CallumPears

Yeah it's apparently going to be a mixed one with 2 332nd troopers and 2 Maul Mandos. Seems like a very stupid idea and I'd much rather have had just 4 Mandalorians (maybe a mix of 2 Maul and 2 loyalists, especially since after so many years we still have a bunch of fairly prominent Death Watch designs they never made such as the Lieutenant with the Mythosaur skulls or the one with the yellow lines on his helmet, or even just an update of the standard soldier since we only got those in 2011/2012 with no leg printing). Yeah it's an interesting mixture for me when I buy modern LSW. Typically I want either the build or the minifigures, but rarely both within the same set (and it's increasingly common that I don't want either, such as with the Juggernaut). E.g. I really want all the figures in the recent Star Destroyer, but would probably not bother with the model. If I find it on clearance or something I'd get it and use the pieces for various MOCs I'm working on such as an Interdictor cruiser I've been planning for a while. Or with the Yavin Rebel Base I just bought Luke, Leia, Garven Dreis and the Rebel ground crew figures separately and that was enough. Meanwhile I bought 2 of the Tantive IV hallway sets cheap on eBay with no minifigures since I really like accurately detailed builds of ship interiors like that but have no interest in getting more Stormtroopers with the ugly modern helmet, I already have a few dozen Darth Vaders (I should put them all together on a grey baseplate and do a proper count at some point lol) and about 50 of the older style but still reasonably good looking Rebel troopers, and I have no interest in what I consider to be a quite poorly-executed Fives figure.

Are they? (Sorry; long post ahead) They have a very good mould for the helmet, but other than that they're heavily flawed figures and after waiting years for Galactic Marines is this seriously the best they could manage? Some of these are bigger issues and some are nitpicks, but all of them are problems which should not have been difficult for the designers to notice with how much they brag about how "every garment has to be perfect" and so on. Roughly going from top to bottom: The print on the helmet is both prone to misprints and even the best-printed ones are still inaccurately designed. There is an argument that the eyes should be green. I agree, but the black is fine. However, they should not have that grey outline around them and also rather than being fully-separate eyes they should be joined in the middle, and the print should go right up to the edge of the red section with no white above the eyes. They're supposed to have shoulder pauldrons- a reuse of Fives's in solid black would've been perfect. The shoulder strap goes down on the front of the torso when it should go off to the side. It should be the same as the ones the 327th which are also inaccurate due to only having 2 pouches but you'd think they would've chosen one or the other with how much they blather on about "consistency". The torso has a mistake with the belt where the large and small sections are in the wrong order. Every single Clone minifigure ever made to date had this correct, until now; it's very strange that they actively chose to get it wrong on the Marines when they could just copy/paste it from the standard Clone template (see the issue with the legs down below...). The back print of the torso is inaccurate as the panel should look completely different. Not too big of an issue since it's covered by the backpack but still pretty stupid that they didn't just do it right anyway. A physical cloth kama would obviously be nice, but as much as I hate the printed ones I can accept them as a stylistic choice. However, it is inaccurate as they should have a grey border (ironically they wrongly put the grey edge on the 327th troopers' kamas when those are supposed to be solid dark tan, so they got it wrong both times). They even have the black outline printed to separate the border from the main part of the kama, but then it's fully coloured in dark red anyway. If they weren't going to give them physical kamas, then I think it would look much better to have the legs in dark bluish grey. Same issue as the recent ARC-170 pilots where for some weird reason they made the entire leg the colour of the boot. It's equivalent to if they gave Imperial Crewmembers and AT-ST Drivers fully black legs and just printed grey on the top half of the front. The best solution for the Marines would of course be dual moulding with white for the boots, dark bluish grey for the hips and "thighs", and then a cloth kama to wrap around. Since obviously dual moulded legs are just so much to ask of this poor innocent billion-dollar company, it'd still make more sense to me to use grey as the base colour. The boots and kneepads. Probably the most egregious part that most people already know about by now. Galactic Marines are supposed to have the same kneepads and boots as the 41st Elite Corps Scout Troopers. They were clearly just too lazy to make a new design (which doesn't fill me with much confidence for the future possibility of Kashyyyk Troopers in the 2020 style). And Bacara isn't exactly great either...

