6180HydroSearchSub

Will be getting this--budgeted for this since the leaks came out--but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed by one thing I noticed in the reveal: stickers instead of prints?? On a $400 USD set??🤦

The primary reason why was because I was trying to make as few changes to the official set as possible since I ultimately did want something on the shelf that reflected as much of the out-of-the-box design intent as possible. So things like the yellow stripe stayed in since I liked the idea that the stripe was the designer's homage to the original's yellow hoses. The resulting creative and practical constraint I put on myself was that I could only use the parts available on LEGO PaB (USA) at the time, which meant things like using black hoses instead of yellow--another reason why I ended up keeping the yellow stripe. At the end of the day, I think I'll be okay with the end result of this completely arbitrary set of constraints because (1) I personally don't want to invest too much more $$$ into 10355 Blacktron Renegade, (2) it did lead to some interesting creative choices I wouldn't have otherwise made (e.g., using fishing rods in the sensor array), and (3) 10355 will never be the ICONS model I (and I think others) imagined in the months before its release but I think I'll be satisfied with how my modded version looks next to 10497 Galaxy Explorer.

Thanks! One thing I noticed was just how many parts of the original set looked unfinished. For example, the Black Fence 1 x 4 x 1 Lattice pieces around where the smaller craft dock just stick out like a sore thumb on the original model. Just a few tile pieces would really integrate them into the rest of the wing--in my mod, seven tile pieces per wing, 14 total. Given how simple that would have been, I have to assume the only reason the designer didn't do that was for budget reasons. Thank you! Closeup on the sensor array below in case you're interested. Yes! Strangely, I felt the 2 x 8 black tile on the LEGO version actually highlighted the yellow in the area, whereas minimizing visual complexity by adding more yellow paradoxically led to the opposite effect.

Agree that the cockpit should have been downsized, if nothing else, than for scaling consistency between the original ships and their upscaled counterparts. However, I don't know if a smaller cockpit would have result in this scenario. According to a digital Studio model of 10355, the cockpit section consists of approx. 116 pieces. Even if a smaller cockpit somehow led to a 30% reduction in pieces needed for that section, we're only looking at approx. ~35 pieces saved. To @Black Falcon's point, and assuming my earlier hypothesis was correct, I don't know that an extra 35 pieces would have gotten us close enough to a scaling ratio comparable to a 10497-like update. Just as a point of comparison: I recently made some digital mods to 10355 that I'm planning on adding to my own copy of Renegade IRL (below pic). 35 extra pieces on top of the existing set (i.e., not counting color changes that in theory wouldn't have added to the budget) would just about account for the upgraded antenna array and rear wing shaping. However, I estimate there's at least another 35 or so extra pieces worth of changes to modify the existing 10355 to the version in the picture below--which I personally find looks closer to the original Renegade but still nowhere near what I thought an ICONS-style Renegade would have looked like when it was announced.

So I started sketching out a Blacktron Renegade MOC designed more in line with 10497 Galaxy Explorer beginning with the shuttlecraft, and one of the things I noticed was piece count: the original 6954 shuttlecraft is constructed with 16 pieces; the 10355 is 24 pieces; the MOC is 68. I then compared with the original/remake ratios for both 10497 and 10355: 928/497 is generally listed as containing 338 pieces. A rough estimate minus the moon base/baseplate gives us approximately 300 pieces for the Galaxy Explorer/rover/astronauts (I eyeballed 40 for the moonbase). 10497 contains 1254 pieces. The ratio of 300:1254 is 4.18, i.e., the 10497 remake contains 4.18 times the number of pieces than the original. 6954 is generally listed as containing 315 pieces; 10355 contains 1151 pieces; or 3.65. Which is to say, I think the new Renegade got shortchanged. If 10355 had budgeted a similar upscaling factor as 10497, the set would have been closer to 1317 pieces. In any event, my MOC exercise does suggest my earlier hypothesis might be true--a new Renegade designed more along the lines of 10497 would have been way over the price point LEGO was trying to hit.

All the discussion about the Blacktron Renegade in the Ongoing Thread made me wonder, what would something designed more similarly to the 10497 Galaxy Explorer look like? i.e., something that took more inspiration from the original design, but more detailed and upscaled? Started with the shuttlecraft, since they share the directional thrusters element with the Galaxy Explorer. Some renders below with both the original and 10355 shuttlecraft. Thoughts?

