Samppu

Works really well, I like it!

Totally agree! Imperial battlepack, yes please! Particularly a one including anything more obscure than simple stormtroopers.

My wishes don't revolve so much around the sets according to their themes but according to the parts they include, particularly novel molds for aliens and helmets. 1. Range trooper helmet (for cheap...), if the rumor is true, and it actually makes an appearance in a set. 2. Any new molded alien head, or a remake of the old ones hard-to-acquire now. Plo Koon seems guaranteed at least, and it should even come in a cheaper set (like not in those 100+ € sets...) 2. If we get Deidra, I would wishfully wishwishwish that her officer cap would have hair attached to it. Or that she at least gets the officer cap... Admiral Sloane... Sigh...

Yes please. And while we're still at it, a tank driver with a proper helmet... Generally I feel we are overdue of an Imperial battlepack, which would include other stuff than just stormtroopers. The same goes for the Alliance/New Republic. In recent years we have only got clones.

Ah, I love it! This is how I personally consider how the capital ships should be built. Accurate from the outside but still including a reasonably scaled version of the interior with the most iconic choices prioritized as its content. Excellent touch on this.

Yep. Generally Lego tends to make unreasonable choices when it comes to inclusion of generic vs. unique figures. Probably has something to do with licencing issues, though. The Soulless one with Grievous a couple of years ago could have included Cody (luckily we had one later, but disappointment then was very real) and the anniversary AT-RT could have included AT-RT driver but instead both were given just generic clones in their places. Same things with the Naboo characters as you said. While I believe in the release of a SW cmf line like I believe in fairies, obscure characters could still appear in advent calendars if they are not given sets, like Zam? Usually they only include figures, which have appeared on sets, but at least the Imperial colonel was unique only to an advent calendar. That would also hugely boost the interest into them anyway. 5 figures, 2 of which are mostly useless holiday specials, with a whopping price tag and generic choices for the rest 3 figures. Have skipped those things for years in a row now, and watched with envy the Potter versions...

Ah, I love it! Good work on smooth angles and well-crafted versions of the figures. Can the minifigures access the cockpit somehow?

I would suppose these legs are already too long to make your Darth Vader longer (and you would need to wash off the prints first), but has anyone tried? I would love to see the result, and wouldn't bother to try it myself, because this fig is hard and expensive to acquire. But in case someone here happens to own this figure already? The figure is called Jack Skellington.

Didn't know this, wow. Still, Naboo craft could be nowadays made with the new metallic shades at least, there are tons of pieces in production in those colors anyway.

Interesting, that's news to me. Though, Legends was not entirely coherent either. I was referring to the indirect stories about Han Solo's youth as mentioned in the Death Star novel and some other novels and in some comics and in some visual guide books. Though, those sources are sparse and indirect, not even trying to depict his story as a whole, but instead only hinting towards some selected parts, which may not always be consistent even in the sources I know. E.g. I haven't read Crispin's trilogy, so I don't know if it includes Soontir Fel, or if their connection is just made up in the Death Star novel. But ok, I see that as a meaningful inspiration for the movie, and I will surely try to get a hand on those books. Yet nevertheless, the Disney effect in general is real. Admittedly being an orphan is a general cliche in storytelling, but being an (often somewhat idiotic) antihero is quite Disney specific cliche. Particularly how Solo meets Chewbacca in the Disney movie does not feel like saving or taking a personal risk or making a sacrifice at all. From their initial encounter one would not catch the idea that Chewbacca would hold sacred debt towards Solo for saving his life.