I've been wanting a new TIE Advanced for a few years now. I actually have 2 of the old blue ones and the small one from the Death Star but those are nothing like the quality of modern sets. I also already had 2 copies of the 4479 TIE Bomber, but was very excited for the new one a couple of years ago- same applies to Vader's TIE since other than the Rebels 2-pack set we don't have a version of it which matches modern TIE designs (and that Rebels one could be greatly improved). Of course we'll have to wait to see if the rumoured one is good, or if it is messed up like what the X-wing is said to be.

It is indeed fake- the guy who posted it is active in the legocirclejerk sub and just admitted he made it up as a joke

If you look at the first letter of each line in the leak it spells fake so either it's a cheeky joke or it simply is fake. But yeah we knew there were a few more figures cut off (and have reasonable guesses as to what they are)

Yeah I really appreciate Solid Brix for going in on the Turbo Tank problems, but there are a lot of cases where he gets stuff wrong. E.g. last year in his review of the Mandalorian S3 battle set he said the Paz Vizsla minifigure was identical to the one in the Forge set but it clearly isn't. Just a little more research would really help in cases like that; it's not like it's a livestream where he has to do it all in one take. I can definitely see MandR being annoying but to me the important thing is that he's at least pointing out the obvious flaws with modern sets which a lot of people seem happy to ignore. As someone who's very focused on small details I'm just glad to see someone else who also picks up on that stuff (and if anything he's a lot more generous to LEGO than I am in some cases like with the flaws on Bly, where he had some of the flaws annotated in his review but actually missed a few more). But stuff like the Rex microfighter complaint I just fundamentally disagree with. I'm not a fan of any minifigures being locked behind the huge sets, especially not important characters like Rex. And while I don't care too much about arm prints the quality should be consistent across the board (especially since this is the same company that makes all the instruction books so ugly nowadays in the name of "consistency").

Heads up that the post on the legostarwarsleaks subreddit showing a 2D schematic of the Death Star (2 circles, one of the front and the other of the back with rectangle cutouts and text labelling various rooms) is fake. The OP even says it's not a real leak on the post but from the title and picture it's definitely presented like one.

Not sure what you mean by this; the current standard Vader design is not from RotJ. The only ESB/RotJ Vader we've ever had is the original 1999-2007 design. The modern Vader, like what they've done with the Clones, is a mixture of multiple depictions and as far as I'm aware is not accurate to any of his designs. Minor corrections: They actually did slightly change the Astromech bodies, adding a cross-axle hole in the bottom after a couple of years. (I suppose you could say the same for the battle droids who had minor changes to their torsos, but those didn't have much of a functional effect.) The Cloud Car pilot's helmet is a reuse from a Rogue One rebel.

Yeah I'll definitely not be getting the GWP. Hopefully it's just more Stormtroopers. Are we sure the rectangle thing wasn't just someone making a joke about it? I remember seeing someone say it and didn't think they were serious but can't find it now to confirm.

Yeah I would've preferred the LSW2 or TCS design too. And yeah it's not accurate to Skywalker Saga: those ones wear white shorts with red hearts on them.

Honestly though I actually could see this being good. Like, if it's an absolutely flawless exterior on one side which can be backed up against a wall to sit flush and fully cover the open interior on the other side it could work. Whether it's worth 1000 is another matter entirely of course. And the minifigures being lacklustre... yeah I definitely agree there.

"Mommy I want to be a leaker when I grow up" "Ok son, just make sure to always use a potato camera and for extra points be sure to put a cushion on top of the box and slap your hand in the middle of the photo" So many Stormtroopers kinda feels like a waste of slots- I would've preferred more officers (especially with how much I despise this Stormtrooper design). Though at the same time it might well have been fewer figures in total rather than each one being replaced with something so I guess it's better to have them. Also means fewer figures for me to Bricklink if I don't like the set as a whole. Can see there is indeed another astromech on the bottom right, but can't make out much detail. Can also see a Navy officer on the bottom left. Standard practice for LEGO in a lot of cases now. Not sure about Krennic specifically though- which parts of him are you thinking?

