LEGO Star Wars 2020 Set Discussion - READ FIRST POST!!!

[Sabre-aN]

Arm printing for Vader is a nice surprise! I imagine he'll be in high demand on Bricklink. Doesn't make the new final duel worth buying to me personally but I'm more of a "semi-retired" army builder so I'm not exactly in the market for a big playset like that. I would like the fig though! Funny how the Royal Guards still have that same torso print they've had for decades, normally Lego would have fiddled with it plenty of times by now.

I actually think the AAT looks a little worse now that there are high res pictures and we can see it in detail. The turnaround video on Lego.com of it also does it no favours, from the side the cannon really does look ridiculously long, and the rear looks awful - is it so hard to do something like on the 2009 one and have at least the appearance of a sloped rear hatch, even if it doesn't open, & then have some small side slopes at the back of the 'skirt' for stability, instead of the ugly flat protusion in the centre? As it is the rear of this new one reminds me of the original 2000 AAT. I do quite like the way they've done the 2 consoles for the driver though, it's simple but nice.

The Airborne Trooper's kama does indeed seem to be dark gray rather than light gray like the previous one, nice to have a new variant for that - I think I'll have to Bricklink a few. The printed hips & legs are quite interesting, they've printed the buckle for the kama onto the hips and they've printed the straps that go from it to the kama onto the legs at the very top, you can just about see them. Weird how detailed they've made him, and yet they couldn't get the jet trooper's legs right or inclue the dot on the 'i' of the 501st chests pieces. Worth noting from the turnaround vids that the 501st and 332nd troopers don't have any blue on the back of their torsos, which matches the TCW 501st but not the movie 501st who had the back 'console' coloured in blue.

Also now that we have official images of all the new clones I whipped up a quick comparison so I could see what they would look like with black hips and/or coloured arms like they used to have, might also be of use to someone else:

I think I'm just not a fan of how plain some of them look as standard, especially the 332nd Ahsoka Trooper, without blue arms to represent the blue shoulder armour they have it just doesn't look right to me. I'm still miffed about the jet trooper's legs being standard 501st ones too, and the shaded in cheeks on the 501st and 332nd helmets are still a bit annoying. But otherwise I'm warming to the design - I was only planning on picking up one of the 501st sets for sentimental reasons but I think I might pick up 2 or 3 now, bricklink some 332nd, and then swap out the arms and hips to make a nice little mini-army, even if they're not quite what I would have ideally wanted.

[Paul11283652]

The Soulless One looks like better value when considering the size. It’s bigger than the Night Buzzard. The latter is disappointing though. No decent interior and overpriced in Australia, both $120. 

I’ll be glad to get Allah Gold’s Eta-2 to swoosh around with Ratio Tile’s and say “game time started.”

Also I’ll buy two each of the AAT and the battle pack, one to build now and one to put sell for $1000 in a few years.

[Childish_Landino]

2 hours ago, NeutralNoodle said:

If this set includes Bespin Luke and the new Vader with arm printing, that actually sounds like a great value. It would probably be cheaper than if you bought them both on BrickLink or something. 

I wouldn't be so quick to assume the set is in reference to the Luke v. Vader Bespin Duel. It may, but I personally have heard nothing to confirm that, I just know it is Bespin related. It is ~$40. Set number is 75294. 

[icm]

The Night Buzzard looks great - if and only if I think of it as a "midi-scale" version, similar to the midi-scale Millennium Falcon and Imperial Star Destroyer from ten years ago.  It doesn't have nearly enough interior space to count as System minifigure playscale.  The new Jedi Interceptor looks pretty good from the outside, but it'll need modding so that the pilot can sit upright like in all the previous versions.  The ITS transport actually looks like a really good model with a very accurate shape and a reasonably large, playable interior at a reasonable price.  It's a pity that it's such a boring, obscure ship!  General Grievous's starfighter looks like a really good model - it's smoother and more accurate than the previous version by leaps and bounds.  The price, unfortunately, is awful.

[TeddytheSpoon]

41 minutes ago, Childish_Landino said:

I wouldn't be so quick to assume the set is in reference to the Luke v. Vader Bespin Duel. It may, but I personally have heard nothing to confirm that, I just know it is Bespin related. It is ~$40. Set number is 75294. 

Perhaps a cloud car then? Would be interesting to see what they could do with that at $40.

[Rayskull]

Like that Corvette, very nice in general, I only wish they would make a real windscreen work.  But amazing shaping looks like a good ship for some Mando's.    

 

The final Duel is astonishing.

