MaximillianRebo

Snub Fighter: Looks like a good build, nice layering on the plates, good detail, lots of useful parts. The stud shooters are also well integrated and don't stick out like on other ships. On the downside the nose area looks a bit long and not wide enough - based on the artwork in the credits. I would shorten it by a stud or two at the front and make it a stud wider on either side. Minor nitpick but the front cannons appear too long but that's an easy fix: remove the candle pieces and just keep the Darth Maul lightsaber pieces . Colour wise yeah it's another bley ship; maybe that's the in-universe design but some colour accents would have helped. Again based on the credits artwork it looks to have a lot of dark blue, but maybe that's just the colour shading of the image. Microfighter: 50% price increase Does this mean the upcoming Mechs will now be the cheapest of the new sets? Maybe that's intentional... I don't mind the build - it's a microfighter after all - but definitely bulkier than the Naboo iteration. Lose the stud shooters (or revert to wing mounted flick fire missiles a la the previous version) and move the nose back a stud would help a lot imo.

You could say that about all Lego pieces though. No one is claiming a 2x4 plate or brick costs 10-15 cents to make when they're talking about PPP. It's all profit margin. As far as 4-5 dollars per fig, I think that's on the high side for a valuation (and I think Jang has said similar in his videos) but it's just his estimate of what TLG thinks they can get away with for whatever method they use to arrive at a final price for each set.

Pricing is all over the place for Australian SW sets. The following sets: N-1 Starfighter ($60 USD), TIE Bomber ($65 USD), most helmets, SSD & Trench Run ($70 USD) are all $100 AUD here, while Ferrix is $70 USD and $130 AUD From memory the recent Imperial Shuttle had a similar ridiculous conversion as Ferrix. On an unrelated note Cody and Rex are already on the shelves in my local Kmart. Usually it's a couple of weeks after release date before physical copies start showing up in non-Lego stores.

Wow that map sticker is way off. Even with the not to scaleness of the map Orthanc is just in the wrong spot. Barad-dûr should be where Orthanc is (not in the far east of Mordor) and Orthanc should be far left of Minas Tirith and up a bit. Also it's a bit odd why there's a map in Rivendell of the interior of Mordor (although it's been a while since I read the books so maybe there's an explanation for that one). That said it's a beautiful set with an enormous amount of detail, and absolutely out of my price range.

I agree. A Yavin set would work well in a similar style to Vader's Castle eg. open backed with the temple exterior on the front and sides - hangar on the bottom floor, briefing room/control room above that, and medal ceremony on the top floor. The rumoured inclusion of a Y-Wing microfighter also points in that direction, similar to the mini TIE Advanced in the castle set.

I posted something about this last night my time, which was admittedly like 10 pages back now, but a) TLG should have enough data from the Marvel mechs to indicate this is going to generate the sales they're looking for and b) the target market is more like parents or relatives looking for a cheapish present or impulse buy that won't break the bank. Plus the adults buying will likely recognise the OT characters themselves and be more willing to purchase vs various clone battalions they know little about. It can't be a coincidence that the mechs are allegedly launching with an almost identical line up to how the helmet line began, just swap out a black helmeted TIE pilot for black helmeted Vader. Either it's a tried and true (and successful) formula, or they're just going with old faithfuls.

If the mech rumours are true I can see why TLG are going in this direction; they will certainly have enough market research and sales data from the Marvel mechs to give them an idea of what to expect. Funnily enough I don't think it's kids (directly) who are the target - it's parents. Parents who need to find an inexpensive (ymmv) present for their kid to take to another kids birthday party, aunts and uncles who know their niece/nephew likes SW but doesn't really know which characters/movies and plays it safe by buying them something small, impulse buys when you just need junior to put a sock in it. It doesn't hurt that by presumably replacing microfighters they are also raising the price of the cheapest sets by $5 so when adults need to something, anything LSW related $15 is the lowest they can go.

Thank you! There's so much variety in this era I'm always finding new inspiration for builds. Thanks! The colours influenced the designs a lot with the typical situation of finding out the part I wanted to use was expensive/difficult to find in that colour forcing me to go in a new direction. This was definitely true of the Aratech Lux; finding both the windscreen and shield in trans neon orange made the whole design possible.

I had a few classic space sets way back when that had viewing windows, especially ones that came with lunar baseplates. It could be because I was smaller back then but it feels like the box size for those sets is not much different to a largish modern set, the difference being however that the older sets had only several hundred pieces vs well over a thousand nowadays. Yes the pieces were on average bigger back then but modern sets still have more volume of stuff. We know that modern sets still have a fair amount of air in the box so it's not impossible to reintroduce this feature in theory, but I imagine in practice it would result in bigger boxes and a likely price increase as always appears to occur.