I think the total we're expecting is 38. Speculation here, but we can almost guarantee there will be duplicates of the Stormtrooper, Gunner, and Royal Guard, and we haven't seen Obi-Wan or any Navy Troopers yet. So that'd increase it by 6, then within the remaining 7 I'm sure there will be one of the black-suited Navy officers like we saw in 75159 and also an Imperial astromech of some sort. Possibly a TIE Pilot too.

Definitely prefer the polybag figure from what we've seen so far. Can't really make out his face but that old one was perfect, and yeah not sure I like the hair choice. I guess it's more like how he looks in Andor? And they do it for £3.50 CMFs, and also sell the legs themselves for 50p on Pick a Brick (I bought 100 of them, which was more than I needed to replace the ones on my officers and have enough left over to last me until they start including them as standard)

Tbh Yularen's legs are an easy fix since they aren't printed or anything. It's just a weird thing to mess up when we clearly see him having black trousers in all 3 of ANH, Rebels, and Andor. Cheaping out on the dual moulding obviously sucks, but honestly that sort of thing bothers me less since at least there's the "justification" of them being greedy. It's a terrible reason, but it is still a reason. The things that really annoy me are the silly mistakes which happen for absolutely no reason beyond pure incompetence. The only cause for me to be worried about Tarkin is that they made the mistake with Thrawn, but hopefully for Tarkin they just copied the 2016 figure 1:1 since that was already perfect (except for the lack of boots but we aren't getting those now either). We'll know once we get a less-blurry picture.

Also farmboy Luke is new. Glad they've gone back to giving him tan legs but hopefully the white print looks good on the real thing. Not sure how I feel about the colour choice for Galen. Yeah his outfit has a greenish tint but so do most other Imperial Officers and they've never used full dark green for those.

WOW even C-3PO didn't get it. Hadn't noticed at first since I wasn't really focusing on him but that's ridiculous. (Though tbh I'm not really a fan of the dual-moulded C-3PO leg anyway since for reasons unknown to mankind they used plain grey instead of silver for it.) Can't really make out the faces from the pictures I'm seeing except for the Dignitary (Sim Aloo) which I'll agree doesn't really look like him (is it a reuse from something else?). I think the figures I'm most interested in so far are the Imperial Officers (especially Tagge and Motti) and the Dignitary (pending any inaccuracies we can't see yet due to the picture quality, and of course overlooking the lack of boots and Yularen's wrong-coloured legs).

Wow no dual moulding on any of them really is disappointing. Easy to fix for the most part (except for the ones with printed legs) but we shouldn't need to do that. Also Yularen's legs should be fully black not white. They got that wrong in the polybag version of him too. Tarkin is a little too blurry to tell whether they got his code cylinders right.

So far we have one character with dual-moulded legs and it's the meme stormtrooper lol Hopefully they at the very least give all the officers boots (not much to ask when they already sell those legs on PaB for 50p anyway) but yeah Han really should have them. It's a real shame they gave him them in Cloud City then never again. I wish they'd start doing it for the Imperial Crewmember too (also sidenote the crewmember essentially has the same legs as the ARC-170 pilot but with black boots instead of white. For the pilot they used white legs to show the boots and just printed grey on the front, which would be equivalent to giving the crewmember black legs and printing grey on the front. I definitely prefer what they do with the crewmember by just leaving the boots off rather than making the whole leg the boot colour, though of course dual-moulding would be best in both cases).

Gingerbread set is said to be Vader's TIE, not an AT-AT (much more fitting for the price point I think). Wonder where the AT-AT rumour came from in that case?

