Alexandrina

I couldn't disagree more, and this isn't just me preferring the look of rebels over the armoured factions. Battle-packs imo should always come in pairs - two opposing factions designed to do battle with one another. That's what battle packs are for. I have no use for a dozen stormtroopers on their own. Give me rebels too, and they have somebody to fight. It might be a controversial take, but I don't think the battle-packs have been worthwhile since 2008. After that, we had ugly Clone Wars faces alternating with ugly Hoth rebels, then they started putting named characters in battle-packs (not the point of a battle-pack) and the price crept up.

I wonder if they added that feature recently then! My Rebrickable account is about four years out of date now because I moved to my own custom-built spreadsheet. Of course when you're going really granular with your collection, sometimes you need a 'variant inventory' that might not actually exist. I can't remember offhand what the set was, but there is a set which I'm fairly sure must have come at some point with the 1x1 cones with the top groove, but all the web resources only listed the old variant without the top groove. I couldn't prove it as I was only piecing this information together from knowledge of what sets I had and what pieces I had, so I wouldn't submit an alternative inventory to Rebrickable, but it saved me a huge headache being able to just change the inventory in my own spreadsheet (And then there's also random unadvertised freebies - I had a 2x6 brick in a sealed copy of the original Chamber of Secrets set that wasn't meant to be there, but needed adding to my spreadsheet) For just getting a vague inventory ofc none of this matters and Rebrickable is perfect! (Though I also dislike the way they show your percentage of sets released in a theme but don't allow you to exclude certain sets. It irritates me that I have the only general-release Stranger Things set and yet I've only got 33% because of Comic-Con exclusives I will never have a chance at getting)

The main issue with Rebrickable/Brickset is that afaik there's no way to specify which version of a set you have, if it was one that had minor inventory changes in its life (an example of such a set is Army Men on Patrol, just off the top of my head because I have both variants of it). It's still going to be broadly accurate as an estimate but not without its flaws. For OP's use-case I'll absolutely second your recommendation - for anyone reading the thread who is looking for a more heavy-duty, permanent solution (as in, they're expanding their collection not selling it) I'd advocate for taking the time to make a custom spreadsheet. Especially if you have lots of bricks not tied to specific sets; all the web-tools I've tried are lacking in that use-case imo

Since the Rebuild the Galaxy range has demonstrated that Lego's offerings aren't limited to canon TV shows/films, it would be wonderful to get a couple of sets covering the highlights of the old Legends-era books. Not a huge range - just enough to finally get some of the heavyweights of that era in Lego form. Honestly, they could even repackage the standard ships to make half the range still appeal to non-book fans. Imagine a Stealth-X instead of the usual X-Wing - the same basic ship, but with a new colour scheme and figs of Jaina Solo and Kyle Katarn And imagine if the next edition of the Millennium Falcon contained an older Han and Leia, as well as Anakin and Jacen Solo They could also lean into the fan-service with the Wild Karrde, giving us Mara Jade and Talon Karrde (as well as Luke Skywalker for the non-book fans - and possibly Grand Admiral Thrawn as well) I personally really want an Octa Ramis minifig somehow, but I can't even conjure up enough copium to somehow figure that one out

Only off by about twenty miles!

It's definitely common usage in England to say "udders", so I'd imagine it would be similar a little way north

I've actually not completed anything for about ten years now! My personal standards get in the way and I discontinue projects before they're done, whereas when I was younger I'd churn out any old rubbish Finally have a proper set up though (I used to film on my bedroom carpet) so I can do a couple of tests. I've been wanting to have a crack at building only the foreground irl and keying in Stud.io renders of the larger set - so I don't need to physically build 50,000-piece monstrosities for the sake of two hours' filming! It can be surprisingly hard to get hold of main characters sometimes, especially if your Dark Ages coincided with the times Lego made the main characters readily available. Distinctly remember a period where it was impossible to get any of the main OT characters in anything but their Hoth/Jabba's Palace outfits, and C-3PO straight up wasn't available for a few years. Never thought I'd be so excited for a Landspeeder as when the 2010 set came out. Years later, I still don't have Han Solo in his standard outfit.

