CallumPears

Yeah agreed. I love the new skin tone and the leg print is great but I hate the use of the animated style for the new torsos and how they combined the animated and realistic designs for the helmets. They should've stuck to using the realistic style for everything, which worked great for the 2013-2019 Clones. The hybrid style has put me off modern Clones far more than the helmet holes or even the lack of physical kamas. I unironically think there hasn't been a single Clone figure I'd truly consider to be good since 2019, due to the new style. It's what stopped me from army-building the new 501st troopers in 2020. I generally dislike any form of animation style being applied to LEGO minifigures. I put modern Clone Troopers in the same category as the old Clone Wars eyes, the Rebels Stormtroopers, etc. LEGO figures already have their own stylisation, so combining that with another form of stylisation doesn't make sense to me. For me it's the same level of awful decision-making as them choosing to use the pupil-less eyes, but at least those eyes only affect a few characters. On the plus side it's saving me a lot of money by making me not want many of the new sets, but it does also make me sad to see all the Clone legions I've been wanting for ages (e.g. the 327th) get made now when I wish they'd made them 5 years ago while they were still using the designs which actually looked good.

One of the biggest disappointments for me was when they made that set a few years ago and then included a random pilot instead of Krennic

With the shift to 18+ stuff that might be a pretty bold claim. Yeah this is the case for me too. Not only do I think the mechs are a really awful concept (they're mostly the same build just with different colours, resemble nothing in the SW universe, and accomplish the same thing as microfighters by giving you a single minifigure BUT at a 50% higher price), but of the 4 we've got there was only one that had a desirable minifigure. I've already got dozens of Stormtroopers, Vaders, and Pilot Lukes. Sure, I've been collecting for 17 years but even someone who just bought the Boarding the Tantive IV from last year already has 2 of those covered, and surely nobody is army-building Stormtroopers at the crazy price of a mech for each trooper when you could already get them on eBay/Bricklink for far less than that. The Boba Fett one at least gave him arm printing which was previously only used on the UCS version, but even then they skimped out by not including his cape (and as a domino effect the decision to make this set have the ESB Boba meant the one in the Skiff set which lazily reused the design was inaccurate, and also still missing the cape, when really they could've used the RotJ design for both since they must have known the Skiff set was coming). Some truly new figures like Padmé would be great, though even then I'd prefer if they just did small sets at the same price point instead of a mech, especially since Marvel, Minecraft, etc. can manage to do it perfectly fine.

Yeah this definitely makes sense. I guess the thing for me is that when they make the new vehicles for the shows like RTG, Freemakers, etc. I prefer when they base them on "real" ones. Then it hits the points of being recognisable to people who watched the show AND of being an actual canonical vehicle. To be fair though the Dark Falcon makes sense given the whole theme of RTG; the whole point is to have things switched around like that.

Same, the one caveat being when they use it to release obscure characters like the Ithorian and RA7 protocol droid in that Yoda Chronicles set, or Quarrie in one of the Freemakers sets. But even then they could've made the vehicles based on actual Star Wars ones. Jek-14's ship being an E-wing was nice but the colour scheme wasn't really usable. A Freemakers set being (very loosely based on) a TIE Phantom was nice but it was using the old blue colour scheme so didn't match modern TIEs, and had weird cockpit shaping which doesn't match the actual TIE Phantom. Ultimately yeah the set slots and new moulds (seriously why did they make that MOC Hunter Droid thing? Just don't see the point of a new moulded head for a made-up one-off like that when they couldn't do it for the Bad Batch's helmets a few years later) could be applied way better if they did it based on Legends stuff. That way it's still a bit of a curveball and something "wacky and cool" if that's what they're going for, but is still actually something which exists. Like what they did in the past with the TIE Crawler, the TIE Defender, Anakin's 03 CW Fighter, etc., which are all really good sets.

This right here. No idea why they've been doing that wrong since 2019. To me it's the same as the less accurate Hoth Rebels, Snowtroopers without kamas/backpacks, the inaccurate Clone designs, etc. Just a general decrease in quality in places where there's really no excuse.