Revisited my entry for the 2025 Alt-Build Contest. Made some changes from the originally submitted design, for both additional stability and to incorporate more pieces. A few parts are only attached with one stud, but thankfully those aren't any weight-bearing elements or parts you would be handling as you pose it/move it around. Standing stability is also surprisingly decent IRL. And most importantly, a minifig fits in the cockpit!

One thing I would add is: I think it's clear based on the final product that fidelity to the original set might not have been as important for Renegade as it was for Galaxy Explorer. Certain upscaled elements on Galaxy Explorer were also present on the original Renegade set--e.g., the triple thrusters, the brick-built arrow--but were not ultimately included in the updated Renegade. As an aside, I also think it's important to note that the modernized "CS simplistic aesthetic" was not a given before Galaxy Explorer was released, and unfortunately has been shown to be not a thing post-Renegade. From what I remember of the MOC scene pre-2022, I think the direction most people were taking in LEGO space builds was towards more greebling, texture, and design complexity (e.g., this MOC by Pete Reid published in 2008, or this one by The Brick Artisan in 2021). In that respect, I think 10497 actually cut against most people's expectations of what an "ICONS Galaxy Explorer" would look like. Unfortunately for 10355 Blacktron Renegade, I think the opposite was true--most people, myself included, probably thought it would take after 10497 because that's what we thought a Classic Space ship in the "ICONS" would be going forward. Speaking for myself, that expectation was the source of my disappoint with the set as-released--and maybe instead of making comparisons to 10497, we should have been making a comparison to 70816 Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!. It feels kind of silly that I'm only making this realization almost a year after Blacktron Renegade was released, but I'm starting to think the crux of the issue is that LEGO placed Blacktron Renegade in the wrong line. Maybe instead of ICONS, LEGO should have put Blacktron Renegade in the Creator 3-in-1 line. It's not the best fit, but if you think about it, Renegade has much more DNA in common with something like Benny's Spaceship than Galaxy Explorer: emphasis on play patterns, relative simplicity of design and building experience, and the general scale of the ship vis a vis the minifigures. Furthermore, although a Creator 3-in-1 Renegade would have still gotten the inevitable comparisons to 10497, instead of the second part of that sentence being "but it's no 10497," the narrative would have been "but this was intended for kids." I think this hypothetical is analogous to 31168 Medieval Horse Knight Castle. Nobody buys 31168 thinking it's going to be like 10305 Lion Knights Castle; rather, the more appropriate comparison is to 31120 Medieval Castle. In retrospect, if LEGO was able to position 10355 Blacktron Renegade the same way (and maybe they tried but retailers balked) I think everybody would have been a lot happier with the end product.

I've been thinking about this on and off since the Renegade was revealed, as it had been my most anticipated set of the year following the Galaxy Explorer and then subsequently the most disappointing set of the year (relative to expectations). I think it comes down to a combination of having a more difficult design brief and having been designed on a relatively smaller budget. With regards to the former, based on the designer's statements made during interviews, it sounds like the Renegade had to (1) incorporate the modular play pattern of the original Renegade, and (2) incorporate the family-friendly/group building philosophy LEGO appeared to have been trying to roll out for some of the larger sets. Galaxy Explorer didn't have to do that given its source material, which I would argue must have made designing Renegade harder and must have resulted in its disjointed and, frankly, unfinished final design. Budget must have also been a factor. Whereas Galaxy Explorer was designed and cost out pre-COVID, Renegade was trying to hit the same price point post-COVID-era inflation. If you compare the Renegade to Galaxy Explorer, Renegade does worse on both price per piece and price per [unit of weight]. Surely the fact that amateur MOCers can figure out better designs than some of the lackluster design choices we got out of the box (e.g., the weirdly plain communications array module, the unseemly gap on the back edge of the wings, etc.) suggests that the design was influenced by external forces outside the official designer's control. In short, I think Renegade was trying to do more with its design on a smaller budget. I think if money were no object, we could have gotten a Blacktron Renegade that was every bit as nice as the Galaxy Explorer. However--and just based on my own small attempts at fixing up the Renegade--the retail price for that imaginary set would likely be at least double what the actual set currently retailed for. And I hate to say it, but I don't know if there's a business case for that.

@Murdoch17, an amazing upgrade to one of my favorite childhood themes! I was really hoping the new Johnny Thunder in the recent City Explorers theme was a backdoor to a full revival of the Adventurers theme, but alas!