Honestly I kind of want to revisit the concept for a brickfilm one of these days. The basic concept was interesting (essentially, Ben Skywalker was told he could have Mara back, but he'd have to kill somebody else to pay for it - decent moral dilemma imo) but the execution was basically just an excuse for me to show off all of the book characters I knew. This was in the period where Disney had announced the sequels but not yet decanonised anything, and I was genuinely convinced that minifigures of Mara, Jaina, Kyle Katarn, etc. were just a few years away

I'd imagine if there was anything like that coming, it'd have been announced now - since it seems you can already pre-order the game. I'm actually annoyed it's not going to be on PS4, especially since both of the mainline games were. I can afford to buy the game itself, but I can't afford to buy a console for it!!

I can agree with this, for sure, but I would point out that you did bring up post-sequel media yourself. It's not especially relevant to the staying power of the sequels, but that cuts both ways. Honestly, my main point is that the prequels were roundly hated for a long time, well up to the release of the sequels (and at least in my experience, when TFA came out people said it was at least better than the prequels - it wasn't until the divisive TLJ and the lower-than-average TRoS that opinion really solidified to be anti-sequel). 2015 feels right too for another reason: it's around this time that the first kids from the Clone Wars' target demographic would have reached adulthood. I've found that Clone Wars fans are quite likely to overlook the flaws of the films and/or romanticise the entire era because of their nostalgia for the cartoon. I think it's safe to say that two things are true: the sequels have not been a merchandising success to the extent Disney would have wanted, and the prequels were generally considered poor right through into the sequel era. (I have a minor theory as well that a lot of hardcore Star Wars fans checked out around 2014/15 for different reasons unrelated to the quality of any of the films - specifically the decanonisation of the Legends novels. As most of the Legends novels were post-RotJ, and the Clone Wars era stuff tended not to be so thoroughly disregarded, this demographic is going to have had more overlap with prequel-haters than prequel-lovers. I know that my own interest declined when I realised that all of my favourite characters were going to be abandoned, and I'm still bitter that we never got any sort of resolution to Vestara's arc) Nowadays I'm not sure it would still hold true as too many years have passed, but I imagine that had Lego released a set or two based off the books in around 2012-2013, it would have been competitive with or even outsold the prequel sets on the shelf at the time. Especially if it included Thrawn!

I'm not sure this is necessarily a fair representation of the situation. For one, prior to 2008 when the Clone Wars cartoon started, there wasn't really any noticeable prevalence of prequel-era content in terms of supplemental media. Sure there were tie-in novels when the films came out, but the (overwhelming) majority of the books of the time were either post-OT or far pre-PT - and if you're counting the High Republic era as the prequel era then of course a ten-thousand-year span of time is going to have more content than a couple of years. Games, too, tended to lean towards being in other eras (there were exceptions ofc, such as the Battlefront campaign). Even after 2008, most of the emphasis on the prequel era was because that was the active era. (Some fan spaces were definitely prequel-heavy in this period - the brickfilming community, for example - but this again is likely a product of the fact that most of the active voices were young/teens at the time) Meanwhile, in the post-prequel era (let's say, since TROS came out in 2019) there's been a broad mix, but not only is most of the material based in some way on the characters created by Dave Filoni (who I'd argue is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars but that's neither here nor there), a lot of the series are very clearly working towards setting up elements of the plot of the sequels. Which given that Disney also won't permit anybody to make stories set after the films is a decent showing. And given that the sequels take place in a limited span of time, during which there are basically zero gaps in any of the new cast's activities, it would be hard to tell a story with Rey or Connix or Jessika Pava. I'd also note that there is post-sequel content in the works. And I would definitely disagree with the idea that people softened on the prequels before 2015. I remember that period well (it was the peak of my interest in Star Wars, to the point that I was writing 90-page screenplays in which Mara Jade was brought back to life) and the prequels as films were always seen as terrible. That is separate from the world around them, which has been appreciated at least for as long as I can remember.