Yeah same. Not a huge fan of Filoni's Clone Wars (part of why I hate the 2020 armour style on the minifigures; it takes too much influence from that show's animation style) but some of these sets look great. My current plan is to get the V-19 at a discount somewhere, and get the MTT on eBay without the minifigures (Aayla looks great but I already have 3 of the older figures). Yeah it's easily the worst victim of the downscaling trend. The playset ones are already super downscaled, so at this point it might as well be a microfighter. I love the 2021 TIE and X-wing, but Slave 1 needs to be big. Yes I noticed that too. As you mentioned he does have a new unique torso since more of his belt is yellow than the standard 327th trooper so it'd be weird if they missed the stripe (and his should be darker than the standard 327th trooper stripe). I reckon the stripe is there and it's just lost in the light reflection or the pixels with how low-quality the photos are that we have so far.

Yeah tbh as long as it still has the feature to fold them up (including the bottom one) I'm fine with it not having the full synchronised feature. As long as they don't just flop around or whatever. Someone in a YouTube comments section pointed out something I hadn't noticed: the 327th pack includes the new rangefinder on the trooper with the long rifle. Hopefully there will be a couple of spares too (UCS Slave 1 had 2 spares so 3 in total). Glad to see it's already getting made more widely available.

He does have his unique all-yellow belt, so it is a new torso design and it'd be weird if they didn't get the stripe right (though they did royally mess up Fox so anything's possible I guess). Maybe we just can't see the stripe due to the low picture quality? That's-... man

I think the Aayla figure might be medium blue? If so I'll be Bricklinking an extra head to replace the CW one on the 2010 figure. Yeah fingers crossed. They do throw some curveballs in occasionally (e.g. when the Phantom with Thrawn was $30 but £40 for some reason) but hopefully these ones will be reasonable

Bacara's helmet looks great (though I don't see the red dots it's supposed to have? Hopefully just due to the image quality) but his torso not so much. The extra chest armour he has should be similar to what Airborne troopers have, but instead it's absolutely tiny. Also as with the Marines he's missing his pauldron. Yeah same. The 2021 Slave 1 is actually my least favourite of all the downsized ships, since the playscale Slave 1s are *already* downsized. The 20th Anniversary one is easily the best playset they made and a Jango version of that would've been great.

Happy to say that the Marines do indeed have their backpacks, with the same build as the 2014 Snowtroopers (1x1 tile on a 1x1 plate with ring) Not so happy to say that they have white legs. Same issue as the new ARC-170 pilots. HOWEVER at least once I give them some custom kamas the top part will be covered up anyway. Also no pauldrons

They've been doing them in lacquered silver, not LBG, since 2009. It just looks like that to me. Maybe a little shinier than usual since it's a render. Speaking of this though it's weird that Ventress's are plain LBG and not any sort of metallic colour, even just pearl silver. Juggernaut too now! A great day for leaks!

Catalogue pictures leaked for V-19 and MTT! Wow ok they look good. Obi Wan and Ventress are both based on the 08 TCW (not 2003). Both look incredible, as does the pilot. Nice arm print on Obi Wan. Commando droids look identical to the old ones. Aayla is a lighter shade of blue than the 2017 version and I'm happy to say she has normal eyes. The MTT's droid rack has a really nice-looking feature with how it folds down, much more accurate that the older ones, but the obvious downside of only holding 6 droids. No picture of the Slave 1 set but we can see Lama Su and he looks great too

