icm

I'll note that while this is a very impressive build, it uses substantially more pieces than even the 2019 Falcon. Maybe it should be simplified, if possible, to be more like a hypothetical retail set from the era, without changing the overall style or dimensions.

Wow, this is amazing. I don't think the 7190 Falcon was half-bad, but I didn't know it was possible to build a genuine pizza-slice Falcon using parts from the same year. Thanks for posting!

RansomFern does it again! Another alt-build that's so brilliant it's hard to believe it comes from the same set, and equally hard to believe that Lego didn't build it that way the first time!

I wonder if the playscale Jango ship will use the windscreen from last year's big Milano. It's larger than the starfighter windscreen used on the 2021 Boba ship but smaller than the big windscreen used on the big ships in 2002, 2006, and 2010, and smaller than the windscreen on the 2019 ship. It might be useful for a Slave I that is larger than the 2021 model, but still downscaled compared to the models before that.

From my point of view the ISD was much better than a building representing part of the Death Star

Lucasfilm wanted the Zeta but Hans Burkhard Schlomer persuaded them to accept a set of the Krennic shuttle instead, because he felt like he could do justice to the Krennic shuttle at the price point but he couldn't do justice to the Zeta. Bricklist notes Lucasfilm thought we should rather make the "hero" 4-winged transport ship, but we convinced them to do Krennic's shuttle instead with a sketch model I made.

I believe your revelation that 6987 is not really a Blacktron set because it doesn't have all the same gimmicks as the other Blacktron sets would be known as a "showerthought" on Reddit. Edit - reading the rules on that sub, it doesn't count.

Funny you all say 2004 was a bad year. I remember when I was a kid I thought it was a great year! 2004 brought the first AT-AT, which was a great model and had the best proportions and play features of any AT-AT until 2020 (the 2004, 2020, and UCS AT-AT sets were all designed by the same set designer), and it brought the first remakes for the X-wing, Snowspeeder, Landspeeder, and Millennium Falcon. Those were all groundbreaking remakes: it was the first X-wing with a tapered nose, synchronized wings, retractable landing gear, and white bricks; the first Snowspeeder with back-to-back seating, rear reel, and a wedge nose; the first 8w Landspeeder; and the first pizza-slice Falcon. The 2004 X-wing set a pattern that was refined all the way through 2020 (counting the playscale T-70s), the 2004 Snowspeeder set a pattern that was refined all the way through 2019; the 2004 Landspeeder set a pattern that was refined all the way through 2017 (the 2020 Landspeeder was the first to have a really different build at 8w); and the 2004 Falcon set a pattern that was refined all the way through 2024 (the Dark Falcon still uses the pizza slices). Additionally, the X-wing came with an excellent Yoda's hut that was basically free (the 2006 X-wing was the same starfighter build at the same price, but without the hut), and there wasn't another Yoda's hut until 2018. So yeah, it's true that 2004 was mostly remakes, but they were all excellent and groundbreaking remakes that set the pattern for decades. Pretty successful set designs by any measure, I'd say. And the photo staging on the boxes and instruction manuals of the X-wing, Snowspeeder, Millennium Falcon, and AT-AT that set them in the context of Echo Base and the Battle of Hoth was brilliant. By the same argument, 2006 had a lot of remakes, but they were excellent remakes! The first remakes of the A-wing, B-wing, Boba Fett's Slave I, the Desert Skiff (with the first Jabba's Sail Barge), the first playscale ISD, the first V-wing starfighter - that was a pretty great year too, as I remember from when I was a kid.

