LEGO Star Wars 75172 Y-wing Starfighter from Rogue One [Review]

With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story available for purchase beginning today, we’re circling back to some of the 2017 LEGO Star Wars sets we haven’t reviewed yet, starting with 75172 Y-wing Starfighter. This is the fifth minifig-scale Y-wing that LEGO has released since 1999 and the largest at 691 pieces.

75162 Y-wing

75172 Y-wing Starfighter depicts a Blue Squadron Y-wing featured during the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, with five minifigures. The set retails for $59.99.

75162 Y-wing

The build

The Y-wing, its accessories, and the minifigs come in 5 numbered bags, with a 100-page booklet spanning 131 steps, and a large sticker sheet with eight stickers.

75162 Y-wing

The first bag includes pieces for the weapon carrier along with Moroff the mercenary and Admiral Raddus. The carrier has a crane and carries extra ammo for both the spring-loaded darts and the torpedoes. While the vehicle a fun little accessory to the main vehicle, there’s not much that’s interesting in the build of the weapon carrier, so let’s move on.

75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing

The second bag includes the parts for the central core of the Y-wing, along with the Y-wing pilot and astromech droid. Like most LEGO vehicles of any size, the core includes Technic beams for sturdiness. A vehicle chassis is nicely used as the base for the astromech slot. The rear of the body has a large opening underneath, with an intriguing Technic mechanism attached to a crank, the purpose of which will be revealed in due time (or on the box cover, as the case may be). The back of the body has some excellent SNOT detailing and even a bit of half-stud offset.

75162 Y-wing

Bag 3 builds most of the Y-wing’s cockpit, up to the canopy. Hinge plates connect the side panels to the underlying hull, held firmly in place by one of the most unique connections I’ve ever encountered in an official LEGO set — a pair of LEGO skeleton arms lock the side panels to 1×1 bricks with bar attachments. It’s almost a shame that a bunch of wedge plates cover up this innovative build solution.

75162 Y-wing

The fourth bag completes the cockpit and adds pylons, landing gear, and greebles to the starfighter’s core from bag 1. Replicating the look of exposed conduits and wiring, bars attach to all the clips sticking out every which way from the vehicle’s body, similar to the detailing introduced on the UCS Y-wing from 2004 (and included on most subsequent versions). The cockpit is built from some lovely sand blue, together with trans-gray. The canopy is fully printed.

75162 Y-wing

The fifth and final bag includes the pieces for the ion jet engine nacelles, as well as a stormtrooper minifigure. The left and right nacelles are identical, and each one includes four identical support pylons, for a total of eight — it’s the only part of the build that begins to feel slightly repetitive, but the realistic look of the finished model is worth the repetition.

75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing

75162 Y-wingLarge gray stickers add technical details to the curved panel pieces. (I’d be curious to see what LEGO designers could do with a fully brick-built solution for these sections.) The engines themselves include some fantastic details, including minifig ice skates attached as directional vanes. Unlike previous Y-wings, the exhaust vectrals are open, necessitating some pretty complex SNOT-work to attach them to the support pylons.
75162 Y-wing

The finished model

Despite its similarities to 9495 Gold Leader’s Y-wing, this new Y-wing represents a substantial improvement, from the larger forward laser cannons to the open thrust vectrals. The greebling is much more detailed, with realistic coloring that replaces more white with light gray.

75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing

The swiveling ion cannon on the top of the cockpit is arguably a nice play feature (and with a friction pin it doesn’t flop around when you swoosh the Y-wing around). But this Y-wing includes one of my favorite play features in a LEGO set of the last year or two. That mysterious Technic mechanism I mentioned from the first bag turns out to be a bomb chute that can accommodate two proton bombs. By turning the crank on the rear of the fuselage, the bombs fall through the opening on the underside of the starfighter.

75162 Y-wing

This is an excellent, sturdy starfighter worthy of not just Rogue One but A New Hope and the Classic Trilogy overall.

The minifigs

75162 Y-wing

Nearly every previous LEGO Y-wing has included Dutch Vander as the pilot, along with an assortment of other characters. Even though Dutch does lead Gold Squadron against the shield gate during the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, it’s great to get a Y-wing pilot who isn’t Dutch. The Blue Squadron pilot wears a dark blue flight suit, with a dual-sided head showing alternating excited and terrified expressions.

75162 Y-wing

Admiral Raddus leads the Rebel fleet into battle aboard his Mon Calamari starcruiser the Profundity. Raddus apparently hails from the colder northern reaches of Mon Cala, as shown by his darker pigmentation. He has a dark gray Mon Calamari head (the same mold as Admiral Ackbar and his officers in previous LEGO sets) with multi-colored printing, including mottling on his neck.

75162 Y-wing

Moroff is a member of Saw Gerrera’s band and appears during the street battle on Jedha — he does not participate in the Battle of Scarif. Nevertheless, this is a great minifig with detailed leg printing, a unique head/torso piece, and a cool brick-built backpack to go with his heavy minigun-style rotary blaster cannon.

75162 Y-wing

R3-S1 isĀ an astromech with female programming, and droid pool on Yavin IV. She has a clear dome, which has unique printing in her LEGO incarnation, complimented by a dark silver body.

75162 Y-wing
75162 Y-wing

The stormtrooper is a stormtrooper. You’ve seen stormtroopers before. The inclusion of the stormtrooper frankly feels a bit like filler…

75162 Y-wing

Conclusions & recommendation

This is a stellar Y-wing — easily the best redesigned version released since the rather awful original packaged with Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced in 1999, and it might even rise to my favorite LEGO Star Wars set from Rogue One so far.

With excellent details, a really fun bomb bay play feature, solid minifigure selection (excluding the stormtrooper), and nearly 700 pieces for only $60, I can’t recommend this set highly enough.

75162 Y-wing


Read the rest of our reviews of LEGO Star Wars sets from Rogue One here on The Brothers Brick.

5 comments on “LEGO Star Wars 75172 Y-wing Starfighter from Rogue One [Review]

  1. Ronald

    Turn the knob the other way and the bomb mechanism holds 4 bombs ;-)
    I agree that this is the best Y-wing yet but it’s a shame that a large part of the engines still relies on stickers. I would have happily done without the admiral and Moroff for a slightly lower price, and I would have liked to trade in the stormtrooper for ground crew to operate the crane.

  2. David Hensley

    I will never understand Lego’s trend of including random minifigs with every set. It seems like every set must have at least three exclusive figs, even if they arent relevant to the set at all.

    And why 5 figures for a ship that seats 1?

  3. morgan19

    ^ Because–whether you/I/we like it or not–exclusive or rare figures sell sets and potentially turn a “eh, maybe” into a “must buy!” for a lot of consumers.

  4. Paul Mison

    The Y-Wing from 2007, 7658, had brick-built engine nacelles, but it used the old style of macaroni bricks to do eighth-circle offsets, and the new style can’t replicate that technique. I still prefer it to stickers, though, and will probably mix the build (perhaps shifted more into the grey) to this Y-Wing once I inevitably succumb to its temptations.

  5. Miro Dudas

    I picked this set up in a heartbeat. Mainly because I could use another Y-wing and for the new astromech droid. The other figures are nice to boot as well, and one can’t have too many stormtroopers. Let’s hope this Rogue One stormtrooper is better at aiming. Those OT stormtroopers can’t hit a thing.

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