General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Chat about stuff other than Transformers.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Skyquake87 »

I love that set. It looks so cool. I see Lego have finally cottoned onto the growing market for bootleg superhero minifigures and done a collectible series of DC superheroes https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/dc-s ... ries-71026
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ganon578
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by ganon578 »

Lego Star Wars 75218

Ordered this online since the price was right. Very nice model of the T-65 X-Wing, and I love the S-Foil mechanism. The only issues are the short laser cannons and the missile launchers on the ends of the wings. These are minor things though, as I really love all this set has to offer. It comes with Luke Skywalker/R2-D2 as well as Biggs Darklighter/R2-Q2. It even as extra plates with stickers for Red 5 (Luke) and Red 3 (Biggs) to swap when you swap pilots/astromechs. It's a really nice feature that extends play value. Sadly, the X-Wing doesn't have any storage for Luke's lightsaber, nor either of the pilots' blaster pistols. At any rate, this is a great set, and well worth the $$$.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Skyquake87 »

Some fun stuff has come out lately, I do like the look of the silly monster truck burger van. https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/mons ... 24224337:s
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ganon578
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by ganon578 »

A bit of a Lego Star Wars haul lately for me:

75172 Y-Wing: From the Rogue One line. I like the design of this one much more than the newer Resistance model from Rise of Skywalker, even though the cost was identical. To me, this is a Y-Wing. The build was fun and decently complex. It's got some nice hidden missile launchers and a great bombing mechanism. The minifigs are great too: Y-Wing Pilot, Astromech w/ a clear grey head, Admiral Raddus, and a really cool white shaggy guy named Moroff that had ~1 minute of screen time in Rogue One. And a Stormtrooper. Overall I really love this set to 'match' with my X-Wing.

75259 20th Anniversary Snowspeeder: I have the original from ~1999 (which I still dig), but thought it was time for an upgrade. The design hasn't changed much, but it's more accurate and mostly white. The canopy is much better than the original, and it's got some nice hidden missile launchers, a rear stud shooter, and a proper tow cable. It came with Luke, Dak, a Rebel Hoth Trooper, a gun tower w/ stud shooter, and a 20th Anniversary Lando Calrissian. It's a good overall set, but I feel it's a touch overpriced at $40.

75243 20th Anniversary Slave I: This set is really nice. It's ~1000 pieces, and the build comes in layers. It's super fun to put it all together, one bag at a time. The final ship is very hefty, yet sturdy. It even has a fold-able handle on the back for swooshing the ship around. The side wings and the internal cockpit seat independently swivel, which happens automatically via gravity when you pick it up and hold it vertically. It's also got hidden missile launchers and a cargo hold for a carbonite Han Solo that's included. Very solid build and very cool ship. Tons of minifigs too: Boba Fett, Han Solo (not in carbonite), Zuckuss, 4-LOM, and a 20th Anniversary Princess Leia. :up:

75236 Starkiller Base Duel: Didn't have a Kylo Ren or a Rey (or much from the sequel trilogy for that matter) so this set is a nice addition. I was quite pleased with the Mustafar Duel I just got, and this one is right up there. Great detail with the snow and trees, and the chasm between the two fighters. Had to swap out Kylo's hands for black though, as they came in flesh color and he should be wearing gloves. Good play set though!

A-Wing Green Leader Minifig: Bought from a local shop. I have the Resistance A-Wing, which is green and comes with X-Wing Pilot Snap Wexley. I sought to fix this, and luckily this shop had a lone minifig that fit the bill. Though it's not explicit in Lego world, I'm sure this is the guy that crashes into the bridge of a Star Destroyer in RotJ. He's even got a double printed head with a frantic/scared face on one side. Either way, his helmet is accurate for an A-Wing Pilot, and his jumpsuit is green which matches the ship nicely.

I've also been eyeing up a Rogue One U-Wing (75155) at this local shop. Hopefully it will still be there next week or so when I can grab it.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

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All right, after 'eyeing' the Lego Star Wars 75155 U-Wing Fighter for about 2 minutes, I had the cash to grab it. Luckily the local shop still had it on the shelf. I'm never in that store long enough to know how fast the used sets stick around. Got it at a great price (compared to what I could find new online or used on eBay), with all the minifigs and their blasters: Jyn, Cassian, U-Wing Pilot, Rebel Solider, and some funky guy named Bistan. Seems like it's missing only two stud shooters from the inside troop compartment, which I should be able to easily replace. My only gripe is that getting all 4 troops inside is quite tricky with my adult fingers. BUT, all 4 do fit. It's much bigger than I thought it would be, but it's in great scale with my Y-, X-, and A-Wing fighters. Pretty fun to swoosh around too!

