monkeyhanger

Anyone got any idea which sets have 15% off? I doubt the sandcrawler will be discounted on day one (although I am looking to buy one), but still hoping that Ewok Village might be.

To really do this set justice, they need (in addition to Owen Lars and 3 x Jawas): C3PO, R2D2, Gonk droid, RA-7(one with a proper insectoid head, not that black C3PO headed rubbish that we got with the Death Star), the R2 type unit with the conical head (that "has a bad motivator"), the spider armed one, the one that was basically a dome and an aerial on wheels, R1G4, Aunt Beru. I hope this is one of those sets that looks far better in the flesh than it does in those pictures. It doesn't look incredibly large at about 58 studs long, not for $350 (likely £250/E300). how many of the piece count will be swallowed by those treads? Not impressed with the lazily placed 2 x 1 yellow trans plates for the cockpit windows either.

We're supposed to be getting a UCS Slave I in Sept/Oct, looking to sell my 8097 to make room for it. Those mods are a great addition, santapj

kr-lik: There's not many parts there that are so rare or specific to the MF that buying in an alternative colour will save you a wedge of cash. If you've got little or no parts already that could be suitable in an alternative colour, you might as well buy them in the proper colour, especially if they are LBG, DBG or black. General rule is that the main structure/technic beams can be pretty much any colour apart from a few technic beams on show along the inner edges of the mandibles. Most of the underside layers of the plate sections could also be in any colour you like. Exceptions to the rule for being more expensive in the "right" colour or print are the levers, the dish, the masts and the large red plate on the underside. If you have a decent loose parts inventory then you could refer to the downloadable manual, see what parts you have in the "wrong" colour, separate them and then study the manual to see where they get used to determine if they won't be seen on the finished article. Around half of the parts in the set won't be seen on the finished article.

Got 2 recently for £52 total spend at TRU UK. Will really bulk up my Hoth shelf which comprises of approx 15 x Imperial battle packs (only a few speeder bikes on display), 12 x rebel Hoth battle packs, a motorised AT-AT, an AT-ST from the Endor bunker set, a Hoth Wampa set and a few other Hoth bits I can't remember.

I ordered about 1000 parts from Lego's brick replacement service (which is different from their PAB service) much cheaper than bricklink. I paid about £110 for that set of parts that were priced up at around £300 via the cheapest bricklink suppliers (excluding postage) - there are huge savings to be had on some parts. When you phone them, be prepared to have the proper Lego number for the parts you want (download the manual and refer to the back pages for the parts list), not the 4 digit lego design number you see on bricklink. From the proper number (7 or 8 digits I think I remember), the Lego advisor can tell you if that part no longer exists, but an alternate part is available e.g. 6.6L bars not available but 6L bars are etc. On bricklink you may also find some parts hard to find, but the newer part is widely available e.g. part 1234A isn't available or is massively expensive, try looking for part 1234B instead which will have the tiniest of differences. Worth waiting until the service resumes on 15th Jan for all but the most common and cheap of parts such as your small plates and blocks which will almost certainly be cheaper through bricklink. Here are some price comparisons from the last set of parts bought in Sept 2012 for mine (so Lego direct prices might be slightly out of date, but only slightly, bricklink prices may have gone up significantly if those parts are pretty much only needed for 10179 and no new sets have come through with them). Most other parts can be bought cheaper through bricklink (1st price bricklink price, second price Lego price):- 4210815 Gun Bar Dark Stone 8p 28.8p 4211887 * Umbrella stand Mid Stone 175p 4.95p 4502460 2 Rigging Black 58p 121.1p 4211522 1 x 12 brick Mid Stone 29p 46.37p 4211366 1 x 16 brick Mid Stone 97p 48.68p 4260409 Curved special 4 long Mid Stone 48p 26.64p 4211527 Round brick with holes Mid Stone 76p 56.57p 4509865 Lattice Dish Black 12p 34.4p 4211694 2 x 1 brick V fingers Mid Stone 72p 25.47p 4166618 8 x 8 plate Mid Stone 108p 83.7p 4176959 1 x 2 plate with stud Dark Red 6p 6p 4293876 2 x 2 plate with peg White none available 18.76p 4249039 1 x 1 round stud Chrome 79p 1.2p 4509915 4 x 2 slope Mid Stone none available 18.38p 4256828 1 x 16 technic brick Dark Stone 115p 48.675p 4257699 Technic 90 angle Yellow 134p 67.75p 4211450 Gear rack 1 x 4 Mid Stone 37p 16.92p 4211560 * 3 x 2 wing wedge L Mid Stone 68p 25.46p 4211559 3 x 2 wing wedge R Mid Stone 78p 25.82p 4250256 4 x 4 special wedge Dark Stone 11p 32.4p 4211361 3 x 3 cut corner plate Mid Stone 5p 15.21p 4211735 4 x 2 Wing plate L Mid Stone 67p 14.47p 4211732 4 x 2 Wing plate R Mid Stone 66p 14.87p * Replacement part number 4538098 ** Replacement part number 4527767 If you're after any dark red items, they will have an alternative number that the operator will have to search for as there is a newer shade of dark red. Some of the parts cheaper on bricklink were either very hard to get a hold of or required so few that the postage costs and the fact that the sellers had very little else I wanted made tagging them onto a Lego order economically viable.

Don't forget to contact Lego on their brick replacement service. Many parts are cheaper though them than Bricklink, especially the longer technic beams, the 3 x 2 and 4 x 2 wing wedges. General rule is that anything that costs more than 20p on Bricklink that is considered very small will probably be cheaper from Lego, anything medium more than 40p will probably be cheaper than Lego and anything very big (plates, large wings, beams etc) will be cheaper with Lego. Some parts have had very minor changes like hollow pins, chamfered edge tiles etc so the lego part number will have changed slightly for the new version available. If you have plenty of parts of your own in the wrong colour they may come in useful as there are lots of internal parts or undersides of large plate assemblies that will be unseen. Sometimes it's cheaper overall to order a few parts that are slightly more expensive via Lego because as you get more parts you find fewer parts from one seller and postage outweighs savings on parts via bricklink. I bricklinked mine for about £250 about 18 months ago and it is 99% proper (including grey rigging and printed dish), although I did already have about 1800 common parts. If i'd have beenless fussy on the colour for unseen parts, i'd have done it for about 1/2 of that. I expect the cost of doing it with no parts already is close to £450 now with rigging/dish substitutes and £600 to do it properly. Yellow angles are considerably cheaper through Lego.