MaximillianRebo

So, basically the diamond industry. I saw a video from someone who'd obtained a copy (possibly Jang?) and they pointed out a problem with the gears so yeah, it was convenient to go with the public narrative on cancellation and avoid a much larger mechanical issue. To me most big stinks nowadays are YouTubers using controversy to drive views and then their content gets repeated on Reddit and other forums and becomes a much bigger storm than it should be.

As always with these 'what were they thinking' type of product announcements, it's going to be non-Lego fans of the IP who are the target demographic, while most AFOLs sit there scratching their heads. I'll agree that Twilight sits at a weird place, it's too far out of the zeitgeist now to command the consumer might of BTS fans, but not old enough to capture the nostalgia market of sets like Home Alone. Yep, if there is a Lego fan demographic this set is designed for, it'll most likely be architecture fans.

10 hour old account posts new info about a figure that people have been speculating about for days. Yep, definitely believable

Hang on, it's all beginning to make sense. It's GEODE!

I want to say Kyle Katarn is more well known, but that depends on what media most people follow - the books or the games. Doesn't really matter, either (or both!) would be excellent.

Thirded! They've already done the Boba prototype figure so a Holiday Special fig wouldn't be too out of left field. And even if TLG/Lucasfilm wants to avoid (deny the existence of) the Holiday Special they can model the fig on Boba's appearance in the Droids cartoon, which was very similar.

You seem to be making a distinction between 'adult' or I guess 18+ sets and other system scale or play scale sets. I imagine most AFOLs are interested in info about any and all new releases, be it play scale, dioramas, UCS etc. regardless of the target range shown on the box and there is currently to my knowledge zero info about summer releases, 'adult' or otherwise.

Watching reviews of the Ghost and I'm losing interest in getting the set. I wasn't fussed by the exposed technic beams but somehow the big gaps on the underside of the ship bugged me. I'm usually the first person to say just add some extra pieces to fix the flaws but to this seems to have been the straw that broke the set for me. I like the design of the ship (always a sucker for ships with angled surfaces, just so I can see how those angles were achieved) and I enjoyed Rebels but I'm not it's number one fan. The figs are decent - Hera is great, Chopper good (although the previous version looks somehow better) and the others are ok but ultimately background characters - and I say this as someone who doesn't prioritise figs when choosing sets (and I never expected there to be a complete rehash of the Rebels crew in this set). The interior is there, but seems kind of empty and bland, Hera sits on the floor in the cockpit (I know, just stick a chair under her). I know this is all nitpicking it just seems to have eroded my interest in a set I was originally looking forward to when it was announced. Ultimately I lot of what I said doesn't even matter as I just build and display - missing plates underneath, lacklustre interior aren't even things I'll even see when it's on the shelf. Maybe if there's a good discount at some point I'll change my mind but with the set being an exclusive that's unlikely (Amazon might have a sale later). I'll probably wait until Ahsoka finishes then see how I feel. Wondering if others feel the same way or if I'm being too negative and looking for flaws in what's actually a great set.

Actual trans yellow blades do exist but only ever appeared in one set, back in 2015. I picked up one off Bricklink a while back to make a Kenner version of Tatooine Luke.

A while back I posted my collection of speeder bike MOCs based on vehicles from Star Wars: The Old Republic. This time around here are some larger vehicles also from the Old Republic era, some more well known than others. The Daggerstar One of the most well known Old Republic vehicles, this is the swoop that you pilot on Taris in the first part of KOTOR. I even added the 'boost' function at the back of the craft. Chiss Talon Interceptor Unfortunately I don't have an actual Chiss figure (e.g. Thrawn) to pilot this craft, so 4-LOM will have to do. TF-4 Rampage Speeder I tried to give this speeder a similar scale to the various official Lego speeders, plus give it that typical Star Wars 'used' look. Arclight Nova A bit of a departure from the suggested colour scheme owing to lack of pieces in dark red; I somehow ended up with colours reminiscent of the Horizon Tallneck Old Republic Starfighter Finally my take on what Lego produced as 9497 Republic Striker-class Starfighter. I aimed to get more slope on the wings than the official model while still allowing the wings to fold out - meaning they angle downward quite a bit... More photos of each build can be found on my Flickr page.

I think a big part of the problem with the battle pack debate is that, probably starting with the 501st set in 2020, any smallish set which contains a majority of infantry themed minifigs - especially if they're clones - immediately gets referred to as a 'battle pack' by large portions of the fan base and then subjected to whatever arbitrary rules have been created to dictate the ideal composition of battle packs, when this designation was never meant to be the case. It reminds me of the 'Is this a butterfly?' meme, except with a clone instead of the butterfly and a caption of 'Is this a battle pack?'. Personally I have no problem with a cheap set containing Rex, Echo, Fives etc. as it's simply just another set, and not a battle pack at all.