Hope the commando droids are done well. I was never much a fan of the older ones being done fully in dark brown. Getting the orange highlights on there would be great. Also wasn't a fan of the legs being the SBD ones as their hands couldn't sit at their sides properly. Maybe a new torso would be the ideal solution but I doubt they'd do that. Glad to hear about there being 3 Galactic Marines rather than just 2 - hopefully that'll bring the Bricklink price down a little since I'll probably not get the set as I already have the 2010 Turbo Tank and a very good custom Bacara figure, but I want some of the Marines (pending the leg design; we already know they won't have kamas but there are other aspects which they could also mess up). Fingers crossed that they get some sort of cheap release, whether a magazine gift or next year's Advent Calendar. All of these, and Mon Mothma's airspeeder for the May 4th GWP please. Yeah anyone who bought the Jedi/Clones battle pack already has a surplus of Ki-Adis lol. While a terrible choice for a battle pack, that one was basically a perfect minifigure so not sure there could be any improvements that'd make me want him but I get including him since it is his legion. Ironically Boba's Slave 1 was the only downsized set I really didn't like. The regular system ones were already fairly downsized so that one was far too small. I want the Lama Su figure, but otherwise if the rumours are true about the Jango figure not having arm printing this is another set I might pass on (ah who am I kidding it's a Slave 1 set of course I'll buy it; got every other version so far, but I'll definitely wait for a discount. Boba's was regularly on 30% off so hopefully this one's the same). Yeah I quite liked that too, though it didn't work well for some figures (basically anyone who didn't have a helmet or a hood, e.g. my Krennic's cape always made him look like he was wearing a Shakespearean ruff or something). Main thing is that it didn't crease. Gonna have to disagree there. The cloth kamas are some of my favourite accessories they've ever made and the shaping is perfect. While it probably would be better than what they're doing now I also don't think dual-moulding would work too well since you'd have to make the hips the same colour too, it wouldn't have the bulkiness (which is something I actually liked about the old ones), and we'd definitely have issues if they tried to print white on the front of the legs of a figure with a black kama. Also making them separate pieces meant it was a lot easier for me to make custom figures with them.

The weird thing is they had perfect cloth parts for both of these. The First Order pauldron is a much better size (and the same one was used for the Imperial Artillery Stormtrooper not too long ago), and the ARC Trooper back in 2012 had a way better piece than Fives.

Adding my sword to the pupils fight too. Hate the glossy eyes and they're so inconsistent with it. The excuse was that it makes them more consistent but it's the complete opposite when they do it on characters like Ezra, Ahsoka, Hera, Barriss, etc. who should all have the regular black eyes anyway. At least with the Sith I can understand giving them coloured eyes, but I still think the ones with pupils look better. And the consistency argument makes no sense anyway because regular figures have pupils without irises. These new ones (I say new; they started doing it over a decade ago but I hated it then too) have irises with no pupils. It is the complete opposite of being "consistent". If for whatever reason they wanted to get rid of the pupiled eyes then I would legitimately prefer for Sith to just have the regular black eyes like all other figures do. That'd look better than these weird glossy ones. To this point, let's not forget that rubber isn't exactly indestructible. Scratches easily, holds dust onto it, and in the wrong conditions it can straight-up disintegrate into a gooey mess.

When they made the new Snowtrooper helmet back in 2014 they put a slot in it which is exactly the size of the 42446 neck bracket. The helmet was specifically designed with backpacks in mind. In 2018 this bracket piece was replaced with 28974, which is thicker and doesn't fit under the helmet. Snowtroopers haven't had backpacks since then, which was long before the UCS AT-AT came out and people used the sitting down excuse (I don't remember whether that was an official statement or just fans coping). Also plenty of AT-AT sets in the past had them sitting down fine. If that really was the reason then they should've used a different design for the seats in the UCS set, but really it had been going on for several years before that. The new Stormtrooper helmet doesn't affect the neck bracket so as far as I'm aware all Stormtrooper variants which need backpacks have had them (Sandtroopers and the Artillery Trooper) (though sidenote I really hate the 2-wide bracket they use for modern Sandtrooper backpacks. Way too bulky and why the kriff is it transparent? Still better than not having them though). As for the Hoth Rebels... no excuse there. We actually have seen this already; the first leak of the torso showed both the front and the back. It just has the same standard back detailing as regular Clones do. However, that wouldn't stop them since Snowtroopers also don't have their backpacks printed; they're just missing entirely.