I agree with this, for the most part. The minidolls are actually decent figures - they look good and handle well. Where they're lacking, for me, is in utility for stop-motion - as they have less mobility than standard minifigures, and less customisability, it's very difficult to make much use of them. For play and for display, though, they're fantastic.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Honestly, most of the interesting prequel set material had been done by 2012 (barring a few inexplicable gaps that still haven't been filled, like Shaak Ti without the hideous Clone Wars eyes), and the original trilogy has been working its way back through old concepts for twenty years at this point - if these trilogies can keep going back on themselves without fans complaining, why can't the sequels get a few decent sets here and there? Aesthetically they were stunning films (I'm not going to bother getting into the weeds of story because it'll go nowhere productive) and I feel like Lego haven't really taken advantage of this.

Do you generally find you have enough loose hands to warrant a special place in your storage system? (Or do you take the hands out of the torsos?) I've always just kept my excess in a sandwich bag on my desk. They're the only parts I don't bother putting in my spreadsheet either, I just keep the odd ones I find somewhere separate so I can replace broken/missing hands in the future I do store mixed parts too, sometimes. I have one tray each for all animals, all food, all minidoll parts, all headgear accessories, etc, as well as one large tray for all 'castle' pieces (so wall panels in all shapes and patterns, turret bricks, castle roofs). I've also got a tray I call 'large miscellaneous', which is for parts that don't warrant a box of their own - for instance, the die from the Games sets or the turntable brick from Pretty Playland.

Not that I'm in favour of it (I agree with you; if you're going Classic Space, do it properly) but I'm actually going to find this quite useful - I have a couple of the orange helmets from the VIP add-on pack the other year, but no torso to go with them

There's a grey dog/wolf in 4756 as well, though I know it's not a great wolf (for my money 4756 is one of the ugliest Lego sets ever, mind) but if we can count the wolf as new despite it then we can count the cat too

In that case, does the wolf really count as new? Wasn't there a wolf in one of the Harry Potter sets way back when?

I don't think this is especially a new thing. I was a child getting into Lego Star Wars nearly twenty years ago now and even then, I had very few named characters in the early years of my collection. In the 2006 sets, for example, all the main characters are bunched into the big sets. The only named character in the cheaper half of that year's range was Ten Numb (who most people probably only know as a minifigure). 1HY 2007 was the same, and even later in the year you tended to get a named character in sets. In the first four years of being into Lego Star Wars, the only actual characters I had were Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie and R2 from the X-Wing, Grievous, Darth Maul, kid Anakin and half a Darth Vader figure that I don't even know the origin of. In terms of getting named characters, it's actually improved imo from this down patch. I've not really paid much attention to Star Wars sets recently (fatigue with Star Wars in general because I find most of the Dave Filoni era stuff really boring) but there look to be a good few decent offerings. But also - do kids not still prefer battlepacks? When I was young, it was all about building armies of clones and droids and things. I remember my friends and I being envious of the army in the pizzamovies films

Some of these look really interesting. Will have to pick up cat lady, wolfpack, pirate and pink-hair girl. Might leave the rest to chance, they're not terrible but also don't particularly excite me

Obviously it sucks if you can't use the baseplates properly but is it possible this is a one-off/batch error rather than a change in the baseplates in general? I've only bought one baseplate since the new undersides were introduced, but I can't say mine was noticeably different from the old ones. It could be that the one you bought was accidentally imperfect - which, again, is far from ideal, but it's less malicious than Lego changing baseplates. I'm thinking here that it's not the first time Lego have reissued the baseplate packs with different numbers, and they didn't change the fundamentals of the part in the past.

I've found a few odd parts over the years (a blue 2x2 tile, an incredibly scuffed-up Castle wall piece, inexplicably once one of these despite my never owning any set it came in and there not being any other children in my area when I was growing up) The highlight was probably finding 7121 almost complete (including the box and instructions, missing only the minifigures and about three bricks) on the side of the road in about 2009.