I get where you're coming from. sometimes I see MOCs where SNOT seems to have been used as the end goal itself rather than a means - in a similar way to some musicians focusing primarily on technical mastery e.g. always faster and higher, rather than simply playing something interesting. I guess the goal in these excessive SNOT builds is to hide the dreaded studs (heaven forbid a Lego model actually shows exposed studs ). Personally I'm never a fan of aircraft or spaceships where the wings are SNOT builds with bricks facing sideways. Sure it gets rid of those unsightly studs but to me the end result looks too blocky - for want of a better word - rather than the contour than can be achieved with layered plates. That's not to say that brackets and modified bricks aren't incredibly useful in the right situation, like adding detail to the side of a model, but like any building technique it needs to be right place/right time, rather than just default setting.

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but with Yavin 4 still not on the Australian Lego site even though it releases in, what, two days time, other sites show a retail price of $260 aud and at least one site listing it for $220.

While I'd agree that neither franchise is at the height of their popularity at the moment, I think people selling SW minifigs is more about the explosion in minifig prices in the past few years and them wanting to profit from that, rather than trying to offload their collections altogether.

Great to see some colour in LSW sets again, even the E-Wing as a standard white plus colour accent looks good. Shin's starfighter is of course the stand out, the colours here look like it's been decorated by a certain Mandalorian... The E-Wing is definitely too tall - no problem to slide your speeder bike under this one - but I understand how it's been done to keep the wings off the ground. Will see what mod options there are to make it several plates shorter. Minifigs are good all round, glad I picked up a couple of trans neon orange 4l bars off BrickLink a few months ago just in case

Front section looks a bit short/stumpy, for example there's not a lot of space between the back of the 2nd cockpit and the top of the ship, but I'm not the biggest gunship expert so could be wrong on this - especially if this Coruscant version has different proportions to combat versions. I've heard others say that previous gunships were slightly larger than minifig scale, could this slightly downsized version be closer to the 'correct' (whatever that means) scale?

I really want to like the Yavin set but the result is just lacking. It's a good idea to use Vader's castle as a template (outside of a full MBS treatment, which is probably never going to happen unless they start releasing MBS sets every year) but Vader's castle was more compact. I think my biggest issue with this set - apart from the price - is that it's too sprawling. I didn't realise that the 2nd level of the main temple section is just a play feature for two stud shooters. IMO they should have put the briefing/control rooms in that section - probably would have had to make it taller to enable human fingers to place the minifigs - and used the remaining pieces from the side sections to build up the side walls of the temple. The Y-Wing is fine for what it is (similar to the TIE Advanced in the castle) and has been mentioned earlier a similarly sized X-Wing would look good in that setting. Compared to Vader's castle, Yavin has a similar piece count (looks to be a decent amount of large plates and other pieces), 7 more minfigs and 4 years later costs about 30% more (not looking forward to whatever the Australian price ends up being). I wasn't following new releases back when the Castle was announced, what was the reaction then to the price compared to what we're seeing now? End of the day though it is a kids play set (hence the tree being the way it is with the feature of raising and lowering the lookout post - finally we know how troops access that point!) which is fine and it's really a set that's aimed squarely at that age range. JB Spielwaren made a good point in their video though that it isn't a location that saw any movie action and there's no figs included to fight against. As a big OT fan I will almost certainly buy it, especially as I don't see them doing a Yavin set again for a long time, if ever, but it stings to be already thinking about mods to be improving the set with the price being what it is. The biggest omission I feel is no Kyle Katarn and no Grandmaster Luke. That's what I'll do - mod the side sections to be Jedi training grounds

Picked up the Boushh helmet at a 25% discount. Pretty happy with that, especially as it's not easy to find where I am.

Great way of thinking outside the box. All the tools builds are excellent and even the work bench is brick-built!

Each to their own but it's the purist life for me. I can understand though why some, especially in themes like trains, would need to use pieces that don't exist in Lego's collection. It's a challenge sometimes to make a certain structure or shape work with only existing pieces - will there ever be a plate with studs on both sides? - but often that challenge/restriction pushes me in a direction I wouldn't otherwise consider and the results are better because of it.

Looks amazing! Great work to get all the details and posability at that scale.

Is that a reindeer Gonk pulling Omega's sled?

Very nice model! Scales very well with the official Interceptor and you've even managed to integrate the stickers from the original build in a way the blends in seamlessly.

Thank you everyone for your comments! @Professor Thaum As someone who grew up with Classic Space it seemed the natural choice in this situation @Veynom Thank you for your comment about the scale. Part of me thinks I've made the ship a bit too small - like a lot of Legends craft there is varying information on the overall size depending on where you look. In the end I tried to create something that scaled well with a four-wide cockpit and getting the right angles in the nose section.