For real? If they're supposed to have pauldrons and backpacks... then they'd better kriffing have their pauldrons and backpacks. Zero excuse to not have them. The fact that from what we've seen so far the new helmet mould doesn't extend down the back of the torso does give me hope that they'll at least have their backpacks (as that's the reason Snowtroopers don't have theirs now: the new neck bracket piece isn't compatible with their helmets), which I actually think is much more important than the kamas (though of course they should really have everything).

I sure hope not tbh. Just bring back the cloth piece. Maybe they're making a decision to get rid of cloth pieces... but if they are then that's a stupid decision.

Yeah ideally the Marines would have dual moulded grey/white legs AND cloth kamas, but no chance of that sadly. I really hope they don't do what they did with the new ARC-170 pilots which look ridiculous with the white legs. I'd rather have grey legs with no boots at all than have the entire leg be the colour of the boot with a tiny bit of print on the front. It'd be like if they gave Imperial Officers black legs and just printed a dark grey patch on the front. The 327th helmet looks much better than the render. Aside from the kama and the minor inaccuracy on the torso it's a really good figure overall, even with my dislike of the Clone Wars animation style being used on minifigures.

I think the Fives pauldron in all-black would be my preferred solution for the Marines. Hopefully they haven't abandoned cloth entirely. Yeah I was thinking about the new plastic pauldron being able to go on either side too. It would be really nice if at least one of the 327th troopers has the mirrored torso print to go with that.

Yeah weird that that one suddenly had a backpack after a few years without them. Should absolutely be the standard. The accessory pack not having them is especially annoying since it would've been helpful to cover their alternate faces which are clearly visible under the back of the helmet. Idk what it is but I swear some of the designers are allergic to backpacks or something. It also happened with the Endor Rebels who only got backpacks way back in 2009 then never again, not even in the 2012 sets that featured them, and the Snowtroopers from 2019 but that was due to the bracket piece getting a redesign which made it no longer compatible with their helmets (no excuse for the First Order Snowtrooper in the 2017 Advent Calendar though, or the Hoth Rebel in the 2016 calendar). Really really hope the Galactic Marines have theirs, and that whatever design they use for the pauldrons doesn't interfere with that (if they don't have backpacks in the set then that would already be very annoying, but if the pauldron piece is like the 327th one then that'd be even worse as it'd stop us from being able to add our own backpacks with how tall the neck would be).

Hello, diehard 327th fan reporting for duty (literally them and the Marines have been my 2 favourite clone designs for over a decade). They look pretty good, but some issues. The yellow shade should be darker, maybe the flame yellowish orange colour would be a bit closer. The pauldron strap printed on the torso should have 3 pouches but only has 2. The helmet print is too wide and should be closer to the fin on top BUT I've seen a comment from someone who claimed to have seen the final product saying the real one (the leak was a render) looks better, so we'll wait and see on that. Pauldron neck attachment point makes the head look too tall as I mentioned before. Also my general dislike of the hybrid style which automatically knocks a few points off any Clone we've had since 2020. A bit of a long paragraph there but don't get me wrong it's still a pretty decent figure overall. Weird coincidence that for both the Marine and the 327th trooper we haven't seen the legs yet. Hopefully they both look good (barring the printed kamas of course ). I also wonder what the Marine's pauldron will look like. Theirs are double sided so my question is will they make a full mould for that, will they be lazy and reuse the single one, or will they use Fives's cloth one from last year? Also, if they do use a plastic one I wonder whether they'll be able to have their backpacks. Maybe they could even do a combination mould of the backpack and pauldron as all one piece. Of course, even for figures like the Hoth Rebels which should always have backpacks they've been consistently "forgetting" them since 2017...

I quite like the size, but the thing throwing me off is how tall it makes the neck look. Maybe it's due to it being rounded instead of squared at the end like the backpacks and jetpacks are? I adore cloth kamas though. We already know those aren't coming back for now unfortunately, but I wish they would. Seen it suggested a lot in the past couple of years but personally I don't think dual moulding would be a suitable solution.