In my experience, most GWPs are a nice bonus - cool to have the extra bricks, but very rarely is a GWP something I would consider buying otherwise. (Off the top of my head, only the Forestmen's Hideout and maybe the Blacktron GWP were sets I had any interest in). That said, while actual models are cool, my favourite GWPs have tended to be the parts packs, whether that be the VIP add-ons or the 12-in-1 sets they occasionally release. I feel like a lot of people's issue with GWPs would be soothed if they pivoted to having more of these sorts of sets. Maybe they could even do a themed add-on for certain sorts of set (imagine a Pirates or Castle or Space VIP add-on pack, full of cool and theme-appropriate minifigure accessories and stuff), and release the equivalent of these mid-range GWPs as a companion set to the big one. For example, if they were to do a reimagined Fort Legoredo under the current system, you might have a reimagined Weapons Wagon as the GWP. It would be better if instead, both Fort Legoredo and Weapons Wagon were available as a pair of sets on shelves together, and the GWP was a VIP pack containing assorted rifles, revolvers, cowboy hats, barrels, cacti, etc.

In fairness I've never actually held any ZNAP or Galidor, but my issue with the machete is that it's clearly meant to be held by a minifigure but unlike every other minifigure accessory, it doesn't actually seem to fit. Every machete I've ever had is slightly too wide to go in a minifigure's hand, so they're functionally useless. IMO if they're meant to be in scale with minifigures, they should be a single piece/a couple of specialised pieces. Brick-built animals to scale with the figures never look good and quite often seem to be a way to inflate part counts. It's different if the set is specifically an animal rather than part of the minifigure system (like the Tuxedo Cat for example) I guess it shows how much I enjoyed Jaws that I don't remember that line (or any other line tbf)

Not necessarily, they could probably get away with having it be more narrow. The proportions just look off to me

Moral issues regarding AI aside (as some models are definitely unethical in how they're trained, especially image generative AI - and no, something being posted online does not give carte blanche for it to be used in AI models) it's just not good enough to supplant humans, nor is it likely to be any time soon. I've made some use of it as a tool - I've previously generated images for tokens in an online DND game, and I did experiment with using one of the AI voice models to make guide lines for stop-motion, so I could time shots more accurately. The results are usable in these cases as a sort of 'scaffold' for the creative process; they're by no means good enough to publish, but they can be put in place as a temporary part of the process. (This goes especially for voices in stop-motion. My workflow means that it's not practical for me to seek out, record and pay my cast until post-production, so having a means of experimenting with alternative lines/takes during the production phase is helpful) In some fields it's even worse. Take writing. It's a matter of two seconds to get an AI model to generate a few paragraphs of prose for you, but the prose is terrible. Sure, technically it's fine on a sentence-by-sentence level - but it has no sense of rhythm, so you get sentences of equal length, usually three to a paragraph. It has a pedestrian vocabulary. And there's never any nuance beyond what is explicitly put into the prompt. You'd get a similar outcome if you asked a group of Year Six students to write a sentence each, following specific guidelines of what to include in that sentence, then stitched together what they wrote (except the kids would probably be more creative here). Even the idea of 'AI as a tool to aid the creative process' isn't universally true. There are fields where using AI actively hinders you. I experimented with using it to structure a chapter of my book, but the results were so terrible that I didn't get any usable material from them, and actually made a net loss of time when you factor in the time spent to write the prompts in the first place. When it comes to Lego, I don't think AI will get there. Even if you could get it to consider all the physical factors (how different bricks can combine with other bricks, weight, sturdiness of construction, aesthetics) you're limiting it to combinations that have been thought up by a human to program in. Just today on the front page I saw a genius combination of bricks to make a sloped wall which didn't involve studs or any conventional connection. I fail to see how AI could conceive of that. Not to mention, TLG would still have to build and stress-test the designs, and there are bound to be bricks which don't serve an obvious purpose (or any purpose at all; even if you find a way to get it to factor in legal combinations and stuff, that doesn't mean it's not going to stick a random 2x2 brick in an unseen place that doesn't functionally affect the build but is also entirely pointless)