REVIEW: 75018 Jek-14's Stealth Starfighter

[Artanis I]

All & more photos available in full size on Flickr

75018 Jek-14's Stealth Starfighter

Star Wars set based on The Yoda Chronicles

Released 2nd half of 2013.

Parts: 550

Mass: 956g

MSRP/RRP: $69.99 USD, £59.99 GBP, €69.99 EUR, $89.99 CAD, $89.99 AUD, $129.99 NZD

TLG's blurb:

Capture Jek-14’s™ Stealth Starfighter!

Pursue the rogue clone, Jek-14™, in his amazing Stealth Starfighter with retractable landing gear, opening cockpit
with space for a minifigure, folding wings, rotating and elevating blaster cannon, R4-G0™ astromech droid, storage
compartment with holocron and 2 flick missiles. Will Jek-14 escape the Separatist Bounty Hunter™ and the
Republic Special Forces Clone Trooper™, or has his power grown enough to face them? Includes R4-G0 astromech
droid and 3 minifigures with weapons: Jek-14, Separatist Bounty Hunter™ and Special Forces Clone Trooper™.
• Includes R4-G0 astromech droid and 3 minifigures with weapons: Jek-14™, Separatist Bounty Hunter™ and Special
Forces Clone Trooper™
• Features retractable landing gear, opening cockpit with space for a minifigure, folding wings, rotating and elevating
blaster cannon, R4-G0™ astromech droid, storage compartment with holocron and 2 flick missiles
• Weapons include a Lightsaber, blaster rifle and blaster
• Also includes an energy shield
• Press the levers and fold the wings for flight mode!
• Fend off the enemy with the flick missiles and blaster cannon
• Open the storage compartment and reveal the holocron
• Measures over 3" (10cm) high, 13" (35cm) long and 13" (34cm) wide

Instructions for download:

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6050823.pdf (booklet 1)

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6050826.pdf (booklet 2 international version)

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6050827.pdf (booklet 2 NA version - ie English French & Spanish)

Bricklink | Lego Shop@Home | Brickset

No reference photos, the minifigs & ship are from Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles. Apparently the ship looks like something pre-existing in the Star Wars universe called an E-Wing. Not that I've heard of that before, but some E-Wing images resemble this set, others don't really.

I still know very little about the Yoda Chronicles, Jek-14, the ship etc. Hopefully the show will be available for me to watch at some stage. All I know is that Jek-14 was an altered clone who is force sensitive and has gone rogue. His arm is invisible and charged up with the force or something. (It's non-canon, so it doesn't really matter if it's ridiculous or not.) So, he's being chased by a Separatist bounty hunter & a Republic special forces clone.

Let's have a look at it.

As is typical, we start with The Box. As is normal for Star Wars sets, the cardboard is very glossy and smooth. I found boxes from this wave to be more difficult to open than usual, I had a bit more trouble prying the boxes open without tearing the cardboard this time. Maybe they're using a different glue, the knife wasn't as slick as usual.

Box shows us what we're in for, a beautifully black & red space ship with obligatory flick-fire missiles, a top mounted cannon, additional wing mounted (non-firing) missiles, an astromech, a special clone trooper and a bounty hunter, all joining the company of our new "hero". Set high in orbit over either a reddish planet or a hot sun, together with the very nice 2013 SuperYoda green box art border really makes the packaging very attractive.

Back shows us the posability of the builds & minifigs and also the cannon. (Blaster cannon does not fire, BTW...)

Along the top of the box are the full sized images of the included minifigs, also shown in smaller scale on the front. We are alerted to the fact that these minifigs were not previously available.

Next, we go Inside The Box

Contents of the box are an instruction booklet, a sticker sheet, and 5 numbered bags. The minifigs are divided through the bags.

Sticker sheet:

9 stickers if you can't count. The small one for a 1x2 cheese console is reused twice in 75025 Jedi Defender-Class Cruiser.

Let's see the instruction booklets.

Nothing unusual on the front.

Specifics on the numbered bags' contributions: bag 1 builds Jek-14, the bounty hunter & the nose of the ship. Bag 2 builds the back of the ship. Bag 3 builds the clone, astromech and the rest of the main body of the ship. Bag 4 builds the left wing, bag 5 the right wing and top cannon. The instructions themselves are exactly as you would expect, no real need to look at them here.

Towards the back of the booklet we are shown some of the movement of hinges etc within the set. In addition to those, the cannon also tilts up & down.

