Walter Kovacs

Nice review. I picked one of these up on Monday, so I have just a few thoughts to add. The entire droid was fairly wobbly, in my opinion. I've already exchanged the 16 blay Technic Pins with 16 black Pins with Friction. The legs end up MUCH more posable. I highly suggest this mod for anyone that buys this set. Black pins with friction are one of the most common extra pieces, so chances are most of you have enough spares lying around. The Clones are rather nice. Commander Fox looks especially good. I'm hoping a Phase I clone battle pack, or else Fox (and the other commanders) are going to have squads of one. Those four 1 x 2 Plates with Handle are not spares. They go on the feet, opposite the other four 1 x 2 Plates with Handle. Did you leave them off for aestheetics, or just miss the step? Just curious.

Well, scratch this one off the list of future MOCs. I doubt I could ever create a Lambda class shuttle as stunning as this one is. Absolutely brilliant. And I second the request for instructions. This shuttle would look awesome in my UCS display.

yorkiejim, can I have a seed from your Money Tree? I have some bills to pay. While I'd love to have one of each set, I'm going to start with the RGS. I missed the RGS and AT-TE the first time around. I'll probably snag the HSD as soon as I see it, as well. Especially if it's a TRU exclusive (I believe it is). After that, I have to rely on Christmas to fill in some of the gaps. I'm hoping for the AT-TE and V-19 from my favorite Mother-in-Law. Some Christmas money can be used to get the Magnaguard. The TX-130 and Droid Gunship should be an affordable splurge. I have no plans to get the Death Star. Just way to far outside my budget. The Twilight is a tad to expensive, too. Wouldn't mind having either, or both, of those sets , though.

Yeah, sorry about the music. To be honest, I forgot it's there, since I almost always have my volume muted. As obscure as this variant is, I wanted to make sure everyone could find some hard data on this ship. Thanks for your feedback. I'm organizing the MLCad file into steps so that I can generate instructions right now. I'll do a quick render of the cockpit interior when I'm done. Not the best cockpit I've done, but certainly not the worst. And I'll certainly upload the instructions into the gallery when I'm done. Look for them in about a week or two. Nightwing: You finally recognize the depths of my madness. Mwa-ha-ha-ha. At least there's some madness to my method. Even though I like the way the Predator came out, I still feel it's only fourth best out of my designs. I think my Scimitar, Defender and Avenger designs are better. I am my own worst critic though, so I could easily be wrong.

Though I never said it publicly, I had almost convinced myself that this set wasn't worth $400. After looking through those pics above, I fully retract that sentiment. It's worth every penny, and probably more. I'll never own one, though. $400 should net me all the CW sets except the Twilight, so that's the direction I'm headed. Still, a really, really good set.

I'm going to echo commanderbly's comments a little bit. It needs some more details. Can't wait to see the improvements you're currently working on. My biggest problem is the name. It just doesn't look like a bomber. When I hear bomber, I think bulky, with lots of room to hold ordinance, missiles, torpedoes, etc. This ship looks more like a heavy fighter to me: plenty of firepower, might be able to take on a small capital ship (think Corvette size), but nothing that could take on a medium or large capital ship. Still, I do like the overall design. EDIT: One more thing I wanted to ask. Did you include any controls in the cockpit? It's always a nice detail to add. Not sure if you have any room, though.

Why is everyone so fired up to get this set? At $75, it's absolute robbery! It's just a re-package of the Droid Battle Pack ($10), the Hailfire/Spider Droid ($20), plus four clones and a Commander. If you think four clones and a Clone commander are worth $45, I've got some minifigs to sell to you. $9 per fig seems downright outlandish.

Just for The Nightwing Returns, Linky. Enjoy! Aparently the link was first posted here on EB. I found it over on FBTB, where I first saw it. As for my fervor for a UCS TIE, if you've seen my MOCing tastes, you might understand a bit better. I've got quite a UCS TIE collection going. Another official set can't be a bad thing. We've already had a minifig TIE Fighter in three different sets. Unless there is a major re-design, I'm not sure another is warrented. Of course, if there was a re-design, I'd be all for it.

