Raytracer

Hi all, So, I didn't like the 'F1' alternate of the 5767 (5767, not 5765!!!) cool cruiser set - anyone who owns this set would be familiar with it, I'm not sure what the designers were aiming for. Anyway, to fill you in, I've been building F1 cars for a while, though I took a few year break and in the meantime LEGO came out with long, curvy parts that made me tingle in strange places... And as it happens, this set had many, many such parts. 5767-1 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Here's the original culprit. I like the yellow, I like the parts, just not a fan of the actual set design... that's ok, that's what creativity is for! DSC_4313 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Meet my F1, a slim-nosed version - though I realised after I took the pics that I forgot the wing mirrors, oops. DSC_4296 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Side on, low and aggressive DSC_4294 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Rear 3/4 view, safety light visible DSC_4293 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Have to admit, this is as much about testing my photography as showing off the model - but this front view shows the front wing attachment. DSC_4312 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Rear winglets, and a shot of the side pods DSC_4310 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Just a casual bit of car porn DSC_4305 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr I didn't like the steering wheel that came with the set so I made a much smaller, more F1 style one out of 1x2 plate with clips and a technic t-piece. DSC_4300 by Raytracer Photography, on Flickr Here's that mount point for the wing, a 1x1 plate with vertical clip... another one would have been good but the set only comes with 5... What's it called? Mildly Yellow, of course! *Any resemblance to Jordan F1 colour scheme entirely coincidental, honest.

If it makes you feel better, all I've managed to get out of this discussion is a challenge - I'm thinking some serious mods to my 10221 might be in order in the next week.... I too do the passionate thing, I just tend to do it in other arenas (Here, for example)... but you guys have sparked my inner fire. I just hope that my Lego isn't too flammable.

Ah! I thought little old me couldn't have stirred up quite that much controversy! Carry on then, men.