The parts inventory also conveniently shows us the lengths of the technic rods.

Minifig checklist for all of the regular retail sets. (Ewok Village, Planets, Old Republic & Starhopper sets absent)

Not even gonna mention the back of the instruction booklet. *shudder*

Now for the parts, this time I was in a hurry and couldn't be bothered with the extra time it takes to lay the parts out nicely:

Nothing unusual or of special interest here for me, other than minifig parts.

Jek-14:

Nice helmet print! He also comes with a hairpiece, so he can be displayed without his helmet to show his face. The hair covers both rear faces well.

A lot of buzz over this piece, the first ever translucent minifig arm. Cleverly TLG has decided to print force lightning on the outer side, partially covering the otherwise visible stalk of the minifig hand piece. The use of translucent parts for minifigs is a controversial one, (more that it is mostly impractical, yet very sought-after) but here TLG has avoided the major problems caused by translucent minifig parts by only connecting this one to standard opaque ABS parts.

Those who are interested in this topic might find curious that this arm's texture feels different to that of other trans parts. It is softer feeling. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it reminds me of something else. It seems that this arm could be made of a different plastic to usual trans parts.

Bounty Hunter:

There's that Mandalorian helmet again, this time with a completely different print. I quite like the brown & olive green. I'd rather his helmet was brown than white, but the colour seems to fit okay. Single sided face this time.

Small cockpit, but big enough. Relatively easy to get the pilot in and out without fuss, unlike some models where you have to fiddle around and then the legs get left behind etc. The nose is curiously shaped, it has the teardrop drumstick tip look. It appears oversized on some angles looking at the photos, but I don't recall thinking so while building or looking at the set. I like the air intake in front of the cockpit - assuming that is for flying in breathable atmosphere

Again the parts are fairly standard. No minifigs this time.

The rear section is built separately and connected to the front with pins & axles etc. There is a small cavity at the very back, this becomes the storage area holding the holocron. Curiously, the grey stickers that look adjacent are not applied as such, as we will see in a moment.

Only piece that caught my attention was this. I haven't seen it before, don't know if it's new or not. The inventory isn't on Bricklink yet to check.

Special Forces Clone Trooper:

Blue uniformed clone. That's unusual. He has the stormtrooper or late clonetrooper helmet, a simple pauldron and an energy shield. Single face, with un "ugh" expression. Check out the armour printing! Seriously solid.

R4G0:

Astromechs aren't usually very interesting. This one doesn't have back printing either. Nice front print though. Perhaps this guy swapped heads with R2D2? Would explain why an R4 would have the pointier head and an R2 has the rounded dome...

Although the set "features" include landing gear that can be folded up, it only refers to 1 foot directly beneath the cockpit. One thing I'm guaranteed every time I buy a Star Wars or Space set is a bunch of technic stuff doing I-don't-know-what until after it all comes together. I'm always impressed or perplexed depending on my mood. I can't come up with that stuff.

Here you can see what I mean regarding the grey stickers.

These parts are cool... not seen the black one before, and the trans blue part is also used in 75025 Jedi Defender-Class Cruiser as part of that set's engines as well. I like the visual effect they bring, even if it isn't so visible in the end here.

The exposed friction cylinder & ram parts look good as the wing tilting mechanism. There's an astromech head part on the back of the engine. I like the engine's use of trans light/bright blue, expecially on the front. We can see on the underside the flick-fire mechanism in the middle of the wing. Thankfully it has been designed in a way that it's inconspicuous. We can also see at the rear (near the centre of the photo) the grey technic piece that acts as the handle for that wing to switch mode. The bent down wing edge looks pretty cool, more raptor-like.

Almost the exact same parts as bag 4, except mirrored in some cases, and with the addition of the top cannon.

Total extra parts in this set:

Comparison of wings up/down

Rear compartment with container for holocron

Z-95 Headhunter from earlier in the year, ships are a very similar size and overall shape (well, they are based on aeroplane design, really). This one is much sleeker, and has a cooler colour scheme going on.

I put tiles over the grey bits I thought ugly. What do you think?

Model/set evaluation:

I quite like this set, I love the colour scheme and if the Republic Striker from 2012 had used these colours I think it would've been far better. Maybe I just like these colours, but I'm pretty sure I like the shape of it too. Not having anything to compare it to for accuracy, all I can say is that it looks like a nice bird. It has the obligatory flick-fire missiles, opening cockpit, fold-open storage area, big mother engines, 2 position wing modes and 3 opposing minifigs, (of course it swooshes...) so it's great for play too.

