Bobsy

It's a nice little build, but it's a tad on the small side. Granted, I didn't ever play the game, but a Googlin' for images shows it to be a bit more of a hulking beast of a machine. Perhaps put it on steroids, pour a few more bricks on it. Alternatively, take off that turret at the back and you've got a swish, sporty civilian landspeader.

No evidence or source or tip or anything. People are bringing it up more and more because - let's be honest - we're due.

Those were the days when men were real men, women were real women, and no-one needed a goddamn robot to help them fly their spaceships.

I recieved the pieces from Bricklink today... except there's a whole load missing so I had to put on a grumpy face. Sadly, the tailfins can't be built at the moment, so I'm afraid photos will have to wait.

Because they're presented as a mysterious, external threat, like the majority of hostile aliens in Star Trek. Star Wars has most of its antagonists coming from within its own borders.

Yeah, this is precisely what I did. And he's already got back to me to say he'll send the missing pieces. I felt really bad because he's such a nice fella and the whole correspondence has been really top notch.

Chances of a Yuuzhan Vong set being made are very, very slim. The book series has long ended, and it was controversial to say the least when it was done. They were by several different authors, all with their own ideas and not all of them respectful to one another... or the franchise as a whole. The decision to kill off Chewbacca caused a storm in itself, and the Vong were often seen as more Star Trek than Star Wars. So yeah. Not super-popular, and now long-passed.

Okay, I just had an order arrive from a Bricklink seller in germany (I'm in the UK) and there were a few errors. Some pieces were not included at all, some were included but in the wrong colour, and some were the wrong brick altogether. Is it reasonable to expect the seller to send me the missing pieces and replacements for the incorrect ones free of charge? Can I get a refund? Or is the only thing I can do leave lousy feedback?

You are? Based on what? Lego already have a four-armed torso n Lord Gamardon. Why would they spend thousands of dollars moulding a new one when one already exists? Plus, they will already be shelling out for creating the new head mould. I's very unlikely the torso will be new.

It's a matter of Lego scale. Any larger and the minifigs would just get lost in an oversized-looking vehicle. Plus, it's important to keep the size down when compared to ships. It helps to clearly show the difference between the two different types of vehicle. I'll have a look into it. We'll see. Screw Malgus. He's an ascended piece of concept art for the idea of a Sith Warrior. I think I had him assembled for about two days before swapping his head out for Savage Opress's to make my own Sith Warrior for the game. Happily, that armour goes with practically anything.

It's not just about price-per-part. It's about a toy costing £80. That's an expensive toy by anyone's standards. While I love it to bits, I know that if I wasn't an avid TOR player, I would have bought the TIE Fighter at £35 instead.

Are you an Old Republic player? If so, you NEED to get the Fury, and probably also the Republic Striker. If not, save your money. They are ridiculo-spensive, especially the former. I gather the current TIE Fighter set is more or less definitive, and has been almost uniformly marked down to £35 in Britain, so that's good. Another good buy is the Desert Skiff, which surprised me in all the right ways. It's bigger than it looks, has some fantastic minifigs, and very swooshable. And if money's not an object, the UCS Imperial Shuttle has its fans. I'm not one, as money really is an object for me. £250? Jog on.

So to sum up. We don't know what Legends of Chima is. We're not sure if the reported name isn't a typo. We don't know if it'll be an action or historical line or both. We don't know when it'll come out. We don't know what it'll be based on. Is speculation really worthwhile at this point? We might as well say that it's about a small dog getting into mischief. A dog called Chima. We've got basically nothing to go on at this point. Couldn't we just... take it easy for a while?

The Old Republic - Manta Speeder by bobsy26, on Flickr This is a Manta, a common form of airspeeder in The Old Republic. They're used by both the Republic and the Sith Empire as taxis (in New York Yellow and London Black, respectively) but can be seen scattered around the galaxy in private hands. Swish and sporty, they're a decent looking speeder, but at present players can't privately own these fancy fancy future-toys. But being so ubiquotous, I thought it a good idea to render in Lego. I think I did a pretty accurate job. You can see images of the original here (in blue) and here (red). I chose dark red as the primary colours simply because I knew the cockpit piece has definately been produced in this colour. I could possibly have done black to match the Imperial taxis instead, but models done all in black just look dull. As with pretty much everything I do in LDD it took something like 10 tries to get right. The curved fuselage was a real challenge, but the breakthough came in turning the pieces on the left and right of the bonnet 90 degrees to the way they are now. It managed to kick things off, and the rest of the speeder came together eventually. The other big difficulty came with the cockpit. I knew it had to hold two passengers, but didn't want it more than 6 studs wide. I tried lots of different techniques, but kept coming back to the single-piece seat from the Pharoah's Quest vehicles. It's not entirely ideal, as it tries to taper to 4-wide too early, but I found that putting plates in the same colour underneath it helped give the illusion that it didn't taper at all.