So, you're short on cash, you live in a different state, you haven't prepared the MOC that you wanted to bring and there's a 700km drive ahead of you. What do you do? Well, in my case, I went to sleep. Tuesday evening, 10pm, I was lights out in bed ready to get up at 5:30 and get cracking. On getting up though, there was the *slightest* issue. My partner's MOC was only half packed. The car was nearly full. If there is an award for real-life tetris, I would like it forwarded to my loving fiancee pronto, for getting out of bed and making the fastest unpack/repack job I've seen. Anyway, Departure time and we hop in the Barina and get cracking. <Some time later> Rolling into Melbourne coming from Adelaide is always an interesting experience, but I don't think I've done it in the mid-afternoon before. The roads were surprisingly quiet and we arrived at our weekend halt, staying with Damien and Jax, quite possibly the most awesome couple I've met. Damien was attending as a con-goer as well but Jax is not interested in Lego, and yet put up with two young naive troublemakers in her house, and fed us to boot! Anyway, so Wednesday was a blur of driving, arriving, half unpacking and sleeping. Thursday though... well, Thursday was an interesting one. I'd been asked to come in for some training at the Melbourne office on Thursday, you see, and this was supposed to be at 12:30. Doors opened for MOC delivery at brickvention at 12. In Adelaide, this wouldn't be a problem, you go, you unload, you drive to a carpark, park and walk to the office. Nobody told me that parking in Melbourne STARTS at the $20/hr mark. I ended up forking out $80 to park in the city for my training, which thankfully I'll be getting back, provided I glare at my boss enough. Anyway, so I didn't get to see most of the setup day on Thursday, but I did go in after work for a couple of short hours - just enough to see my partner working hard on her Hogwarts: Oh, and Travis, one of the members of the Committee that makes Brickvention happen, looking rather Sailor Venus: Unfortunately we couldn't stay long on Thursday because we had to get home, feed and sleep because of Friday. Convention Day. We rolled in nice and early on the train, got in just in time for setup and the prelim speeches. Some were interesting (Derek, Ryan) and some were uh... not as interesting (Mayor of Melbourne City Council) - but still relevant! Build in a bag came, heats were run, I got my time in and got into the finals (good fun!). During lunch I went MOC stalking, and had a chat to the crew making a documentary - later in the day we would be interviewed as the first Lego building couple they'd met - that's either awesome or sad, I can't work out which. So what did I see in my MOC stalk? Some cricket, which I didn't realise until later had a streaker running across the pitch (sorry, he(?) was built like a ken doll so no pictures for the ladies) A man in a suit, running through some grass with a scared look on his face. I think he needed his meds, Another man's bottom, unfortunately this really big dish-thing got in the way, Some really tall colourful towers with some multi-coloured glass in the background, And some men on horses. I think they were comparing the length of their swords. After a quick stalk and lunch feast, we were back into the convention room for the next competitions and the finals of the build in a bag - unfortunately, I pipped myself at the post in the build in a bag by confusing a 1x1 round plate in trans-orange for the same thing in light grey, but still came second overall. Speed build was interesting, the difference between first and second was only 8 seconds and I came... second. I enjoy building things fast, can you tell? On the quick sort I was nowhere near on the pace, and I blame gremlins, the moon and even the slight breeze coming in through the door. No, wait, I'm just bad at sorting. Oh well! Sometime during all of this I'd bought raffle tickets, $10 worth which amounted to twelve tickets. I promptly put six into the super star destroyer, four into the hoth echo base and two into the unimog, then forgot about them for the rest of the day. I decided to go back upstairs and talk to people, mingle, as it were, and do some more MOC hunting. Round two of MOC hunting unearthed the following: A man staring intently at a train, Some brightly coloured Sphericals, A tiny man choosing some bottles, A poor photographer looking for opportunity, Some utterly gorgeous miniland-scale vehicles, And lastly, some faces in the crowd, before the crowd has even arrived! Returning back downstairs, I arrived just at the draw of the raffle, snuck to the front and got settled just in time for this to happen. Yeahh, I was fairly stunned. So stunned in fact that I don't really recall much of what happened after, only that I went upstairs and suddenly it was 7-something and dirty brickster was supposed to be starting soon wasn't it and oh crap time to get back downstairs just in time to sit in on the fun. Stole myself a nice lantern! Cue poorly done transition to Saturday, the first public day. I elected to sleep in, rather than trying to get myself up. Relaxed, I strolled in with my camera to see the masses at work. It must be time for... More Photos! My quick and dirty Mostly Yellow, made on Thursday night using the parts provided in the showbag, seemed to be getting a surprising amount of attention, A crowd within a crowd, and some people on broomsticks flying around, A machine for moving balls around, The crowd crowded around the most interesting models: This, the quidditch pitch, My partner's Hogwarts, The amazing train display, And at some points in here, there's a rocket, a buckingham palace, a white house, a roller coaster, some ships, a partridge in a pear tree and wally. See the rest here. Sooo that was public day 1. Public day 2 saw me arrive at the start of the day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and working out how to best help out. The rest of the day saw me delivering cups of water to thirsty exhibitors and relieving people for lunch. I don't recall much except that there were MANY happy children and adults. End of Sunday saw a rapid bump out, a packed car and a delirious drive back to our beds. An early night and a 5:30 wake got us back to Adelaide just in time for snoozing o'clock. So, my thoughts? It was a much better run event than last year's, which while well organised, simply overloaded on people. The pre-booked tickets this year were perfect as a solution! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if some con-goers (me) needed deoderant halfway through the day because of all the running around. Will I be going to Brickvention 2013? The only thing that will stop me is the planet suddenly ceasing to exist.

Nice write up :) I was just polishing mine off when I saw this, so now we get to have 2 Brickvention 2012 reports on page 1... my bad! I was the guy who subbed in so you could go for that lunch break on Sunday, so I hope it was a good one because my feet were killing me at that point!

I think everyone's making too much of a fuss, honestly. The set isn't called UCS Super Star Destroyer in actuality. It's called Super Star Destroyer. Yeah, it looks like a UCS set, but I think they knew putting it out the door that it wasn't. I like it as an 'interpretation' of the SSD and if you aren't too picky, it looks like a typical lego-ised version. I might consider modding mine to look more realistic at some point.

Thanks :) And thanks to all for the nice comments! I might consider doing more reviews in future, though I think I'll be sticking to my main themes (Creator and Technic)... perhaps when the new UCS R2 comes out I'll get that for review ;)

That logic just made my brain cry a little bit.

