Samppu

At least I have noticed it as well, though compared to the problems with the general color consistency (especially the color yellow has horribly inconsistent shades between individual bricks) and misprints on helmets (honestly, some custom makers produce nowadays more qualified helmets - the modern scout trooper still being an exception of excellence in the Lego brand), I have not really bothered myself about it. - Samppu

Very interesting, thank you for explaining this! - Samppu

Wow, I would be really curious to hear about this! Like in general did he introduce the concept of the ship personally (I guess so?) or alternatively was it accepted or maybe even introduced by the Lucasarts or someone else first, or did he just imagine the concept and then someone else tried to give it a picture, how it should look like. - Samppu

Oh, I really love that book and seeing this marvelous piece inspired me to grab that story from the shelf again! - Samppu

Wow, love these! What is the head piece for Darth Nihilus?

Haha, made my day.. :D

True.

Ironically, this is very true. In addition, I would be happy if Lego or other companies alike would show some bold moves by not caring about random and totally pointless shouts that only add up to the cancel culture in these kinds of cases, where there obviously is nothing bad behind the product. I think what he is doing with the reviews is a smart move from his point of view, as the information is still there as pointed in the earlier comments, but he can safely say to anyone accusing him of leaks or whatsoever that all he did was a review.

Technically, all the lightsaber "hearts" are white. Even those that have a colored such as green or blue glow around the white heart. It is this glow that is somewhat colorless for Ashoka's new sabers. Speaking of which, it would be cool to have dual-molded bars with white hearts.

I totally agree, but I would at least personally still prefer any set to no set. Though the same policy has been around for cheaper sets as well. No Cody in the Grievous fighter even if the set itself almost screamed to have it. No AT-RT driver in the Kashyyyk AT-RT Anniversary set. Luckily Clone Army Customs has high quality customs for those, but still.

I only build MOCs myself, so the minifigures are usually the only reason to buy SW sets instead of just buying parts elsewhere, and I bet I am certainly not the only one following this philosophy, so it is really weird they do not bother with more interesting figures in opportunities like this. There are other examples, too. There are, of course, many more collectors, AFOLs and casual Lego lovers alike, than pure MOC builders, but I would still guess that the increase in sales following better minifigures - which also attract collectors as well - would easily be worth it. Especially in this case Beru Lars would not need a new mold, just a new print and a suitable hair piece, so the problem would not be about the budget.

Haha, I can totally imagine this scenario in my head... :D The employees gathering around the morning coffee table when the CEO crushes in and asks if the Episode V sets are ready as they are going to the production line tomorrow, when the brave one tells that he spoke about Episode VI earlier. "The difference between V and VI is I, aren't I?" the CEO laughs and leaves the room leaving the employees staring at each other. That one as a joke, I am honestly very happy that we get more scout trooper helmets (also in this year's Advent calendar) and that Lego actually pays attention to the traditional Expanded Universe lore.

I weigh in to this a little, because I consider the rage on these mistakes was in fact justified (albeit in the internet it easily gets out of proportion, but that is how it tends to work, unfortunately). It is not that these mistakes themselves were so bad (we do have a clone pilot relatively easily accessible for those who desire it, and I did not believe a second that they would have made a new mold of any kind with this set, not for Cody nor the pilot on the basis how they have treated such opportunities before - e.g. missed AT-RT pilot in the 20th anniversary walker and missed Cody in the recent Soulless One). Rather the problem that enraged the people was the highly unprofessional attitude reflected in the ignorance whether the figure is a pilot or a commander "because people anyway only remember seeing a yellow clone". For anyone buying such expensive sets, these things do matter and such details shouldn't be that hard nor expensive to take care of. Additionally I think this episode reflects one root reason behind many short comings in Lego SW production line during the recent few years, which - as far as I am aware of - is that some of the key designers in the Lego SW team have been working there since the very beginning now two decades back in time. They were certainly the best available recruits back then who were also highly enthusiastic about the original trilogy, because that was all that there was to Star Wars back then. But things have drastically changed since then. The original designers are no longer the best nor even the most enthusiastic. We have tons of new content (I would bet that the original old school designers have not bothered to pay attention to look through it all), a myriad of new revolutionary parts and a world wide pool of genius builders who could make child friendly, low part count but still miraculously impressive snowspeeders with their left hand, whereas all we get from the original designers are repetitions of the very same design that has been around now two decades. These kinds of examples, the snowspeeder in particular but also the small things like the clone commander vs. pilot issue, are clearly a sign that the problem is no longer about time or resources.