Some time ago I was looking for inspiration for MOCs and game across this page of vehicle mounts in Star Wars: The Old Republic. These were fun to make as there's a huge array of designs to choose from and the colours available meant I could get away from the typical black, white & bley colouring that is common to so many SW vehicles. Here is my ever growing collection of speeder bikes from the Old Republic era with links to compare each MOC with its source material: Lhosan LC-4 & Praxon Legacy PMP-06 Pleasure Speeder & Joko TZ-8 Lergo Enforcer & Adno Windscorpion Aratech Lux & Meirm Dark Wolf Czerka Bobber & Roche Gangster Gurian Lightning & Czerka Cruiser (yes I ran out of Mandalorians) Bonus round: Finally a MOC not from the Old Republic era but here is my version of Ezra's speeder from Rebels, modified as a ride for Threepio & Artoo. You can check out more angles of each vehicle in my Flickr album.

Fantastic build - as are all your mechs - although I did look at this for a long time before realising that the mech is facing forward and the knees and feet are 'backwards'! I imagine that's necessary though for stability and balance.

Lately I've added two more machines to my Horizon collection: a Behemoth and a Longleg. Behemoth Longleg The Longleg can stand on its own, but the clutch power in the clip/bar joints in the legs are finicky. Even with the trans clear pieces it's still prone to lose it's balance, I should probably change to trans clear 2x2 round bricks for better support. Also included is my mod of the official Watcher. Changes include a different tail piece, shorter legs to get it closer to the ground, and small changes to the head design.

Lego Ideas is 80% (or more) crowd sourced market research into what IPs are popular right now and 20% original designs and/or interesting and creative takes on what can be achieved with Lego. I mean, no one voted for a BTS set because they envisioned an intricate build with lots of detailed features; they just really like the group. As has been said, sets like the Tallneck and Optimus Prime show they can figure out on their own what will be popular, but Ideas gets them most of the way there without anyone having to lift a finger.

I don't pay a lot of attention to City, apart from watching the occasional review, but I imagine a colour which is basically 'emergency vehicle yellow' would be very useful in that theme.

"Controversial" probably means no prequel sets Regarding piece counts, it's not difficult with modern building techniques to have a high piece count in a small volume, say a bracket or clip stacked with 1x1 plates to bring it up to the height of a brick; 3 pieces instead on 1, rinse and repeat. Ambush on Ferrix for example has quite a high piece count vs "volume of stuff".

I'm in the opposite camp when it comes to Lego colours. Sand blue, dark blue, dark red, dark orange, bright light orange are some of favourite colours when adding accent colours to a MOC that would otherwise be white or bleyish and I'm always happy when an official set is released using a lot of one of those colours as it means more availability on Bricklink.

For me the build process is the main thing I'm looking for in a set. For example I wasn't heavily invested in the Kenobi show but bought the Scythe because I thought it would be a fantastic build and it was. As an OT fan I'll probably get the Boushh helmet because I like the look of it and again it looks like an interesting build to get all the different angles. Yes a replica helmet would look more authentic but the only interaction there is taking it out of the box and putting it on a shelf. As far as art sets go I would definitely get Starry Night and perhaps the Great Wave if money was no issue but have zero interest in sets like the Sith art, Batman, Elvis etc. as by all accounts the build process is tedious. The Titanic looks like an interesting build but I have no interest in displaying something where many people died, but that's just my personal preference.

Huh, so there is a Boushh helmet after all. Excellent news. Shaping looks great and that's a lot of - medium nougat? - curved slopes.

Bit late to the news of a rumoured Endor helmet, personally I was hoping for a Boushh helmet as that could have been an interesting build. Maybe the rumour was simply 'Leia helmet, ROTJ' and people assumed Boushh over Endor. Oh well. Perhaps it could be the mystery fourth helmet but I doubt they'd do both in the same wave.

Tiles positioned between studs is acceptable as it doesn't place any stress on the pieces; I have sets from the 1970's that use this technique. Plates between studs though ...

I know Max isn't one of currently rumoured figures for the Throne Room diorama, but in ROTJ he appeared in both the throne room and on the sail barge (I'd say more prominently in the throne room, depending on which edition of the film you watch), so a late inclusion in the diorama set is as possible as a hypothetical sail barge set.

20th Anniversary Slave 1 for me, ending my 25 year hiatus from Lego.

Codenamed: Lemon 🤔 Pac-Man?

Exactly. You can understand and begrudgingly accept that a business will make a decision that benefits their own bottom line without being a 'shill'. One of the stories of why Lego almost went bust 20 years ago is they had too many unique parts that required separate storage so their storage and logistic costs went through the roof. Every new printed piece is a unique part that has different storage requirements from the blank piece it is printed on, and other pieces of the same type but with a different print. Like everyone I'd love for stickers to never exist (except for those sticker sheets for the 1980 Lego Ideas book, they were cool) but I'd also like the company to keep going for a while longer.

Just saw the new sets on Lego AU website and the price of $100 aud for the Bomber is ... not ridiculous. Just slightly more than the current exchange rate on $65 usd and tax is included in the price here. It all depends on whether you think the US/euro price is reasonable in the first place but at least it's one of the best local vs international pricing conversions here in a while.