarilian
Typo fixed, trimmed text for space

[Lord Insanity]

Well I was expecting a "Death Star" style play set so in that regard I am quite happy.  The landing pad is a total miss though.  It should have been sitting up and sticking out slightly over a grey circular floor like the rooms to either side.  By not having the floor there it totally kills the implied Cloud City shape.  The carbon freeze chamber / lightsaber duel areas at least have the excuse they were supposed to be over "bottomless" pit areas.

While on principle I hate when things that should be separate sets are included in larger sets, that Slave I is my new favorite version of the ship.  Finally an updated classic system scale 7144 Slave I instead of those $100 & up monstrosities they have been releasing.  Of course it's not being sold as a separate set like it should be.  I suspect this is based on the complaint from Assault on Hoth that there was no AT-AT set available at the time. (We just had the perfect add on set released in the past month instead of when Assault on Hoth was available too.)  I just don't understand the Lego Company sometimes.  They really need to line up complimentary sets in the same wave.  Instead they would apparently rather cram everything into one set to the detriment of things that must be in said set.

Why didn't they use dark orange for the cloud car.  It's not red.  Even regular orange would have been better than red.  If you don't have time to actually watch the scene in the movie just look at the picture on the official Star Wars wiki.

Price is clearly reflecting the Star War tax so :-P for that.

Overall I am fairly happy with it.  It needs several MODs of course but it is far better than either its predecessor or I was actually expecting.

[KevinYoung]

Its ok nothing great or anything that really jumps out. Was hoping they go in a different direction but they didn't.

[Cylo]

This set looks ok, but I don't like how they tried putting stud shooters on the Slave I. C'mon, this is classified by TLG as a UCS set! They should not have stud shooters!

[darththeling]

41 minutes ago, dvogon said:

Can't wait to get it to mod it 

Tell me about it. I'm already jumbling multicolored pieces together from my spare bin to get a sense of the dimensions. For the fussy modder, this set is a hell of a great starting point for an outstanding MOD.

 

21 minutes ago, Lord Insanity said:

Why didn't they use dark orange for the cloud car.  It's not red.  Even regular orange would have been better than red.  If you don't have time to actually watch the scene in the movie just look at the picture on the official Star Wars wiki.

Inclined to agree with you, although I read today that the Empire Strikes Back cloud car studio filming model was apparently red - we see orange in it because of the light saturation in the scenes on Bespin - they arrive at sunset.

Of course it's confusing because all the Cloud Car toys since then (including the original Kenner toy) appear to be orange as well. Pretty sure they are straight up orange in the videogames like Battlefront. Anyway... for those that prefer orange, they can moc away at it. For me, I've two vintage 7119's that are going in. The landing pad should fit one of them very nicely. 

On that note - I am really not liking that Slave-1 and will be junking it for parts. Would have prefered -$10-$15 off in relative price value, really. I know why it's in the set but... most of us already have at least one version of Slave-1. 

 

EDIT: Just found someone made this, for scale: That extra triangular wedge around CC's circumference really gives it some girth.

Edited August 21, 2018 by darththeling

[lightningtiger]

I just had to put that there..........I love it and this might be my first UCS set  

[MartinCliffe]

I like it, ticks most of the required boxes for me (I’m a system scale set guy not a UCS collector) and the weak pound makes it an easy Christmas present decision for myself!

[Mountain Drew]

I know this is irrelevant now, but that "leaked" Lando fig was indeed a fake.

 

[ISDAvenger]

• This amazing set is part of the LEGO® Star Wars Master Builder Series.

I am surprised no one has mentioned this bullet comment. Be interesting what future sets comes out of this....maybe a new UCS Star Destroyer?

In reference to the BACC, overall I think it is pretty cool set and will probably buy it. There will alway be pros and cons to every design.

 

 

[aroseinbloom]

For those of you who are as concerned about Leia's hairpiece as I am, either of Rey's hairpieces make for a decent replacement. There's probably some others to choose from as well.

Edited August 22, 2018 by ShadowStrike

[Scarilian]

4 hours ago, nymmerod said:

I asked in the Rumor thread but that has conversation has been shut down by the mods. Does anyone know why Lego is listing Lobot’s cybernetic band as an accessory? What do they mean? Is that just a reference to a new head print for Lobot? I can't see any accessory in the photos. I'm confused.

