Mos_Eisley

Before their secret location was discovered by the Empire, the Rebels always enjoyed Christmas on Hoth. Not only did they always have a white Christmas, but Luke and Leia could often be found singing carols near the giant Christmas Tree in the Echo Base Galleria... Thank you for the contest and Merry Christmas!

Thanks for the kind words everyone! TheBrickster, thanks for the Photoshop work! Of course I don't mind! I wasn't going to be able to get to it for a few days so I just thought I'd post as is - so thank you! I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Unfortunately, my pictures with all the extra Halloween touches like skeletons and pumpkins didn't turn out! Somebody asked about the base, I'm not sure if you meant the whole base or the base of the house. Batbrick, the brown flower stems only appeared in one set - 10123 (I think that's the number) Cloud City Star Wars set. They must have ended up in a European pick-a-brick too because I remember a few years ago when someone had several hundred for pretty cheap. Unfortunately before I got a chance to buy some, someone had purchased them all! Now they are quite expensive. I had the idea about the trees for a while and just needed a suitable creation to use them with. I have a lot of the tan arms to use for trees in the fall. I'd really like a bunch of white ones for wintery trees but they are hard to find in quantity.

On the tails of the Halloween Set inspired by 10199 Winter Toy Shop, I thought I'd post the haunted house that inspired my little set! I actually built this last Halloween, but I wasn't a member here and I never posted about it anywhere else so I guess it's kind of new. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any interior details. I eventually added minifigs and accessories, but these are just the pictures from when I completed the main building. Happy Halloween!

I think that set 10199 Winter Toy Shop is a great set. Hopefully, we'll see a new set like this every Christmas. I'd also like to see sets like 10199 done for other Holidays as well. To that end, I have built a little something that I think would make for a great Halloween set using a similar size and design as the Winter Toy Shop: Thanks for looking and Happy Halloween! Jason

Wow, thanks for the votes everyone and congrats to Pedro and Oky Wan! No worries about the keychain, Oky Wan. I didn't expect to get anything, so the keychain works for me. I'm pretty new here so I don't even know what the Eurobrick Stormtrooper is so I don't know what I'm missing out on! It does sound cool though, so I better try to win one in the future! Thanks again!

I did some searching and didn't see a similar thread but my apologies if this exists somewhere. But the question is, what single production year's sets would you want to see revived if given the opportunity? For me, I'd have to go with the 2006 line-up. I think that 6209 Slave I, 6210 Jabba's Sail Barge and 6211 Imperial Star Destroyer are the 3 best sets ever released in a single production year. Not only did each of those include a lot of minifigs, but the ships themselves are great. It also included 6212 X-Wing Fighter, but it is still readily available. I think the 2005 line-up would be second for me because it had a lot of great minifigs and the Sandcrawler, but overall I don't think the vehicles/ships were that well designed. I guess for me the perfect time to buy some Star Wars sets would be the fall of 2005 as I could pick up all kinds of great stuff from the existing 2005 line-up and the early releases of the 2006 sets! My follow-up question is one I've been curious about for a while. What is your favorite Star Wars box design? Mine is the Original Trilogy Edition design. It's very simple and understated, but I think I like it because it reminds me of the Star Wars toy boxes from when I was a kid. A poll about this might be fun...

Having the ability to build the wrecked speeder into a functional one was my original plan, but given the piece constraints, I just wasn't able to do it satisfactorily. I was left with the options of having a speeder or having a wrecked one. I thought I'd go away from the "normal" battle pack and have a little scene more suited to Jawas. What I thought would be even better is if it included enough droid parts that you could mix and match them and create different droids. Again, the constraints of the contest wouldn't allow for this as they would have counted against my fig total and I wanted the focus to be on the Jawas. For me, I don't even care what the vehicle is in the battle packs. I buy them for the figs and the rest just gets added to my parts bins. Regarding the megaphones, I just wouldn't want them in a battle pack! The Jawas came with the space gun/torch piece in the Sandcrawler and the megaphone is probably slightly better than that. I think an ion blaster would be somewhere between the megaphone and the small guns but I'm not a customizer and didn't have a lot of room for extra parts so I figured I'd use something that people would probably like to have more of.

Superb box art! I can't say that I'd want a lot of these, but very well done nonetheless!

Meng, definitely one of the cleanest fig displays I've seen. I'd love to do something like that, but I hate to dust so I'd need to put it into some kind of sealed enclosure! Big Cam, the Jawas came from many Sandcrawlers and the Shadow Troopers started from a lot of clearanced TIE Crawlers and then expanded when they showed up in the Battle Packs. None came from the tent sale. The only other Star Wars figs I saw at the tent sale were TIE Pilots, but unfortunately I didn't see that bin until another guy had cleaned most of it out. I was able to get about 20 of them though. Huck, I would be more than happy to trade some of the helmetless figs. Unfortunately, I don't really have any of the Snowspeeder parts anymore. All of those parts were traded away and sold to help fund the purchase. Let me know how many you are interested in and what kind of stuff you have to trade.