Good morning Eurobricks! It's time for me to stop lurking and start contributing - and what better way to get started than with a review? A trip to Melbourne, Australia for Brickvention on the weekend past led to an interesting situation, in which a raffle had a Super Star Destroyer up for grabs as the top prize - well, we were broke but had a tiny amount of cash, and I had been *wanting* this set for YEARS... so I bought $10 worth of tickets and put half into the SSD, and half into the other sets up for grabs (eggs, basket, don't put all your.) - At the end of the day, the raffle was drawn and I swear the shop owners up the stairs and across the street could of heard my celebratory WHOOP! *cough* So yeah, anyway, I ended up with this set, and was forced to wait for three whole days before I could even begin building - and had to drive back to Adelaide in the mean time! Ok, so enough waffle. What do we have? (Image shamelessly lifted from Brickset, reupped to flickr to save their bandwidth) Set: Super Star Destroyer 10221 Pieces: 3152 Age: 16+ (hah! I was a precocious child.) Price: $399USD, $699AUD, ₤349GBP I'll skip the obligatory photo of the box for now (I'll get it up later, promise!) and head straight into the meaty goodness, the real guts of the box and the reason we want the set to begin with (who wants a box?). edit: You want the box! Here's the photos I promised - taken the day I got it back at the house we were staying at... ... ... Oooookay! So, as I was saying, who wants a box? Opening the box, the first thing I find is a series of smaller boxes, beginning with this one, a slim, VERY heavy box with a book on it. Sounds instruction-y. Slightly Green, one of my little alternates, will be helping me out with this build... Oh, oh! Someone catch me! I'm swooning! It's a properly ring bound, cardboard covered instruction novel, in A3! I had the original 10030 ISD, and the difference in quality between the two instructions is amazing. These feel like you could build the set a few times and still have the pages actually remain where they were put in the factory, as opposed to, oh, falling out all over the place. Here be the other boxes, one through three - one interesting note, all the boxes storing parts in this set are standard sized boxes, like the ones for a large creator set, just without the printing. You still need to shove your thumbs through punch out holes to rip the boxes open though... I apologise if you haven't seen Spaceballs, but... 'Stickers! I hate Stickers! Especially the small ones!' - Thankfully a fairly small sticker sheet, mostly taken up by the 8x16 info sticker. Time to get to business, let's get into box number one! Bags 1 and 2 are in this one, creating the base and skeleton of the ship, as well as the minifigs, micro ISD and other sundries. The model is split into 7 total groups of bags, which is great for builders like me who (as you'll see later) tend not to sort their parts before assembly. Bags 1: The Baggy Menace. It's a fairly impressive collection of bits, this. And here's the figs - no assistance from my car this time, but what have we here? A 8x16 tile in Black? A Chinese made head? And-oh! A printed 1x1 round brick! IG-88 will be so pleased! A new Darth Vader as well as Admiral Piett round out the unique figures, and more photos shall be incoming when I get off my lazy bones and set up my light tent. I may or may not have been slightly distracted by the mass quantity of LEGO spreading across my floor. Directions: Add Bags 1 of elements, plus select elements from the tough polybags. Simmer in a high 30's Adelaide summer for 3-4 hours or until well assembled. My partner wants to steal this mass quantity of 8x10 wings for making staircases. Have you ever seen a lion protecting her cubs? Yeah, that expression. Just had to share this one, a single pearl dark bluish grey tooth piece, just one in the whole set, used for a backpack. Oh, and to waste 600px of your screen real estate with white photo. By this stage I've started to settle into my groove a bit, and knocked over the micro ISD. Photos don't do it justice, it's actually a really good looking little micro. That said, now I need to make a nano/pico scale Tantive IV to hang off the side of it! Partway through bag one and starting to encounter slight structural difficulties. The instructions get you to build out the entire front section, then go back to the rear to add strength to that. Never mind that there's this little thing called 'gravity' that tries to bend the front towards earth, I'm sure we can work out some sort of solution, right? Righto, now we're getting somewhere, kind of. Bag one complete, structure gaining rigidity. I still wouldn't want to be picking it up from either end, but you can at least move it around without it trying to explode and take out your face with flying bricks. Bags number two, and we start to see some very out of place brightly coloured parts, such as the lovely 2x2 plate modified with Technic pin connector in yellow. Where were you when I needed you?! The skeleton is starting to take shape and really reinforce the flat base