I could also defend the vision of the prequels. Revenge of the Sith is my personal favorite as an episode, particularly the book (really, if there are some particular Star Wars books I want to recommend, it is certainly Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover as well as Thrawn-trilogy by Timothy Zahn, of course). Yet my general point is that before the prequels, we did not really have a good idea what the Jedi were about, what was the "senate" that the emperor took over, how the Galactic Civil War and the Rebellion started in the first place, and most importantly, how Darth Vader came to be. These ideas were all created in the prequels, even if we now take them for granted. The prequels had problems in their story telling, because they focused on wrong things and depicted some things in a weird way (e.g. judging by the looks of it, Anakin's childhood does not appear in the movies particularly oppressed as a slave...), but the general course of events was many times beautiful and tragic, as well as very Star Wars -like. For some examples, I wouldn't change the event as such, but podracing and gungans got unnecessary amount of screen time, some of which could have been given to connect all the epic and missing parts of the whole plotline. Like imagine if we had seen a short glimpse, after or before the scenes in the Gungan city, where the Jedi council had sent the rogue master Sifo-Dyas in episode one to rescue Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, but instead of searching them on Naboo, he would have secretly gone to meet the Kaminoans, because he wanted to invervene such problems in the future with a military force, not just with a weak diplomatic shuttle with a pair of Jedis. Or imagine if we had seen a discussion between Fang Zhaar or some other anti-military senator (Bail Organa?) and Palpatine before or after they tried to assasinate Padme in Attack of the Clones. Bail Organa: "I believe we should still approach the Separatist movement with diplomacy." Palpatine: "To my experience, even the Jedi could not save Naboo with diplomacy." Fang Zhaar: "Yet with all due respect Chancellor, we still have not used all the other means, we could impose trade sanc-" Palpatine: "Pardon me senator, but as I see it, only great enough violence can balance the force... ...between ours and theirs." *Palpatine begins to walk away, but meaningfully turns around and says with a fatherly smile, "I am sure we will yet find an agreement on this." In the next picture the Naboo Cruiser explodes, and in the aftermath Organa and Zhaar are shown to have understood the message, when they grumpily vote for the creation of the Republic military. Such scene would also give better motivation, why Organa is the first one to oppose Palpatine and to search for the missing Jedi after the purge in Revenge of the Sith. You got the idea. The events themselves mostly deserve to be in the story, but they are missing their motivation. Such scenes would also give great inspiration for mocs or even short animations. True. Being an orphan in general is a cliche in storytelling. My point is that Disney even goes as far as trying to force every character into that mold for no particular reason. Anakin had no father, because he was supposed to be born without one, through and by the Force. Luke had no real family for obvious reasons. But particularly Han Solo had no particular reason to be an orphan. That is just the disneytizing effect. In the Legends he is an active character from a good family who pursues a career in the Navy and who becomes a celebrated fighter ace whose friend and rival is the baron Soontir Fel. Their paths diverge, when first Solo learns to care about himself, not the system, but he does one exception by his own will, when he saves Chewbacca from slavery and they both escape and become outlaws. Compare this to the Disney version, where he is an orphan who does not particularly pursue anything but rather tries to escape from a shitty home, and he is an anti-hero who is thrown from one place to another by accident. So much so that he even saves Chewbacca by an accident, not by his own moral decision.

Totally agree on this. Like ignoring any personal preferences for individual characters, or more so any discussion about female or black leads etc., the problem of the sequel trilogy is primarily the fact that they were mostly lazy copies of the originals with no coherent vision. Additionally and even more unfortunately, this incoherence does not concern only the plot but also the lore and the world building. The Last Jedi introduces ballistic turbolaser guns for no particular reason. Solo depicts Corellia as a dirty and depressing planet, even if every other piece of the lore depicts it as a jewel among the Core Worlds. Jedi video game series introduces stim healing sticks, even if the lore and other video games before it have used bacta canisters (the game is otherwise excellent, though). Such carelessness gives me the feeling that either the creators do not really understand Star Wars or they don't care, because these kinds of changes to the lore have no particular functional relevance. You could have a healing bacta canister and call it bacta instead of stim, and it would work the same, but would better fit the lore. Also, there is the disneytizing effect. Every main character has to be an orphan. Check. No violence, particularly not to any character with a human face. Check. No questionable morals, not even in the criminal underworld. Check. No personal incentive, that is, the main characters tend to be anti-heroes instead of heroes, which means that they are pulled into an adventure by an external force and they do their deeds rather as a result of an accident or a must, not as an act of their own choice with consequences. Check that too.

Luke is in the skiff set, so I think it is just reasonable and fair to not include him in the barge. Though, better him than nothing, but generally I think it serves well to make different sets complement each other. I mean that I much prefer design philosophy that buying all the sets of the same series you would get, say 20 unique figures, rather than 10 unique figures with multiples of some.

Agreed. I was once working during my studies in a big toy shop, and the battlepacks were the standard I gave to the busy buyers, who were looking for something for a birthday gift into a birthday party of a friend of their child (around 15 to 20 dollars seemed to be the acceptable price point for such gifts in the area). "But what if he/she has one already, can I return?" "Even if they did, I assure you that you don't have to." Seems like a bad business choice to discard them in this respect, too. Unless they have a reason to think that the children don't care about Star Wars anymore and that other themes fill that birthday gift for a friend of one's own child -gap, which sadly may be true.

I am a little confused. Aren't ISB and COMPNOR somewhat rivals? At least in some visual guide (don't remember which one, but probably Legends) it reads that ISB's primary duty is to surveil and punish rogue Imperials (sort of thing Mara Jade does in Legends), and COMPNOR (Commission for the preservation of the new order) does the same but on citizens, not officials.

This sums it up for me as well, another moc builder.