Rocky, nice collection. I might have a lot of figs, but I don't have shelves of ships to display! Very nice. I also love the sealed stuff. That part about another minifig army fan doesn't sound good?! The story could probably be shorter but since you asked, I'll give more details. A few years ago Legoland California had a big tent sale shortly after part of the parks were sold to Merlin Entertainment or whatever the company is called. In the past, these tent sales had stacks and stacks of sets that were discounted 50%+ (I remember going to one about 10 years ago and they had pallets filled of the Legend rerelease of the Metroliner for $75!). This sale wasn't really advertised, they just told annual passholders that when they came to get new passes for the changes being made at the park, there would be a tent sale going. What they ended up having was several rows of large buckets (about double the size of those 5 gallon storage containers you get at The Home Depot) filled with the small, sealed bags from various sets. Each bucket was filled with the same particular bag from a given set. So one bucket might be filled with 500 of the small baggies from a Knights Kingdom set that contained the breastplates, shields, weapons, etc. So you would use these large canvas bags to carry all the baggies you wanted, then you would open the baggies and dump their contents into clear Ziploc bags with a volume similar to a freezer bag. As long as the Ziploc bag would close, you were good to go. I didn't weigh any of my bags, but I would guess they would have been anywhere from 2-5 pounds each, all filled up for just $20 per bag! You didn't even have to take the complete contents of a baggie at first. People were picking out just the best stuff and having $20 bags filled with probably $150+ in parts. When the workers saw we were interested in a particular tub, they'd go in the back and come out with 2 or 3 more containers. I saw one Bricklink seller there who bought more than $10,000 worth of stuff. I think I bought about 30 bags that first day. The sale was supposed to last 2 weeks but I was going to Italy 2 days later so I decided I should visit again since it was a lot of fun and an amzing deal on brand new parts. I looked through the parts but everything seemed to be pretty much the same stuff I had already seen so I filled a couple bags up and was ready to go home. When I left, I walked around by the back area where all the additional containers were being stored, roped off in the parking lot. The containers were all open so I was checking each container as I walked by. Most of the stuff I had seen but I had to do a double take on one container when I saw a bunch of orange torsos. Looking closer, I discovered that this container was filled with bags from the Snowspeeder set #4500. I quickly went over to one of the employees and I asked if I could buy something from the back area and she said yes but I would have to buy the whole container which would be sold by weight. She took me over to the container and I discovered 2 more containers of parts from the set below it. She then offered to take me to the wherehouse where there were probably 200 more containers stacked up. I looked through those but didn't see anything else that interested me so she weighed my 3 containers and it came to around $350 per container (I don't recall what the weight was or how much I was being charged per pound but it was far less than their per quarter pound price in the park for parts). I had no idea exactly what I had in my purchase until I got around to sorting it a few months later (it took me about 3 months to sort out all the stuff I got those 2 visits). I ended up with about 190 complete Hoth Rebel 2s, about 190 complete Luke Pilots and about 190 complete Dacks. It also included about 150 of each of those figs without their helmets or other gear. Of course, it also had most of the parts for nearly 350 Snowspeeders. Unfortunately, it wasn't all the parts and it didn't include the windscreens so I wasn't able to build a Snowspeeder army! So that's how those armies came to be. Sorry for the length, but I think it was a fun story!

While technically weapons, they are ion blasters, so they are mostly used on droids and electrical systems. Ion Blaster

Mutley, I remember seeing some of your pictures before but I didn't really know anyone's names or anything. You have some nice work in your Brickshelf folders. The Hoth Base is looking good. When do you plan on finishing it? I know a lot of people think it's sacrilegious to leave sets MISB, but I always like to see sealed sets, especially retired ones, all piled up!

I like the Jawa minifig and I thought it would be cool to build up an army of something I didn't think too many other people would have in large amounts. They really didn't cost me much, if anything, as I bought a lot of Sandcrawlers on sale and sold off the other minifigures, complete Sandcrawlers and sometimes just the Sandcrawler parts. Regarding the Hoth Rebels and Rebel Pilots, I got very lucky and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was able to pick up nearly all the sealed parts baggies from almost 350 of set #4500 Snowspeeder a few years ago for a pretty reasonable price, I would say. I actually have about 130 more of each of those figs but without their helmets (and backpacks and goggles for the Hoth Rebels). I'm currently trying to finish out my collection. I think I only need about 15 more figs to be complete to date.

I've been lurking on the site for a few months and always enjoyed checking out everyone's armies. The Battle Pack contest finally got me to join the site so I figured I'd share some of my armies as well! My goal is to create some large scenes, displays, etc. when I have more space to build so for now these are just my less common fig armies simply lined up: Hoth Rebel 2s: Luke and Dack Pilots: Shadow Troopers: Jawas:

Thanks for the comments and suggestions! I know this one doesn't have a vehicle like traditional battle packs, but since their vehicle is a bit large for a battle pack, I thought the Jawas should be picking up some spare parts. I would also say that none of the actual Battle Packs really create a battle on their own, that's what the other faction's Battle Pack is for. Jawas aren't looking for a fight, but if you try to swoop in on their finds they'll want to battle. I definitely agree with the suggestion for my extra Battle Pack to include a Skiff Guard. If it was actually being produced or entered into the contest, I would do that for sure!

Jawas were among my favorite of the Kenner action figures when I was a kid. I think the LEGO versions are just as good and I think it would be great if people could get them in something cheaper than a now retired $140 set. Since Jawas are mainly scavengers, this seemed like the perfect scene for them. I wanted to create a larger speeder wreck, but it's tough within the confines of a Battle Pack! Speeder Salvage Battle Pack Item #: 9568 Ages: 6-12 Parts: 67 Scavenge the Dune Sea with a Jawa tribe! You never know what you'll find while exploring the deserts and wastelands of Tatooine! Remains from wrecked speeders include plenty of scrap parts for Jawas to take back to their sandcrawler transports! Sometimes you'll even find complete droids! With a little work, these are sure to sell quite well to the local moisture farmers! - Includes 3 Jawas with ion blasters and the all-new Salvaged RA-7 Droid! - Build your army and add #9569 Jabba's Guards Battle Pack for even more Tatooine fun! Thanks for the fun contest and I look forward to seeing some great entries!