Tom_Brick

After doing the other TIEs from the advanced program (the Advanced v1, the Avenger and also the Defender), it was time for me to also tackle Darth Vader's ship while I was at it. Here's the result (Inventory & Instructions can be found on my Rebrickable page: https://rebrickable.com/users/thomin/mocs/ ):

This is an era I’m entirely unfamiliar with. By the time of the UFO sets, I was „too old“ for Lego and by the time I returned, those sets were long gone. Thanks for the review. It really is a nice set. I particularly like the fact that Lego was still using prints instead of all those horrible stickers nowadays.

Cheers everyone. If my child self were here today, I'm sure he'd feel great about the feedback. And yeah, I definitely did swoosh them around

I'm currently sifting through my old childhood Legos that I recently picked up from my parents attic and I came across some of the "MOCs" I did back then. Obviously there were no Star Wars Licences in the late 1980s / early 1990s, so I had to build my own stuff which in this case were tiny little Star Wars fighters...who knew that the genre of nano fighters would become a thing decades later. Of course my designs weren't as elaborate and detailed as some modern designs are, but I was a kid, there weren't as many different slopes and special parts back then, there weren't any examples that could have given me inspiration plus I had to work with what I had. So given all those constraints, I do give my younger self some points for ingenuity. From left to right: X-Wing, Y-Wing, Millennium Falcon, 2 x TIE Fighters, 2 x TIE Interceptors, TIE Bomber + TIE Advanced

Thank you, that's it. Looking at my parts, I guess it came from the 912 set as I have multiple parts from it. I even have one of those minifigs without arms or legs. Unfortunately it seems as if a lot of parts have also been lost over the years. It's indeed a very cool part. Too bad it has been discontinued, otherwise I'm sure I would find some good uses for my MOCs.

It's not a typo. "Centre" is the proper British English spelling. Americans switched up the "-re". Other examples are "theatre", "metre", "litre" and "fibre".

Thanks everyone, I figured that I could post some more detailed pictures. I'm starting with the church-side of the model. If you guys are interested, I can post some more details. First a look from the street in front of the bell tower: Then we take a swing around and have a look at the entrance to the church Next up, a look into the church itself. Of course there's an organ upstairs in the back. The walls in the church had to be three bricks deep in order to accommodate the stained glass windows: Then we have a look at the connection between sacristy and church. Unfortunately you can't really see the staircases going up due to the lighting. The ground floor of the sacristy has a different colour interior compared to its exterior. Behind the sacristy is a little herb garden which you can't see on this image due to the angle. What youi can see however is that I kinda messed up the cobblestone on the ramp onto the bridge...I'll need to fix that... Here's a look at the top floors of both the sacristy and the priest's house. In both buildings it's mostly used for storage, the sacristy also has a little writing table: Next up is a closer look at the third floor of the clergy building where the maid sleeps together with a lot of utensils and some more storage: On the second floor we have the priest's room...very cozy with it's own fireplace, a desk, some books and a little storage compartment underneath the stairs where he keeps a barrel of wine: Lastly we have the kitchen with a large fireplace where the maid can cook for the priest:

Hi, I'm currently going through my old trove of Lego bricks that I picked up from my parents attic recently and I came around a mysterious piece that I'd like to identify and also find out from which set it could be. At the latest, it can be from the early 1990s. I would guess that it's quite a bit older though. Any ideas would be welcome.

I've previously posted my attempts at a modular medieval city. As I mentioned back then, the fully modular approach where every house could be placed next to any other house did have some drawbacks as I had to design every wall as if another house would stand right beside it. So I wanted to try something else, going into a direction where I use larger modules, clusters of houses instead of individual houses. Unfortunately, it escalated quickly and I ended up with a massive cluster (almost 33000 pieces). So this won't work for me either. But I still like the result, so I wanted to share it with you guys. First some information. I was inspired by the "Krämerbrücke" ("Merchants' Bridge") in Erfurt. Of course I drastically downscaled it and also took some other creative licenses.The bridge was originally built with the houses on top in 1325, but was rebuilt after a massive fire in 1472. While the original bridge in Erfurt had 62 timber framed houses, mine only has six. All of the houses have a full interiour on three stories. On the bridge, I have a wine merchant, a store with pots and pans, a tailor, a store for knifes / swords, one merchant selling vegetables and one selling meat. On the one end of the bridge I have a goldsmith and two residential buildings, on the other side I have a church building. The ascent onto the brighe goes underneath the church tower and on the other side is the sacristy. There's a pathway above the bridge connecting church and sacristy and of course there are staircases connecting everything, including the top of the belltower which can be accessed either through the church or the sacristy. Next to the sacristy is the clergy house where the priest lives with his maid.