What a crazy coincidence! I've only recently found the time to get back to hobbies, decided to revisit this MOC, and literally just submitted instructions for the revised MOC to Rebrickable earlier today. If you're interested in those new instructions, they'll hopefully be live in the next few days assuming they get approved. But if you are interested in the original design's .io file, I'll have to dig around an old hard drive to find it (finally got a new laptop end of 2024)--let me know!

Fantastic modification! It looks much more polished!

Thanks, @aFrInaTi0n! Very curious about what you have in mind for trans neon green! @tmtomh, you are too kind, and "bananas" is right! I could not even tell you the number of times I had to completely redesign sections of the ship after realizing I didn't have enough parts to mirror it for the other side!

Did you use an official LEGO hole punch? Joking aside, what a clever use of the paper bag! Is it just me, or are the printed studs on the paper sized a 1:1 for the dimensions of actual studs on bricks?

That clearly just means they need to bring back Aquasharks as well to get more value out of the color!

How creative!

Thanks, @SpacePolice89--what a compliment from such a noted space enthusiast on this forum! After building this I would definitely love a Ice Planet 2002 revival in the Icons line! (Although I would be lying if I said I didn't prefer something more in line with 10497 's aesthetic rather than the new Renegade's...)

NEXO KNIGHTS 70327 The King's Mech => ICE PLANET 2002 (small category) Uses approximately 75% of the pieces from the original set.

An alt-build of 70327 The King's Mech for the Eurobricks Alt-Build Contest, small category. Speaking as somebody who loves mechs, does anybody else sometimes take a look around LEGO's product offerings and think, maybe we could dial it back on the mechs just a little bit? So as a fun challenge, I thought it would be interesting to try and turn a mech set into something that wasn't--the challenge being that mechs are generally designed with appendages that move (i.e., plenty of joints) but without many standard pieces (like bricks and plates). As a bit of extra fun, I decided to experiment on a mech set out of my dark ages, 70327 The King's Mech, and this is what I came up with: ICE PLANET 2002 is back! Clocking in at 281 pieces, or approximately 75% of the original set's pieces (not counting the Ice Planet 2002 minifigure included just for visualization), this ship is intended to be an homage to classic Ice Planet 2002 sets like 6834 Celestial Sled and 6879 Blizzard Baron. When looking at the original NEXO KNIGHTS set, the first thing that jumped out at me (after the colors) was the giant sword piece which clearly needed to become a center ski just like the vintage sets had. The next elements of the alt-build to come together were the side skis, as the vintage sets always had three skis. That's where some of the first mech parts came in, to create some angled support struts as opposed to simply mounting them underneath. I thought it made sense in-universe if the support struts were capable of variable geometry, acting like suspension while skimming the icy terrain of Krysto. (I would also be lying if I wasn't at least a little influenced by the silhouette of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which definitely permeated the build going forward.) The next idea I had was to use the NEXO mech's mask as some approximation of the radar dish that both vintage sets had. However, for the new alt-build I imagined it would function more like some sort of cowling or shroud for the laser drill--serving double duty as both a display for the operator and as protection from any icy shards that came flying their way! I was quite pleased with how the engine pods turned out, between the fairly consistent color blocking and the shaping achieved despite the limited parts palette. The hardest thing was in figuring out all the SNOT geometry needed to make them work. The next few gifs peel back some of the outer pieces to show what's going on underneath. For example, the entire front of the engine pod including the "pontoon" is held on by one 1x2 jumper plate, and getting the two sloped curves to actually mirror one another was a bit tricky too; it took a lot of trial and error to figure out that the stack from back to front was: jumper plate, up bracket, clip plate, ball joint plate, plate (round plates), down bracket. The backside of the engine pod was just as tricky: a balance between figuring out how to transition from SNOT to studs on top while making a relatively strong connection while getting the wedge to line up with the front of the pod. The final solution resulted in the 2x2 plate with technic pins sticking up just a little into the hollow of the 4x4 pointy wedge, while the bottom of the 4x4 wedge plate had to sit slightly below the top face of the SNOT plates. The below gif shows both this and a pretty good angle of the ship's "reactor", the stack of trans neon orange wedges alternating with technic plates. I'll take a moment here to admit that, based on the parts limitation, this model might be a bit fragile in real life. Some of it is due to a shortage of critical parts (I would have killed for more regular plates and jumper plates!), but also due to the intrinsic challenge in figuring out how to make pieces from a model designed to move instead not move. For example, I mentioned the alternating technic plates in the "reactor" earlier since I ended up sticking a technic pin through them in an effort to ensure the back platform wouldn't just be hanging off a single digital stud. Similarly, I tried "locking" the ball joint connection that connects the front and back halves of the ship with a technic axle into a 1x2 technic brick. The below gif shows this as well as how the center ski attaches to the craft: The cockpit actually ended up being the last major part of the ship that was built and to be honest I ended up being pleasantly surprised that it looks as cohesive as it does given the remaining parts I had to work with. My favorite design element in the cockpit are the controls, built from just a few robot elements, that was inspired by the classic space control piece found in 6879 Blizzard Baron. If you're still here, thank you for reading this far! I've really enjoyed both building for this contest as well as seeing all the other entries! I will leave you with two more ortho views of the ship from the side and top:

