MaximillianRebo

Very happy we're getting more Horizon sets. The designs of the machine animals are perfect for realizing in Lego; fingers crossed there are many more to come (although I already have a Sawtooth moc that I'm pretty happy with - looking forward to placing it next to the official model). The price as mentioned sounds excellent, much better than other licensed IPs. The Tallneck had a great price too - $90 usd for around 1200 pieces. I wonder if Aloy will become the new Mando - a rare and highly sought after fig when first released that ends up appearing in just about every set related to the franchise

I read this as 'the triumphant return of sand PEOPLE' and thought 'hmm, actually a Tusken Raider helmet wouldn't be a bad idea'. Could be an interesting build to see how they get all the facial features. Probably not the most popular choice for a helmet, but definitely something different to the steady stream of Imperial and Mandalorian helmets we get.

Thanks everyone! I spent a lot of time looking at screen shots from the game and also cross section photos from books and yeah, there's a big discrepancy. One cutscene in the game shows Jan sitting in the cockpit with the hatch open and the ship doesn't look much bigger than a starfighter, while the cross section illustrations include a sleeping area (albeit cramped) in the nose section and space behind the cockpit where the crew access the docking ring on the top of the ship. I built the whole thing in Stud.io first before attempting a physical build, starting with the wings/engines, and the rest of the ship went through multiple revisions as I tried to keep the whole build to scale with those original sections. I'd go as far as saying the scale of the whole ship was basically decided by piece 3176 which I wanted to use the get the curved ends on each engine section, and everything scaled up from there. It's definitely solid; the only issue with swooshability is that the wings/fins make the whole build fairly back-heavy, but the easiest place to pick it up is around the cockpit area which is too far forward. The balance point of the ship is about 2/3 of the way back and while there are spots to grip onto, the body of the ship is a lot thinner at that point so it's not as easy. Yes! There's a hinged hatch directly above the cockpit which I removed for the close up photo. It's 8 studs long by 6 wide, so there's enough space for adult fingers to place the figs in their seats.

A while back I posted my purist figs of Kyle Katarn, Jan Ors and Mara Jade, but never got around to posting photos of the ship that Kyle and Jan flew in the first two Dark Forces game: the Moldy Crow. Not sure how close my moc is to minifig scale, but I'm happy with the scale I used and the detail I was able to achieve at that scale, including a cockpit with space for both pilots. Close to 1000 pieces in total and no super rare pieces needed - the dark tan flag pieces on the wings and red window pieces on the side intakes were a little difficult to source in Australia - and luckily I didn't have any trouble with all the reddish brown pieces used in the build.

Fantastic design as always. I especially like the pic with Threepio and the Ewoks; he truly is a golden god!

I don't think this is a situation where prioritizing helmeted figs is the way to go (Constraction, buildable figs yes, but not battle packs). I think many people were disappointed that this years Mandalorian battle pack just used plain black heads for all figs, missing the chance to include various faces and skin tones that could be used for kit bashing elsewhere. Also I'd say that Endor troopers have as much of a distinct look as any helmeted faction. Since it doesn't look like there'll ever be a return of the 'character packs' of the past (at least not in LSW), sets like the Rebel Battle Packs from 2016-17 can in someway fill that gap and do provide an opportunity to mix and match bodies, faces (especially non-human heads) and headgear to create multiple varied looks in a way that armoured faction battle packs don't.

Youtuber serves up a bunch of clickbait with no actual information purely to drive speculation ie. engagement. What does this need to be posted?

The difference is that it's called the 'Sail Barge' in the movie (by EV-9D9). Both Khetanna and Slave I are only named in supplementary material. Funnily enough back in the day the Kenner toys were sold as "Jabba's Sail Barge (The Khetanna)" and "Slave I (Boba Fett's Spaceship)", so whatever naming convention you go with - vehicle name vs vehicle type - then the other one should be the opposite.

Just curious, were there a lot of complaints about the AT-AT price when it released? I don't remember there being as much discourse around the price of that set - apart from that it's high, it's very high - but people seemed to roll with it more so than what's being said about the Sail Barge price. I ask because the PPP is roughly the same - 12.5 for the AT-AT vs 12.7 for the Sail Barge. Also has it been confirmed by anyone reliable that the Rebel Speeder/Imperial Dropship set it a) a Lego exclusive and b) only available for three months, or is this Instagram speculation repeated as fact?

