CallumPears

True, we've still not seen that Balrog booknook which is supposed to release on the 1st of June but we've already had official reveals for the Sherlock Holmes and HP equivalents. Yeah more info about the DS would be great, though right now the main thing on my mind is seeing what the Turbo Tank and MTT look like, and whether they've done a decent job with the Galactic Marine figures. 327th and Bly too since we haven't seen them yet but the Marines are the ones I'm most interested in (327th are actually my preferred design but with LEGO's current style I have no interest in any Clones using standard armour). Also curious whether they'll apply the eye plague to Aayla Secura, since she thankfully escaped it in 2017 (honestly not sure what other changes they'd make since that figure is flawless, unless they make her in a different shade of blue perhaps).

I'm totally fine with stuff like the Bounty Hunters pack where it's a full set of named characters. The annoying ones are when they mix the different types (named vs massable) such as the Jedi/Clones pack. And yeah more small sets in general please. As we've said before, something in the style of the little £8.99 Marvel sets would be very welcome, akin to the old Final Duel and Jedi Defence sets.

Yeah... it's at the point now where when I'm buying bulk lots I completely ignore any Stormtroopers unless they're a variant I'm particularly after, e.g. recently got my 2nd Mimban Stormtrooper and still don't have any Rangetroopers (TIE AVENGER PLEASE), since I just have too many of them now to justify going after more. I should have a lot more time on my hands in a few months once I graduate and I recently acquired some grey baseplates so I'll get on that, maybe post it on R*ddit or Instagram or something. I am also considering downsizing a bit fairly soon since there's probably a decent bit of money in the ones I don't care so much about just sitting there at the moment. Haha yeah imagine if this means Trump getting elected gives a domino effect of a new Bounty Hunter Pursuit set.

Agreed, absolutely incredible that they put him in there. Ok yeah I've been collecting for a long time now so I have rather a lot of Stormtroopers. Been a couple years since I did a proper count up and I've bought a few bulk lots since then so don't have an exact number but I know I'm at over 100 of the 2014 realistic style (mixture of standard Stormtroopers, Sandtroopers, Shock Troopers, and Jumptroopers), plus a couple dozen of the Family Guy ones, and honestly no idea how many of the 2008 design or the Rebels ones. I recently moved house and am now away at uni so a lot of them are still packed up at the moment but once I'm back home in the summer I'll do a proper count up of everything. While I've been actively trying to get the 2014 style, a lot of the others came as "bonuses" when I got bulk lots for other things. E.g. I finally got a smooth-hair Princess Leia a few months ago and the lot she was in also had about 20 of the 2008 stormtroopers among others. But with the value of Leia vs the price I paid they were basically free. Yeah I really liked what they did for the Mimban Stormtrooper. Something like that (without the raised forehead of course) might've worked quite well. Love the Cantina. I love minifigure-scale stuff in general and that one was really well-done (other than a couple of minor inaccuracies like the placement of the booth where Han shoots Greedo being on the wrong side). Also a lot of great minifigures (Sail Barge should've taken some notes in that regard! The build for that set has some issues but really the major letdown is the minifigures). Yeah I agree with everything you said there. And yeah it sucks that those magazines aren't a worldwide thing. So when I said the magazines could solve my issue with the Night Troopers pack that only applies in places where they exist.

Yeah I don't have any desperate need for standard stormies either. I'm still not a fan of the new helmets, but I've got enough of the 2014 troopers that I don't care about them anymore. And any specialist troopers which weren't made in the 2014 style (which so far is only the Artillery Trooper and Night Troopers) I can get a GCC replacement in that style (they've made the Artillery one and have hinted at NTs being in the works). Other troop types like Army Troopers, Shoretroopers, Death Troopers, etc. don't use the Stormtrooper helmet mould anyway so aren't affected by it. Getting the standard white version in a magazine would immediately erase any issues I have lol I'm also hoping the ISB trooper from the U-wing shows up in one but might have to wait a while for that.