Funny that you mention the Polaris I Lab, as I just restored that yesterday. I still need to order some minor parts, but I could already set it up. I still need to find a good place for it. My first Legos (apart from Duplo when I was really small) was a collection of used Space sets my parents picked up from a neighbour who's son grew out of Lego. Among them was the Galaxy Explorer and the Alien Moon Stalker. However, it came without instructions and partially disassembled, so I never had them in the way Lego intended them but as I imagined they should be. Obviously there was no internet in the 1980s where I could get the instructions. Now is the first time I have them built according to the official instructions. The Polaris I Lab was the first boxed set my parents got me from the store, so I had the instructions. I loved it, including the rocket. I definitely played the heck out of it. Once I'm through with all the sets I am aware of, it'll be fun to try and piece together which other sets remain hidden in my old trove. Most of the pieces my parents got from the neighbour back in the day were loose, so I never knew what I had exactly. I already found one piece that only came in one particular set in the late 1960s, some sort of delivery truck, though I doubt I can piece that one back together as it had several quite unique parts. So the neighbour must also have bought a bunch of used bricks.

The thing about the old space sets in general was that playability was key. They all had nifty features, though the Moon Stalker probably was the best in that regard. All those gimmicks are awesome. Plus: Only the Moon Stalker has containers in its legs...check mate AT-AT. I think that's the downside of the current Lego strategy of only selling licensed products. You do get the name recognition which is great of course, but you're also very limited in what you can do. You can't add a grapple arm or detachable gliders to an AT-AT because that's simply not how an AT-AT looks or works. Another example is something I came across when going through my old Legos. I found an official book with alternate instructions for tons of old sets. The purpose was to encourage kids to come up with their own builds. An early MOC tutorial if you will. There was some really wild stuff in there and I couldn't see Lego doing anything of the sort today, let alone with sets based on licenses. Here are some examples:

Yeah, now that you mention it, that makes sense...thanks

I've recently picked up my old childhood Legos from my parents attic and am now one by one restoring my old sets...cleaning the bricks, ordering replacements for lost pieces and then putting them back together. The last one was the Alien Moon Stalker: However, there was one thing that kind of puzzled me. Why am I using this printed tile in this place? Looks like you're supposed to take off the rear bit, but why and what for? Where would I put it? I guess I could plug it into the pin in the rear that's used to connect the glider with the walker, but I don't see the point. Does anybody have any ideas why Lego did it this way?

No worries, I didn't take it as being insolent. I like free stuff as well. My smaller models are usually free, but stuff like this takes so much effort that I think it's only fair to ask for a little bit. And compared to the costs of the actual bricks, it's not even that much.

Thank you Thanks and sorry to disappoint you, but making these instructions is quite a lot of work so that I think it's only fair to charge a little bit. I'm not getting rich off of it, in fact, what I earn doesn't come close to justifying the time I put into this. But it helps taking the edge off of my expensive Lego habit

As I mentioned earlier, I designed two new TIEs in parallel, the TIE Avenger and the TIE Advanced v1. I guess I mainly did it this way because I subconsciously wanted to put off doing the instructions which is always a pain. So I jumped back and forth between the two. Anyway, both are now finished and the instructions are available on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-72582/thomin/tie-ad-advanced-v1/#details

The Outland cockpit is completely different from anything else. Other than that, all cockpits share the basic philosophy but they do come in quite different implementations which I do reuse when possible. I have what I call a "slim" and a "large" cockpit. One of those is used on most MOCs. Except for the Defender and Brute which have new constructions but sharing some ideas.

Here's what I came up with. I'm actually quite proud of my cockpit design, but your swiveling pod is of course next level.

Yes, this is indeed based upon the Fractalsponge design. The solar panels on it are quite a bit longer than in the old video games. But I do really love the more pointy look. Also, I wouldn't expect the panels to hold without a stand, mainly because I use a mix of hinges and regular clips. If it were all hinges, I'd say it probably would hold. Those suckers are tough. I was debating whether to add spokes on the inside, but ultimately went against it as I wouldn't be able to exactly replicate the look of the outside...it would look a bit tacked on. But maybe I'll play around with it a bit more and add them yet. Also, I've been working on a TIE Advanced v1 in parallel which is now also done. I'll post some pictures soon. And of course I did build a TIE Defender some time back, though for the Defender, I also went for a different look than what was first introduced in the old TIE Fighter game. I based my design on the first promo-renderings for the Star Wars Squadrons game where the Defender had extremely long, extremely pointy solar panels. In the final game, they toned it back a little bit, so the Defenders in Squadrons are inbetween the promo renderings and the look we've seen before. So my MOC is now a bit of an outlier. I like the look, but I'll eventualy do an update to emulate the look of the Squadrons game which should also make it slightly less unweildy.

Very clever rear design. I like it. Though I guess I'd try moving the engines out by one stud and rather complete the circle. Might be worth a try.

I like it. Particularly the side-cart where Cobb sits is well integrated, better than on he one I did back when the episode first aired. But apparently my design was still good enough for the Chinese to steal it They even stole the angle on my image

Thank you guys.

Interesting, yeah, sounds solid.

I've been sitting on this half finished for a while, now it's finally ready: The instructions are available on my Rebrickable page: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-72544/thomin/tie-ad-avenger/#details

Agreed...those rotating guns are brilliant. I've done my own Brute and eventually gave up on the rotating pod, I couldn't get it to rotate without compromising the overall stability. How did you manage to rotate the pod around the connection between the cockpit and the solar panel?