icm

Sort of like the trademark squatting that led to the Razor Crest set initially being called "The Mandalorian Bounty Hunter Transport" in Europe.

I hope the 1200p $130 10+ TMaG set 75446 is the new playscale Razor Crest we've been wanting. Fingers crossed it's not the 930p $150 10+ TMaG set 75447. If this year's CTT sets any precedent for heavy-armor SW builds, 75447 will be the TMaG AT-AT walker.

If you're in the United States it has to be the Black Pearl. Bluebrixx doesn't ship to the USA anymore, thanks to You-Know-Who. But seriously, I'd say go for the Black Pearl. It's got a better hull shape and the fun mechanical gun deck, the parts quality is better, and it has few to no stickers. I'm no cheerleader Lego purist anymore, but I still find that Lego has the best part quality in the business, and good part quality is very important for a pleasant build. Cobi parts have the same quality of molding and fit, but they have tighter clutch which I don't like as much. The quality of the parts Bluebrixx sources have improved a lot between the first Bluebrixx kit I bought (the Star Trek TOS shuttlecraft in 2022) and the most recent (the Queen Anne's Revenge in 2025), but they're still alternately mushy or stiff or loose. You really notice the reduced parts quality most on the tiny little parts and the big plates. Standard 1-by-X plates and bricks have good enough quality that I don't really notice much difference. Edit - You're in Belgium, not the US. I'd still say go for the Black Pearl, but you'll be satisfied with the Queen Anne's Revenge too. Both are good ships. I would say that the Queen Anne's Revenge from Bluebrixx is the only one of the big off-brand pirate ships that's worth getting, because it's the only one that attempts to be a reasonably accurate rendition of a real vessel with realistic proportions and details. All the other giant Chinese pirate ship kits on Amazon or AliExpress or what have you are garish caricatures that have lots of firing cannons, lots of interior space, and lots of sails, but no sense of proportion or realism or even good taste, while the giant realistic sailing ship MOCs you can get from no name MOC shops are probably quite fragile and will probably have parts of very dubious quality, not to mention the lack of printed instructions and the dodgy legality of the whole thing. If you're going to get a great big pirate ship kit, it's gotta be the Bluebrixx Queen Anne's Revenge or the Lego Black Pearl. Your choice basically comes down to whether you would rather have the mechanical gun deck or the full interior.

I was going to say that happened in 2021 with the 4+ Batmobile at $30, the Classic TV Batmobile at $30, and the Tumbler at $40, but it turns out the 4+ Batmobile and the Classic TV Batmobile were April releases while the Tumbler was an October release, so they weren't actually all released at the same time.