Hm. Something about the design says it's not spaceworthy. But it looks great, and would make a great speeder on land or underwater. Either way, send it through LDD2PovRay, it's definately worth a proper render. Just be prepared for a long wait with the curved canopies.

Well they won't be clones. It's long before the clone wars. Also, where did you see this? What's your source?

Battle packs tend to avoid Jedi, using generic characters instead. There is a chance they'll be looking to re-use the Malgus armour, since it's actually really generic (EVERY Sith Warrior's worn that mask at some point) but I think more likely it'll be 2 Republic troopers against 2 Sith troopers. I'm personally holding out hope for HK droids, but it is only that - hope. Of course, what would be REALLY great would be four companion characters. Say, Vette, Talos, Qyzen and Doc maybe.

Officially, Clone Wars. But it remained in use all the way through the OT era, though you might need to make some small alterations, as the CW version has slightly different wings. As for the other sets... Kamino with Astromech Droid and Jedi Starfighter - Pass. Don't need or want another Astro droid. Or a Jedi fighter for that matter. Coruscant with Clone Pilot and Republic Assault Striker - What exactly is a Republic Assault Striker? The Old Republic Fighter? An ARC-170? The latter might be worth a look at least. Asteroid with TIE Bomber and TIE Pilot - Yaaaay. A plastic potato to put on your shelf. The Old Republic Battle Pack - Yes, yes, YES. Fingers crossed it will have HK droids in there somewhere, but either way, this is a guaranteed purchase for me. Maybe more than once. We'll see. Clone Troopers vs Droidekas Battle Pack - I suppose that - done right - this will be a decent army builder. But I wouldn't be so sure, based on the wild and wacky clone characters that have become the norm recently. Personally I don't care about this set. But we'll see. A-Wing including Admiral Ackbar, Han Solo and an A-Wing Pilot - Surprised to see Han Solo included here. I guess he may have looked at an A-Wing once? AT-RT including Yoda, Clone Trooper and Assassin Droid - Uh-oh. Alarm bells are ringing to see three figs in what should be a small, affordable set. I have a feeling there's a bit of the Geonosian Cannon going on here, where the piece count crept up so high they had to include more figs to make the set seem worth the price. Z-95 Headhunter including three Clone Troopers - As I mentioned in some thread or other, the Z-95 is the joke of the fighter squadron. Weaker in every way to an X-Wing, despite looking a bit like one. I may just snap one up, provided the set actually looks good. Gotta love them underdogs. The Rancor Pit (as revealed at Comic Con) - Pass. It's still just a box with four walls missing.

I don't remember season 4. It's still not been shown in the UK. Going to make it that bit harder to sell merchandise based off it, too.

Suggestion: should Eurobricks have an index of Cuusoo projects started by its members? Seems a sort of thing that should exist.

It requires a new droid head mould, but HK-47 and HK-51 would be great. The two could make up one half of an Old Republic battle pack. With more Sith or Republic troopers making the other half.

Have we considered that this may be the name of the subtheme for the final Ninjago wave? Or that it may be pure fantasy with only a tenuous name connection to Chima myth, much like Bionicle did with Maori myth? Lego do have form with that sort of sneakiness.

Z-95s have been a staple of the EU since the early 90s, when it was originally designed for the X-Wing video game. In fact, it might have been referenced in literature prior to that, but I'm pretty sure its shape comes from the game. It's essentially the poor man's X-Wing, being similar in shape, speed and performance, but weaker in every way. Paper-thin shields, half the firepower, no astromech, armour that crumples if you so much as give it an angry look. It was used in every game in the X-Wing series, usually by pirates or rebels when times were tough (or when they were pretending to be pirates). As for the model, I guess it technically matches a Z-95 description but looks a little too much like an X-Wing to me. And in doing so, you've pretty much hit the problem on the head with regards to TLG releasing an official Z-95 set, in that it as a ship it simply looks too similar to their flagship starfighter, which they'll want to have on shelves at the same time.

Here's a sobering thought to tide you over. Yoda's hut. With flick-fires.

I wouldn't hold your breath for any Geonosian sets in the near future. We've relatively recently had the Geonosian Fighter, Geonosian Cannon and Battle for Geonosis, all of which give good coverage of the Geonosis episodes in TCW. While AOTC sets are a very real possibility, they'll probably want to avoid repeating Geonosis so soon. (probably)