Jerac

It looks very much like Rebel Builder's one: Were you basing your one off this?

It is not UCS scale yet I'd say. But an UCS-scale X-Wing, hmmm....

Well, at ~1.3k pieces it already is in UCS range ^^ It has more parts than (all of these are UCS): TIE Interceptor, TIE Advanced, original X-Wing, the Aethersprite and the AT-ST. Right now the cost I see in EU is €130, and in US about $160. Remember the prices change all the time and this is using automatic shop finding. If you refine it a bit or can reuse something from your collection, the cost dramatically drops. Thanks @Hollander! Actually the wings were easier than in any other TIEs because I was not bound by exact dimensions. So finally I could use some angled piece and then match the length of the framing without any problem. The biggest challenge so far were the... basic T/F's panels! And they still are... I have had an idea how to cover the holes there are there but this idea caused another problems elsewhere, eh.

I started my MOC year 2018 by making the cheapest TIE craft in the Imperial fleet, and now I end this year by making the most expensive one. The TIE Defender only recently made it into canon, but back in 1994 when it debuted in Lucas Arts' TIE Fighter game, it was a beast. Faster than an A-Wing, tougher than a B-Wing and more manouverable than the Interceptor, the Defender does all a starfighter does, just better*. Now I have it in LEGO form... which was pretty interesting to get to. Because since there is no true canon representation of the ship except for Rebels... which I'll get to in short... I could give myself some leeway when it comes to accuracy and give it the coolest shape I could think of while still preserving core features. The Defender as seen in Rebels has slightly different shape: Much like... well, almost everything, Rebels took a nice design and changed it... for reasons unknown. Let's just say I am not a fan of this rear-heavy design, nor do I like the tall-neck ISDs or featureless toy-looking basic T/F line fighters. Not to mention if I went with this one it would tip forward because the center of mass is further to the front than the furthest flat piece of the wings. Instead I based my design having this one in mind: The only real alteration I did was making top guns a bit different to distinguish them - after all these are supposed to be ion cannons, and added visible missile launchers in a place which made at least some logical chance - on the panel centers. Anyway no matter which design you pick, the Defender is an odd one. The ball is just tacked on to a triple support base, panels are bent in wrong way and it is always going to look top heavy because, well, it is. Engines were contested point between me and BrickVault. We tried several solutions, but the final fight was between these two: I still believe the Defender, being THAT FAST should have large, prominent engines, but eventually we picked a less-in-your-face design as seen on top, while still making more sense than what Rebels did with theirs. Structurally this design perhaps the toughest one of all the ships to date, except maybe the Bomber. But it is hard to compare something to the Twin Flying Brick, This is the first TIE in my line which has an interior, thanks to Inthert for inspiration! It fits any kind of TIE pilot and altough you need to remove the quarter dome pieces to put him there, they are lightly attached on one stud so this is super easy. Tell me what you think! This build, as usual this year, is available through http://brickvault/toys as instructions, which you can get to support us! *When it comes to OP starfighters, the Defender is the top dog - with sole exception of the Missile Boat which is as ridiculous compared to the T/D as the T/D is to anything else. To put it shortly, Missile Boat is almost twice as fast, holds enemy ships in place with tractor beams and carries ten times the ordnance count of what B-Wing carries. And the MB is pretty small ship.

Thanks for feedback! As for the clips, unless it is specifically marked in the instructions, it does not matter, so you can use whatever one you wish. I'll have this in mind with next buids though. The sole exception is in few of the TIE models when I am using the narrow clips because they fit into headlight bricks' backs, which is useful technique in some places. I am pretty sure the bottom panelling was attached tight but it is possible it doesn't attach all the way down, hm. For sure however I see no stability issues with it. Does it fall off yours ship? The stand and clips thing... hmmm... right, I totally by a chance picked narrow clips for the neck and did not realize that. If I picked thicker ones I'd see this. The odd thing is that nobody reported this before. Thanks for mentioning. I'll add this to the "pending update" list!