Wasn't there a new MINI TIE Fighter unveiled at a toy fair a few months ago (I want to say April-May time frame)? I remember hearing reading a lot of buzz on the forums about the return of the MINIs, but that died quickly when pics of the Death Star surfaced. Could the TIE Fighter be the new MINI version? If I remember correctly, there was also a MINI Snowspeeder and official instructions for a MINI V-19. I'll admit that I do have my doubts. It would be odd to unveil them in May, then not release them until the following January, but it is plausible. EDIT: I just had a thought. What if the TIE Fighter model is in the other direction: UCS Scale!!! The TIE ln is probably the most iconic SW vehicle that has yet to receive the UCS treatment. THAT would be totally, utterly awesome.

I'll restrict myself to sets I actually own, so JF's Slave I and Ultimate Lightsaber Duel are safe. I have never been too fond of 7101 - Lightsaber Duel (the one with Darth Maul and Qui-gon). Just bleh, all the way around. 7115 - Gungan Patrol was pretty poor as well. But the worst overall has to be 7127 - Imperial AT-ST. Not only was it completely out of scale, and far too blocky, but the minifig it comes with is - Chewbacca? Did I miss something in the title, Imperial AT-ST? What the ... At any rate, 7127 gets my vote for worst designed.

There have been quite a few really good sets, but the new MTT gets my vote for best. I couldn't in good conscience vote for a set that's not out yet (DS, RGS), and the Sail Barge, while excellent, isn't quite as good as the MTT. An honorable mention should go to the second Slave I, if only for those great minifigs.

The Special Edition Naboo Starfighter was a UCS set, and it sold for $40. I know other AFOLs have produced smaller UCS scale models, including the aforementioned Speeder Bike, some include instructions. Here is one that I know of off the top of my head. BTW, his Speeder Bike design would cost ~$10 USD at Bricklink, not including Shipping. EDIT: Darthperson beat me to the punch. Darn my verifying facts.

I voted for the Twi'Lek. But after some thought, buying a spare set of parts for the bomb happy Monkey-man seems like a great idea.

This design is almost complete. I still have to add things like Technic pins and axles, and design the UCS Stand. But none of those things affect the overall look of the model, so I give you the Predator Class Starfighter: A few notes about this model. According to Wookiepedia (sorry, no link), most of the fighters had the slatted windscreen, but the flight leaders had the traditional TIE Windscreen. I opted to design to the flight leader, because the slotted front would be a nightmare to try and emulate in LEGO. I suppose a plain tan windscreen covered in custom decals would be the best way to emulate it, but I don't have the skills to pull that off, especially in MLCad. If you think that this model has come out a little quick compared to the Scimitar Bomber, you're right. I started this design last Thursday, completely re-designed the wing attachments over the weekend, and finished up Monday morning. That's pretty fast for me on a UCS scale model. Enough prattle already. On to the details! First and foremost, the attachment between the wings and the cockpit ball had to be robust enough to support wings that are 39 studs long. Thats a lot of weight to cantilever out away from the model. The source picture (the link is above) shows that the rear plate is very thin. Far too thin to do in LEGO. So I made it as thin as possible while still being sturdy enough to not fall apart during construction. The rest of the design was built around this fact. Here is a Close-Up of what the rear section looks like. The next most important feature are the quad lasers. You can see them well in the Front view. Another distinct feature of this fighter are the Four Engines. Ideally, I would have used a 10 x 10 Octagonal Cockpit for the rear of the Cockpit Ball, but the holes for the engines were off by 45 degrees. So instead I built my own out of plates. The slopes used for the engines really made sculpting the roundness of the Cockpit difficult, so there's probably some improvement that can be done. Here's a Side and Top view to give an idea of the overall size of the ship. And finally, the last important detail of this particular starfighter. The wings close foe docking, and my version HAD to have this feature. Here are some views from the Front, Top and Side with the wings closed. I realize that the wings should be parallel while closed, but I thought it looked better the way I show them. The rotation pieces certainly will allow the parrallel configuration. The Full Gallery can be found here. Overall, there aren't too many opportunities to greeble this ship. The rear section was already to thick, so I didn't want to make them any taller. Besides, greebling the rear might impinge on the Engines, which IMO are a much more important detail. The cockpit itself is fairly sparse (I realize I didn't give any pictures of the cockpit interior. You're not missing much, trust me.) I certainly could spruce that up quite a bit, but those are details that can be done anytime. As mentioned above, the stand hasn't been full designed yet, though I have worked out the spacing and theory of it. In a nutshell, there's a hole in the bottom of the Cockpit Ball which will keep the model from moving side to side or backwards/forewards. The weight of the model will be supported by the rear of the model. Imagine the stand from the UCS Vader's TIE Advanced, only greatly elongated. As always, Questions, Comments and Criticisms are greatly appreciated. PS: At the current time, I have no idea which TIE variant I'd like to do next. If anyone has a request, I'd be glad to attempt it. The only ones I refuse to do are the TIE Mauler, TIE Crawler and the TIE Hunter. I want to avoid treads for as long as possible, and the Hunter has some very difficult angles to incorporate into a LEGO model. I need to sharpen up my technique before trying it.