You could do a 4+ version

For me, the best years of LSW besides 1999-2001 are 2015-2019, and in particular 2018 and 2019. Because those were movie years, there was lots of new material for the sequels, but there was also very good coverage of OT and OT-adjacent sets like the Rogue One Y-wing and the Solo TIE. In 2018 we got the best OT X-wing and TIE fighter (OT design, though Solo movie) and in 2019 we got the best OT Millennium Falcon, Slave I, and Tantive IV. OK, the Falcon wasn't an OT set, but it just needed a minifigure swap, and you could conveniently get the OT Falcon crew in the Slave I and other smaller sets easily available in 2018-2020. For me, the worst years were 2008-2013, because I wasn't very interested in the Clone Wars era at the time, and those years focused on TCW just like 2015-2019 focused on the ST and OT. So, one man's trash is another man's treasure, etc. Apart from that, the last few years have been rough because of the declining quantity of playsets and increasing quantity of 18+ display sets in formats that don't really interest me, like buildable droids, logos, and helmets, while the playsets that remain are downsized and price-hiked. There have been some really good sets in the last few years, but the direction the theme has been taking doesn't please me. Edits in bold.

This time, I tried to be pretty sparing with my use of "Like It" and "Love It", so as not to dilute my vote. I marked a few medium-size castles as "Like It", and nearly everything else as "Not For Me". The only three that I marked "Love It" were the following, which are the only three I can definitely see myself buying. I really hope the Classic Space Rover makes it through this time - it was my favorite build one or two rounds ago, but it wasn't selected. The Intergalactic Justice Enforcer is also very creative without being too big and complex and overdesigned. The Broadside Brawl is two nice little brick-built sailing ships that would make a great playset.

Thanks for your review post. You have an impressive fleet!

Great news! So happy to have Brickshelf back.

Seven? I can only find five on the Mattel Brick Shop website.

I posted here but then I deleted my post because I don't want to participate in necrobumping an old thread.

That's why the old EU had a lot of complicated layers of canonicity. People used to mock it for that, but it wasn't without reason. For me, the films and TV shows are of roughly decreasing canonicity in production order, which seems to me like the simplest commonsense approach.

That does look amazing. It continues the all-too-frequent trend of bundling scenes that could be small, affordable sets into one giant building, but it's one very good giant building. I just wish we could get a single ~$80-$90 set that combined the challenges from the end of Philosopher's Stone, i.e. Fluffy, the Devil's Snare, the Winged Keys, the Chess Set, the Potions (although they weren't in the movie), and the Mirror with Quirrell. That would still be a large set combining several scenes that were discrete sets in the first movie wave from 2001, but it would be more focused and playable than trying to cram them in the lower levels of the giant tower at a reduced scale.

It looks pretty good to me going from the sketch. We haven't had a City jet with that configuration since 2016, and then since 2011. The 3w cylinders should make pretty good engine pieces, and I don't think we've had a jet with folding airstairs before.

Of course, who am I to question the oracular wisdom of Imposter-RiddlerDC-LegoTurtle the Swedish-Finnish wunderkind? He must be the sales manager for the flagship Lego store in Stockholm.

Still need a citation on this.

[citation needed] Also, that's perfectly normal for this time of year, what with May the Fourth and all. Are you seeing anything different than the typical level of sales that most themes get?

Of all the possible reasons why Lego hasn't had a traditional Castle theme since 2013, I'm sure that's one of the least significant/likely. That's why Lego doesn't do modern military, not why they haven't been doing a lot of Castle.

According to one person's complex headcanon, I guess. Personally I've vaguely imagined that the Lion Knights are kinda-sorta English and the Black Falcons are kinda-sorta German. Really, the different Castle factions can be from wherever you want in medieval Europe.

With a title like Starfighter, we better get a handful of nice swooshy new starfighter sets out of the movie (if it gets made, which I won't believe until there's a trailer). But I bet we'll get one new starfighter, one rehash, two buildable droids, a 4+ speeder chase, and a helmet.

It's a stretch to count BDP as a theme, because it's not sold through Shop at Home or in Lego retail stores, but it does have a fairly large amount of sets, they are produced by the Lego company, and there's reasonable availability for a short-run boutique product. But yeah, BDP is certainly not a theme in the same way Atlantis or Dreamzzz are.