I've talked about wanting to rebuild this ship in Barracuda colors without the lower hull and the gun mechanism for relatively cheap, but that was before seeing high-res pictures, reviews, and speed builds of the actual set. Now that I've seen those, I've completely changed my mind. This is a brilliant set and I'd rather have the set in the box than try to build a modified version myself. I don't want to pay $380 for it, but I don't yet know what an appropriate price would be on a per-weight basis. This summer, I was lucky enough to get the Bluebrixx model of the Queen Anne's Revenge before tariffs hit, and I built it early last month. That's a great big pirate ship with a realistic hull, a reasonably interesting build, a full interior, and 40 firing cannons, which is theoretically what I really wanted. It's got seven middle hull segments plus bow and stern hull segments, and it cost about $280 USD. I'm glad I have it, but in the six or seven weeks since I built it I haven't taken off the top deck or removed the pop-out hull modules for play even once. Instead it just sits on my desk looking pretty and taking up space. I also rebuilt my copy of the original Black Seas Barracuda this summer, so I know well what a great Lego pirate ship it is for play and how good it looks on the shelf. With those in mind, I see the new Black Pearl as a surprisingly good middle ground. It's a great big pirate ship with a realistic hull and a very interesting build, and at five middle hull segments plus a bow hull segment it's about the same length as the previous largest playscale pirate ship, the 10210 Imperial Flagship from 2010. Obviously the hull, cabin, and masts are much more realistically shaped in the new Black Pearl than in the old Imperial Flagship, while the Imperial Flagship had much more interior space for play. Comparing the play value to the Black Seas Barracuda, though, it's surprisingly similar. There's the cabin, the rowboat, the anchor, and about the same volume or more in accessible holds. Every past Lego pirate ship has had the firing cannons, but honestly those are kind of tedious for play when you want to run out the guns for the whole broadside, and there was never really that much room to pose minifigures in the gun deck of the Barracuda anyway. Seems to me, judging from my experence with the Barracuda and the Bluebrixx Queen Anne's Revenge, that the broadside mechanism for the brick-built guns is a very fair trade in play for the individual firing of a few firing cannons. The lower hull also looks great. Alas, the list of recent Lego ships I want is already very long, as wanted lists are wont to be: Black Pearl Temple Bounty Going Merry River Steamboat Endurance Titanic As well as wanting to bricklink the Fire Nation Ship, a white-hull Imperial Flagship, a nougat-hull playscale Black Pearl and Brick Bounty and Brickbeard-Bounty ... And saving for the Enterprise-D ... And saving to get my wife Rivendell, Balrog, and Shire .... So many amazing sets, so little time/money/space .... and such high prices ....

Thanks for the WIP pictures, the write up, and the instructions. This is another great alt build. Sleek, functional, a good adaptation of a different IP into the CS style. The Ranger is ridiculous, but it's an entertaining movie with great music.

The price and the lack of an interior don't do the ship any favors for me, but I do like the shape of the separable upper hull above the waterline. I hope the support structure for the angled quarterdeck won't get in the way of retrofitting a larger interior, because it the main hull still looks like a good candidate for rebuilding with reddish brown hull parts and Barracuda colors.

If it's embedded in a build and reduces the number of stacked stud connections in that part of the build compared to a regular plate or brick, it's probably intended to reduce stress on parts.

I wouldn't exactly call it a "bombshell" to say that Lego sets use a lot more plates than bricks now. That's an observation I've made to myself years ago and it's a trend that dates back decades. Personally, I would date it as far back as 2004, when new wedge plates, new hinge plates, and new building styles allowed the remakes of the Snowspeeder and Millennium Falcon, and the first version of the AT-AT, to achieve their shapes mostly with wedge plates set on hinges. The first Snowspeeder, from 1999, is mostly made of bricks, while the second Snowspeeder, from 2004, is mostly made of plates. I wouldn't say it hurts rebuildability at all, and I certainly wouldn't say there's any nefarious agenda in it.

Awesome, thank you so much! This is really an amazing alt build. It could almost be the A model; it could almost be the UCS X-wing itself. I downloaded the instructions this morning.

They do - it's very common to have tiles under wide or long plates in order to make things easier to assemble or disassemble.

The base concept of Hunger Games may be disturbing, but the writer of the books turned it into family friendly YA thrillers and the custodians of the franchise did their darndest to make it into family friendly PG-13 teen romance material. It's no less appropriate for Lego than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which features children seemingly dying in all sorts of awful, malicious ways until everyone shows up alright at the end of the story.

For me, when I find it hard to see in through a trans-black windscreen I find it hard to imagine the minifig pilot seeing out, and that breaks the illusion of play for me. I would rather have the illusion of the pilot or driver being able to see out than have the illusion of scale. So, in many cases I prefer trans-clear. In some I prefer trans-brown. In very few cases do I prefer the new trans-black. It's just too dark a tint, and it breaks the illusion of cockpit visibility for me.

I like trans brown better than trans black in almost all cases.

