One of the most shocking scenes in Star Wars: The Last Jedi occurs on Supreme Leader Snoke’s enormous flagship the Supremacy, when Kylo Ren turns on Snoke and he and Rey join forces to battle the Supreme Leader’s Praetorian Guards. 75216 Snoke’s Throne Room captures this scene as a playset. The set includes 492 pieces with 5 minifigures and retails for $69.99.
Read our hands-on review of 75216 Snoke’s Throne Room from The Last Jedi
Despite — or perhaps because of — the release of two different T-70 X-wings produced in support of The Force Awakens in late 2015 and mid-2016, it’s been over six years since LEGO has released a version of the iconic T-65 starfighter featured in the Classic Trilogy. With the release of 75218 X-wing Starfighter on August 1st, the most recognizable Rebel fighter in the Star Wars universe becomes available to a new generation of LEGO builders. The latest X-wing includes 731 pieces and four minifigs and will retail for $79.99 in the US (CDN 99.99 | GBP 89.99).
How does this latest LEGO X-wing stack up against the previous X-wings released over the years?
Read our hands-on review of 75218 X-wing Starfighter
Don’t be misled by first impressions. This Rebel Alliance Space Station by Corry Lankford is an absolutely enormous LEGO creation — nearly two metres tall!
Corry has grabbed the “grubby realism” aesthetic of the Star Wars universe with both hands and stuffed his space station full of greebles and details, creating a genuine sense of a lived-in future. This shot of one of the decks showcases some of the texturing that’s gone into the model, whilst offering a glimpse of the detailed interior compartments…
Click to see more of this amazing Star Wars creation, including the accompanying spacecraft
Fans will be pleased to know that LEGO has released instructions for all 3 of the San Diego Comic-Con 2018 exclusive sets. Many of the sets in previous exclusives have had unique printed pieces or parts that make them hard for fans to build without paying the hefty secondary-market price. This year LEGO has taken the additional effort to show that they’re listening. While you still won’t get the exclusive packaging with comic book-style box, the rest of the parts should be available in other sets, or maybe already in your collection, and that’s a fair compromise.
Click on the images below to download the PDF instructions.
The single most recognized feature of the BTL-A4 starfighter, a.k.a. the Rebel Alliance Y-Wing, is the long tube-shaped engines or nacelles that give the starfighter its nickname. But an equally distinct design detail would have to be the greebling, or random non-specific technical looking details, that fill the rest of the ship behind the wedge-shaped cockpit. This microscale model by Tim Goddard has absolutely nailed both of these details in a very challenging scale for a model this complex.
The recent introduction of a number of tiles with rounded edges like the 1×1 quarter tile, the 1×1 incisor tile, as well as the 2×2 curved and angled tiles, provide a lot of detail both on the ship’s fuselage, and in the stand, which contains a slice of the Death Star surface. Another MVP with this model is the 1×2 silver ingot. The signature elements all come together perfectly.
Tim’s Y-wing joins his growing wing of Rebel starfighters at this scale, including a U-wing from Rogue One and classic X-wing.
You can tell that Nathaniel is a fan of Star Wars just by looking at the way he has lovingly upgraded the recent Boba Fett buildable figure set. Everyone’s favourite Mandalorian looks noticeably filled-out with new anatomical details added in the form of cleverly integrated brick built thighs. A number of other neat touches to his armour provide detail and a samurai twist. I suspect Nathaniel knows his Star Wars lore, specifically George Lucas’s debt to Akira Kurosawa’s epic The Seven Samurai, referencing the connection in the theming of his creation. I have to agree, that the bounty hunter reimagined as samurai warrior, banners flying, Katana in hand, striding across a flower-laden Shogun era meadow, looks amazing.
Builder Nooroyd demonstrates an exquisite cinematic approach in their take on Han Solo’s meeting with Lady Proxima from Disney’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. The creation’s photography captures the film’s beautiful blue-tinted realization of the planet Corellia, so well in fact, that on first inspection you might be fooled into thinking it a piece of lost concept art. However, look closer and you begin to see fantastic LEGO details like the fanned brick built entrance to the tunnel to the left of the picture, or the cleverly selected brick separator and Technic steering rack elements on the back wall.
Sometimes, the scale of official LEGO Star Wars sets presents a challenge for builders who want to create elaborate scenes to incorporate them into. Microfighters can help in this situation unless you are not a fan of the cute and chunky vehicles in proportion to their minifig pilots. One solution is to do what Brick Ninja did, and re-design the official sets to better match mini-fig scale.
This custom version of Han Solo’s stolen M-86 speeder may have fewer play features and a bit less detail, but it matches the dimensions of the movie vehicle perfectly, and still fits Han and Q’ira side by side.
See Moloch’s landspeeder and compare these to the official LEGO sets
Meet R2-B2, Artoo’s long-lost cousin that didn’t get to play a scene in the Star Wars movie franchise, rebuilt by Luc Byard. It was said in recently recovered interviews that “Betoo” was simply too overwhelming and would overshadow Threepio as his droid buddy. We think George Lucas made a good call on this one, but wish he had a cameo, perhaps as an Easter Egg buried in the background. R2-B2 has never been seen again since then. Some say he’s just been overly depressed from Artoo’s success over the years and went into hiding.
Besides just being a color accurate, it’s nice to see how Luc used all the right elements, designs, and curves to reflect the familiar parts of Artoo’s signature look. I’m still a little concerned about boarding a 3 wheeler bus, so I’m definitely going to question the issue of stability.
Nowadays, we’re slowly approaching the point at which, when spotting a new BrickHeadz set on a store shelf, you might wonder, “I thought they’d already released this BrickHeadz character!” And this is no joke — with almost 60 figures released so far one can easily lose track of characters turned into funny chubby heroes. Now, you either get each and every one of them to keep your collection complete or spend more time choosing some of the very best sets. LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz 41619 Darth Vader and 41620 Stormtrooper totally deserve a closer look. They are not just a couple of iconic movie characters, but also a very solid addition to any BrichHeadz collection.
Click here to read our review of the sets!
This Friends-themed Star Wars diorama by Tyler Sky is simply delightful! I can’t imagine these mini-dolls preparing for a battle, but it’s pretty much a winner in my books anyway. It’s got a great theme, and the Friends sparkle isn’t overwhelming–just enough of a touch of the familiar colour palette to give it the feeling of a semi-serious scene from Heart Lake City. The mini-dolls sporting Rebel helmets are a perfect fit as the brave pilots. A closer look shows the typical slot where the Astromechs are seated is now co-piloted by favourite furries, with a transparent dome for protection.
Theme aside, the construction of the Friendly Y-Wing is also quite well thought out. Clever uses of parts include a basketball net for the ion jet turbine exhausts and tread links to form the vectral rings at the very end of the engine pods.
Now that the film is out, LEGO is delving deeper into the plot of Solo: A Star Wars Story, revealing three new sets on Amazon UK. All three are part of a key action scene in the movie where smugglers attempt to pull off an epic heist, but for those who haven’t yet seen the film, they’re mostly spoiler-free, as they don’t reveal much more than the trailers did.
See the new Solo movie LEGO sets