Yeah it really feels like they just aren't even trying do get them right, or at this point even actively trying to get them wrong; it's honestly impressive how much they manage to mess up. Some of the mistakes are a little subtle (not an excuse though; there's really no justifiable reason for the designs to be anything short of perfect outside of subjective stylistic choices like the printed kamas) but so many of them nowadays are so blatantly obvious that it beggars belief as to how they got approved to go to print at all. And as a non-clone example there's also the issue with Thrawn having not enough code cylinders (makes me a bit worried for Tarkin's in the upcoming Death Star- they got it right on the 2016 figure but it wouldn't be the first time they took a step backwards in terms of accuracy).

MandR absolutely deserves some criticism (I like him and do agree with him on most subjects but there are some things he says which I strongly disagree with, e.g. the Rex in a microfighter thing), though some of it definitely goes too far. I think the really crazy people are the ones over on Reddit on the legocirclejerk. They seem to make it their entire personality to hate everything he does, which results in them essentially checking to see what view he holds and making it their mission to promote whatever the opposite of that view is. MandR says something is bad? No! It's actually the best thing ever made. MandR likes something? No! It's the *worst* thing ever made! It has carried over to basically any criticism of LEGO on Reddit being spammed with downvotes and replies calling you a "mindless hater MandR fan" and so on. It was especially bad a few weeks ago when the summer leaks came out and straight away anyone who said the Bacara figure had an inaccurate chest print or that the 327th should be a darker yellow got absolutely dogpiled. Thankfully it's not so much of an issue here on Eurobricks though.

(Edit: not sure why the font is so big for most of this post- can't figure out how to change it lol) I have my disagreements with MandR but to be honest I think he's (mostly) right here. Aside from the leg print and obviously the skin tone (I bought 300 of the new heads on PaB and have replaced all my old ones- it genuinely is such a vast improvement so I'll give them some credit and agree with you there), I by far prefer the 2013-2019 Clone design. The torso in particular I absolutely hate on the new ones with how messed up the proportions are, making designs like the 501st's stripe really compressed, and how they're missing the little = marking (not all Clones have that in RotS, but the vast majority do). And the helmets have some issues too (especially with the number of vents on the side which is wrong on both the new P1 and P2 helmets). The old helmets and torsos are practically 1:1 in terms of accuracy. The main thing is that I really hate when they put animation styles onto minifigures in general. I hated it when they did the CW eyes and the Rebels Stormtroopers, and I hate it here on the Clone armour. It's what stopped me from army-building the 501st in 2020. And of course there are the far better actual physical kamas and no serious print inaccuracies (as we see with the 501st Jet Trooper, Fox, Bly, Bacara, the Galactic Marines, and others). The only notable inaccuracies I can think of from that era in general are Thrawn's rank plaque and Kanan's hair (both kinda excusable due to being based on concept art, and as we all know Kanan's hair got fixed) (I'm sure there are others I'm missing but there were certainly nowhere near as many as nowadays where it feels like every other set has something wrong with it). Also I'm definitely on the anti-helmet holes side. In principle yeah they're a good idea but the way they implemented them is absolutely terrible. Should've done something more akin to CAC where the visors clip around the rim of the helmet (and yeah CAC's are a bit flimsy but they could easily sort that out- make them a little thicker and add in the "space helmet" style of recessed dimples in the rim rather than full-on holes to keep them in place), and now that they've replaced the rangefinders we might be seeing a new visor piece coming soon so they might as well have done it back then and done it properly. Yeah that's my view too (though a little more OT and Andor stuff would be nice too). There's everything from prices being too high to inaccuracies in the minifigures to design issues in the sets themselves. Just ridiculous that at the very least they couldn't have got the latter 2 sorted to try to justify the high prices. Wow I hadn't thought about that. Yeah VIP points are a 5% discount so really the polybag MF is the only extra, and either a different GWP or even just a double points event would beat it.

And we had Yularen's torso too. Yeah same in the UK. I've been waiting to get it at a discount since I only care about the Thrawn figure (and he's still too expensive to get on his own on eBay or whatever) but it's like it just disappeared from everywhere. Happened with the Spider Tank too where the only thing I wanted was the Bo-Katan figure but the set never got any good discounts. You'd think they'd be keeping Peridea around for a while since the battle pack just came out, but it looks like it's gone from everywhere except LEGO's own site already (e.g. Smyths specifically says it's gone and not going to be restocked), and even on the official site it's on back-order. Seems like a very short shelf life; less than a year is pretty unusual right?

