joebiwankenobi

Bravo! I've been eagerly awaiting someone to mod the ball as it desperately needed some help. Good job removing all the unsightly gaps and staggered plates!

I haven't bought a new set during its release window in 7 years now. Waiting for discounts is the wise way of going about purchasing anything as of late. I suspect that there will be larger discounts than what we are used to in the near future, as I feel that a lot of these new sets will be abundant on store shelves at these high MSRPs. The one thing that's somewhat hilarious to me is to consider that the 2024 Clone Battle Pack will be on store shelves alongside the new 327th one with roughly comparable piece counts/box sizes/contents, but the new one is 50% more than the one from only a year ago. That's going to cause people to pause. One funny nitpick on the 327th pack I haven't seen anyone cover yet... Why did TLG give one of the troopers regular IRL binoculars when the clone should have macrobinoculars? Even Bly has Macros in the MTT? Such an odd substitution. LOL

On the same note, though, we've had an utter plethora of affordable sets over the last 6 years that had the main OT cast in them. Just check the sets since 2019 and then consider how got the extended shelf stays on most of them that seem to be more common now. If someone needs a Han, Luke, Leia, Old Ben, and whatever variant, they can be picked up for relatively cheap depending on the variant. Sure, some characters aren't as common, but then again, we've been waiting on how long for certain prequel characters now--looking at you Dooku? Don't get me wrong, I've been advocating for a ROTJ Falcon for 10 years now just for the figure compliment. Is it going to happen? Likely not. Do I foresee the inevitable *lost count at this point* remake of *insert OT ship here* where one can get any of the figs *relatively* (the prices have gone lulu oingo boingo not cheap) cheap (*at the current state of prices across the board*)? No doubt. I do think there's a lot to be thankful for in just as much as there is to be critical about although the latter always beats out the former when it comes to comments/posts/videos/etc. I'm not singling anyone here out, but just making a general comment. Some examples of good improvements are the variety of sets made, the increased stability/accuracy of models, the new parts/molds, the improvements on stickers, and the increased figure assortment. There are some obvious downsides though. I understand a lot of it is subjective, but there are some things such as quality control when it comes to parts/prints and price/model size. Some of the problems are the result of the improvements such as the models getting smaller as they get more compact/stronger, etc. Others are not though. We've seen some major shifts in the product line over the last ten years and it seems the design team has taken a lot of community input/feedback into consideration, which, I think is a good thing. I'm happy that it's hopefully going to open the door to some cool stuff down the road. Hopefully! Didn't expect to see a UCS Jango Slave 1 ever. Hope we continue to see some prequel UCS stuff as that was always assumed to be ignored. Is it likely that TLG is now catering products more towards the CW era since they didn't really touch any of it for a very long time? Probably. Between the amount of people interested in that content and with how frequently it keeps coming up, it makes sense. Concerning the product output for "current" medias, I assume a lot of that deals down to the licensing agreement with Disney/Lucasfilm and the overall performance of a lot of product since the 2013 buyout or so. I think the strategy of playing it safe by making maybe 1 - 2 sets per new "thing" is pretty smart. Allows them to have some breathing room rather than have a whole wave and a lot of products become shelf warmers if the movie/media isn't well received. Will movies like the Mando/Baby deal have more sets. Probably. I'm sure there's a lot more to this as well that we won't ever really know, but thats neither here nor there. We're at a real interesting point to be a fan of Lego Star Wars. There's a lot of ships/characters/locations/etc. that TLG haven't made, but between the amount of custom fig makers and custom design instructions a fan can readily access now, I think TLG takes notice. I do think that plays into their consideration for product development/allotment as the design team has a lot of fan models built in their office over in Denmark. That's been a thing as far back as the UCS Imperial Shuttle and likely earlier. As fans, we can access and create a lot of what we don't have, but no one can deny it's nice when you can buy an official model. I can't remember what day some are at in campaigning for a TIE Avenger, but I imagine that will be something that has a higher likelihood of being made at some point. I mean, it's a TIE after all. Wait. We may not though, as we didn't get a Brute for Solo. However, as stated, we've got great fan designs to cover the bases TLG leaves empty. Overall, I think we've had a pretty diverse product compliment over the last few cycles, and look forward to what we're going to get in 2026. I'll admit, I haven't really bought a lot of it over the last few years, but I still enjoy it. Will there be controversy at some point? Undoubtedly. I just remember the days when the controversies with the brand were hilariously simple, like when TLG introduced curved wedges and slopes in 2002 and flesh tone figures in 2004 (Now that I think about it, it was in 2003, but it didn't really come to a head until the 2004 Falcon). The implications of both of those "incidents" have proven to be for the better. Alright, Grandpa's gone on too long at this point. Time to wheel myself back to the retirement center and find a Werther's candy or something similar.