at this point, though I would liked to have seen more technic pin connections or a wider main spine, as it tended to flex a bit. Mid-bag two and we're starting to get some greebles on, specifically the bridge. I love this part, as the bridge on a SSD is supposed to be this gigantic area, but this model implies that all this ship is good for is carrying four (five?) minifigs. Funnily enough, I donated the minifigs to the my partner's collection. At the end of bag two, we have some solid skeleton going on - looking down the spine of the ship I spy with my little eye something beginning with 'hey look, technic ribs' - am I doing it right? This is weird. What's not obvious, though should be by this point if you've finished bag two, is that all these parts go straight onto the ship as you build them. For some reason this wasn't clear to my slightly sleep addled brain. Anyway, time for bags three: Revenge of the sub-assemblies! Oh, but first - bag three means box two, which has bags three and four, and there are five bag threes and two bag fours. Still with me? Remember how I said I don't sort my parts? I build on the floor, lying on a comfy pillow, and horrify every deadly serious AFOL builder with my lack of any system apart from the numbers. Probably wouldn't work that well for say, something like 10212 Imperial Shuttle though... Might get a little disorganised. Oh, probably worth noting at this point that my carpet is a shade of grey not unlike dark bluish grey. Ever lose a 2x8 plate that's sitting right in front of you? The stern of the ship is starting to get some definition, thickening out a bit and getting some nice greebles. The larger panels just clip into place with one technic pin and a couple of axle pins for alignment, rather than making you push multiple pins into place. I approve of this and want to see more of it. After building the 'bridge' area for the minifigs to rest in, I got to see some basic techniques for offsetting by half a stud. Really becoming aware at this point that this is a very narrow ship, very sleek and daggerish compared to the old ISD which was really a bit too broad. Bags four are all about the stands, which are very nice, very sturdy and appropriately decorated to look chunky, though the bulk of the ship is still only really held up by four 15L technic beams on each stand. They don't twist at all once attached though, thanks to the round plates at the top, though I did find the easiest way to keep them from moving was just to slide them in and give the ship a gentle whack to seat them. Bag four complete and a shot of how the ship sits on its stands, with the car making a return for scale. I was getting a little eager to finish at this point so stopped taking photos of the instructions and bags, but just imagine that they are there, mk? This is now bag five, and we are onto the 'bridge' covering. It's aligned using the wedges that can be seen in a previous photo and a one-stud gap near the front of the panel. Many greebles died to bring us this part. Once it's on, the city in the middle of the ship is basically complete, now it just needs filling out with some wings... but I feel like something is missing. Ah, right, the main engines! Again, a straightforward build, no exotic techniques here. Obligatory under-ship shot of the engines blazing away. The main engines just push into a couple of axles for guidance and a couple of pins to lock in. Simple to slide it in and let momentum do the hard work for me! Bag six and we're nearly done. The very large, long panels are flimsy until you get them reinforced, and again LEGO seems to have decided that reinforcing from the back, which is already quite strong, is better than getting the nose a bit better attached. Fortunately I suffered no breakages while assembling the panels but I've read that some people have. I was very surprised by the total lack of spares as I was going through this build. This is every single piece that I didn't use at some point by following the instructions, and honestly I'm not sure that I didn't miss those tan 1x2 plates somewhere. I've had more spares in a Alien Conquest set! There she be, the flagship of the Imperial fleet. Just don't mention Isard, or the other couple that hang around in the EU. This is the flagship and the only one, honest! Now it really needs an appropriate scale Death Star to plough it into to recreate that memorable scene. So, some thoughts on the build, before I get to the actual set: I would have liked to see more attention paid to floating pieces. There are a lot of times in the instructions where plates are aligned next to each other and then covered in parts to join, and I can't help but think there must be a better way of doing that particular kind of thing. I tend to be very bad for needing to follow instructions, so I get this weird situation where I'm trying to align stuff in mid air before attaching it, which is just annoying. The way the longer sections are done feels like it needed more thought or more QA testing before the instructions left the factory, as manipulating a two-plate thick, 1m long section is