Price seems to be a bit variable, the NA & NZ prices look higher for this set than the UK, EU & AU, in comparison to other sets. So value-for-money in this set may differ depending on where you are from.

If you're one of those types that buy sets for the parts to build MOCs from, I think this isn't a bad option. Plenty of reusable parts, especially of the technic variety. It's also a set you could easily have multiples of, I'd be quite happy to have a squadron of these ships.

Minifig selection:

Having no idea of what the alternative possiblilities were, I can only comment on the usefulness and appearance of what we got. Astromechs are astromechs, not much to say about them. The other 3 are quite nice minifigs, clones being clones I would be happy with a bunch of them, the bounty hunter could be made into an army too, and Jek-14's prints are fantastic, just replace the left arm on your extras to have an army of that minifig as well. All great for army building or on their own.

Thanks for reading/skimming, I hope this was useful to you. I forgot to photograph the completed underside, any other photo requests let me know. Any questions/comments feel free to share, or suggestions/corrections - including the poll.

[Cwetqo]

This looks like a new version of train roof part:

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=2876

[Tariq j]

Brilliant review, I agree with you on the minifigures, a bounty hunter army would be brilliant, I quite liked this set it's got some interesting features and figures, the astomech droid is alright nothing special about it personally for £60.00 I wouldent recomend it.

[wesker]

Thanks for the review. It will be interesting to see how well the transparant arm holds up in the long term. I also really like the way they printed the Mandalorian helmet for the Bounty Hunter. Its too bad they didn't do the same for Obi-Wan/Rako Hardeen in the Starhopper set.

Unfortunatly the other two minifigures aren't really that interesting and while the ship itself isn't too bad, its not exactly something I'd go out and buy.

[Borex]

The only thing i like about this set is the Bounty Hunter. And what wesker says: too bad they didn't use the helmet for obi-wan

[wilson3a10]

What i can say is the minifig are awesome and cool. The fighter, except the dropship of 75021, is my most favorite model in 2013 set

[Tom Jurassic]

Awesome review! :) I really like this set, the Minifigs look like they could be really awesome in some CW displays, and the Clone has grown on me! :)

[Anio]

The build seems interesting technically speaking.

Actually more interesting than what I expected.

Thanks for the pics.

[Csacsa234]

I was looking for a good pictorial review of this set, so thanks for taking the time to do it. The set is quite interesting. I really like the design of the engines and the colour selection, also the minifigures are really unusual, my favoruite is the spec ops trooper, but all of them are really cool, my only problem is that, we don't have much information about these guys and the ship

Anyway it's a really cool looking set, but I find it expensive, maybe if I can get it cheaper I buy it.

Thanks for the review again, it was really thorough and detailed!

[Brickdoctor]

I don't really have an opinion on this set, but, more new reviews!

[Artanis I]

Thanks for your comments. I forgot to mention about that helmet for Obi Wan in disguise, that Starhopper is an ugly ship, so missing the helmet is a big mistake and very likely to be a deal breaker for me.

One thing I should add is that the core of this ship uses a lot of technic connections, making it very solid (in a good way). I noticed that compared to the other sets I reviewed it has a much higher mass to parts ratio. Sometimes you pick up a ship in not-quite-the-optimal-spot and soon regret it, but this one fares better.

I don't really have an opinion on this set, but, more new reviews!

Thanks for blogging these, I also did the Homing Spider Droid a week or so ago if you want to add that. http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=85737

Edited August 22, 2013 by Artanis I

[charlieboy]

As a minifigure collector those guys are a must for me, the ship however i'll pass on. Great review though!

[Darth Malgus]

I quite like it, thanks for the review, to me its an E-Wing in disguise. I like the EU sets too, hopefully they sell well and TLG keep making EU sets.

[Darth Malgus]

Built this today, apart from some smooth panels on the wings where the hinges meet its a preety solid set, like the minifigs, shame the helmet never made it in to the HH-87 set, solid little starfighter.

[kermit]

Good review , but this set just doesnt impress me that much. The only selling point in my opinion is the minifigure.

[FuzzyBallz]

I was looking into getting the Z95 for the 2 501st clone troopers. I can get that set for half the price of this set, with both being on sale. I don't see myself getting this set unless it's really really cheap, like $35 on sale. Love the Jek-14 minifig.

Ps. US LEGO sets use tape to seal the box, not glue.