LEGO Star Wars advent calendars have some pretty neat microscale ships, but it’s hard to get many good details at such a small size. Tim Goddard has no such trouble with these four microscale fighters, packing these pint-sized ships with a ton of great details and ace part usage, like screwdrivers for cannons. The iconic Y-wing and A-wing are fantastic, but the angled noses of the X-Wing and E-Wing are simple but especially effective.
Check out this superb LEGO Y-wing built by FlyInSpace. It’s a dead ringer for one of the original studio props! Superb shaping, a ton of greebles, and… The same size as your smartphone?! Yes, this model is actually a lot smaller than it might look at first! Certain pieces do provide clues as to its scale, such as the pair of cabinet doors used as the cockpit roof. Quite how FlyInSpace has managed to pack so much greebley goodness into such a tiny package boggles the mind. A miniature marvel!
It turns out, the formula for successfully getting featured on The Brothers Brick is Star Wars. Oh, and LEGO. That part is crucial. The dubiously-named Simulterious takes pretty much the only two pages of TBB’s Book of Winning the Entire Internet and combines Star Wars and LEGO. And now everyone is as pleased as punch. It doesn’t hurt that this crowd-pleasing Rebel workhorse is outfitted with some nifty details and build techniques. Thanks to this builder’s amazing work, this article was really not much effort on my part. You just type up a couple of stream-of-conscious quips, then sit back and watch the success roll in. Thanks, Simulterious !
The great temple on Yavin-4 was a Rebel Alliance headquarters early in their fight against the Empire. It even served as the main staging base for the assault on the original Death Star. But, once that massive space station was destroyed, the Rebels were forced to evacuate Yavin-4 and establish bases elsewhere in the galaxy. So, what happens to a rebel base after a hasty retreat? Markus Aspacher spent a year constructing an answer in LEGO for us.
There are few other fictional space ships that are as easily identifiable as the BTL-B Y-wing, seen here during the Clone Wars. LEGO builder simon-wild showcases his new take on one of the most classic starfighters to be seen on the screen.
Covered in armor and loaded with freedom, the mighty Y-wing was a staple of the Republic Navy during the Clone Wars era. It was retired during the Republic’s transition into the Galactic Empire but regained its status as a formidable bomber for the Rebellion, eventually earning the title, “The starfighter that broke the Empire’s back.”
In his build, Simon elaborates on the 8037 Anakin’s Y-wing Starfighter set released way back in 2009. He smoothed out the fuselage and engines, improved the paint pattern and traded the yellow for red. He also beefed up the size of the bomber to minifigure-scale, nearly reaching the size of the 75181 UCS Y-wing released in 2018. I admire all of the extra armor plating seen in Simon’s model. It helps separate the Y-wing from looking like a fighter and more like a bomber. Perhaps we’ll see an armor-less version of Simon’s Y-wing fighting for the Rebellion in the future?
The Rebels in Episode IV of Star Wars were really a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters, and their equipment was largely hand-me-down dilapidated old tech. LEGO builder Abe Fortier is showing us a side that we don’t often see though, of the Rebels scrapping out a ship that’s no longer spaceworthy. Abe pulled the Y-wing design from Star Wars ship-master Jerac, but gave it a cool twist with disassembled sections and of course, a portion of the Massassi outpost on Yavin 4 that the Rebels turned into a base.
Back in 2017, Ted Andes built one of my favourite LEGO Star Wars-esqe ships that could have been a page taken from the galaxy far far away. This year he’s taken that inspiration and made it into a full-blown evolution of a Y-wing and it looks amazingly sleek and fit for a Rebel bombing run.
Utilising the canopy of the X-Wing and the shades of the popular yellow-themed Y-Wing from Star Wars, taking out bad guys never looked so good.
There are some builders out there whose names are synonymous with quality, often in a highly specialized niche within the larger LEGO fan community. Jerac is one such builder, whose Star Wars creations are famous for their exceptional level of detail, down to the minutest of greebles, and their near-perfect scaling. His latest creation is a stripped-down Y-wing bomber with all of its parts showing, as was typical in the fleet of the Rebellion. I love the shaping of the cockpit, as well as all of the technical details on the back part of the craft. It is a difficult task to get the rear maneuvering rings looking good, but this version of the Y-wing has lovely round rings and even the little details that should be there. Can a minifigure-scale Y-wing be done better in LEGO? Perhaps, but I have not seen it.
Jerac’s builds are often a master-class in LEGO greebling techniques, with piece usages both expected and unexpected. By now, things like ingots and bars are old hat in spaceships, and even binoculars are expected; but the use of some of the binoculars here is a new one for me, at least: placed recessed into the ship so that only the lenses stick out, as Jerac has done here towards the back of the fuselage. The stretcher holder makes for some great cables or piping, and the use of minifig arms looks good, too, at the very back of the fuselage. And there are more handcuffs than I can count. All in all, this is one terrific spaceship, ready to drop some bombs on Imperial targets.
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.
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.
Each year, LEGO releases at least one new LEGO Star Wars set in its long-running Ultimate Collector Series line of large-scale sets. Last year saw the release of the monumental 75192 UCS Millennium Falcon (the largest LEGO set ever released at 7,541 pieces) as well as the excellent 75144 UCS Snowspeeder. This year’s UCS release is 75181 Y-wing Starfighter, built from 1,967 pieces, retailing for $199.99 starting on May the Fourth or “Star Wars Day” 2018.
Of course, this is not the first UCS Y-wing that LEGO has released — 10134 Y-wing Attack Starfighter was released fourteen years ago, way back in 2004. We’ll take a closer look at how this latest UCS Y-wing stacks up against the first one in our hands-on review.
The new LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series 75181 Y-wing Starfighter launches on May the Fourth this Friday, and we’ll be bringing you our hands-on review at midnight GMT on May 4th, so check back later this week for our own review. In the meantime, LEGO has released a really great video in which model designer Jordan David Scott and graphic designer Madison O’Neil discuss how they approached the design process, their own background as LEGO Star Wars fans, and more.
The video provides great insights into the LEGO set designer role, rather than just focusing on the set’s play features. We’ll be covering the play features (and more) in our review, so the video provides a wonderful view into the interesting people behind our favorite LEGO sets.