Star Wars meets DooM in unique, creepy way. This is where his soul went, to fight never ending hordes of demons. It would be even better if all the little grey wheels were replaced by skulls...

Great looking ship! I like the new shape of panels, very fitting the new FO aesthetics, and the hole in rear part is super cool! I bet the hole is there so it doesn't tip to the rear? Clever! One question though: How did ship from pre-Yavin ear meet a ship from post-Yavin era? :D

Am I the only one who, after reading the title, hoped for a MOC whose ground-shattering epicness would eclipse anything known to afol and the motorized function would be superlaser? :D Jokes aside, this is a very interesting and well-working addon!

Sadly auto-buy is getting ruined by greedy sellers who have realized the BL auto-buy algorithm is favoring stores which have huge stock of parts in a bid to reduce total amount of shops to buy from, even if final price is WAY higher than it should be. These sellers often even do not have the parts in stock and order parts for their orders from other stores once they get one. For example one of my models costs over 300$ if you use auto-buy, but if you add few of the most expensive shops to blacklist, poof - with 2 stores instead of 1, you get 140$ total price... I think instructions should come with a shop blacklist to eliminate these high-stock-extreme-priecs ones.

I *really* recommend using "fading" steps in such builds. Might not be as nice as classic instructions, but is much easier to see. Otherwise you'd need to do what LEGO does: random colors inside of the build, which altough nasty looking, make navigating through it during construction much easier.

One of these? Is anybody living off making instructions? I can't be an official LEGO designer after I, uh, slightly messed up the interview and made myself some enemies there, ah the joys of being young and stupid :D

The hot-dogs are piping detail in the cockpit. You can ignore them, they do not contribute to the structure at all. Gears can be of any color, they are not visible from outside. 2x2 round tiles are visible from outside only in three places: on top behind the cockpit, in a similar location on the bottom and in the rear. The rear one can be substituted with whatever round 2x2 round piece you wish, it is a detail. The top and bottom won't break the ship if they are off colour, but at least the top one should match greebling. All others are inside the ship and can be any colour.

Since there is almost no canon source for its looks, one can adapt it pretty much whatever way he wants as long as some common points stay true to the descriptions. Look at this one for example: Isn't it absolutely beautiful? I will definitely try this one in LEGO one day!

No, but I was considering this. Seriously. For now I want to release one more model in 2018 to wrap it up nicely and it seems it is possible! Thanks everyone for support!

I think with the smaller 2x2 printed cone it would be perfect. This bomber looks bulky and heavy, and so should the model. Smaller windows contribute to this style. You can also print your own sticker on transparent foil sticker, you need a laser printer for this but the effect will be great, and unless you wish to make instructions for it, this is what I would do. The model itself is pretty much perfect, nothing to be added here.

I believe 90% of it is perfect and the rest is not. Thankfully, that "rest" area is only the nose cone, which looks bulky and heavy. I know this might be caused by the nose generally not sloping towards the front, but it still should be fixable, maybe by adding this piece in front of the 2x4 curve would help? (and obiviously making rest of the nose cone match this). Aside from this? Fantastic design. What not to like. The nicely sloping nose on multiple planes. Interesting wing colour pattern. Very well done engines which totally won't be shamelessly stolen for a design which totally is not upcoming one day. And you picked one of better looking z-95 variants!

Eeey! This one is even better! It is because it doesn't have all-white colour scheme and really looks interesting! Good usage of studs on the sides, I always believed studs are a nice details when not overused. Keep them coming! Maybe a bigger fleet with some similar-styled ships? If so, go for the red one, it is just more interesting.

And I missed that? Hm, in the parts list I supplied BV with the clips are reddish brown, as are 1x3 inverted slopes. Could you please check if you have these two pieces in reddish brown? We might have a deployment issues, thanks for catching it! Obviously I am happy that you are happy with the design, too!

