icm

A Hogwarts "castle" like the one unveiled yesterday for the abominable Disney doll things.

The thing about locations is it's more natural to use the everyday locations in your home or school or park as play settings for minifigs or vehicles than it is to use location sets as a play setting for a makeshift vehicle made of a brick (made of clay) or spare parts (made of plastic). Vehicles are complete in and of themselves, while locations are only a small part of a much larger whole. That's my two cents about why vehicles sell better to kids (including me when I was a kid) than locations do.

Hay que pedir un TIE Vengador en todos los idiomas del mundo para que Lego sepa que todos lo queremos dondequiera que estemos por todo el mundo. Naciones del mundo, únense en fuerte clamor para el Vengador!

For a moment I got excited because I thought that meant the new Razor Crest was about to leak. But it's the midi version, of course. Still a few months to wait for the Crest.

@danth I haven't taken pictures in a tidy environment with no background that I'm willing to share on Flickr, but I can DM you a link to my Google Photos album if you're interested. I still haven't bought the light bluish gray 6x6 tile that I really need to complete the rear ramp of the Starfleet Voyager, but other than that it's pretty complete.

Thanks for the link. I already saw that video but I haven't taken the time to follow along with the speed build in Studio. FYI, a website calling itself Freizeitgalerie.com claims to have the Aldi ship for sale, but it's a scam. I foolishly tried to check out from that website and got hit with a fraudulent charge of 490 euro. My bank was able to refund me the 490 euro, but the PayPal dispute is still ongoing. I thought I was smarter than that, but I guess I'm not. Gonna have to be more careful about avoiding scams in the future.

Glad to hear that! Looking forward to seeing your version of it.

None of the Series 9 selections interest me, so that's simultaneously disappointing and relieving.

As long as you acknowledge that what you build is inspired by this Mass Effect MOC posted on YouTube by UsernameGeri four years ago, I wish you all the very best in building whatever take on it suits your fancy.

Sure wish I could get that Aldi ship in the US - or even just get a scan of the instructions and a parts list. I have some white hulls and sails sitting in my parts bin, waiting for the right ship to use them. If anyone on Eurobricks has the Aldi ship, could you please scan the instructions and DM me a link to a Google Drive folder or something? Thanks. That market share has already been lost. Lego has effectively ceded Pirates and Castle to the knockoffs for about a decade now, and the abundance of cheap knockoff castles and pirate ships available on online marketplaces makes it much harder to regain that market segment at a competitive price than it would have been if Lego hadn't let Pirates and Castle die in the first place. Of course, I'd love to see Lego make a comeback with full retail lines of good Pirates and Castle sets at the full range of price points.

Yeah, I just bricklinked the parts for the 2016 X1 a few months ago. It holds up really well nine years later. When I was a kid I didn't get the fuss about minifigs. They were just something to put in the pilot's seat and I didn't do anything with the other minifigs in the set. I still don't really do anything with the other minifigs, but now I appreciate having a good selection and distribution of characters, and I appreciate minifig contents as an important part of the value of a set.

Cada is doing an 8w licensed Speed Racer Mach V? That's a must-buy for sure!

Yes, but the resellers will charge a hundred bucks for the gwp and twenty or thirty bucks for each minifig.

Oof, the Mando speeder bike is really rough. From the piece count I was already thinking it would have to be a 40% off buy, but the build is so bad it's only worth it at that discount. Luckily City sets at the $10 price point usually hit that discount by the end of the year, so hopefully this will too. The Cobb Vanth speeder is so big and clumsy, and it absolutely doesn't need to be. I was looking forward to it for the figures, but I'll have to wait for 30-40% off on this one too. Even at full price, though, it'll be a bargain to get a Cad Bane for the half-price-no-figs Justifier I got at B&M a couple years ago. No opinion on the mech and battle pack, those really aren't my thing.

I know Mando's N1 is the relevant one right now, but I'd much rather have a UCS model of the Naboo N1. Oh well, I guess there should be adaptations of the set in Naboo colors pretty soon after the set comes out.

My Antique Shop was delivered two days ago. The courier didn't pay any attention to the delivery instructions and left it on the street outside the neighborhood postal center, but the people at the npc were able to pick it up, so all's well that ends well.

I would be happy to have a complete line of 1xN plates and tiles, like Cobi has.

Well, the idiots at OnTrac tried to deliver after business hours again. I finally went on their website and entered delivery instructions in the chatbot. I hope they pay attention to the delivery instructions for their fourth and last delivery attempt tomorrow! If they don't it'll be a big headache to get this straightened out.