[lego_guyon02]

1 hour ago, Sabre-aN said:

Also now that we have official images of all the new clones I whipped up a quick comparison so I could see what they would look like with black hips and/or coloured arms like they used to have, might also be of use to someone else:

Wow.... just wow.... literally every single one of those edits looks better than LEGO's official version 

[samsz_3]

1 hour ago, Sabre-aN said:

Arm printing for Vader is a nice surprise! I imagine he'll be in high demand on Bricklink. Doesn't make the new final duel worth buying to me personally but I'm more of a "semi-retired" army builder so I'm not exactly in the market for a big playset like that. I would like the fig though! Funny how the Royal Guards still have that same torso print they've had for decades, normally Lego would have fiddled with it plenty of times by now.

I actually think the AAT looks a little worse now that there are high res pictures and we can see it in detail. The turnaround video on Lego.com of it also does it no favours, from the side the cannon really does look ridiculously long, and the rear looks awful - is it so hard to do something like on the 2009 one and have at least the appearance of a sloped rear hatch, even if it doesn't open, & then have some small side slopes at the back of the 'skirt' for stability, instead of the ugly flat protusion in the centre? As it is the rear of this new one reminds me of the original 2000 AAT. I do quite like the way they've done the 2 consoles for the driver though, it's simple but nice.

The Airborne Trooper's kama does indeed seem to be dark gray rather than light gray like the previous one, nice to have a new variant for that - I think I'll have to Bricklink a few. The printed hips & legs are quite interesting, they've printed the buckle for the kama onto the hips and they've printed the straps that go from it to the kama onto the legs at the very top, you can just about see them. Weird how detailed they've made him, and yet they couldn't get the jet trooper's legs right or inclue the dot on the 'i' of the 501st chests pieces. Worth noting from the turnaround vids that the 501st and 332nd troopers don't have any blue on the back of their torsos, which matches the TCW 501st but not the movie 501st who had the back 'console' coloured in blue.

Also now that we have official images of all the new clones I whipped up a quick comparison so I could see what they would look like with black hips and/or coloured arms like they used to have, might also be of use to someone else:

I think I'm just not a fan of how plain some of them look as standard, especially the 332nd Ahsoka Trooper, without blue arms to represent the blue shoulder armour they have it just doesn't look right to me. I'm still miffed about the jet trooper's legs being standard 501st ones too, and the shaded in cheeks on the 501st and 332nd helmets are still a bit annoying. But otherwise I'm warming to the design - I was only planning on picking up one of the 501st sets for sentimental reasons but I think I might pick up 2 or 3 now, bricklink some 332nd, and then swap out the arms and hips to make a nice little mini-army, even if they're not quite what I would have ideally wanted.

Thanks for sharing. Comparing to photos from ROTS and CW I'm glad they didn't use black hips, it just looks wrong and nothing like the figures. The arms are a bit more complicated. The clones only have blue shoulder pads and the arms are mainly white, so white arms does make sense. However LEGO isn't meant to be an exact copy of the source material and it could be argued that blue arms would fit the "LEGO asthetic better". I wish they'd done dual moulded or blue print on white arms, but I understand why not for a £25 set. Unlike some of the previous comments about figures being too detailed I think this is one instance where dual moulding/printing would look so much better. Personally, if they could only do one colour I'm glad they went with white, but I think this will (understandably) be quite subjective.

[Kit Figsto]

I actually think the black hips look way better, the white just looks...off...to me.  I know that there's only a little bit of black where the hip armor has gaps, but limitations in the medium just mean that they can either go all black or all white - and the black contrast looks more appealing to me.  The blue arms also look significantly better, especially on the Ahsoka trooper.  Mainly, I just wish they'd stick to one design, it's really hard to build a clone force when the design gets changed around every 3 years.

26 minutes ago, TeddytheSpoon said:

Perhaps a cloud car then? Would be interesting to see what they could do with that at $40.

Yeah I'm curious too.  If it was supposed to be a convention exclusive, I feel like those tend to not be traditional sets and more of display pieces.  I'm going to expect a microscale version of Cloud City, but who knows.  I could also see some sort of square/round thing broken up into 3-4 vignettes to represent the iconic scenes (hallway, dining room, carbon freezing, duel platform), (something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a9F-_hzLU, not my video but just an example) but that could be a bit too much for $40. 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Kit Figsto

[Felkin]

Is anyone else disappointed they missed the chance to put the Sith holocron wayfinder behind a panel in the Emperor's throne room?

[lego_guyon02]

3 minutes ago, Felkin said:

Is anyone else disappointed they missed the chance to put the Sith holocron wayfinder behind a panel in the Emperor's throne room?

Sets are usually designed a fairly long time in advance of the release. Regardless of this set being a remake I highly doubt the designers knew this small little detail from Ep9 before finishing up the design and moving on to other things.

[Trance89]

Loved to see a pit droid in the advent calendar.

The AAT is completely out of proportion. The bottom part really need to be bigger and more disc shaped. The top part looks good though.

