MaximillianRebo

Same in Aus, it's now evening of the 1st and all new models still in stock on lego.com. Hopefully that means better supply than the last 12 months.

Just ordered the Mos Eisley Cantina. Australian prices can be a pain at times but a Myer sale combined with Cash Rewards bonus and a couple of membership coupons bought the price down by more than 30%.

One thing I like about reading these wishlists is then doing a deep dive into Wookiepedia and finding out all the names of background characters who I mostly only know as their Kenner names. For a Jabba's Palace MBS I'd add 8D8 (torture droid) to go along with the Gonk and EV-9D9. Just my opinion but I'd keep the band as the original line-up of Max Rebo, Sy Snootles and Droopy McCool, because Lapti Nek fits the scene better than Jedi Rocks

Great model! Very nice design on the engines and I like all the detail and the creative greebling, especially the use of minifig hands.

At moments like this it's a real pity that there isn't a Star Wars CMF or other options for buying individual minifigs; I'm just envisaging a Gunship with a Kenner logo on the box and written in small print in the corner: "FIGURES SOLD SEPARATELY"

Just means the TIE Bomber wasn't as popular as its competitors. If it had been, say, Bomber up against First Order AT-ST and Sandspeeder, we would have seen a very different result

I don't have a problem with the number of figs (standard for UCS models) but I would have gone with a Clone Pilot along with the Clone Commander. Maybe the fan vote indicated that people preferred a Jedi/Clone combo and so that's what we got. Even though Yoda has a stronger association with this ship I can kind of see why he wasn't included - at this much larger than minifig scale he would have looked absolutely tiny next to the model! I get that being an AotC based ship the doors don't close but given the scale of the model, the whole troop bay to me just looks big and empty. Is it just me or do the bubble turrets look small in comparison to the troop bay? I get that a person inside the turret would be sitting down, just feels like the bubbles could have been slightly bigger especially when placed right next to the troop bay. Probably a case of not having the parts to make the bubbles any bigger.

The same could be said about the set itself. If the TIE Bomber or Nebulon B had been chosen, the response would have been "Lego hates the Prequels" and when the Gunship was chosen, I don't think there were many other outcomes in terms of scale and number of figs than what we see today. Possibly the only path to please everyone would have been to go with a UCS Nebulon B (or Bomber) and at the same time announce a playscale Gunship for the upcoming winter wave.

An orange display plaque, while a departure from the norm, could be an interesting way of indicating the Geonosis connection. Or perhaps some orange (or dark orange) pieces around a black plaque in the style of the Probe Droid.

Personally I'd be fine with a scaled down Falcon. If Lego are going to continue with this format it makes sense to release one of the most iconic SW ships in this style. It might not be the most popular idea with some collectors, but for a large section of the market ie. kids and parents buying for kids, it would be a welcome addition. Only change I would make - especially if it's released in 2023 - is make it a RotJ model with General Lando and Nien Nunb.

"Aren't you a little big for a winter wave?" The fact that this is a comprehensive list and has a the minifigs listed in detail makes it way too much of a wishlist. Even if info did leak this early I would imagine it would be partial details of the sets at best and not a full rundown Of everything included.

I could definitely see Jabba's throne room as a set in a coming wave. Making it just the throne room gives Lego the chance to re-release the set without any of the palace controversy, and making it a BoBF tie-in also avoids issues with a Leia minifig and means that they don't have to include a Jabba big fig in what would likely be a $30 set.

The forge looks fantastic. Seems like a lot of detail for the amount of pieces included and captures the location really well.

My feeling with regards to cockpit issues is that Lego have painted themselves into a bit of a corner with many of the canopy pieces they have produced. While it's great to have a selection of curved and rounded canopy pieces for various models, the curvature of most of these pieces doesn't match with the inherent blocky/angular nature of Lego bricks and plates. The only canopy pieces I can think of that work well ie. no gaps around the edges, are the square and angled canopies used for X-Wing and Snowspeeder/Y-Wing ones - and in the case of the Snowspeeder there are angled nose pieces that fit to that canopy shape. The best solution for cockpit gaps would be to produce more bricks/plates that match the curvature at the bottom of the canopy (or the back in the case of A-Wing style covers) but until that happens there will always be spaceships with less than airtight cockpits!