There's a pretty decent alt build on Rebrickable for that! https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-216053/Camobricktape/galactic-venator-alt-build-10497/#details

OnTrac has attempted delivery of my Antique Shop twice, but the idiots didn't get to the neighborhood postal center until after business hours either time. I hope they don't make the same mistake two more times and then give up trying to deliver this unique and virtually irreplaceable set. OnTrac's web site claims its shipping costs thirty percent less than shipping through other "legacy" services. Just one more example of "only the best is good enough" for Lego!

Yeah, it's to prevent sagging. It's like an I-beam: the tall joint has the clips on the top and bottom of the joint, because that's where the most force is. In my own NCS builds, I prefer to use a more compact four-pin joint that uses two 1x2 Technic bricks with two holes stacked right on top of each other. That has plenty of force to hold together the front and back halves of two-module spaceships like the FX Star Patroller and Gamma V Laser Craft with almost no sagging and no rotation. It ought to work well for modules as large as the cockpit of the new Renegade, since that's no heavier than the back half of my FX Star Patroller or the back half of my Starfleet Voyager. (I built a Starfleet Voyager remake recently that splits the front and back half for mix-and-match swapping with my FX Star Patroller and Gamma V Laser Craft remakes, but I haven't taken pictures of it yet.)

Ugh, I hope not.

