Tag Archives: Rebels

LEGO Star Wars 40755 Imperial Dropship vs Rebel Scout Speeder: the battle packs are back! [Review]

We’ve mentioned it a few times already this year, but 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of LEGO’s Star Wars line. Everything from Ultimate Collector Series sets to promotional items has been marking the occasion. The last hurrah in 2024 celebrates an important aspect of the Star Wars theme, and a mainstay since their introduction in 2007: battle packs! 40755 Imperial Dropship vs Rebel Scout Speeder combines two classic battle packs, and re-imagines them in a 383-piece set that will retail for US $39.99 | CAN $54.99 | UK £34.99. It even comes with an exclusive minifigure!

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Let’s see if this battle pack can recapture the old magic…

This little Star Wars astromech is bursting with personality

Everyone’s favorite little droid with a huge personality is back in brick form, built in LEGO by Ron McPhatty. Ron has managed to pack an impressive amount of detail into Chopper’s diminutive stature using solid building techniques. That yellow 1×1 tile on Chopper’s chest perfectly matches the original design, and the 2×2 triangular tiles match his patchwork metal plating. Ron also models a variety of Chopper’s exposed internal components with various LEGO pins, bars, and bushes.

MOD 75379 Chopper P4

Even better, Ron has built Chopper to be in-scale with the new LEGO R2D2 set and provided Chopper with some added accessories that model his middle wheel and head arms. I’d argue that hijinks are un-a-droid-able!

MOD 75379 Chopper P3

Ben’s been up to “something, something Star Wars”

The variety of amazing builds we feature here at The Brothers Brick certainly leaves me (Ben Dodds) inspired to go and try out some of the ideas we see. And whilst work has kept me busy these last few months, any free time I’ve had has been spent running away from screens and into the LEGO drawers (amid actual running!). In this small free time that I have had, I’ve found myself building Star Wars vignettes. They’re small, and the challenge is to get as much in the scene without it looking cramped. One such scene is well timed with the release of the Ahsoka series and revisiting the Rebels team. Here, with the Rebels figures I have, we find the Spectre team mid-heist in a face off against pursuit unknown.

With each build I try to give myself a challenge. And here, I wanted to see what I could build with curved Roller Coaster rails. For this, I looked to turn them into a stairwell, and this little scene grew from there, using the escalator pieces as the stairwell itself. Making the limited connections work was a challenge, but it adds a central focus to the build while also allowing me to furnish the build with a water feature. I also added a flourish of vegetation to detract from the inevitable grey that was unescapable here. It is LEGO Star Wars after all!

Dive further into the universe of Star Wars TV below!

LEGO Star Wars 40557 Hoth Rebels & 40558 Clone Troopers Minifigure Accessory Packs [Review]

LEGO Star Wars has been around for more than 20 years, and for the first time LEGO is producing Star Wars accessory packs. They’re effectively the same as the boxed Battle Pack sets, but packaged in the minifigure-shaped clamshells that are used on a variety of other themes. 40557 Hoth Rebels Minifigure Accessory Pack contains 64 pieces and includes three Rebel troops in Hoth outfits plus some defenses, and will retail for US $14.99 | CAN $19.99 | UK £12.99. 40558 Clone Troopers Minifigure Accessory Pack has 66 pieces (a foreboding number) and includes three Clone Troopers and a few bits of gear, and should retail for the same  US $14.99 | CAN $19.99 | UK £12.99. Both sets will be available starting Jan. 1.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with early copies of these sets for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

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Unloading on Scarif with the U-wing that could have been

Star Wars and LEGO have gone hand-in-hand for quite some time now. Uncountable LEGO User Groups are centered around the very concept of building models based on the Star Wars universe. Suffice it to say, there is a wealth of models inspired by the galaxy far, far away. As many ships as there are in George Lucas’ fever dream of a series, a whole can of worms opens up when you look into the concept designs for some of the most iconic vehicles. This ship, built by Jan Südmersen, was inspired by a concept design of the rebel U-wing fighter from Rogue One. Quite different from the movie design on a few fronts, the main difference is the lack of wing-like strike foils. For those that aren’t hip, the s-foils were apparently used more for increasing the shield profile of the ship and less so for aerodynamics in an atmosphere. I doubt this big boy needs much help from some wings, though, as it looks like it can take a few hits without a problem.