In principle, I like the Starship Collection better than any of the other 18+ LSW concepts. A line of capital ships in a small, affordable size is great for desktop fleet battles, which is a genuinely fun and plainly obvious play concept that LSW hasn't done before. Besides helping the ships look good on the display shelf, the stands are genuinely useful for moving the ships around on the tabletop as you have a Mon Cal cruiser slugging it out with a Super Star Destroyer, or whatever. I really am all in on the concept. It brings to LSW what Bluebrixx was already doing so well for Star Trek with their midsize starship models. But like usual, LSW stumbles in the execution. Why must these be pitched/sold as 18+ sets with boring black 18+ boxes? Knock the age rating down to 10+, throw in a couple of minifigures, give it lively box art that shows sets interacting with each other (meaning shooting the living daylights out of each other, because this is LSW), and let kids have fleet battles too. Second, get the prices under control! The midsize Acclamator is priced at $50, has 450 smallish parts so by PPP it should be at $40, and has the same weight of plastic as the $30 Ferrari pit stop from City - but that has five minifigures and a much greater variety of parts that are larger and more expensive to manufacture. The Acclamator should be $35. And of course similar arguments could be made for the other Starship Collection sets. This is a subtheme that I really like in concept, and I really want it to continue, but all the sets in it are so overpriced that I've counted myself lucky to get them used for a liittle over half price.

This looks a lot better than the other 10497 X-wing alt build I've seen. Your write-up is clear and informative. I hope you can get the mechanism worked out, because I'd like to build this someday :)

The U-wing is kind of strange in how it sucks out of the box, yet there are several no-extra-pieces rebuilds on Rebrickable that fix all its problems. With those rebuilds, you can fit as many minifigs in the troop bay of the new set as in the troop bay of the old set, while the troop bay is easier to access and the ship is easier to swoosh because of the smaller size and weight.

Just off the top of my head I would expect the $150 Pooh set to be a large buildable Pooh Bear like the $150 Simba or the big Dalmatian Puppy.

This is perfect. 110% should have been a set during the classic era. Pirates should have ended with a bang with this ship in 1998 instead of ending with a whimper with the Cross Bone Clipper in 1997.

It's very much a YMMV situation. The best you can count on is 20% off for sets with RRP under $100. You might see a 20% off discount on a larger set after it's been out for a year or two and is close to retirement. Walmart and Target store clearances are highly variable location to location, and you have to go to the brick-and-mortar stores frequently to catch good clearance prices. I have very rarely seen these good clearance prices in the stores I go to, and I've never seen something like today's online Walmart flash Lego sale before.

To be fair, the TIE Interceptor from Mandalorian season 3 in 2023 wasn't downsized. It's still a "big" TIE. We never got a TIE Whisper from TROS either (Kylo's ship), which appeared much more prominently in the trailers and in the finished movie than the TIE Dorito that we did get.