Now that I've fleshed out a great bit of my Rebel fleet (still looking to get a Millenium Falcon though), I'll have to beef up the Imperials. They're incredibly out numbered as of today.
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Dead Man Wade
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Dead Man Wade »

Picked up the Black Widow's Helicopter Chase set from the forthcoming movie as a) the only Black Widow minifig I had was the Infinity War one with blonde hair, and b) it has Taskmaster. Not a bad little set, and the helicopter isn't half bad. My biggest complaint is that Taskmaster doesn't have a proper shield, but oh well. Might just repaint one of the Cap shields I have laying around.
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Dead Man Wade
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Dead Man Wade »

Received a couple of the things that I got on the eBay, specifically a Doc Ock minifigure (as I'm working on getting the Sinister Six) and the blindpacked Mr. Miracle. Have a couple sets arriving tomorrow, as well.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Skyquake87 »

I picked up Lego CiTY 60226 Mars Research Shuttle as I bought a friend this for his birthday last year (he likes the Lego space themed stuff) and thought it was cool. And it's been on sale forever, so I thought why not, as it looked pretty cool. And it is!

The set itself is large shuttle with space for two astronauts - one in the cockpit and the other in a console room in the cargo bay. I like this, because too often these kinds of sets only have seating for one and the other just has to slowly die in the vacuum of space. This does mean cargo space is limited, leaving you room only for the flying post box you can put space letters in or take sparkly rock samples home in. The astronauts themselves are nice and although I appreciate the realism of the gold dome, I miss being able to see the astronaut's smiley face peering out into the universe of wonder. The shuttle itself looks really cool. It's nice and sleek and has a good mix of parts making it up. I like it when Lego mix standard System bricks in with specialised parts, it just feels special, you know - like this is how to mix in your bricks to build cool stuff.

The set also comes with a rover, which is massive, but looks awesome. It's a little remote controlled drone thing with an arm and laser for removing samples. Both things are articulated and on a turntable, so with a bit of careful angling, you can poke a bit of sparkly rock off the tiny piece of terrain the set comes with. Also attached to the rover is a small drone, which is carrying around a book cover which you can hover over the flat part of the terrain to decode a formula or something. I like the idea, but I think I'm rather missing why a coded formula would be inscribed into some rocks. Maybe it's like you're doing science and getting information about the way the rocks or crystals are formed.

Like many sad old farts of my age, I mourn the passing of Lego's own Space theme, with its mutli-coloured spacemen and women. Replaced as it has been by the juggernaught of Lego Star Wars. This set reminds me of that bygone era of Lego Space toys, as it's all about exploration and scientific discovery. Doubly-so, given that all the CiTY space stuff is inspired by NASA's own research projects. So this is a sneakily educational toy, but you wouldn't think it, because it's so cool. Highly recommended.

...looking at the design of this, it would make for a great update of the Blacktron Invader craft (set 6894)
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by ganon578 »

A couple large Lego Star Wars ships just joined my fleet!

75257 Millennium Falcon: Excellent ship. 1351 pieces and a fun build that the kids helped me with. The whole thing is really sturdy, as the base is made mainly of interconnected Technic pieces. The typical gaps on the top are minimized with the panel builds, which gives it a great look. The rear thrusters look really fricking cool too, since they are transparent blue pieces over white plates. The ship is so large, you can fit a ton of minifigs in the inside in the various areas: holochess area & technical station, medical/rest beds & hyperdrive, kitchen, smuggling floor space, and the cannons. The cockpit is a little cramped though, as it can only fit 2 figs per the size of the ship. It came with a load of minifigs: Lando, Chewie, Finn, C-3PO, R2-D2, D-O, and Boolio. Not a bad mix, but I would have preferred a Jannah in there instead of Boolio, since he's only in RoS for like 30 seconds. I also modified the cockpit so the left (pilot) side is forward and the right (co-pilot) side is moved back and can fit Chewie's big head better. I used Han from Boba Fett's ship to really complete the set. Overall it was pricey, but having a Falcon in the fleet is just fantastic!