These recent new complaints about the Sail Barge missing the room above Jabba's throne seem a little confusing to me... After all, the Sail Barge does have all the interesting interior one could ask for: the throne room, the kitchen, the armory, the prison, the cockpit, the ladders, the piano room. Granted, there exists a room in the visual dictionary above Jabba's throne, but that isn't iconic nor important, nor even functional, so why bother compromising something else for some totally irrelevant detail?

This. Interestingly, the 3rd party Chinese minifigure makers have meanwhile gone up in quality like rockets. They come with 360 degree high quality (both the design and the finishing) printing, multiple realistic weapons, tons of cloths, backpacks and other accessories (which often are unique), and they even tend to have in par quality compared to the official Lego in terms of not having broken or loose limbs etc. Like they are not 100% perfect, but 95%, yet Lego has not recently reached even that level always... What they still lack is dual-molding, but the official Lego Star Wars figures do not have it anyway, and the face printing remains consistently idiotic for every figure, but that is a simple and cheap thing to fix with spare head pieces from Bricklink. Honestly, I am usually much more excited about these 3rd party customs nowadays than I am about the official figures, at least in terms of minifigures. The official figures do sometimes come with interesting parts that I wish to pick up for creating my own Star Wars characters for my MOCs, like the Sullustan head piece from Nien Numb, but for long now I have been only looking after such individual minifigure pieces, not complete minifigures when it comes to official Lego... So much so that from the perspective of a moc builder, if the Lego Star Wars line got cancelled at the very moment, I would not really loose so much anymore. I can pick loose bricks elsewhere cheaper and any important Star Wars minifigure parts come to me nowadays like 10% Lego, 90% 3rd party customs... (Of course, I still buy a lot of general figure parts from other fitting official Lego themes like the D&D characters have excellent torsos for your Star Wars civilians, for example.)

I agree with most of the previous writers. The build is fantastic and wholesome, as both the minifigures and you yourself can access all the rooms, which themselves are both detailed and loyal to the source material. I have no real complaints about the build, it is simply fantastic. Well, one minor thing, which is the excessive number of exposed studs, but this is a bit of a question of taste. For me, a moccer, it is a value in itself to build as realistic and studless builds as possible, but I understand that the official products don't follow this code. In the case of the Sail Barge the studs are somewhat ok anyway, because the barge is supposed be rugged and a nest of the dirty and the wicked, so its appearance doesn't need to be glimmering and shiny. On an Imperial craft, such a number of studs would be much worse however (just for reference, the UCS TIE fighter was a horrible in this sense, only studs and rectangular shapes with zero elegance in even trying to make smooth ball-like shape...). My real complaints come down to the minifigures, much along the lines with previous writers. Jabba is great, he was great before and the new one luckily sticks to what has worked well before. Same with Max, nothing to comment on him really. Salacious is a stupid example how rules can overcome ration. I understand that Lego has a motivation to somehow unify its design principles on minifigures in general, but in the case of Salacious sticking to the rule of "only one color + white in the eyes allowed" feels like somebody stopped the car to the traffic lights while running away from a hurricane. Luckily they made the exception with Jabba at least. The guards are ok, yet Star Wars keeps missing the dual molded legs, even when desperately needed and even when the molds already existed in other series... (e.g. olive green + dark brown for Gamorrean would have been easily available with the cmf goatkeeper) Giving a few dual molds does not cost so much that there would be any excuse not to put them into a set, which itself costs this much. More so with threepio. They even have a set with him having a dual molded leg at the same time! I am lucky to have the old Bib, so not personally bothered by the reuse of the wrong mold. Yet he would have appeared less of a lazy copy if been given at least the cape to make him appear more like he was in Episode VI, so overall a clear lack of love there... I am happy that the slave Leia appeared at all. Call her whatever you want, put her pants or even a shirt if you wish, but at least we got one. I would not have been surprised if she had been excluded from the set completely. As a bonus, the hair piece is just perfect. I agree with some that it is actually good that the pit of Sarlacc and the skiff are sold separately. This way you can more easily buy two of them if you wish, or choose to go with some of the previous versions in case you happen to have one. The real downside then comes down to the lack of minifigures, particularly the lack of Jabba's thugs. As many have said, the overall figure count is not much that there could not have been much more for the current price, and I find comparisons to similar sets entirely justified. However, worse than not getting enough figures within the barge is the problem of not getting additional Jabba's thugs at all. Namely, as the skiff does not include a single Jabba's guard either, there really is no way to populate the barge with currently available options. This argument is not so much based on the price of the set than it is based on the perspective of completing the set and the scene. I mean that it is ok not to include the pit of Sarlacc and the skiff with the barge if you can, at least in principle, buy them separately, even if it meant perhaps a slight increase in the overall cost. Similarly I wouldn't complain about the lack of guards if there was indeed a battlepack around with which you could populate the barge and the skiff(s), but because there isn't, it feels like they just ignored or forgot that somebody should drive this thing too. For comparison, imagine if they made only the barge but not the skiff. At all. I feel similar incompleteness with the lack of guards, and the unavailability to not even buy them separately. So, overall the build gets from me 9/10 (10/10 from me would require design choices bordering insane for a set, something like flipping a switch at the cannon and the barge would split in two, maybe even cracking some fire bricks in between), but with the lack of Jabba's thugs and the apparent lack of love over the minifigure design choices I reduce the overall points to 7/10. Edit: missing word