Picked up the Desert Skiff set for the equivalent of $60 usd inc. tax. For that price, I'll take it.

I'm pleasantly surprised about the 'battle pack' price: a remake of two older sets that in modern prices would be ~$30 combined and more than double the piece count this time around. Only 6 figs instead of the original 8 though but including an anniversary fig. They could have easily asked for $45, so in the words of Sheev... As an aside, this new set is exactly one piece more than Battle on Peridea but costs $15 less. Sure the figs are mostly repeats rather than the unique characters and I guess Peridea has more large pieces, but it shows how much a messed up metric PPP can be. Or that the marketing gurus at Lego know how much people will pay for Thrawn...

I crunched the numbers on this recently: 2023: 15 playsets out of 28 total sets 2024: 15 playsets out of 26 total sets.

With the big push TLG has been making over the last few years to capture the casual fan and cashed up 18+ market - not just with licensed sets but also lines like Icons and Ideas - I don't think Eurobricks, which is largely populated by people who are very aware of what is happening across the Lego spectrum and would buy many more sets than the average consumer, is a good indication of what does and doesn't sell in the casual market. I'd wager there'd be a lot of people who buy a helmet, a midi-scale ship, a diorama, as a desk ornament but don't post on forums, don't follow news and leaks and just buy the occasional set that appeals to them who are completely unknown to forum posters but very well known to Lego's market research team. It's not a hard and fast rule, but since Lego keep pumping out non system scale set they must feel like they're doing something right, and given the news of their 1HY profit increase (across the board, not specifically for LSW) there isn't a lot of reason in money terms for them to change direction in the near future.

That could (fingers crossed) be a very good thing, for both LSW and the franchise as a whole. With waves seemingly shrinking each year to the next, and new media taking up a number of slots of the sets that do release, this could be some much needed breathing room and give Lego space to revisit sets that haven't been seen in a long time, or simply haven't been seen at all. 2013 is often singled out as a 'golden year' for LSW and I don't think it's a coincidence that that was a time when the media landscape was far less clogged than it is currently.

Very nice work all round, especially on the angles of the front section. Regarding the central beam, would it work better to have several single transparent beams spaced along the structure, as multiple transparent beams placed side by side isn't very, well, transparent. Not sure if this is just replacing one problem with another problem though...

I feel like with the long lead time from initial set design to release coupled with shifting release schedules for the shows themselves, it's entirely possible an Acolyte set or two shows up in the next summer wave. At the same time sets based on well established media have been designed and then shelved before reaching the release stage, so who knows

Thanks everyone for your comments! That's exactly why I built it; needed to give more life to my Mos Eisley street scene. Even though I grew up with the OT, I was surprised to find out that Rontos didn't appear until the 1997 Special Editions (at least that's what Wookiepedia says). In my mind they'd always been there... I went back and forth a bit trying to get the right scale between head and body, and also scale well with a minifigure; once I'd decided on using the moulded legs, that played a large part in deciding the overall scale of the build. I bought all the pieces for this from Bricklink, so the legs are definitely available. The only issue was adding them separately to the wanted list after importing the rest of the model from Studio; I just called up the parts list for 75148 and copied the part numbers from there.

I've always liked brick built creatures, especially the challenge of creating something animal shaped using bricks, and I'm happy to present my attempt at a brick built Ronto as seen in the Special Edition of A New Hope. Well, I should say 90% brick built, as the legs are obviously moulded pieces. The body of the Ronto is based on the Luggabeast from 75148 Encounter on Jakku so it made sense to include the legs from that creature as part of the build. The saddle is based on the one used on Ronto's in the Skywalker Saga Lego game. Instructions are here; one problem though is none of the leg pieces exist in Stud.io - if anyone knows of a way of adding parts 26269, 26270, 26271 & 26272 please let me know! I also built a swoop bike - the Mobquet Flare S Swoop - to recreate the Special Edition scene where the swoop rider scares a Ronto in the introduction to Mos Eisley. The ratchet connections on the Ronto legs made it easy to pose the creature in a rearing position.

Whether or not the next entry in the Mando story needs to be a film or TV season, Lego have in the past dedicated large waves to film tie-ins, as opposed to the two or three sets (if that) that a season of a show receives. Fingers crossed we continue to see this when the new film drops.