Precisely this. It's really exactly the same issue as having named characters in battle packs. Slightly less significant as you can still have a few multiples of elite troopers (unlike with, say, Ki-Adi-Mundi where you literally only want 1), but you still want fewer of them than the standard ones. Or, rather, you want *more* of the standard ones. Let's say I want a squad of 10 Night Troopers. With set 75412, I have to buy 5 copies of that set. I would also get 10 Death Troopers. But in Ahsoka there are only 2 Death Troopers, and as far as we know they might literally be the only 2 "Night Death Troopers" to ever exist. So 8 of those figures essentially represent a complete waste of 4×0.5 of the price of the set. If it was a 3:1 ratio, I could buy just 3 copies of the BP to end up with 9 troopers, and only have one "extra" DT. And the Bricklink prices of the standard Night Troopers would be much lower to get the remaining 1 to make a total of 10 (I guarantee that, with the set releasing as it is, the aftermarket price for the Night Troopers will be significantly higher than for the Death Troopers. On that subject, I wouldn't be able to sell the 8 additional DTs from the first scenario to get some of my money back because the market will be flooded with them). Or get 4 copies, which would net an extra 2 troopers from the 10 I wanted and still only have 2 useless DTs (at the cost of 2×0.25 of the set price) rather than paying for 8. Initially it might sound good for LEGO to market it this way since I'd hypothetically be buying more sets overall and paying them more money, but in reality it just means I either don't bother buying them at all or I wait for a significant discount. Even for people who do only buy one single copy of the set, surely it's still better to have more regular troopers than niche elite ones? And all of this doesn't go into the additional issue with this set specifically of the 2 different Night Trooper designs meaning there is an extra factor of wanting to avoid too many duplicates of the grey-helmet version, as well as the fact that if it had been 3 troopers we might have got an extra print for one of the pieces (say another helmet or leg print to switch it up a bit) so that they don't look too uniform in their damage. On the subject of the Night Trooper battle pack, we have yet another case of something about modern Stormtrooper helmets I might actually hate more than the shaping: the black squares on the back. On standard white Stormtroopers these have a grey square printed in them. On Sandtroopers, the Artillery Trooper from the Marauder, and now the Night Troopers, this marking is missing. I noticed it a few years ago when I got the Cantina and was hoping they'd sort it out. I still hate the shaping, but at least that's just my subjective view about the aesthetics. This is a clear objective inconsistency.

Of course. Ok, Rogue One pack as we said, then for Andor give me a pack with 2 of the basic grey-suit troopers with the hats, 1 grey-armoured trooper (like Han on Mimban without the cape (sidenote: would love to see a General Veers in that same grey/green colour scheme)) and one black-armoured security trooper from Ferrix. Build as we've said before could be the little speeder from Ferrix. Alternatively, make it a slightly larger set and use one of the larger speeders we see on Mina-Rau. Throw in an extra Army Trooper or Stormtrooper. Anyway I'm wishlisting now. One thing I'm wondering is whether they made the right call doing Dedra in white. Partagaz's coat in the past few episodes has been distinctly tan-coloured, and looking at some shots from last season Dedra's looks to at least have a tan tint to it. Next year for the 35th anni of HTTE? 👀

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I've already got plenty of Death Troopers (currently on 10 commanders and 25 regular), but a few more Shoretroopers would be very nice. The Rogue One Imperial battle pack is another one where I think they messed it up by including too many DTs. Should've had 1 DT, 2 stormies and 1 Shoretrooper.

I was extremely tempted but still holding out. As much as I want it the set just has too many flaws. I'll probably just get the GWP on eBay, and maybe see if someone's selling the Barge in used condition for a reasonable price.

Yeah most likely, and I'd prefer that anyway tbh. As much as it'd be nice to get the main characters I really need some of those dripped-out Imperial troopers. And yeah the 2018 Sentinel is basically perfect so a Defender would be a great choice if they do another Rebels set at some point.

Droid with STAP is out. Everything looks good except the droid's head I think (they used a single 2x4 curved brick with a sticker for the main part of the "face"). I was also hoping for the 1138 reference on its backpack but that's fine. Overall even as someone who usually doesn't look twice at the buildables I actually quite like this one. Reminds me of the Scout Trooper bionicle-type figure from a few years ago which was my favourite from that line.

I've bought every SW advent calendar since 2011 (ok my parents got me them for the first few years but still). The last few years I've waited until the end of November to get a discount. This might be the first time I don't get it at all, unless I find a really good discount. Maybe I'll get it used on eBay a couple of months later to get Babu and the BD droid (if the BD droid is a new print). Some people over on Reddit are falling into the trap of considering the buildable droids as minifigures, or considering Babu and the BD droid as minifigures when really they're no more expensive for LEGO to produce than the little pets that some CMFs have.