So the leak is (copying from Reddit): March 1, 2026 75421 Darth Vader's TIE Advanced, $70 USD, 473 pieces, age rating 7+ 75423 Luke's Red Five X-wing, $100 USD, 584 pieces, age rating 7+ Ay yi yi yi yi. I imagine the builds for these will be really good, but those prices are just awful. In February 1999, set 7150 was 407 pieces and $50 USD with two minifigures and one astromech droid. Let's assign $25.00 of that to the TIE Advanced; the CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $49.02 in June 2025. In January 2009, set 8017 was 251 pieces and $30 USD with one minifigure. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $45.83 in June 2025. In June 2016, set 75150 was 702 pieces and $90 USD with four minifigures, and it felt so overpriced at the time that it warmed shelves pretty badly. The Imperial half of the set was 413 pieces, so ~$52.95, which the CPI Inflation Calculator puts at $70.86 in June 2025. We've had $70 TIE fighters before, like the 75154 TIE Striker in September 2016 with 543 pieces and four minifigures and the 75211 Solo TIE in April 2018 with 519 pieces and four minifigures, but those had lots of big pieces. I guess this will probably be about the same size as the 75150 version from 2016, which has about the same inflation-adjusted price. With a more refined build the extra 60 pieces can easily go into the same size of build. But that one warmed shelves hard back then because it was so overpriced. This will be another shelf-warmer for sure. Meanwhile the $70 Star Wars sets from 2025 are: 75429 AT-AT Driver Helmet, 730 pieces, 0 minifigures 75433 Jango Fett's Starship, 707 pieces, 3 minifigures 75408 Jango Fett Helmet, 616 pieces, 0 minifigures 75399 Rebel U-wing Starfighter, 594 pieces, 3 minifigures and 1 bipedal droid 75405 Home One Starcruiser, 559 pieces, 0 minifigures 75415 Kylo Ren Helmet, 529 pieces, 0 minifigures 75402 ARC-170 Starfighter, 497 pieces, 3 minifigures and 1 astromech droid 75406 Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle, 386 pieces and 0 minifigures ($65): 75432 V-19 Torrent Starfighter, 567 pieces and 3 minifigures So the $70 Vader TIE has fewer pieces than any $70 Star Wars set in 2025 except the midi-scale Kylo shuttle, and all the $70 sets from 2025 (and the V-19) already feel rather overpriced. The playscale starfighters at the $65-$70 price point currently feel like the best value for LSW, but still not greeat value, and that is taking a pretty big hit next year. Blame it on tariffs, blame it on inflation - but I read somewhere that all the Lego in the US comes from the Mexico factory and is tariff-exempt under the USMCA? Bah. As for X-wing pricing: In February 1999, set 7140 was 263 pieces and $30 USD with three minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $42.51 in June 2025. In January 2004, set 4502 was 563 pieces and $50 USD with two minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $87.08 in June 2025. In September 2006, set 6212 was 437 pieces and $50 USD with five minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $79.50 in June 2025. In January 2012, set 9493 was 560 pieces and $60 USD with two minifigures and two astromech droids. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $85.38 in June 2025. In September 2015, set 75102 was 717 pieces and $80 USD with three minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $108.45 in June 2025. In June 2016, set 75149 was 740 pieces and $80 USD with three minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $107.07 in June 2025. In August 2018, set 75218 was 731 pieces and $80 USD with two minifigures and two astromech droids. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $102.34 in June 2025. In January 2020, set 75273 was 761 pieces and $90 USD with three minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator puts that at $112.53 in June 2025. In January 2021, set 75301 was 474 pieces and $50 USD with three minifigures and one astromech droid. The CPI Inflation Calculator put that at $61.66 in June 2025. In August 2024, set 75393 was 1063 pieces and $110 USD with four minifigures and one astromech droid, but it was a two-pack, so let's assign 5/9 of the set cost to the X-wing and 4/9 to the TIE Fighter. Those are the same proportions as the relative costs of the 75300 TIE Fighter for $40 and the 75301 X-wing for $50 in 2021. So we have 5/9 * $110 = $61.11, which the CPI Inflation Calculator puts at $62.62 in June 2025. So, $100 for the X-wing isn't out of bounds for historical inflation-adjusted pricing of a single X-wing, but the build is probably going to be a "small" X-wing like 75301 or 75393 rather than a "large" X-wing like 9493 or 75218, so it's going to feel a lot more overpriced that those did. Even at the time, 75218 and especially 75273 felt dramatically overpriced, which is why Lego pivoted to the "small" 75301 and 75393. But here we are at top-tier X-wing pricing again, with what's probably going to be a subpar build. Lego has done good things recently with the ~550 parts count for the V-19 and the U-wing, but those are overpriced at $70. Pushing it to $100 is almost Hoopty/X-jet/Juggernaut-awful pricing. I better stock up on Pilot Luke and R2-D2 in order to backfill this X-wing with older figures if I'm lucky enough to be able to find it without figures for a reduced price. I'm a sucker for X-wings, but with that price it's going to be hard to get excited about this one. Here's what Lego could do to make me excited about it: The number one way Lego could improve on any previous playscale X-wing would be to finally have true scissor wings with a single central pivot point. The second and third UCS X-wings had true single-pivot wings, but the closest the playscale X-wings have come to that is with set 75301 in 2021. The wings on that version had two pivot points, whereas all the other playscale X-wings have had a separate pivot point for each wing. The number two improvement would be to have fully retractable three-point landing gear. The only version to have that is the 75393 RTG version from 2024, but the landing gear there is far too tall and stocky because of the wing-swapping gimmick. The number three improvement would be to bring back a decent cargo space, or at least somewhere to stow the lightsaber. The cargo holds of set 7140 from 1999 were always fun when I was a kid, and I really loved the cargo bay under the nose for set 4502 in 2006. The versions in set 9493 from 2012 and set 75218 at least had a cramped, awkward place to stow the lightsaber behind the seat, but the versions in set 75301 from 2021 and set 75393 from 2024 didn't even have that. As for the Death Star, I don't hate it but I sure don't love it either. Setting aside the price for a moment, I like the looks of the individual rooms, but the rooms aren't connected in a way that makes any sense. The rooms from the prison block - trash compactor - air bridge sequence especially are all jumbled together without the proper connections for the story. I think the Imperial Shuttle side-build looks great and I would love to be able to buy it separately, but I should be careful what I wish for. I wanted to be able to buy the small Slave 1 side-build from 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City separately and we pretty much got that a few years later in 75312 Boba Fett's Starship, but then it doesn't look like the larger playscale Slave 1 models are ever coming back. So with the Imperial Shuttle already downsized from 75094 Imperial Shuttle Tydirium in 2015 to 75302 Imperial Shuttle in 2021, a separate set version of the Death Star Imperial Shuttle would pretty much mean we would never get another large Imperial Shuttle again. And then the prices would creep back up to the "big shuttle" prices while we continued to get "small-small shuttle" builds....