I'd be interested to know where the numbers fall on moulded vs brick built. At least on the Star Wars forum there seems to be a strong preference for moulded creatures - no idea about HP or JW. Personally I'm a fan of brick built creatures because the medium we're working with is Lego, although I do make exceptions for anything smaller than minfigs eg. dogs, cats, goats etc.

Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future. Barring any official announcement - which is rare - so far there are only rumours about the winter wave (and rumours lately have not been 100% reliable). Maybe there will be dioramas later in the year - TPM diorama released in May - or maybe they will be gone for a year and then come back again, like battle packs did. Anything is possible.

I'm kinda surprised that the Dark Falcon sold out quicker on Lego.com in Australia than it did at Big W, which had it at 15% below retail price on the day of release. The only time I've ever bought directly from Lego is for exclusives, as other retailers always have cheaper prices on widely available sets. Is it because of points or GWP that people prefer Lego.com?

Some numbers to put things in perspective: Mandalorian (3 seasons) - 19 sets Ahsoka (1 season) - 4 sets Kenobi (1 season) - 2 sets Book of Boba Fett (1 season) - 2 sets Andor (1 season) - 1 set Skeleton Crew (yet to be released) - 1 set Acolyte (1 season) - 0 sets Of course Mandalorian (and in marketing terms Grogu) is probably more popular than all the other shows combined, so it's not surprising that it has far more sets than any other show (also far more than all others shows combined). I'll be the first to say that Lego's record on trends is spotty at best, so there's no rule that says that the Acolyte must have at least one set just because all other shows do, but I still think it's odd that it doesn't have a single one, especially in the world of Star Wars, which basically kick started the world of merchandising and marketing tie-ins. Outside the scope of this forum but I'll admit the show had its share of questionable story choices, but so did every show except Andor: Leia under a trench coat, the Mods on Tatooine, Sabine pulling the force out of nowhere, characters getting stabbed with lightsabers and surviving in multiple shows... The main thing just about every other show had going for it though is legacy characters, which are gold in marketing terms. I still maintain that shifting release schedules - along with TLG own development cycles and when they get source material from D+ - is largely responsible for the current situation and we'll see at least one thing from the show pop up next summer. Or I'm wrong and after focus group numbers come in the Jedi Cruiser currently sitting on a designers desk in Billund will be quietly shelved.

It wouldn't be hard to do the main Jedi cruiser from the show at a similar scale to say, the Onyx Cinder. The way the front part of the ship splits off from the main engines would be perfect to represent in Lego (or at least it would be from my Classic Space perspective) A typical six minifig lineup for this size set could give Sol, Osha, Yord and Jecki, plus Mae and Qimir as 'conflict'. Probably the main reason we haven't seen it is the supposed scheduling swap between this and Skeleton Crew, hence why we do have the Onyx Cinder with next to no information about that show and the Acolyte with zero sets. The overall small number of sets this year doesn't help either; fewer playscale sets and fewer sets total means that many things are going to be missed. Regardless of what clickbaity YouTubers think about the show, it's odd that there isn't a single Acolyte set available, but there is a large 'flagship' set from a largely unknown, yet to be released show.

The more I look at the new 'battle pack' the more i like it. Even though both builds are non-canon (I think) they both look like something that could sit alongside other playscale vehicles and not look out of place, like a Kenner mini-rig or something that Filoni & co would later introduce into canon media. Here's a idea for someone's YouTube channel: Best Playscale Battlepack Builds. As others have pointed out, the set is a remake of two early battle packs - the Imperial Dropship and Rebel Scout Speeder - which were 81 and 82 pieces respectively. With the new set clocking in at 383 pieces it'll obviously be a more substantial build for each (guessing the dropship will be the bigger of those two builds). About the price: two vehicles at $15 each (I want to say $12 but looking at the piece count and modern prices that's never going to happen), 6 figs at ~$2 each (especially as there are no unique figs and are repeats of others from earlier this year), plus an anniversary droid at say $3-4 and that gets us to $45 very quickly (unfortunately). I know the Clone Trooper/Battle droid pack was only $30 but that set had 150+ fewer pieces, and many of the 'figs' were droids, which are priced/valued differently. I still don't think $45 will pass the 'volume of stuff' pub test but that's where LSW is nowadays. The 2008 battlepacks were $10 each, in 2024 terms that's equal to $14.59, so close to $30 combined. The new set has more than twice the number of pieces, two (repeated) figs less but including an anniversary fig with new prints. I really hope that it's $40 but also hate that the numbers point to somewhere higher than that...