just impossible without tipping it on it's side, making it impossible to add parts. The top hull sections are attached far better this time around than the original ISD, but then attaching them with butter would have been better than that attachment method. I'm not crazy on the 4L bar being used as an alignment tool for the tip of the nose, as it tends to let the sections warp out and I get the impression, even if it's not quite true, that the front of the ship is held in shape more by wishes than design. I was very impressed by the stands. They are nice, they are strong, and they are designed to hold the weight of the model appropriately. I loved the greebling and the heavy use of the 1x4 Brick with Groove to create decks. For it's failings, the build had some interesting techniques to teach, and one very interesting part (which I neglected to take a photo of) had a 2x2 round plate put between four 1x1 plate with clip on top, spaced apart by one stud from each other. The plate just barely touched the clips at the edges but overlapped the base of them, so there's a geometry I wasn't aware of before. Ok, enough about the build I guess, let's talk about the model. What is my scoring regime? I start out with a perfect 10/10 and deduct points for every negative that is significant enough to warrant doing so. The result of this is that I consider a model like the 8480 Space Shuttle to be a 9.5, to give a relative standpoint. Design: 8/10 It's not movie-accurate, but it does convey all the sense of a gigantic brooding ship. The seam down the middle is still very noticeable but they've done a good job of hiding it as much as possible. I love the sheer mass of greebles in the city and how they've been applied. The things holding it back from being a 9 or 10 are really the gigantic flat base, which makes no sense when the engines have had such care put into them, and the slightly dodgy attachment for the tip of the nose, which leaves a splayed out arrangement. Parts: 7/10 There's nothing exotic here, and even if that pearl dark grey tooth is unique, there's no way I'd be buying this set just to get that. It's a very useful grey parts pack though, and has vast quantities of good parts for making castles and ships. There's many, many 8x16 plates and enough 3x10 Wing plates to make a spiral staircase a few stories high, and if I ever dismantle it and 'collection' it, I'll have more 1x1 plate modified with top clip than I know what to do with. Build: 8/10 See above for my lengthy comments about the build. What holds it back? The flimsy construction of larger sections, as well as the floating elements. Minifigs: 5/10 Here's the thing. This set is a UCS set. Minifigs don't have a place here, and it kind of sours the scale for me a bit. I feel like without the minifigs, a couple of which are clearly a play for making collectors buy this set just for those (New Darth, Admiral Piett), this set could have been a smidge less expensive. The minifigs themselves are actually quite good, though I noticed the printing on the IG-88 1x1 round brick was stretched as if the printing press missed by a bit, and the gold print on Vader's suit was offset by perhaps a quarter of a mm. If this was clearly designed as a play set (think the minifig Death Star) then I'd be giving the figs a higher score. Playability: 2/10 I tried swooshing it - once. I decided I'd prefer not to have a massive explosion and broken pieces. I suppose you could reenact the scene from EP:V where the bounty hunters are sent out, but you're missing Boba! It's very much a display set, and I suspect the most playing I'll be doing with it is when I pack it to move in six months time. Price: 4/10 (For Australian market) $699 is VERY expensive for this set. It's an impressive set, it has a good time for the build, but honestly it took me roughly as long to build my $300 Unimog, which has only slightly less pieces. It commands a premium for being a Star Wars set, and a bigger premium for being UCS, which adds up to quite a massive premium. The biggest issue I have is that for that money, I could be buying actual, serious, upgrades to my car, which I drive every day - though realistically, for what I paid? It gets a perfect 10/10... Overall: 35/60 If this ship were a Uni course, I'd be calling that a pass verging on a credit. That's not bad! There are things about it that frustrate me, there are things I'd like to see done differently. Overall though, it was a reasonably interesting build with not many boring points (except for build 12x of this structure that takes 5 minutes) and it makes a very impressive display model. What brings it down badly is the minifig score and the playability score. Without the minifigs, there wouldn't be a minifig score or a playability score, bringing it to 27/40 which is almost a distinction. I would prefer not to do an overall score for this, as there are parts of it that just don't work with a scoring system. You can't play with it, but that isn't it's purpose in life. I would like to give this ship 7 or 8 out of 10 overall, but what can you do? Cheers for reading, and ta-ta for now!