 

[Mandalorianknight]

According to mandrproductions, the $40 set and bespin convention exclusive are different sets.

I guess he's been right before with vader's castle and the 501st set, so I guess it's a possibility.

If true this begs the question, what is the $40 set? @jdubbs hint makes it sound like a 40th anniversary empire strikes back set, but I'm not sure what it could be at that price. A larger version of hoth attack? Another snowspeeder, this time just more overpriced?

 

[2maxwell]

Seeing the AAT up close, I still like the set a lot but I'm going to modify a lot of small things on that sucker.

[ToaDraco]

I'm glad to finally get hd pictures of everything. The Night Buzzard looks excellent and is still the set I want most but there are few things I wish were better. While I like the inclusion of opening hatches for the Knights to pop out of, it doesn't look like there's actually enough room or even a way to put them all the way inside and that sucks. There is enough room for a prisoner or 2 in the cargo hold so that's nice and shows some attention to detail as it was once a prison ship. Seeing the in-progress picture does highlight how thin the whole thing is and how few parts really go into it bringing the value of the whole thing down when compared to its price. It's still nothing compared to the Soulless One. Really, all of the sets are overpriced but that one is still an outlier. I'm still really excited to pick up the Night Buzzard and the designers really did a fantastic job replicating it in LEGO. 

The Soulless One looks much better than in previous pictures, the box art does not do it justice but having better pictures also makes the price seem even more egregious. 

The AAT still looks really good to me despite its flaws and the new images improve it in my eyes. The back isn't as bad as some have said. Overall it still looks like it should be $30 not $40.

Anakin's Eta-2 looks like a nice update and if I'm being honest with myself, I'll probably end up getting it because I'm a sucker for Eta-2s and it's a relatively cheap set. There are slight improvements but what would have really sold it for me is if they had come up with something else for the cockpit. I'm so tired of that piece. It works and lokks somehat accurate but LEGO can do so much better. The reused Mustafar Anakin is unacceptable. Honestly, I wish this were his green Eta-2, then the figure would make sense and the set would immediately turn into a must-have. The old one isn't up the modern design standards and is way too expensive on the aftermarket. 

I'm pleasantly surprised to see arm printing on Vader and the Death Star Duel set overall looks like an excellent remake of the old set with a ton of improvements but I doubt I'll end up getting it simply because I gravitate towards collecting Star Wars vehicles and would rather save for the AT-AT. 

I really don't have anything more to add to sets we've already seen extensively but I will say I'm a little disappointment the entire wave has been pushed back to September 1st. It's only a month later and could definitely have been worse. On the bright side, it means I'll have a whole lot more than just the Razor Crest to look forward to on my birthday! Assuming everything ships on the 1st it'll all arrive by the 4th. Speaking of which, do we know anything about potential promos for this release wave? 

Edited June 17, 2020 by ToaDraco

[ArrowBricks]

The wave is good seeing the official pictures- don’t have many problems. 

 

Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor is fine just not for me since I have it. Lazy Anakin torso though could have some sort of value if it was new!? 

General Grievous Starfighter had the potential to be a good set. It looks nice and the Airborne trooper although isn’t Cody is still nice and different. Just needed a new Grievous (tan) and not the lazy Kenobi torso and take £10/$10 off it and it’s all fine. 

Actually really like the Duel set. That Vader as I said is just superb. I’ll get this set 100%

At the end of the day this wave is excellent considering previous waves recently. 

 

 

 

[icm]

46 minutes ago, Mandalorianknight said:

If true this begs the question, what is the $40 set? @jdubbs hint makes it sound like a 40th anniversary empire strikes back set, but I'm not sure what it could be at that price. 

Brickheadz Tauntaun battle pack :)

[TeddytheSpoon]

1 hour ago, Kit Figsto said:

Yeah I'm curious too.  If it was supposed to be a convention exclusive, I feel like those tend to not be traditional sets and more of display pieces.  I'm going to expect a microscale version of Cloud City, but who knows.  I could also see some sort of square/round thing broken up into 3-4 vignettes to represent the iconic scenes (hallway, dining room, carbon freezing, duel platform), (something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a9F-_hzLU, not my video but just an example) but that could be a bit too much for $40. 

 

Microscale Cloud City could work and would pretty sweet. Not sure about the other idea if only because it's quite close to the MBS set. That said, if MandR turns out to be right and they are different sets, I'm not sure we'd get two Cloud City sets, as that's a lot of Bespin out at once. I could see some sort of ESB vignette happening similar to the recent GWPs though.

[storskogen]

It can be a good thing that the Night Buzzard isn’t too big. All those who are interested in completing the knights of Ren won’t need to spend too much money, and they will still have a good looking, detailed and displayable ship. Bricklinking them will also be not too expensive.