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Mum says it’s my turn to fly the X-wing!

It seems that Star Wars is experiencing a baby fever. We’ve had enough of surprise fathers, sisters, and *tries not to throw up* grandfathers, so I welcome the new and unexpected. Recently a certain cute green gremlin took pop-culture by storm, and replaced Minions as the default for Facebook mom memes. It’s 2021 and I still see the words “chiccy nuggies” and “choccy milk” in the same sentence. But whatever, babies are cute. Andreas Lenander has caught the bug and built a babyfied X-wing and some baby rebels.

Baby X-wing pilots on Yavin IV

All jokes aside, I really like this babyfied idea for being a new unique take on Star Wars. Just a few weeks ago I wrote about a small build by my friend Ross, where baby Greedo confronts baby Han over a bottle of blue milk. And Andreas’s build is really well done. The walls of the Yavin base offer plenty of variety in detail to keep it from becoming bland and boring. Andreas keeps the X-wing as accurate to the source material as he can, despite the small size. It’s a really difficult ship to get right, even in larger sizes. So big applause to Andreas, he won me over with this build, and not because of the babies.

Caught the baby fever? There are some more baby creations to see…
Or had enough of babies? Check out Andreas’s other builds that we’ve featured. No babies in those, I promise!

A fleet favorite in microscale

Star Wars starships can come in all scales and sizes especially when built out of LEGO. Ron McPhatty demonstrates this concept of size variation in his digital microscale LEGO build of the Ghost, the premier starship of the rebel fleet piloted by the fierce Hera Syndulla.

Untitled

The most interesting thing about this particular model is that the interior space is fleshed out. Most microscale models do not have interiors, while the Microfighters that LEGO offers just include a seat to place an out-of-scale minifigure in. Continue reading →

Ryder’s U-Wing from Star Wars Rebels built with LEGO

One of the things I enjoyed about the last season of Star Wars Rebels was the incorporation of the new canon material introduced in Star Wars: Rogue One, with mentions of Director Krennic, appearances by the Death Troopers, and Ryder’s U-Wing, constructed here in LEGO form. Inthert has done an excellent job depicting the beat up, minimalistic, utilitarian look Ryder’s U-Wing was known for.

Ryder's U-wing (1)

A top-down shot allows us to see the greebling on the interior of the front nacelles, giving the ship an exposed look similar to that of the Y-Wing. Close inspection reveals the neat usage of minifigure walkie-talkie elements and old vehicle exhaust pieces as hoses of some sort.

Ryder's U-wing (Top View)

LEGO Star Wars Rebels 75170 The Phantom II + TBB chats with Thrawn author Timothy Zahn [Review]

For long-time Star Wars fans, perhaps the most exciting thing to emerge from the current batch of LEGO Star Wars sets inspired by the Rebels animated TV series is the new Grand Admiral Thrawn minifigure, released as part of the 75170 The Phantom set, which depicts the modified Trade Federation shuttle that replaces the first Phantom part way through season 3.

75170 The Phantom

Grand Admiral Thrawn himself was created by sci-fi author Timothy Zahn in Heir to the Empire, the first book in Zahn’s epic Thrawn Trilogy. TBB spoke with Timothy Zahn at Emerald City Comicon recently, and got his first impressions of the Thrawn minifig, which we’ll share later in our review.

Read the full review after the jump!

Winter 2017 LEGO Star Wars sets finally available in the US [News]

As if to punish its largest market, LEGO held back the American release of the first wave of 2017 LEGO Star Wars sets in January, even though they were available nearly everywhere else in the world on January 1st. Fans of LEGO Star Wars in the United States can now pick up the latest sets, including great new sets from Rogue One and Rebels.

75172 Y-Wing Starfighter features a Blue Squadron Y-Wing Pilot, Admiral Raddus, the bounty hunter Moroff, an astromech droid, and a stormtrooper. The set includes 691 pieces and retails for $59.99. The set is already backordered from the LEGO Shop online, but is available now from Amazon.

LEGO Star Wars 75172 Y-Wing Starfighter set

75171 Battle on Scarif includes Jyn Erso disguised as an Imperial ground crew member, Cassian Andor, and two shore troopers. The set includes 419 pieces and retails for $49.99.

LEGO Star Wars 75171 Battle on Scarif set

See more new LEGO Star Wars sets available now