75094 Shuttle Tydirium: Through a local used shop. I was going to get Krennic's shuttle (mostly for K-2SO), but this one was just a touch more expensive but significantly more iconic. Great build, and it was only missing 3 pieces (used set) that were easy to replace. The thing is rather sturdy unless you drop it (I know from experience) and you can pick up the whole thing by the 'dorsal fin' if you grab it in the right spot. Very swooshable ship, and just like the Falcon, the rear thrusters are beautiful. It came with all the original minifigs, from the Endor portion of RotJ: Han, Leia, Chewie, and two Rebel soliders (Endor). They came with a thermal detonator/ammo/weapon box, blasters, and Leia came with a small cookie that she offered to Wicket in the movie. Surprisingly, the main cabin opens up well and is easy to access for such a small space. The cockpit can fit two people, including Chewie. Since there's no other markings on it, it can easily be converted back to an Imperial shuttle that can carry some of my Imperials including Vader & the Emperor. I've had it stylized as both, and I love it.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

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A while ago, I built a Vehicle Voltron which is the same height as the official Lion Voltron. I didn't like the red chest jet, and last week, I finally got around to rebuilding it. Now, I'm much more satisfied with the jet, and the combined bot's look. That inspired me to continue work on my Gladiator Voltron, which is also the same height as Lion Voltron

I'd built the structure of one leg and most of the torso of the red bot, no detail work. I just wanted to be sure I could make the lower torso fold into the leg for combined mode. Now, I've built the other red leg and remainder of the torso, the upper blue torso, upper black torso, all three heads, one lower black leg, and one lower blue leg.

The upper torsos can stack and snap together, with the heads fitting inside the upper torsos like the original toys. I'm using the lower black and blue legs, along with one of the red leg/partial torsos to test leg combining. It's going to use clips like how the Lion Voltron's blue and yellow lions attach to the black lion. I'm just trying to work out how many to use. Right now, I've got 4, and that seems too hard to attach and detach, so I'll try 2.

Once that's worked out, I'll tweak the upper torsos for the extra connections, which is probably a good idea since right now each combined leg attaches to the combined torso with a single Technics 5 mm peg. Then, I'll add the lower torso pieces to the black and blue legs, mirror those for the other side, and work on details like the greek letters on the legs and chest decos.

I haven't even thought about how I'll do the arms, yet. I don't think I'll bother making them fold behind the combined mode's back, and just have a 6-armed combined mode. That's how I always displayed them as a kid.
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ganon578
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by ganon578 »

Nice! You should post up some pictures at some point, I would be curious to see what it looks like.

I haven't done any MOC work with Lego in a long time. I did a small one with the kids a month-ish ago, inspired by theHunter on PS4. We made a little hunting scene with an elevated hunting stand and some shrubbery/trees here and there. The kids were also kind enough to donate their little cute Lego animals for targets.

That said, I will probably get some more Star Wars sets sometime in the next couple of days. May the Fourth is coming, so there's bound to be some sales or something, somewhere.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Dead Man Wade »

I did my first customy thing recently, combining the somewhat recent Lex Luthor mech with some parts from a Spider-Man/Mysterio set that just came out, and I'm very happy with the result. Now, I'm sourcing parts to turn a War Machine Buster set into Nimrod. This is my first time even attempting something like this, so I'm nervous as all hell.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

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ganon578 wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:04 pmNice! You should post up some pictures at some point, I would be curious to see what it looks like.
I couldn't figure out how to attach them to this post, or my Kreon Thread, so here they are on my tfw2005 thread. Vehicle Voltron's almost done, I just need to make the blue shoulder vehicle more interesting. The engineering of Gladiator Voltron is done. I just need to find the parts to deco the chest, add Greek letters to the legs, and finish the rest of the arms.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Denyer »

Neat. Also really like the Kreon-scale brick built combiners, Black Zarak, Monstructor and the Rack'n'Ruin.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

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sDug my Pirates from ...2014? out of the loft. The sets weren't that great - best ones were an soldier's outpost and the big Pirate ship, but I thought they had potential. So (finally!), I got around to messing about with them over the weekend. Somewhat inspired by the recent Ideas set and the upcoming Creator sets, I have to say.

