Thorg23

The shop at home site is an embarrassment. TLG should be ashamed not having extra server capacity on hand for what was guaranteed to be a ridiculously high traffic period.

Well this is a nice palate cleanser after Assault on Hoth.

The biggest problem for this set is that it's just trying to do too much with too little. Trying to make echo base, the shield doors, the ion cannon, the snow trench, the snowspeeder, the wampa cave, and have a bunch of minifigs with this kind of piece count just ends up with everything looking underdesigned (for the new stuff) or phoned in (for the re-used builds). The scope of the set as a whole is simultaneously too large (in terms of number of scenes included) and too small (focusing on unnecessary play features). Both those issues end up wasting a ton of parts and design space, meaning the set is just not up to the level of an ultimate collector series set, and instead amounts to a lazy "greatest hits" of Hoth system sets. Setting aside the design issues completely and looking at the set purely as a value proposition, I have to agree with the person who made the "4 in 1 pack" comparison with 7666, 8089, 75014, and 75138. If you are willing to buy some of them used, you could buy all of those sets for less or about the same as what lego is charging for this set, and you would arguably get more. You'd lose the half baked ion cannon and shield generator, but gain 2 more speeders, more imperials, a couple probe droids, and more minifigs overall. This set is going to be an easy pass for me and that doesn't actually bother me that much, as it's nice to have a set I don't feel compelled to buy, seeing as how I have a bunch of other exclusive sets to catch up on right now. But it's still a pretty big misstep for the UCS line after such great successes as the Tie Fighter, Slave 1, and Sandcrawler (which btw is a great example of a UCS "playset" done right).

Can't log in to the S@H website. Used my saved password and it told me the password was wrong. I reset my password just in case someone had hacked my account or I had changed my password at some point and forgotten to save the new on in my browser, but it still won't log in. On firefox trying to log in just loops me back to the log in screen; on Chrome it still tells me my password is wrong. Also had issues lately like some others where trying to view order details would redirect you back to the main S@H page, and the only solution to that was to log out and then log back in every time I wanted to actually view account or order details. Given the boatloads of cash LEGO is making, they have absolutely no excuse to be running a store website this bad. Hire some competent programmers, get some decent servers. Whatever the problem is, fix it.

What I did with mine was simply not lock together the two clip pieces on the underside of the top portion with their partner on the other side. If you fold the entire top section together so that the clips are touching the bars, but not attached to them, the top section will sit in the slot in the hull perfectly without moving at all, and the middle stays perfectly straight along the center line. I actually came upon the idea purely by accident, as I forgot to connect the clips on the underside and finished the model, then wondered what people were talking about when all the reviews said the top section was loose and moved around too much. I went back and checked, noticed my mistake, but decided to leave it alone since it seemed to fit better as it was. Your solution is prefereable if you want to do some "take evasive action" style swooshing though, as the top section in my setup still isn't connected to the bottom and would still fall off if you flipped the ISD upside down.

The original star destroyer model used in ANH actaully did have a vertical tower. Since the 10030 is obviously intended to be the Devastator (given the inclusion of the Tantive IV model), the vertical tower is correct. There is a detailed look at all the different bridge models used in the films here: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/towers.html

The Azure Angel set looks like a good Lego interpretation of the source material, but I never really liked the ship itself. The whole aesthetic of it smacks of fan fiction/crappily written EU nonsense - like the designers took a regular Jedi fighter and said "Guns are cool - okay let's add A WHOLE BUNCH. Extra fins are awesome looking - let's add some of those too, YEAH! Oh, and let's add some GIANT ENGINES on the front, everyone loves BIG ENGINES." And eventually you end up with the Star Wars version of this:

The newer one is much more accurate to the shape of the speeder than any previous version. Previous iterations used a 3x12 wedge plate for the edge of the wings, but the slope was too shallow, and always made the speeders look too square and boxy. For 75049, they used 2 3x6 wedge plates on each side, giving the edges a much steeper slope, which nails the overall profile of the vehicle. This also allows for the rest of the wings (both the laser cannons and the sloped bricks that hold them) to be more accurately shaped as well. I have held off on buying previous versions (like the wampa cave or battle of hoth), but 75049 was good enough for me to finally get one. It has the new spring launchers that are in a lot of the sets in this wave which I don't ever plan to use, but they are well hidden under the wing and don't hurt the profile of it at all. Aesthetically, I prefer the orange striping on the other Rogue speeders to the gray on Luke's, but it's film accurate. There are still some annoying things, like having a ton of stickers for a small set and the x-wing/y-wing canopy instead of a properly shaped new one, but those were issues with previous versions as well, and compared to those it's still a marked improvement.

Holy crap... most impressive.

In no particular order: Big Boy Mallard CP Royal Hudson An updated Superchief SP Daylight 0 Series Shinkansen Anything with the Yellow Red Grey Union Pacific Livery

The set designer from TLG, Mark Stafford, has talked about it on Reddit when discussing the set. http://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2cc734/sold_out_online_lego_stores_are_loaded/cjec9ga

It should be on Amazon for MSRP at some point. They end up selling nearly all of the exclusive/hard to find sets eventually.

Exo Suit I also preordered the Star Destroyer, AT-AT, and Snowspeeder from Amazon.

I just preordered the AT-AT, Snowspeeder, and Star Destroyer on Amazon. Several of the Summer 2014 wave are discounted 15% or so on amazon US right now.

Nice review. I'm definitely going to be F5'ing Shop@Home at midnight on August 1st to make sure I get one of these.