FX medical droid Ok I'm kinda on the fence. Babu Frik is cool to get (hate TRoS but new aliens are always nice) but other than that there isn't really anything I care about. All the builds being minifigure-scale is indeed nice... but they still feel a bit pointless. At least with microbuilds you can have an X-wing and a TIE fighter. Here you have... a tool rack... and... oh look another tool rack. Also R7-A7 is a bit of a weird choice imo. Would've preferred a new body with a gimmick head where it can be switched for the one in Plo's microfighter (akin to R2-X2 in 2014). Maybe a reindeer head since it's brown. Can't tell from these photos what colour the markings on the BD droid are. I hope they're not blue since I already have 2 of the version from Mando's N-1 lol I don't hate it overall, but was definitely hoping for more minifigures, whether new designs like how in the past we got TLJ Luke and Blue Leader, or reuses like an ISB trooper. Is it still going to cost the same as the previous ones? If so that's a ripoff. Also the large image on reddit with all the builds together actually only shows 23 of them but I think the missing one is the buzz droid so no secret surprises

Strongly disagree. Anyone who wants Night Troopers surely wants more of them than the Death Troopers. And as the set currently is, 2 Night troopers is not enough for a decent made-up battle, nevermind accuracy to scenes in the show, so they would want multiples of the set. I'm not even talking about large-scale army builders since they can afford to waste their money. I'm talking about kids who don't want to waste half of their pocket money on useless extra Death Troopers if they buy even 1 additional copy to get more troops (I'm speaking from experience here with the 2017 Rogue One Death Troopers + Stormtroopers pack and the 2018 Jedi + Clones pack). And there's the issue of half your Night Troopers having the grey helmet. Even for the people who do get only a single copy, I still think a 3:1 ratio would've been far far better as that's actually a decent make-up for a squad (3 troops and 1 elite to lead them). I just feel like if the subset you described don't care about having more than 2 Night Troopers then they certainly shouldn't care about having more than 1 Death Trooper. Those people "only being able to get one" is an arbitrary choice they made. Want more Death Troopers? Buy more sets and you also get more of the regular troops which it actually makes sense to have multiples of. Don't force the rest of us to pay for a bunch of useless extras. (And not only are we getting useless extra Death Troopers, we're ALSO getting fewer Night Troopers.) At the very least, if they really were committed to the 2:2 ratio, they should've used different designs for the Death Troopers. Sorry if this is a bit rambly; it's nearly 4am here lol. I guess I should technically be in the camp of favouring more Death Troopers since I despise the Stormtrooper helmets and will probably only get 1 copy of the set myself (unless GCC come in with some great replacements, and even then I might still only get 1 copy BECAUSE of it having too many Death Troopers), but I just feel like from the perspective of the designers (who obviously don't feel that way about the Stormtrooper helmets they themselves designed) it makes no sense. I really just feel like they have no idea what they're doing sometimes. Predicting it now: the advent calendar will have ANOTHER Death Trooper (like what they did with the Clone Commander nobody wanted multiples of a couple of years ago).

I'm still very disappointed with the figure selection they went with. I swear there are some things which LEGO constantly does wrong while the rest of us are stood here screaming at them for how blatantly obvious the better way of doing it should be. It's a battle pack with elite troops and generic troops. Make it 1 elite and 3 generic, not 2 of each. They've been getting that wrong for over a decade at this point. Especially since they didn't even bother to give the Death Troopers unique damage markings. And we see way more white-helmet Night Troopers than grey-helmet ones so it really should've been 1 DT, 1 grey NT, 2 white NTs. Still not a fan of the new Stormtrooper helmets but whatever. GCC just released some very nice custom ones in the old style (I'm definitely getting a couple of those Artillery Trooper ones to replace mine) and hopefully they'll have a couple of different Night Trooper designs on the way soon. I'll still get it at some point, probably just 1 copy to not overload myself with too many of the Death Troopers. I still like the design of them, and want those zombie heads for other stuff too. As you say it definitely won't be day 1 though. I haven't paid full price for a battle pack in years, and for this one I'm factoring in the extra cost of the GCC helmets.

Exactly! And it was really nice how that Yoda Chronicles scout fighter gave us the first RA-7 protocol droid and the first Ithorian. I also liked when that one Freemakers set was basically a TIE Phantom, and Jek-14's fighter being an E-wing (though the colour schemes on both could've been better to make them actually usable in their original contexts, especially the E-wing). As I've mentioned before I'm even ok with the figures just having generic SW-aesthetic outfits since at least those can be reused for random civilians (even then it doesn't exactly make them a selling-point for the sets), though I particularly hated when the Freemakers had that ugly hand logo slapped on them as it really limited the reusability.