Actually, I only need about $9.00 worth of bricks from BL, plus S+H, to build this one. So I will be making it out of Bricks relatively soon. Not exactly sure when soon is, though. I'll add the pieces I'm missing for my TIE Drone to the same order, and maybe enough for a MINI as well. A nice round $30.00 order should fit into the budget somewhere, right? One of the reasons I made the Predator, despite it's obscurity, is that there was actually a schematic I could scale off of. There are only a handful of schematics out on the web that I can find, and I've built most of them except the TIE Mauler, TIE Fighter and TIE GT. I sort of wanted to stay away from ground based TIEs for now. I'm not going to attempt a TIE Fighter of my own, at least not for a long while. And since the GT is really close to the Fighter, it should probably come after I get a good Fighter design. The reason I don't want to try a Fighter yet is fairly simple. Reto Geiger has done a UCS scale TIE Fighter, and it is much, much, MUCH better than anything I can do with my current skillset. I'm going to hone my skills on all the other variants, then try my hand at what is probably THE most Iconic TIE of them all. In short, I can't do the model justice yet, so I'll wait till I can. I hope my intentions are clear. I think part of the detail problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of surface area to detail. The wings make up 75% of the ship, and they're about as detailed as they need to be. *shrugs* We'll see how it looks in real bricks.

And now for the next installment in my never-ending quest to have UCS versions of all the TIE Variants, I give you Revision 1 of the Scimitar Bomber: Some of you will remember I posted some WIP pictures a few weeks back. Don't bother resurrecting that topic; most of the links are dead now. I incorporated some of the comments that I received from the WIP. The Hex Hull section was made a little smaller, so that the transition between it and the Rear Hull was a lot smoother. You can see it well in the Front and Top views. The Engines were also redone. I was basing this model off of a Twin Engine variant I had found on Darksaber's website, but decided to go with a more traditional Single Engine for the final cut, as can be seen in the Rear view. The Cockpit got some very minor adjustments to remove some interferences, and the wings remained unchanged. They, and all the pictures, can be seen in the Full Gallery. Overall, I'm very happy with the way the model turned out. But at 1963 pieces, and an estimated cost of over $235 USD, it'll be a while before I am able to build this in real bricks. I'll post the instructions in a few days, should anyone be interested. Questions, Comments and Criticisms are always welcome.

Thanks for the positive responses. It is really steep. But you have to realize that that 10 x 10 windscreen is going for around $50. That REALLY inflates the price of these models. I also found an error in my price calc. My spreadsheet was looking for a $.35 piece and came up with $17 price tag (times four parts. Ouch). Total price is actually $236, and without the windscreen drops to $185. Much better ratio. I'll fix my first post.

Thanks, Benny. I've uploaded a picture with the 22.5 degree wings to the Rev 2.8 Gallery. Of course, now you'll have to wait until the folder is moderated again to see it. When I look at the image, the wings look way too shallow to me. Let me know what you think.

Definately not see through. The 4 x 4 dish is held on by a Black 4 x 4 Round Plate.

stash2sixx was the first post I noticed the price mentioned, on the first page. I haven't seen anyone with firm backup of the price, but that doesn't mena it's wrong. I view this set like I view the Indiana Jones sets. Wonderful details, beautiful design, great minifigs, lots of playability; but until I win the lottery, I'll never own one.