The V-19 being downsized will make it more accurate to how it is in universe since the 2008 one was massively oversized to get in the pneumatic wing fold/landing gear lower/retract function. I hope they've still got the wing fold/drop ability in it with a more simplified/better design just as how the new X-Wing and ARC 170 achieved their S-foil mechanics. I don't know if I'd expect the set to have a landing gear since it seems most of the designers at TLG have dropped adding that as a feature to most sets anymore. I'll be curious on the fig selection for Kenobi and Ventress. The new Phase 1 clone pilot helmet is perfect, but the remaining two figs could be interesting. I remember there was an April fools bingo card pic posted that had a lot of the spaces with some crazy claims at the time. One of them said that the Ventress and Kenobi figures would be based off 2003 Clone Wars, which I'd prefer but understand others might not. Thing was that there were a lot of wildcard claims on there that ended up being more possible according to the flow of leaked info. However, time will tell. Hilariously the Azure Angel set from nearly a decade ago that gave us a Ventress fig has torso design that's directly from '03 CW but the face is undoubtedly '08 CW inspired. A lot of people overlook that but if you take a look, you'll see it. Still happy we're getting a V-19 as it is long overdue. easily one of my favorite ships since seeing it back in 2003.

I believe so. Looks like he uses the jetpack to jump behind one of the two larger pylons, grabs ahold of it, crawls around it, and fires at Kenobi from a somewhat horizontal position.

I just went to the youtube homepage, saw this, and immediately knew where I needed to post it.

Wonder how many of those could be battlepacks/microfighters?

Model looks tremendously good. I'll can see the three seats, but I'm looking forward to whether or not more of the interior will be present. Regarding the name, I'm sure someone could whip up custom printed tiles with the correct name. That's what I'm banking on at least.

I much prefer the Kamino facility GWP if that rumor turns out to be legit. Opens up the possibility for some Kamino builds and playset MOCs.

Honestly, I'm really interested to see what the DS is going to look like. I've been working on an off on a 4X upscaled version of 10188/75159 for almost 5 years now. It started out as doubling the size of the set and then I got into questioning why I can't have playscale falcon land in it. Have yet to post anything of it as I want to get it right and have instructions for the beast before putting it "out there". I've come up with a number of rooms and features from looking at literally every single death star related playset produced by toy companies/homebuilt so I'm really curious to see if TLG ends up doing anything new. I know I've done some room arrangements and features that are "new" takes so to speak. I'm going very deep with references and call backs to things from the original west end game sourcebooks/old Lucasarts pc classics/lots and lots of SW materials from the 80s-2000s. Also was able to really round out all the sides and floors, too. It took a lot of time (and math) but it's wild how if you take the time, you can do some wild things. I've killed two computers working on this thing as Stud.io could not repel file sizes of that magnitude. Have broken up the project room by room and no computer deaths yet. *crosses fingers* Need to finish up a decent playscale falcon MOC to get the sizing just right to continue this monumental MOC. Getting back to the upcoming set, I'd imagine given the piece count coming in at over 9000 parts, that it's either going to be an enlarged version of the previous playset Death stars or be slightly larger version with some form of a shell. 75159 (2016) had 4016 pieces and the original DSII display model 10143 (2005) had 3449. So this is rumored to have an additional 2000 parts on top of both of those prior sets. I'm really curious about the features. Will the lasers beams be illuminated by a light brick or something? Maybe we'll get some tie fighters and tie fighter pilots *hint* *hint* for my own project. Could they put a stormtrooper barracks? *hint* *hint* from me again. We've had bits here and there over the last 4 years with death star related stuff like the death star escape, tractor beam set, final duel set, among others so I hope we see significant updates and new things over the prior MBS playsets. Ironically, it's rumored that Hasbro's next big haslab project could be their own DS playset that's been rumored for a number of years at this point but time will tell. From the random drawing that someone made of seeing a mock of their playset, I laughed that the folks at Hasbro did similar things that I'm doing with my own model. Made me feel good and question my life choices on whether I should have gone into the toy industry lol.

That rangefinder in black is going to finally give the ARC trooper helmet the correct look.

I’ll be curious to see if the rumored UCS Death Star will have the same shelf life of the 2008 model instead of the 2016.

This makes me wonder whether they actually saw the Star Destroyer back then or possibly early concepts of the now rumored Death Star...

I could see them call it a "Republic Hover Tank"

A TX-130 is the Republic Fighter Tank. It's the saber tank and has had that designation since it first appeared in the 2002 Clone Wars game back on the old PS2/Xbox/Gamecube days. I think we should all just sit back and let the rumors cook a little more. We're in the weird period where all sorts of things get claimed. Not too far off from getting photos of things for the summer I imagine. Best to wait for those.