Yeah I've given up on following the modern comic run with all that stuff. As for Advent Calendar figures, I basically view them the same way as RTG, Freemakers, etc. I prefer when they're just normal figures that might be too obscure for a regular set, but if they do make them Christmas-themed then at least have some parts I can salvage for customs.

Going back to this I've done the maths and if it's exactly scaled with the wheels then the new tank will be 87% of the 2016 model's length (6 stud wheels vs 6.875 stud wheels). Yeah at this point I just want to see it so we can laugh at it for a couple of days then move on. I would say the Galactic Marines will surely have their backpacks... but they haven't done them for Imperial Snowtroopers since 2016 so maybe not. All the other versions of the Turbo Tank have included smaller builds (turret and speeder in 2005, command station and AT-RT in 2010, AT-RT in 2016). Imagine if they use a significant proportion of the parts on some (probably ridiculously oversized) speeder bikes like they did with the Bad Batch shuttle lol. Yeah the only way I can see them avoiding that is if they say it happened during one of the timeskips. Possible, but I kinda doubt they'd skip over something like that. I hate when retcons happen, especially nowadays when they said they were restarting the whole EU specifically to have a consistent continuity where they wouldn't need to retcon stuff, but hopefully it'll at least be done well (and with Andor I have no doubts about that).

Someone's posted what they say is the build for the tank's wheels. Basically consists of some 6x6 round plates stacked on top of each other with some smooth round bits on top (basically looks like the "shoulders" of the middle legs on the 75337 AT-TE). They also suggest that the smooth parts might be a new mould and they're just using placeholders in their mock-up of it. The previous one from 2016 used the old Viking wheels which are slightly under 7x7 studs, so if they scale it with the wheels then the overall build will be a little smaller. Loks to be about 10 pieces per wheel (possibly as few as 8 depending on what happens with those smooth parts they mentioned), so 10 wheels means ~100 parts in total with ~700 for the rest of the tank itself.

I'm annoyed that they fully redesigned every part of the Super Battle Droid last year and still did not put a single connection point (whether stud, antistud, bar-sized hole, etc.) on their back. The only times we ever see a blue MTT deploying troops in TCW it was SBDs every time, so it would be nice if that's what they go with for this set but not sure how they'd go about it (I have seen some cool custom models which did it but not sure how legal the connections were in those).

They could also save some white ink by not printing it in completely the wrong place.

Should be: they changed the mould for the legs with the new Super Battle Droid figures.

I hope they do for the comedy value, though I do also want to get a few of them and not sure I'm going to bother with the GWP. It's also possible that they go on Pick a Brick like the Nazgul did.

Not Legends; that's a specific continuity. This show is non-canon (like the infinities and some tales comics, and videogame alternate endings). Blame whoever made the decision to name the official canon "Canon" (with a capital C); that's caused a lot of confusion I think. Got Canon canon, Legends canon and non-canon (plus the old tier system). Please please please LEGO I am begging for that battle pack. I do have a decent group of 32 Army Troopers (bought 30 of the Han Solo torso from 75211 back when it was available on BaP and gave them AT-ST driver heads, and got a couple more in bundles after that) but some more diversity in battle damage would be nice if nothing else. Don't really care for stormtroopers personally as I've already got rather a lot of them lol. Would prefer something harder to get like a Range Trooper (of course, if I had my way we'd be getting full battlepacks for all of the Rogue One and Solo trooper designs, especially Mimban Stormies and Shoretroopers). A battle pack like that and of course the TIE Avenger should've been the most glaringly obvious things for them to make from Andor, I think even moreso than the Fondor as much as I would also like that.

I've got a dozen beskar Dins but only recently got the face print and updated helmet design in the N1 microfighter. Still no Darksaber, but you can get that on PaB for 70p and even cheaper on Bricklink so I'm not exactly in a hurry. Between this and the Mando Fleet Commander being in one last year I'm wondering if the Interceptor vs Fang Fighter didn't sell too well and they've got excess figures. Wonder if the astromech will be in one later. Figures are always the best "gifts" in those magazines though it's better when they're truly hard to get. E.g. Bespin Luke still remains the best one they ever did, and while I wasn't a fan of the design the 212th trooper was great for army builders.