Missions sounds great, I love the idea of actually trying to make way through something that associates to that game mode. Could there be a versus match from time to time as well? Two builders who mutually accept to challenge each other competing to accomplish the same Mission?

An additional idea I am just throwing out considering the maintenance cost mechanism I introduced in the previous message. Would it be fun and simple enough, if the types of the planets would follow a logic that each faction must have at least one planet of the farmland type and at least one planet with a shipyard, or if they don't, their maintenance cost would go up some number of points until they conquer a planet that has them. In addition, it would be fun to have a rule that if your faction did not have a shipyard at the moment, every vehicle of that faction that appears in a build must be somehow rugged or rusty. Similarly if your faction did not have farmland in its control, your builds must show problems with famine or lack of supplies. Sure, no problem, I am totally intrigued by this game. In personal life I have been working with my studies very hard, so I haven't really had the chance to join this yet, but I am now eagerly looking forward for the upcoming season. I totally agree with the freedom to choose issue, and like you said, equal number of builders does not necessarily produce equal number of XPs due to different experience and time available for each builder, so it is a fair and a good choice to try to get everyone interested in, be it in any faction they wish to join. I am also glad if the maintenance cost idea spawned interest. It is just a thought I am throwing, so anyone can feel free to develop or use it further or then not.

A concrete idea regarding the previous message and the point 2 about balancing the count of the Victory Points. This idea is inspired by the mechanism that the board game Eclipse uses. Gaining control over a planet could be balanced between unequal factions with the idea that each planet that a faction owns adds up to a maintenance cost. This cost could be counted with e.g. the following table: The number of planets a faction owns: The maintenance cost in XP: 1 0 2 1 3 2 4 3 5 5 6 8 7 13 ... ... Etc. (the cost follows the Fibonacci numbers, which means adding the two previous numbers together, e.g. 2 + 3 = 5 and 3 + 5 = 8 etc.) The cost could in practice mean that when fighting over control of a planet, the cost would be reduced from the XP each faction is putting to conquer that planet. For example, if the Empire had 7 planets in its control and the Rebel Alliance had 5 planets in its control, the maintenance cost of these planets would be 13 for the Empire and 5 for the Rebel Alliance. Then when they contested over the control of a planet, the XP the Empire is producing would be calculated by summing up all the XP the builders are making on that planet, say, 41 XP, and then reducing the cost, in this example 13 XP, so their total would be 41 XP - 13 XP = 28 XP. Similarly if the Rebel Alliance builders produced 35 XP over that planet, their total XP would be 35 XP - 5 XP = 30 XP. Thus the Rebel Alliance would win the planet, even if they had produced less XP in the battle due to their lower maintenance cost, because they are a smaller faction in this example. In this way, conquering new planets becomes easier for smaller factions. Generally the ownership of the planets would also probably change more often, because when you lose a planet, your cost also goes down at the same time when your opponent cost goes up and it becomes easier for you to try to reconquer the lost planet back to your hands again. This also makes it more important to actually start to think about strategy over the targets of the planets that a faction wants to conquer. E.g. one must carefully consider, whether they want to own Tatooine if it only produced one VP but significantly added to the maintenance cost, so it would not be sensible to simply try to conquer everything you can possibly reach. (There are ways to make this even more interesting by carefully considering the logic of the map. E.g. a "cheap" planet with only 1 VP but which lies in an important intersection of the map and the control of which could possibly block the movement of other players, would produce interesting questions whether to try to conquer it or not.) Story wise the maintenance cost could be thought to represent the cost of having to spread a faction's military forces to ever more widespread area to take care of guarding and escort duties as well as fight pirates and collect customs and generally maintain law and order and fight corruption and crime in the area of the possessed planets.