I pre-ordered four copies of the 10497 Galaxy Explorer the day it was announced and I bought another copy later when it was on clearance for half price. I used three copies to build the A, B, and C models, and I gave one copy to my brother and one copy to my wife. (My wife's copy has been sitting half-built and very dusty on the shelf for over a year and a half now :/ ). But I only bought one copy of the 10355 Blacktron Renegade. There are a few reasons why I only bought one copy of the Renegade for myself, while I bought three copies of the Galaxy Explorer for myself. First off, I've never really been into Blacktron the way I've been into early Classic Space. I bought vintage copies of the original 918, 924, and 928 soon after I graduated from college and I designed my own modern remakes of those spaceships in Studio, though I didn't get them built in physical bricks for several years after that. I also had a project in Studio where I was trying to build digital copies of every 918, 924, or 928 remake I could find on the web, though that petered out after a while. I love the simple, sleek lines of the original 918, 924, and 928 and the way that simplicity lends itself to a wide variety of modern interpretations. In contrast, I only built one Blacktron creation before the Blacktron Cruiser GWP was released, and that was a small, simple, half-hearted interpretation of the Invader that mostly used spare parts I already had. Second, I wasn't as impressed by the rebuildability of the Renegade as I was by the rebuildability of the Galaxy Explorer. The Galex uses almost entirely basic wedge plates, Technic bricks, and other basic plates and bricks and slopes; it doesn't really depend on specialized parts for any of its key features. Even the big tile ramp in the back is a pretty simple part that's easy to use in other places. By contrast, the Renegade relies on very specialized frame parts to build its backbone, very specialized lattice wedges to achieve the look at the front of the wings, and specialized support girders to decorate the top of the frame. Those parts make it rather less versatile for MOCs, although to its credit it still does have a lot of basic bricks. This can be seen on Rebrickable: there are instructions for building just about anything out of the Galex, but the selection of alt builds for the Renegade is much smaller. Third, the official B model of the Renegade is much less impressive than the official B and C models of the Galex. Although the Galex B and C models are basically just downscaled, self-similar versions of the A model, they are still good enough to be A models in their own rights if they were to be sold separately, while the A model itself has no compromises whatsoever to allow for the alt builds. In contrast, the B model of the Renegade is pretty mediocre, and the A model is obviously compromised for its sake. There's no need to have the 1x6 arch bricks in the Renegade except to use in the legs of the Alienator alt-build, but at that size it's a shame to have the Alienator use the same old shuffling motion the little old set had on a much smaller scale. The smaller walker of the B-model is cobbled together from spare parts and doesn't have much identity of its own. Fourth, the self-similarity of the A, B, and C models of the Galex respected the self-similarity of the original 918, 924, and 928, but there isn't that same commonality between the Renegade remake and the Invader remake. The mods to make the Renegade and the Invader compatible are small, but it was still poor planning on TLG's part to not build the Invader with future compatibility in mind, and poor execution to not build the Renegade with backward compatibility and cockpit commonality in mind. To really respect the original sets, commonality and compatibility should have been paramount. I don't mind the simplicity of the Renegade build compared to the greater sophistication of the Galex build, or the higher proportion of yellow compared to the original set. Those are stylistic decisions that don't really affect the merit of the build considered on its own terms. It's the lack of commonality and the compromises for the subpar B-model that bother me. The boring 18+ box art is also a bummer! They absolutely should have done the same kind of homage to the original with the box art as the 10497 did. I agree with @Renny The Spaceman that the Renegade is much harder to modernize and upscale than the Galex. The Galex is primarily defined by its shape, as it has very little functionality. Just an opening top hatch, a back end that splits open, and a rear ramp. As long as those simple features are maintained along with the general outline of the wings and the general color scheme, the ship is still recognizable as a Galaxy Explorer and the designer can have a lot of creative freedom with everything else. The shape is easily upscaled or downscaled without loss of detail or function. By contrast, the Renegade is mostly defined by its functionality. A proper remake should have at least as much modular self-compatibility as the original (which the set does) and also intercompatibility with other contemporary Blacktron remakes (with the set does not). To maintain modularity, an upscaled version needs beefed-up module joints to stay sturdy, but then that changes the proportions and we end up with something that's more chunky than spindly. Also when upscaling it to match the upscaling precedent set by the Galex, you have to choose whether to upscale the cockpit or not. If you do (and the set did), you lose the simple cockpit commonality with the remake Invader that wasn't significantly upscaled from the original; if you don't you lose the proportions of the windscreen compared to the rest of the ship. Although the shape of the Renegade is distinct, it's not nearly as simple, clean, and easy to sketch as the Galex outline, so that means you have to make a lot more stylistic choices in how you're going to do it. If you're going to add retractable landing gear (and I've been of the opinion since 2002 that nearly every Lego spaceship should have retractable landing gear), it's not hard to hide it in the thickened wing of an upscaled Galex or attach it to the portion of a non-upscaled Galex that extends below the wing, but to hide it in the Renegade you either have to change the proportions of the spindly booms to hide it inside (like the set did) or you have to think a lot harder about where it's going to go. At a larger scale, you also have to think harder about how to keep the twin-boom frame stiff and swooshable. The twisting and bending forces in the original were small enough to handle with unreinforced simple bricks and plates, but at a larger scale they need Technic reinforcement and stronger crosslinking between the booms. So that forces another design choice. Do you keep the main engines as close to the center as possible and have them hinge out of the way to unload cargo to the rear, as in the original? The tradeoff is that to maintain rigidity, the cross-members that support the cargo module from underneath are going to have to be significantly bulkier, and they may have to be augmented by cross-members on top, which will change the look of the ship and might look pretty clunky. Or you can move the main engines outboard so their centers line up with the centerlines of the booms and add a thick structural cross-member at the rear ends of the booms, like the set did. That's the simplest way to make the upscaled frame sufficiently stiff and swooshable, but it means the cargo can't be unloaded to the rear anymore, and the cargo loading needs to be rethought. I think the dropship mechanism they came up with is a fairly clever solution to that problem, at the cost of changing the play pattern from a cargo ship to a VTOL dropship. So yes, there are a lot more design challenges in an upscaled, updated Renegade than in an upscaled, updated Galaxy Explorer. I don't agree with all the design choices they made, but I don't think they were all bad choices. It's still disappointing that the two sides of the 10355 Renegade frame are the same length while they're different lengths in the original, but that's easily remedied with an add-in module extension. I should build one. I should also mod my Invader and Renegade to have compatible modules, and build different little flyers for the wings. I really don't like the brick-built Blacktron logo flyers. They don't look good and they don't hold minifigures well and they don't swoosh well either. I'll note that @danth's own Renegade remake is wildly different than the original in most respects. It's a wildly creative build that transforms into a totally awesome mech! But the original doesn't do that. So it seems a bit rich to criticize the 10355 for being too different from the original when your own design is so wildly (and totally awesomely!) different too. Talking about it makes me want to buy a second copy of the Renegade. Maybe if it goes on sale before the end of the year I'll still do that.

It's better for dusting, though! I think one unspoken reason behind Lego's move to a mostly studless finish over the past decade-plus is that smooth surfaces are a heck of a lot easier to dust off than studded surfaces.

My BDP 5 Antique Shop status changed to "Shipped" today. I'm in the western United States. Unfortunately, it's shipping using LaserShip/OnTrac instead of UPS or FedEx.