(Edit: wow ok I kinda just started typing and this ended up being pretty long. Sorry for clogging up your screens lol) So to summarise the Juggernaut's issues (some serious some nitpicks but all of them still valid as issues. Also a good chance that I've missed some): The obvious price issue. I've seen comparisons with the recent JW Mosasaurus which I think is a pretty good one to use. More pieces in that set, including some nice printed ones and some large parts for the boat... but it's about 1/3 of the price. The Juggernaut has more minifigures... but those are certainly not worth $100 (especially not with the issues they have too). Smaller than all previous ones (and no sidebuilds), but inflation-adjusted is more expensive than the 2016 set. Weird usage of sand blue (surprisingly accurate to have some on the wheels; I think it would've looked better if they'd used part 27925 but I suppose then they'd need 40 of them, but why did they do it for that patch over the front cabin?). Serious structural issues. (Short and simple point but arguably the most important along with the price. SolidBrixStudios demonstrates it very well in his review.) Stud shooters on the sides are at the wrong height if they're supposed to represent the missile launchers (should be at 3 studs higher to put them a bit above the red line). Blue windows? Unless I'm missing something that's not particularly accurate, at least not to RotS where. Pathetic watchtower, and ridiculous that it can just be pulled out with no stopper or anything. Rear cabin has some very noticeable gaps. Rear turret can't move. No main cannons, and no headlights. There are some ridiculous inaccuracies in the minifigures (left a gap to make this its own section). Some are stylistic choices like the lack of kamas which I personally hate but can accept is subjective as a design choice (though I'm not sure there's anyone who actually likes them). The things that are just unacceptable to me are the objective inaccuracies which people are probably sick of me mentioning by now but just in case the designer happens upon this post: Bacara: -His chest pad should be the same shape and size as an Airborne trooper's. Also, it should be grey with a red stripe, not black. -Missing the detonator he carries at the top of his backplate. They managed to include it on Neyo in 2014 so why not here? -Helmet looks a bit weird. Things like the grey print for the cheeks and the print for the mouth not meeting as they should, and the various chipmunk comparisons going around. If Clone Army Customs can manage it why can't LEGO? Unlike with their 360° figures, there's nothing inherently different between the CAC helmet and the LEGO one; CAC just did it a lot better. This one's not really an objective inaccuracy; it just doesn't look great lol Galactic Marine: -Incorrect knees and boots (very lazy to just give them the standard Clone ones when they should have the same ones as the 41st Scout Troopers). -Inaccurate belt design: ...The belt is like []I-I-I[] ...when it should be []-I-I-[] -Shoulder strap should match the 327th. They have the correct number of pouches (3) here, but it should go off to the side (it does attach to the belt, but around the side and not at the same position as the large pouch on the belt). It's as if they had different people making the Marine and the 327th trooper (+Bly) and the two of them didn't speak to each other. -Eyes are very inaccurate. Some people say they should be green, and yeah maybe. They definitely do have a green tint, but then so do Stormtroopers sometimes and we don't complain about those. What is really inaccurate though is how low down they're being printed when they should be touching the red at the top of the face (some people have had particularly bad misprinted ones but even the "good" ones aren't perfect). Also they should be connected, not be 2 separate eyes, and should not have the grey outline around them. Both Bacara and the Marines are missing their shoulder pauldrons. Bacara would've needed a new piece (or arm printing, or dual moulding some dark red onto his right shoulder) but for the Marines they could reuse Fives's in all-black. I simply can't understand how some of these inaccuracies slipped through. They always brag so much about how "every little garment has to be perfect" but it's just not true. Yes, some of them are nitpicks. But the designers still had to make choices with each detail they drew onto the design so why didn't they just... choose to make them good? Other than the pauldrons none of the minifigure issues would've affected production costs in any meaningful way.