As far as i can tell, Lego are lying to make the set sound better than it is. In this case they are advertising a printed head as 'an accessory', given we see Lobot with his Cybernetic Band printed on his head.

[DarthHank]

I think it's great; not perfect, but about as good as could be expected. The exterior of cloud city is pretty dull, and if not perfectly-shaped it would be completely unrecognizable. I don't see any way they could have had a nice exterior while still having an interior (and remaining stable, and under $1000). Really, it's no uglier than the death star set (which I love, I should say). Some locations are easy to replicate with a nice exterior and interior, the Ewok village being the most notable example, but the death star and cloud city just aren't well-suited for it. I do agree with some people who say it's a little cramped in places, and I think the Slave 1, landing platform, and cloud car should have been separate from this set to free up room to make it less cramped and more cohesive (or flesh out the control room from the Vader/Luke duel), but those are minor complaints in my eyes. The only thing that might hold me back from buying it for a while is the price.

 

[Forresto]

I think it would have been stronger if they had focused on cohesion and fewer rooms with more space and pieces. 

For instance the organization of the dining room, corridor, and apartment (?) feels cramped and creates far too much dead space on a model of this price due to the overall shape.

Why does the cloud car need a landing strip? Another massive dead space.

In my opinion they should've fleshed out and expanded the spaces Luke and Vader duel since that's the crux of Bespin.

I actually think the set is fantastic and will be better in person but for this price point it should've been more on point.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Forresto

[Mountain Drew]

I just noticed that Lando's cape has printing, and it only makes me love the minifig even more

[marshall]

I think this is a fantastic set, but overall I have some mixed feelings. I've been waiting a really long time for this set, and I previously took a stab at my own version to hold me over until this came out (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/94595-cloud-city-play-set-moc/). 

For the size of this set (that footprint is huge!), I do think a two-level approach would have yielded much better results. I think the vehicles are fantastic.

There is a ton to love about the set, but I guess ultimately I expected it to be better. The Death Star is my all-time favorite set, and to me everything about it is perfect... and the organization of this set doesn't quite hold up to that standard. I always expected I'd be buying this when it came out, but now having seen it, I think I'll just steal some of the design elements (especially the carbon freezing platform) and incorporate into my previous MOC (which I've been meaning to update/polish for a couple years). If I hadn't already built my own version (which I think I'm biased in favor of), I'd definitely buy this set ASAP. 

 

 

[Khscarymovie4]

Wow, younger me what have exploded this year, new Yoda's Hut and Cloud City. Great year for Empire. I think the set looks great. I love the midscale vehicles included, and all the areas from the film seem to be here. Only problems would be I wish it looked better as an exterior set, maybe add some to the empty spaces, and make new Carbonite mold. The $350 price will be hard to swallow as I usually don't spend that high but it looks worth it. 

[ARIEL-1970]

This is a great playset for kids but I think if they had the slave I and it's platform as a separate set they could have used the bricks from that section to enhance or largen the existing set then had a 2nd set with slave I as an expansion set. I think they would have sold more sets and made more money in the process. Having more smooth tiles for the flooring would have made it look more slick, the landing platform in all it's stud glory looks very early 2000'sish 

[TeufelHund]

I like it - they've done a good job squeezing just about every room from the film into the model. I guess you won't be able to fit a MF on the landing pad but I think they can be forgiven for that one.

The name is great too - I suspect TLG are trolling us over "insult on Hoth".

[prateek]

I want this just for that Slave I. $400 is definitely a no go though aha

8 hours ago, lightningtiger said:

I just had to put that there..........I love it and this might be my first UCS set  

Not UCS anymore my friend 

 

[incognito]

7 hours ago, ISDAvenger said:

• This amazing set is part of the LEGO® Star Wars Master Builder Series.

I am surprised no one has mentioned this bullet comment. Be interesting what future sets comes out of this....maybe a new UCS Star Destroyer?

 

 

 

wouldn't a UCS Star Destroyer by definition be a UCS model and not a Master Builder Series model? (since this set is not a UCS model according to the box)