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After seeing some reviews on YouTube to see the real new UCS DS thing including the designer interview from SolidBricks, not just some blurry fotos, I'm convinced Lego missed the point not only on the price point and lack of quality of the minifigs (which are obvious), but on the usage of available volume of stuff as well. The "classic" UCS DS playset had a lot of volume of playing (which was its ultimate purpose) by having different rooms at different sides of the DS sphere. It allowed the set to be compacted in volume without leaving important rooms out. It was easy to move from one place to another and it passed the "usability" test with my children playing with it for years. I wouldn't care to trade half of that UCS DS sphere for additional detail, but... with the new UCS pizza DS it becomes so evident now how well the "classic" UCS DS designers thought through about it to make a compelling design. Sure that by nowadays standards it is less polished but from a design and playability point of view is way superior on the usage of available volume space. The pizza DS is too big even for displaying, because being that thin it needs to stack the scenes one on top of another with no exception, increasing the overall perceived surface of the set. It might would be nice if half of the sphere were there, but it isn't. Moving one third of the scenes to that missing half of the sphere would reduce drastically the perceived surface of the set, like the classic DS do, but just with half of the sphere. That compromise would make sense with the level of detail of the rooms, which, on a side note, I like it a lot overall. The new DS design also places the scenes in somewhat absurd order for the price tag asked to well funded collectors, so it's impossible to reproduce some main scenes, even for display. It doesn't matter if children aren't going to play with it, the set is not for them. It's clear that minifigs and the scenes are important for displaying it. Why would be Lego adding otherwise minifigs to the set then? For example, Luke and Leia cannot jump to scape from some (missing) stormtroopers just by leaving DS conference room. It makes absolutely nonsense for such a premium product that should give exquisite care to the details for that price. And many other scenes. For instance, the trash compactor heading to the Darth Vader & Obi-Wan climax scene is just foolish, and I prefer to stop here...

It would be nice to have the Tie avenger sooner than later (if not at all). The design is quite fine and its amount of screen time is good enough as well. That would be a nice 50-70 set depending on how far Lego would try to upsell it to us.

Let's hope that for the rumoured Death Star set they will include some of those. That would be great!

I'm waiting to see if that death star play set is real. The Yavin IV is great from a playset perspective with many minifigs. I tend to like more system playsets, I find them more fun and great to play with my children, even if I get most of SW ones. They know that and ask instead for Marvel/Ninjago/Harry Potter/Jurassic sets hoping I'll get SW ones. Got the Cloud City MBS set as well, I love location playsets, they are more immersive. Not the best design, but great for minifigs, playing and pieces. It needs a redesign to be more accurate and less flat, which is a small project I have pending with my children if I grab some free time

Got the Palpatine magazine issue this week in Spain. Not only SW issues have good minifigs, Ninjago and specially Marvel/DC usually have great minifigs to complete collections.

That would be great. The droideka was mostly a Technic build, so the option to have such a mechanism in the new one is appealing, not only to SW fans but Technics/robotics fans as well.

Yeah, they have improved from Dark Troopers set, which was quite good and still could be find at a discount in Europe It's surprising Lego haven't done this scene before, being so iconic. The execution is really good with a great selection of minifigs and appealing for playing and for mods. Indeed, this is a great medium-sized set with nice number of minifigs for playing and for collectors. The anniversary minifig is a fantastic bonus as well. Two sets is I guess the sweet spot to recreate the scene for most uses (playing/mods) and to save a copy of the special characters from children's hands ;)

Those are great news! If they are able to throw in the four minifigs that are rumored, any other one could also fit in there. That's getting more interesting! Definitely a day one buy

I don't know if the dark falcon is going to be real or not. I'd love it to be real, but I'm not confident on that, as it would be maybe too good to be an actual set on the shelves following past years standards. I hope I'd be proved wrong though, I would grab it day one.

Congrats to the winners!! This was a great contest as always, with so many good building ideas for inspiration.

Thanks! Space was really tiny for that scene, not even space for the pizza and croissants oven...

had time for just one entry, but didn't want to miss this traditional Eurobricks contest. Had a great time building it

Time flies in the galaxy and children are always the future of it... In an almost lost farm of a volcanic planet in the Outer Rim Territories, a small family is celebrating a special day with some close friends with great food, drinks and gifts. This was a very fun build, trying to squeeze the scene from the Mandalorian into a tiny 16x16 build. Hope you like it!

This is a good start for the new year. Proportions of the TIE bomber are quite good for the size. It seems a bit small so customisation is going to be a must if paired with older TIEs. Minifigs are good, but not so good for army builders. In that sense it's much better the smaller TIE from 2021. But for one or two sets in a collection, or for a nice gift it’s great. It's nice to get an admiral minifig and it's a nice touch to add an arm-printed Vader in another not-so-expensive set. It's a bit odd to have him in the TIE bomber, though. Somehow I was under the impression that the TIE bomber had two pilots... The Gonk robot design is clever, although a bit on the cheap side, it would have been better to get another minifig for the price. A nice TIE bomber set overall, given the adjusted price. I'll probably get (and tweak) two of them over time.

Nice review! Couldn't agree more. Now it may be found at stores with something like 20%-30% off, which put the set in the right price range, specially taking into account the minifigs, which are great. I've made some adjustments for my children to put the droid in the right place, adding a better shape to the cockpit and lowering the overall height of the model, removing its tendency to tilt. I feel it's still too big and the angles of the wings are too big, but fixing those requires to redesign it from scratch. Maybe one day... I had to put some white 3x2 wedge plates because I don't have those in dark red.