I voted for the Mon Cal Cruiser. Admiral Ackbar and Mon Motha Minifigs FTW!

Hello, and welcome to another of my MOCs, where I solicit feedback, and attempt to integrate myself into your community at the same time. A few notes about this design. First, I know there are better TIE Bomber MOCs out there. I've seen a couple out on Brickshelf. But mine does have a different approach to the design, and has featues that the others don't have. I'll get to those in a bit. Second, although this was the fourth MOC I designed, it was the first that actually appears on film. That made it just a little bit harder, since there was less room for interpretation. Finally, it is the first design where I really tried to add lots of greeblies. I'm not sure how successful I was; I'll let you tell me. Without further ado, I give you my TIE Bomber. The overall shape should be very accurate. I had a good schematic to follow, so aside from a few rounding errors, the overall profile looks good. Here is a shot of the model on its display Stand. I seem to remember, from my days playing TIE Fighter, that the Bombers laser cannons are stacked and were at the center of the ship. That's where I put them, at least. If I'm wrong, please tell me, since I was relying on a memory of a game I haven't played in 12 years. A cutaway shot of the Cockpit. It's a little short on detail, but not too bad. The two blue bricks you see at the top are inverted 2 x 2 slopes with computer screen printing. They can be found in the Alpha-1 Rocket Base, if you're familiar with that set. I thought they added a nice touch, even with the color clash. Too bad they don't exist in Gray. The top of the cockpit does have a hatch that opens, but I'm not truly happy with it. A shot showing the Greeblies behind the Pilot's seat. I tried my best to fill this empty space, but it was my first attempt at doing so much detailing. It sort of looks thrown together, probably because it is. Any suggestions here would be much appreciated. A Back View. I couldn't find any references that showed the actual locations of the Ion Engines themselves, so I put them between the Cockpit Pod and Ordinance Pod. I have a sneaking suspicion they belong on the Ordinance and Cokpit Pods themselves. Could somebody clarify? Now for the unique feature of my design. I thought it would be interesting to see how the ordinace was actually loaded into the Pod, so I made a Bomb Rack. You can see some missiles laying in the rack. The lowest section, which unfortunately is difficult to see in this picture, contains a Bomb Load. It's two studs wide, two bricks tall, and six studs long, made out of Black bricks and yellow plates, if you should want to know. The back of the rack has doors that rotate up to keep the missiles and bomb load from falling out. Here is a picture of the back, with the Rack extended and the doors open. The rack is held into place using a 1 x 2 plate with door rail and a couple of 1 x 4 slotted bricks. Certainly something I haven't seen before, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. I have some serious questions about the stability of the entire model. First, the wings are almost certainly too heavy for the Cockpit side pylon (the Ordinance side pylon is built like a brick shithouse. That pylon extends all the way to the cockpit). Even with a lighter wing design, I am concerned that the pylon will pull out of the cockpit. I may need to do some major reinforcement of the cantilevered 2 x 2 slopes that make up the cockpit walls. I only need about 100 pieces to be able to construct this model (approx $25 USD, not including S&H). As soon as I have some spare cash for a BL order, I'll buy the pieces and start construction. Then I'll find out exactly what I have. Until then, the MLCad and POV-Ray images will have to suffice. As always, Criticisms and Comments are welcomed and much appreciated. The only way to learn is to find out where your mistakes are.

Someone over on the FBTB forums asked me for the instructions to the TIE Bomber. I've uploaded the .PDF file and a parts list into the Brickshelf folder. The link is in the first post. Check it out if the mood strikes you. Just as an aside, since all of my designs are MLCad, I can produce instructions PDFs easily for all of them. Just holler if you want them.