Where are you seeing that? First I've heard of any X-wing and Vader TIE two-pack.

Dunno where you heard that yellowing is only a problem for bricks made before the mid-aughts. I never heard that

I got my two 75413 CTTs (eBay, ~$65 each, no figures) yesterday afternoon and built them last night. Hopefully I'll have time to make them into the Classic Space moonbus and flatbed cargo rover pretty soon. For $65 each, they're not bad builds, but they certainly don't look or feel "large" the way a CTT should. The wheels don't roll well on a smooth tabletop, and the turning function doesn't work well on the tabletop either. I'm sure they would be much better on a floor with low carpet, just enough for some traction. The wheels were the most repetitive Lego building experience I've ever had. I have a pretty high tolerance for repeated or mirrored subassemblies (I like bilateral symmetry in builds, it makes it much easier to build wings etc in parallel), but each wheel has a subassembly repeated twice, so I had to build that particular subassembly 40 times for 20 wheels for 2 tanks with 10 wheels each. That PaB experiment is interesting. Because PaB is less automated than the production of retail sets, the price-per-part of a build through PaB will always be higher than the price-per-part of a retail set. Except here? I'm not too surprised to hear that a build of ~800 pieces comes out to ~$110 on PaB instead of ~$80, but that's a real sad comment on how blatantly Lego is price-gouging with this set by retailing it at $160. The problem with hoping for big discounts on big sets in the US is it's always hit-or-miss. You have to be going to Walmart or Target all the time to see those discounts and grab them. I rarely go into the store, so I have to rely on online discounts and those are rarely above 20%, and big sets rarely even get 20% discounts online. I finished piecing together the 2016 Rebels version of the TIE Advanced (not the TIE Advanced Prototype) a few months ago. It's still a good build that holds up very well today, but the proportions are a little different than the ANH version, and new parts could improve some of the details and shaping. I would be pretty excited about a new TIE Advanced next year.