One of my favourite Lego sets I had when I was young, was 1989s Eldorado Fortress (which I swear was called Governor Broadside's Castle over here). I had the set intact and boxed until about 2002, when I gifted it to my nephew ...who just trashed it and ended up burying pieces of it in the garden. Sigh. So I built a version of that. I had a spare base plate left, so thought the Pirates could do with somewhere to stash their treasure as well, so built them a little Island thing. I'm quite pleased with how these turned out :)

Because I'm rubbish at attaching images, here's a link to the pictures what I took:
https://imgur.com/gallery/iR49gTz
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Warcry »

Those pics look amazing! I was never a Pirates kid myself, even though they looked super cool. Between Castle and Space, there just wasn't enough allowance to go around, I guess! But I always loved the look of the ships and especially the minifigures. I think they were the first theme to really start showing personality in their designs, when the stuff I was buying had generic-looking guys in faction uniforms.
Skyquake87 wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 8:02 pm Somewhat inspired by the recent Ideas set and the upcoming Creator sets, I have to say.
Oh dammit, I wish I hadn't discovered that those exist! They both look super cool. I may have to put aside cash for one or the other.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Denyer »

Nice and colourful. Way better than the prints on stuff that was around when we were kids, by the looks of it.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

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Lego was pretty much a constant when I was growing up. We had a massive bunch of second hand bricks, and I used to get a few sets for birthdays and what have you - mostly small sets. I think the biggest ones I had were a six wheeled articulated Space thing, The town Race Track (with a blue and red race car), Castle Draco and Governor Broadside's Castle. And a large Lego Technic plane with a pilot. Which was yellow. I wouldn't say Pirates is one of my favourite Lego themes, but I liked the detail in the minifigures and the historical setting. As you mention Warcry, they were the first to have some personality and more overtly female figures. I did find the theme burnt through things to do with it quite quickly, and I wasn't so fond of the redcoats and Islanders they introduced as the theme wore on.

I quite like the 2015 Pirates just for being a run of 5 sets (plus a chess set which is stupid expensive now) which were easy to collect to give you the key hallmarks of theme: a massive pirate ship, a small fort, an outpost with a raft, a pirate island and a very small shipwreck. They were quite basic, but gave you a nice selection of minifigures and some nice colours and parts.

I was half thinking about buying the Ideas and Creator sets, but thought - I've got some Pirates already and a pile of bricks, so why not just build something out of what you've got, which is kind of the point of Lego. I had some holiday to use up, so spent a few hours over two days throwing these together. It's very relaxing just messing about with Lego bricks, so I can see why its used for some therapies and whatnot these days.

...I want to get my Farm stuff out now.

I got a couple of Lego Movie sets off ebay; 70805 Trash Chomper and 70804 Ice Cream Machine. I always thought these were quite expensive at the time; roughly £20 each (I got both mine loose and complete for the same price). Having them in hand I can see why - you get a ton of parts in each set. The flying contraptions are fun, but I just wanted them for the regular vehicle builds, because I thought they looked really good. And they are! Only the Trash Chomper manages to use all it's bricks in both modes though. So like with the Flying Flusher, you're left with a pile of leftover parts for the Ice Cream Machine. The Ice Cream truck is brilliant - really colourful with some nice ice cream and ice lolly parts. I like the slightly old-timey look of this and the colours work a lot better than the recent CiTY set.
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Denyer »

Also had/have a fair amount of second-hand LEGO including some very early house elements but the sets and things I specifically remember from parents having access through schools or acquiring boxed or representing the elements amassed are these -- https://imgur.com/a/v7ffLUD (all images tea-leafed from https://brickset.com/ which is fun to flick through). I think the train set and the programmable console are still boxed somewhere.
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Skyquake87
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Re: General LEGO discussion (inc. collectible minifigs)

Post by Skyquake87 »

Oh my God! I remember that educational Technic set. My Primary school had two of them, and they were always kept locked away and only given used as a reward for those who'd got on top of all their work. So naturally, I never got a look in...!

I had some weird early Lego elements too - those big colourful cogs and house windows and doors, plus the remains of some of the first brick built trains they did.

I remember getting a really cool black Lego racing car from the '70s from a table top sale at the Private School we lived in the grounds of at the time. Also where I got my beloved Corgi Batmobile from too. Ah, memories...
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