Seeing how I haven't put a lot of time in these models in quite a while, I decided to give everyone a sneak peak at my current projects, and maybe elicit some feedback that will get me motivated again. These models are certainly unfinished, ranging anywhere from 30-65% complete. Greebs and details may be missing, but the overall shape is there for the most part. Enjoy. "MINI" TIE Mauler I put the quotes around MINI because the scale is a bit larger than all of my other TIE MINI MOCs. It's certainly less than Minifig scale, but larger than the traditional MINI scale. At any rate, I'm pretty happy with the way the Tread came out, but I've really floundered on the basic design of the cockpit ball. That's all I have for this one right now. Nebulon B-2 Revision 2 A few weeks ago I posted a Thread showcasing my Nebulon B-2 MOC. In that thread I mentioned that a Revision 2 was underway. Well, here it is. First, an Overall shot. You can plainly see that the model is unfinished. Most of the Main Hull is missing, as well as the Bridge connecting the Main Hull with the Engine Section. (Ignore the colors for the moment. They are there for design purposes.) The Engine Section is pretty far along, perhaps 80% or more. It could use a lot of Greeby details, but the general shape is complete, and I'm happy with the superstructure up front. This Side View gives a good profile for the section. Even though the Bridge section is not complete, you can get an idea of what it will look like on the Engine Section. Many of the Neb B-2 pics I've seen show the bridge as semi-elliptical on the bottom, but flat on top. So I plan on carrying the 2 x 2 Inverted 45 Slopes on the bottom the entire length, and the 1 x 1 Cheese Wedges on the side, with a plate making the top. I plan on interspersing some random Trans Yellow 1 x 1 Slopes in randomly, forming some windows. It'll help break up all that Dark Blay. The Wings are probably the most complete. The Side View gives the overall profile of the Wing, while the Bottom and Rear views show the details on the lower half. The Upper half of the wing details were completely redesigned between Rev 1 and 2. In Rev 1, I used a lot of plates, making them very heavy. For Rev 2, I tried to stick with Bricks, Slopes and Wedges. I also built the sections upside down, so that the connection between the Main Hull and the Wings looks more seamless. The Main Hull is the part that is giving me fits. I've tried several times, but I have as yet been unable to get the curvature of the hull correct. I'm trying to stay away from using plates, again sticking to Wedges and Slopes. I also plan on adding a Hanger Bay, but that detail has to wait until I get the overall shape worked out. Neb B-2 Rev 2 Gallery. TIE Scimitar My TIE Scimitar started out really well. I started with the Concussion Missile Launchers, since they are one of the most distinctive features of the ship, despite being on the bottom. One of the unfortunate aspects of this design is that, when the Launchers are rotated 45 degrees, the holes I planned on using to attach them to the rest of the ship were 1/3 of a stud off. So they will end up hanging, sort of like a trapeze. This will allow them to move slightly back and forth, but the bottom plating should keep them from moving too much. Besides, this is meant as a display model. The Wing Panels turned out pretty well, too. The angles on the wings are fairly difficult, and stability could have been an issue if using Locking Hinges. So I went with Technic Angle Connectors instead, with 2 x 2 Plate with Pins for the connection to the panels themselves. They should be much lighter than my previous TIE wings, the shape of the Scimitars wings hide the Technicy parts well, and it should be pretty sturdy. After the wings I moved on to the Cockpit. The distinctive sets of black bars that show up on all the Scimitar artwork proved to be very difficult, so I went with sets of two instead. That's about the only thing I dislike about the cockpit. I managed to squeeze room for both the Pilot and Bombardier Inside, with the Bombardier sitting backwards. Here is the Pilot's View, and the Bombardier's View. Aside from a few minor interferences, I feel that the Cockpit is complete. After that, the design really bogged down. The Engines look OK I guess; I'm not terribly thrilled with the way they look, but I have no idea how to improve them. The Hexagonal portion of the hull was fairly easy to create (using the core of my TIE Defender to get the shape), But it has been a bastard to integrate it with the rest of the Hull and still look somewhat natural. Plating around the Wedges of the pylons has been difficult at best. In short, all progress on all three of these designs has been slow, mostly because I've lost my muse. I'm hoping some comments will provide me with enough of a kick in the pants to get going on them and finish them up. EDIT: Forgot to add the Scimitar Gallery. Sorry. Comments and Criticisms not only accepted, but requested in this case.

I've got a few irons in the fire. I am building all of my official sets, organized loosely by theme, photographing them, and then taking them back apart. When I finish I'll add the photos to my Brickshelf page. I just started the Technic Theme, but I have a looooong way to go. I also have three models going in MLCad. I made a thread about them HERE.