It looks pretty good! I like how it is similar to the classic blockade runner, yet different enough to be a separate design on its own. Two minimal changes I would recommend is removing the 1-wide cones at the sides of front module, they look out of place, and a bit further down the ship, on the sides, there are 1x2 jumper plates with 1x1 round plates on top - which are recessed a bit. This could look better if they were not recessed, or were just 1x2 plates with a pair of 1x1 rounds, to make the "flow" of the ship's body a bit smoother.

Thanks! Because BV guys insisted on the rebels' ones and I insisted on making them true to the show, not just a recolor of rz-1. It was much bigger change than I anticipated and took a while, even though I took a shortcut and just rendered few of them instead of actually building.

Hello everybody! I am a fan of many Star Wars spaceship designs, and while most of them I consider to be "among my favourite", the classic movie A-Wing permanently occupies the top of the list. This caused me to build this little ship many times in my life, basically since I was able to assemble two bricks together. This build I am showing today is currently the end of the line for plenty of iterations, most importantly the one from 2008 some people here know: I still like how it looks, even after all these years, but this build had plenty of issues. First, it was fragile: even on the photo you can see it has stickers wrapped around its wedge. They were needed, as the interior consisted of a mess of flex tubing, minifig arms and similar pieces arranged in a way to hold the cones in exactly proper angle. Which, actually, did not work, so I taped the sides to make "missile launchers". The ship also uses some rare pieces, for example the 30x20 wheels coming from one single set released in 1978 or something, there are no landing gear, I didn't like the front wedge notch being in different angle, and on top of that, I messed up with proportions in some areas. 10 years later, working with BrickVault on instructions, topic of renewing the A-Wing was sure to return, and it did. I hoped it would be a simple renewal of an old concept, but it ended up being totally redone inside, so it still looks like 2008 one, but this time it can be safely picked up. It also has proper missile launchers, even if a bit too far back compared to the original, and foldable landing gear I am really happy with, as it folds seamlessly. Most of the issues with proportions and overall "cleanliness" were also fixed. Surely this is not an ultimate A-Wing but I worked pretty hard to make it as close as possible to such one. Having the movie ship done was not the end of the story, though, as BrickVault guys really wanted the Rebels' show ships, too. Originally they were supposed to be recolors and not much more, but it looked wrong. Rebels' designs are notorious for making odd alterations to classic designs, and a recolor of base RZ-1 just did not look good enough. So there we go, I though, let's make these few little adjustments to make the Rebels' ship. Few little adjustments are: - move the engines a plate or two toward the bottom, because they are not centered horizontally like they are in RZ-1 - remove the notch in front wedge and add that few details required in various colour variants - make the engines shorter and add the little notches they have around in front and back, while still having similar dimater to the original RZ-1 engines - make different "center thruster" housing - make rear body shorter - make stabilizers smaller overall and wrap up behind engines - change the fuselage assembly behind the cockpit - update the cannon design ...it ended up being half of the ship redone, eh, but I believe it was worth it! The ships are done in several variants: Instructions for this design are available at brickvault.toys, and a little summary and showcase of some features is available here: Thanks for watching and tell me what you think!

It is amazing how a topic with such a bland, boring topic has such a gem hidden inside. The techniques are simple, design is basic, but it all is just so coherent, also fitting SW aesthetics perfectly. Blocking light gray and dark gray sections together is pretty awesome, each of the modules being nice on its own, but still matching together. This definitely is a style which suits you. Perhaps try building something in real bricks based on this design? Also, it needs guns. What is it, Star Trek, to have its gun hidden?

Well, I guess, now I am obliged! I guess I'll make myself a christmas present!

Aaah I love this flying idiocy! :D Like, firing that huge gun TOTALLY wouldn't make the entire thing spin like a whirligig! I guess it would look a tiny little bit better if dbg pieces were swappped to lbg, but it is great anyway. You did DYE-wing too! Oh come on? How cool is that! As for idiocy... where are the engines on the Y-TIE hybrid?

Everything is right! Additinally, the gearbox will be attached to fuselage panels with the clips, and it will further limit tilting. Which may mean that in PriorMarcus's the gearbox may just have unclipped and is loose?