I'm predicting the new Slave 1 will go the way of Trouble on Tatooine - sells out very quickly because it has a unique variant of a popular character, but ultimately everyone only wants one and there's nothing massable about the set so after the first month it's easily and widely available.

This would be a near perfect wave - a good spread of sets across all media (plus the AOTC focus), fills in a few gaps in the line-up and some timely re-releases that haven't been seen in a long time. I'd like to see a Yavin briefing room in the same style as the Home One briefing, hopefully we'll get both at some point. I know it would be memed about mercilessly, but I think a UCS Landspeeder is definitely something that should happen. It would be great to see that model with the right amount of detail. Luke with poncho, hat (and goggles) is a necessary fig and I'd add in Tosche Station Biggs to go with Luke.

I don't think TLG was forced to do anything. They themselves offered the Gunship as a choice in the poll - it wasn't like the options were Landspeeder, Snowspeeder and X-Wing and everyone had to put down Gunship as a write in vote.

Watching videos of the cruiser, and it's weird that Fennec has two facial expressions but no included hair piece. Looks like you can only see her eyes when she's wearing her - admittedly very well moulded - helmet. With no hair piece to use, anytime you want to show her facial expression the reverse head print will also be visible and she'll be bald!

If TLG is being cautious, it's only because of the 12+ months of lead time that new sets are reported to take prior to release. The BB is so hot right now, but back when the Havoc Marauder set was in its planning stages, many months before the show premiered, no one could know how successful the show might be. They could probably guess that it would do well, but if they guessed wrong that would result in a lot of shelf warmers. Compare how the Mandalorian sets were released, just the AT-ST at first, then the RC and now the upcoming wave, and that gives an idea of how we might see BB sets in coming waves.

Fennec is indeed a great fig, personally I'm gonna pass on the cruiser and roll the dice on her appearing in more (and hopefully smaller) sets further down the track. With her appearances in Bad Batch and Book of Boba this should be a fairly safe bet.

I vote for #1 and #7.

I have a soft spot for the old Kenner vehicles, so a part of me wishes that that we're getting the Imperial Troop Transport instead of the Trexler Marauder. Wondering if it'll be possible to mod the side sections of the Trexler to turn it into the troop carrying variant?

Definitely inflation and just an overall price creep, although I don't think number of new figs or piece count is a factor, just conversion from OS prices plus tax, shipping and whatever else they can sneak in. Conversions seem to be all over the place, with the Probe Droid going from $60 -> $120, Imperial Shuttle $70 -> $130 and BB Shuttle $100 -> $150, so double, almost double, and then only 50% more.

Hard to say. Razor Crest and AT-AT are still around but most sets from last August are long gone - or never appeared in the first place. August to December should be enough of a window to find a decent Target or Myer sale without having to jump on a day 1 release. BB Shuttle will be very popular when it releases but once the rush dies down it shouldn't be hard to find. ToT being the first set with Beskar Mando sold out very quickly but again it's readily available now. The kicker is whether or not a set has popular massable figures in it. Even though the AAT wasn't a popular set for its build, everyone was wanting those 332nd figs and it barely appeared on shelves (hoping that makes the Mandalore Duel easier to pick up too). I'm wondering if the Mandalorian Loyalist fig will be popuar in a similar way, but I'm guessing the AAT sales were driven by CW S7 popularity and while there will be some people getting multiple Mandalorian Starfighters, it won't be at the same level as last year.

$110 aud isn't the most ridiculous currency conversion I've heard recently (hello Probe Droid going from $60 usd to $120 aud), it's just that the $70 price tag is way too much in the first place. These price conversions make no sense. The recent Imperial shuttle was also $70 with almost exactly the same piece count - probably larger pieces though - and similar figs (Vader and an imp officer) but also Luke and was $130 aud. I can almost get why the shuttle and meditation chamber are different prices in Aus but not why they're the same price in US. Then there's the helmets that are all the same price here but different prices in the US. As a general question - is there a 'base' currency (eg. usd or euro) that all sets are priced in then foreign markets base their prices on the original currency, or are all markets priced individually? When sets are announced/leaked we always hear the price first in usd but is that because the people doing the reveals are often from the US and use their local currency for pricing info?