LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 10

Day 10 brings us a cool looking laser turret that, so far as I know, has no actual tie-in to a movie. Maybe it shows up in a video game or one of the animated series. Who knows. It does actually shoot the red stud, so at least it does something, but this is as headscratchingly "WTF LEGO?" as the toolbox from last year. Whoopty do. But it is, as I said, cool looking, so I don't mind as much unless I remember the hundreds of other really cool things that would have been nice to have today.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 9

So today was my birthday build - really hoping for something special on my special day!

Let's see what I got (Ignore the stack of translucent pieces: I made a tower of them to put the ship on so I could make a better photo because the model doesn't sit flat due to the triangle pieces sticking out on the bottom; also, the translucent piece under the cockpit IS part of the model, put there to help make the model *almost* sit flat):

General Grievous' fighter! It's a cool ship that showed up in Episode III. The character of General Grievous I thought was silly and rather cliche (like so much of the prequels), but the ship is a stunner, and this little build does a bloody good job capturing a complex and very rounded design.

Not my first choice for what I would like to have seen on my birthday, but it's a darn fine one and I'm totally happy with it!

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 8

A sad day: another boring old battle droid. We've had it in at least one other Advent Calendar, and these are in a bunch of kits.

Is it a nice model? Sure. But come on, LEGO. We're spending $40 on these calendars - you don't have to maximize your profits by filling up with the cheapest models.

Oh, well. Add it to the growing pile of battle droids I have. Roger Roger. :D

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 7

I got a bit behind in posting. Sorry about that! Been busy with concerts and church and other stuff.

So, here we are: Day 7. We move to the prequels for this very cool Naboo Starfighter from Episode I. Much of the ship designs in the prequels are not as interesting (to me) as the ones from the original trio, but the Naboo Starfighter really captured my imagination: sleek, beautiful, elegant. It seemed to be very much the kind of design that the peaceful and artistic people of Naboo would come up with.

It's the kind of design that a people would come up who don't do really "do war" so the few devices of war they have speak to what they truly value: beauty. Not conquest or killing.

Imagine what the U.S. could build if we didn't spend half our federal budget on engines of death.

The build for this one is quite good - as always for these microfigures, very few parts are used. The LEGO masters managed to make this about as close a model of the real thing as possible.

Look at that!

But I will admit to some disappointment that we had the same ship a few years ago in another Advent Calendar. We don't need to duplicate, LEGO. On the other hand, for those who haven't been doing these calendars for the past number of years, this is a really cool ship that others should be allowed to collect, so maybe duplicating it this year isn't too bad of a thing.

But as the Advent calendars seem to deliver more disappointments each year than they did the previous year, this duplication just seems another sign of laziness at LEGO.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 6

Hmmmm.... a mini model of an entire city is what we get for today.

Pretty clever, LEGO! All of Cloud City in 7 pieces, and another 4 pieces to make the Twin-pod Cloud Car.

It's a great build, and exciting to have! And also exciting to get another from Episode V (my favorite of the SW movies) - so that's two builds from Empire Strikes Back so far, and we're only 6 days in! (Cloud City and IG-88).

As I mentioned on Day 1, the "playmat" area has a lot of ice, so I'm hoping this will be heavily weighted to Episode V. And very much hope that we get an AT-AT. I'd love to get a mini one of those, as they are my favorite "spaceships" of the Star Wars universe, next to the Death Stars.

So just for fun, here's my list of favorite vehicles of Star Wars, which really has much more to do with the design of the things than the actual functionality, because let's be honest - an AT-AT and AT-ST are terrible, unstable, inefficient, ridiculous designs for war machines. But as psychological terrors, they're fantastic. Imagine being faced with something that big and scary looking and realizing "My enemy has so many resources that they can afford to waste it building these inefficient designs simply to let us know that they have so many resources that they can build these inefficient and scary looking things and let them get blown up at a ridiculous rate. Crap! We're screwed."

1. Death Star
2. AT-AT
3. Imperial Shuttles
4. Snowspeeders
5. X-Wings
6. Slave I
7. Super Star Destroyers
8. Luke's landspeeder from Episode IV
9. Millenium Falcon
10. Imperial Tie Fighters (including Vader's and the Tie Interceptors)

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 5

Another weird day in the Advent Calendar. Another build that I had to look up to see what it is. As much of a Star Wars geek that I am, I really only know the movies I through VII, plus Rogue One and the Han Solo movie. I don't know the animated ones, and totally don't know the video games, or that other weird one from Day 3, the animated series the name of which I cannot remember and don't feel like looking up.

So far, Day 3 and Day 5 (today) have required looking them up online, and Day 4 (yesterday) would have required a lookup except that I remembered the design from the large build set that LEGO made last year.

Day 5: Imperial Dry Cleaning Droid

No, not really, but it could be. Let's try that again:

Day 5: IG-88

Yep - that's right - IG-88, the droid bounty hunter from Episode V that everyone knows, and that I should have recognized, but didn't.

So yes, my above rant is somewhat justified, but not really. IG-88 is obscure to the layperson, but should not have been to me. Today was not a weird day at all - it was an appropriate day. A good day. Argh! I apologize if I lost some street cred with you on this. But in my defense, this is a much thinner and minimal version. LEGO has a difficult time with a lot of the droids because it has such a small set of possible pieces to use to make one, so they all end up looking the same except for color.

But in the case of IG-88, the head - definitely the same head as the real one. Crap. Dead giveaway, and I missed it.

So, excuses aside, this is me, failing. To think that was another weird build and part of LEGO's bizarre careening through the Star Wars universe was totally errant. Embarrassing. But I'm a pastor, so I'm willing to be embarrassed in public to show that we don't have to be perfect and that we can be honest and vulnerable about our limited abilities. Especially during Advent, as we await the One who came to remind us, as God had been trying to remind us for millennia, that it's okay to be imperfect. Even a self-identified Star Wars nut.

The gift for today is very cool. All bounty hunters in Star Wars are cool. I want a whole set of them now.

There is the Star Wars Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike set that has the four non-Boba bounty hunters (including an IG-88 with a different blaster), which might be worth buying just to have the four minifigures in it. I haven't gotten it because the speeder bike is ugly and I have no interest in it. But now that I have one version of an IG-88, and a few Boba Fetts, I feel kinda stupid for not having the others. I'll keep you posted if I decide to get it.

Speaking of getting things: I did go out today and get the Republic Fighter Tank, LEGO 75182, because I liked the Advent Calendar version so much. Got it for $20 at WalMart, which is $4.99 less than the LEGO store - and even with VIP points, buying anything for less than 95% of the store price is a win, or during double VIP points, anything less than 90%. Yeah, I know, WalMart, but I had a meeting with Prevent Suicide Chippewa Valley at the Goodwill next door, so popped in to check out what they might have had on sale. And getting it for 80% of list price? It's a win, even though my internal social justice warrior is disappointed in myself for supporting WalMart.

Pretty sweet!

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 4

Okay, the Advent Calendar is swerving madly all over the Star Wars world by giving us another build, like yesterday, that isn't from any movies.

Day 4 sees a Republic Fighter Tank as I was pretty sure was seen in Episode III, but according to the Star Wars wiki page, it's only showed up in games, books, and animated shows.

It's perhaps as good a model as one can expect given the 23 or so pieces in it.

LEGO released a large build of this last year, and I always thought it looked pretty good, but not something I wanted, so I don't have one.

So, here it is:

Pretty cool!

And it came with a spare turret, which are good to have around as extras to spice up other models that could use an antenna, or a laser cannon, or a bzzzzt thing.