The information comes from a documentary depicting Lego factory and a designer. Don't remember details nor bother to find it out just for reference, but that's what they said. The simple reason for destroying the molds is that it costs money to keep them; they do require a respectful amount of space after all. Additionally if you never get rid of the old ones, they will eventually pile up... Primarily it is about production optimization. If simply standing in a stock costs you money, it is just a question of time when those running costs cross the cost of simply remaking the mold from scratch. Hence molds which do not see use for an extended period of time nor is there an incentive to use them in the near future, are sensible to be destroyed from the perspective of cost optimization, I suppose. Perhaps they make some exceptions? For example, they might have held the mold of Jabba in reserve in case another hutt had appeared in the new movies. Though with that logic one would expect the same treatment for other alien molds, too. So either Jabba was indeed an exception or the new mold is simply copied on the basis of the previous?

I would go even further and say that any generally usable CMF series will sell well. I personally go all in for the D&D figures from the perspective of my Star Wars MOCs. Particularly the torsos and the boots are highly reusable for Star Wars figures as well, unlike 90% of the regular CMF lines. Perhaps I sell the excess dragon heads etc. on Bricklink, but generally the parts are excellent for reuse. Namely, their color scheme is natural. Colors and prints that fit the Star Wars universe as well as medieval MOCs and other adventure themed worlds. The regular CMF lines come with so bright and unnatural colors, often coupled with yellow figure parts not matching the flesh tones in Star Wars, that they are rarely very usable for Star Wars or other MOCs. Take the series 26, for example. Where would you naturally reuse dark pink torso or transparent violet legs? They do not fit Star Wars, they do not fit fantasy or history themes, they do not really fit even the regular City theme. Marvel figures have had better color schemes but they tend to have superheroes' logos messing up the torsos... D&D series really is the first one with natural color scheme without any particular logos messing up the reusability of otherwise interesting prints. As far as I know, one of their main motivations to buy Bricklink was to access exactly this kind of information...

About the animals: Star Wars surely has plenty of iconic animals to go by, banthas, womp rats, eopies and kaadus to name a few from the movies. Plenty more if you consider e.g. Jedi Fallen Order. They could have easily included one in every Tatooine related sets in recent years, if they wanted to. Corellian hounds was actually a good example and it alone made at least me to buy a piece of those speeders. By generic nobodies I mean canonic aliens of course, not imaginary ones. They just don't need to be any particular named characters in my opinion, but I get what you mean. Though it is not like they hadn't ever been included before. E.g. the old Mon Calamari set included exactly this kind of generic Calamari mechanic with no particular identity. Similar characters would be much appreciated generally and wouldn't probably add the licencing costs so much as the named characters do. E.g. would have been nice to have an additional generic Kaminoan with Obiwan's interceptor (though in the case of the Kaminoans, there would have been a few named options too, but you get the point). I believe the last point in general is true, but I might counterargue that minifigures in Star Wars sets should grow higher in priority in Lego's end. They easily make it or break it whether one wants to buy a set, both for kids and adults. For adults the quality of the minifigures is a great matter, for kids it is at least the inclusion of minifigures, which matters.

Yep, totally agree. Just generic nobodies would be welcome in Star Wars theme to get some alien molds to populate our own creations.

I totally agree, though as NoOneOfImportance commented, it seems to be difficult for the designers to get new molds. Though, as customers, we really do not care how they get the new molds, as long as they make them, so having unreasonable factory process causing poor quality in the product makes no excuse really. I merely wanted to point out the fact that the designers cannot simply take an old mold off the shelf, if it has been more than five years since its passing. Additionally, this sometimes explains odd design or minifigure choices in some sets, because I also learned that they sometimes purposefully try to push in particular parts even if those parts didn't exactly fit the theme of a set just to prevent the mold from getting destroyed.

Btw a fact about molds in the Lego company: I learned that each mold is given five years of stock time. If within that period the mold does not get reused in a new set, it gets destroyed and the only way to get it back is to craft it from scratch (very expensive). Hence, the old mold for male twilek/Bib Fortuna has been destroyed in around 2019.