[Jerry McGlade]

Wow, the sets look very good. 

[lego_guyon02]

30 minutes ago, storskogen said:

It can be a good thing that the Night Buzzard isn’t too big. All those who are interested in completing the knights of Ren won’t need to spend too much money, and they will still have a good looking, detailed and displayable ship. Bricklinking them will also be not too expensive.

While the Night Buzzard is fairly accessable in terms of price the other 4 Knights are still going to set you back around 300 euro for the full sets or around 60 for the figures only. I wouldn't call that ''not too expensive''

[DuckBricks]

Huh. The AAT has literally one more piece than the 501st Legion set, but costs $10 more for only two desirable figures, as opposed to four. I know Ahsoka is really popular and LEGO seems to know it too, but that seems a little excessive to me. Are there any really large parts in the AAT I'm missing to warrant this?

Another thing - LEGO designers mentioned back in 2018 the Grievous figure is expensive to produce, hence the high price tag on some sets. I decided to do some analysis on similar sets adjusted for inflation to examine this.

2010 was the debut of the grievous figure, his Starfighter had three figures (well, one was a droid) with 454 pieces and retailed for $50. That's $58.79 adjusted for inflation but giving LEGO the benefit of the doubt let’s say $60 today.

In 2014 we had the wheel bike for $25. Two figures and a new white recolor of grievous for 261 parts. That’s $27 adjusted for inflation - again benefit of the doubt let’s say LEGO would sell it for $30 today.

Here’s where it gets strange. 2018 had his speeder with two figures for $30, but with only 157 pieces. That’s almost half the previous small set for the same exact figure, no recolor, but $5 more. With inflation, it’s around $31, so not really any change.

Then our friend the 2020 starfighter has 487 parts, so 20 more than the 2010 one, with three figures, the same exact Grievous mold, for $80 USD. Huh. It is true that LEGO designs have come a long way since those days, and models have greatly improved over time. That being said, this isn't the case of it visually looking similar, but having way more parts on the interior or exterior for either structure or detail. They both visually look similar and have similar piece counts.

Comparing this to another $80 set releasing at the same time: Ninjago's Skull Dragon, 71721. That's 1016 parts for the same exact price, $80. It includes six minifigures, so twice as many as the Grievous set, and features a large, expensive-to-produce dual-molded spinner dice element, as well as a host of new elements created for this line of sets specifically. Now, Disney/licensed tax is a thing, but this is basically double the amount of parts for the same price. Other countries have it worse. Canada has the starfighter for $120 CAD, while the dragon is $109 CAD for double the minifigures and parts. The UK has both of these for 75 pounds, which equates to a whopping $95 USD. European regions have them priced at the same point, 85 Euros AKA $95 USD.

I guess the conclusion is that sometime between 2014 and 2018, LEGO decided to treat Grievous like a bigfig in terms of how much he elevates the cost of the set. But is it really worth paying the premium to get a six-year-old figure that's appeared in that exact configuration and color scheme in two other, much cheaper sets? Why is the Obi-Wan figure reused from the Mustafar set inaccurately, when updating his printing could have added some more value to the set? And why not include a second Clone trooper to make up for the divide in price? 

Recently LEGO has priced Star Wars sets to be on discount on launch (see TROS sets on Amazon launch day back in December, etc). Will this be the case for this set? And is anyone going to get this at full price?

I hope that the pricing of these two sets won't send LEGO the wrong message that people are less willing to pay for prequel-era and Clone Wars-era sets outside of a few sets that have been campaigned for. 

Edited June 17, 2020 by legozebra

[wesker]

That new Darth Vader figure is perfection! Hard to imagine how they can improve it anymore from here. Can't say I'm as impressed with the price of the AT-AT. I knew it was going to be more expensive than the last version but not by AU$100! Still going to pick it up as its a huge improvement over the other versions but will be waiting for a decent sale on it first.

The AAT looks better to me in the higher res photos. The canon is a bit oversized and the back looks a little unfinished but overall they've captured the shape well.

The Jedi Interceptor seems like a step backwards to me in regards to the cockpit design. The interior is built up too high which leaves Anakin partially lying down to pilot it instead of sitting upright like in previous models.

[Redroe]

Get an eyeful of that Night Buzzard. I wish they'd do more mid-to-large ships in that scale. I confidently expected that set to be another 120 quid beast. Now my only problem is a moral one because I swore off any TROS sets after seeing the film (I dislike it), having splashed out on the TLJ sets and then regretted it upon seeing the film (I deeply dislike it). But the Knights are a sweetener I may not be able to resist.

[Terrasher]

29 minutes ago, legozebra said:

Other countries have it worse. Canada has the starfighter for $120 CAD

120CAD for Soulless One? Hahahahahahahaha, that's absolutely ridiculous.