Hi all, I have been eagerly following this game and I am looking forward to join you guys for this new season with some pretty crazy stuff coming up. The most crucial improvement that might need some consideration to my mind before launching the new season might be to set more balance between each Faction. As I have understood, the Imperial Triumvirate has gained the largest and the most eager group of builders, and while understandable (the Empire is the coolest faction to my mind as well and @Darth Bjorn has put on exceptionally impressive and inspiring examples to follow) the game element would probably intensify, if the different factions would have more or less the same capacity to produce new builds. The balance could be improved at least in two ways (these are just suggestions that came to my mind): 1. Trying to somehow guide new recruits to the factions having less builders. The new builders should be at least informally encouraged to pick a faction with less builders to have a more balanced game. One could also think about a recruitment mechanism, where the faction that the most recently gained a new member, cannot recruit another new recruit before some other faction recruited one first. EDIT: The following was a first draft. Check the next message. It has an actually potential idea. 2. The counting of Victory Points (VPs) could be periodically balanced. This means dividing the scoring system to shorter periods, call them e.g. rounds or perhaps in this case offensives or phases. In practice, in a predefined amount of time the number of VPs gained will resolve the winner of each round, after which a new round would begin the VPs of each faction once again set to 0. This would make it less likely that any one faction would gain overpower with like 100 VPs rendering the second one as well as the rest of the factions with 20 VPs or so being doomed to lose without any chance of winning the season anymore. Thus instead of playing one ice hockey game that will last a year or two, there would be a season of games each contributing to winning whole season. Edit: there are also other more ingenious ways to balance the VPs than simply dividing the scoring in periods, because in this case it would be of course nice to associate the VPs with the control over a planet. However, the point being, it would probably make sense to have some mechanism balancing the game so that the big factions do not simply eat out the smaller ones merely by being big. The board game Eclipse has one cool example of this. It induces a cost for owning a planet. The more planets you own, the more is the cost, which can render big factions (Eclipse is also about conquering the galaxy) more fragile than the smaller ones in the sense that too many possessions can make you easily lose a lot of them when the enemy attacks, because the high cost of maintaining your possessions will limit your other resources in that game. This is just a general idea, the point of the whole message now being to mostly open this issue for discussion.

if you are in no hurry, I would check the average price of the Bricklink for used condition, then ask for a hundred dollars more and just wait, because the collector sets tend to only gain value in time, and it is unlikely that any of those models would see remakes anytime soon. However, if you don't have the patience to wait for years (or if she doesn't), you probably should set your price against the UK sellers in Bricklink. This is easy as Bricklink has an option to find sellers by country as well. Remember that the potential EU buyers must nowadays pay the VAT (21%?).

Thank you for the answer @ARC2149Nova and @GlacierPhoenix The reason why I dislike the BrickArms E-11 (I mean, it is not bad, but it is just 3/5) is that it does not catch the most important shape of the gun right. It is smaller than the other options from other makers and thus a little more proportionate, but the movable (not movable in Lego but movable in real life) handle at the bottom of the trunk should extend beyond the pipe, but it does not, which makes the minifigure version of the gun look silly. The scope should also have only one attachment point to the trunk, but I admit that is only a nuance. Nevertheless, the fact that the pipe and the handle are not in correct relation to each other is a bad thing. Here is a reference (sorry, I would draw the difference in red, but I don't have a program for it just now, hope you can still see it): BigKidBrix E-11 actually gets both of these things right: I have quite a few of the both versions, can't decide which one is the better one in the end. BigKidBrix is overly large and especially the grip where the minifigure holds the gun is overly long, much longer actually than what it seems to be in pictures. You can in fact attach two minifigure hands on top of each other to one grip.

Oh, I am interested, as I am neither a fan of the CAC weapons (no offense to them, they make great figures, but 9 out of 10 times the BrickArms has made the best minifigure weapons with some rare exceptions - their E-11 standard stormtrooper blaster, for example, is actually the oldest and the worst out there). What does the term BFVA mean?

Does anyone have side by side pictures of the Arealight and the CloneArmyCustoms version of this gun? I am thinking to buy a batch of them, but I am unsure which one looks better. The CloneArmyCustoms seems to have the proportions better (the Arealight seems a little short), but it does not have a trigger whereas the Arealight does.

Ah, gotta love that fish! Excellent build! Cdr. Bannon's story has been of great inspiration to me.

Ah, as a deep fan of the original Thrawn trilogy (the new books work as well, but they include a lot of "disneytizing" though) should've recognized at least Bellicose, too. Thank you for these.

Just out of curiosity, do these names appear in some books or other sources? I recognize at least Basilisk, which was part of Admiral Daala's fleet of four star destroyers she had in her power at the Maw installation in the Jedi Search trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson.

Another big thank you for these. Clearly I have a lot to learn!