Thank you, @Max_Lego! I can only hope one day I will have the space for only IRL builds ... one day! I also have to say, very impressive Bermuda sloop--I especially like the shaping you achieved on the port and starboard quarters!

Thanks, @Mandalorianknight! I hear you about digital builds being tricky. The trickiest thing about this being a digital build was the cockpit geometry--that would have been much easier to do in real life!

76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus Alt-Build (Small category) A Rock Raiders-inspired mech made from a baby dinosaur set ... maybe it belongs to another faction of Rock Raiders that found themselves on a sandy planet?

An alt-build of 76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus for the Eurobricks Alt-Build Contest, small category. The contest rules say "Make like it's 1999, and design an alt-build for the back of the hypothetical box!" and when I hear LEGO + 1999, my first thought goes to ROCK RAIDERS. A quick Brickset browse of smallish sets with a good ppp ratio turned up 76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus. Although the set doesn't contain nearly enough gray and brown for a proper Rock Raiders homage, all the dark turquoise would be a perfect call-back for a Rock Raiders-inspired alt-build. Since the set did not contain wheels, the alt-build would of course have to be a mech. A digital build for now since I do not yet have the set, although I am ~90% certain this would work in real life (that last 10% due to some tricky geometry around the cockpit). For some reason, Studio is not rendering the dark tan Slope 45° 2 x 1 pieces on the "shoulders" correctly so I've also added some screenshots of Studio at the end to show what it's actually supposed to look like and how supposedly floating pieces connect. There were a few design elements that initially came to mind going into this build: (1) digitigrade-style legs; (2) using some of the vegetable pieces; (3) something "cool" with the cockpit design. The digitigrade-style legs because I think they give mechs a more industrial-looking design, like the ED-209 from Robocop (1989) or the mecha in the Metal Gear series, which was appropriate for something inspired by Rock Raiders. I was pleased with how sturdy and industrial the legs ended up looking, and was especially happy with how the shaping and color-blocking around the knees turned out. Using the vegetable pieces was a criteria partly as a design challenge for myself, partly for the contest's creativity criteria, but mostly because the first thing I did after loading up Studio was to put the carrot, pumpkin, and green piece together and think, "laser cannon." Of course being Rock Raiders-inspired we'll say "plasma drill" (with the lime green and orange pieces a call-back to Raider Raiders' translucent green and translucent orange lasers). The lighting in the rendering is a little dark but I especially like that strip of green peeking out the bottom of the arm/barrel, as if they were the energy conduits that power the plasma drill glowing from behind panels. As far as "something cool" with the cockpit, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the 1 x 5 plates to achieve a cockpit that was wider at the rear and narrower at the front. The use of round pieces and tile plates would provide the proper tolerances to make the geometry work. The curved inverted 4 x 1 slope pieces also helped to create a mandible looking front to the cockpit with dual laser cannons--I mean, sensors--in between. The use of the medium nougat-colored pieces were also intended to be a callback to the brown canopies in Rock Raiders sets. The remaining pieces ended up contributing to some design elements I became quite pleased with. The pieces with the triangular anti-studs ended up looking like propulsion thrust/exhaust vents, especially with some additional shaping with cheese slopes. Red round 1 x 1 plates tucked inside the cockpit peek out from openings at the rear look like recessed lights. And with the remaining parts selection was able to make that dark turquoise module on the left side that could be some sort of shield generator or sensor suite (or to be completely honest with my intentions, surface-to-air missiles)--especially since the front side, because of the 4 x 4 plate and 2 x 2 turntable piece, required me to figure out how to have both studs on top and SNOT construction on that face. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading through to the end! Hope you found the behind-the-scenes thinking about this MOC interesting. Final piece count ended up being 312 pieces out of 358 (the screencap says 265 because of groups), so approximately 87% parts usage of the original set. Happy to share the .io file for anybody interested. Thanks again and happy building!