Commander_Rob

Imperial Marauder is in the bag, to be built on Christmas.

Latest Slave I acquired for 43.99€. Not a particularly deep discount, but then it's already a well-priced set.

The latest TIE Fighter (75300). It's pretty sweet.

This year's X-Wing, which lasted about five hours before the first mods, and the current Imperial Shuttle polybag.

Picked up the 2017 LSW Annual for 6.50€ (incl. shipping), which is a pretty solid price for the included Chopper and Ezra figures.

Or know who General Dodonna is... Anyway, a solid, slick X-Wing for 45-50 currencies units is a pretty good proposition. Sure, the 2018 model is great with some mods, but its RRP was also twice as much, and out of the box I think this one actually looks better.

The 4+ Snowspeeder for the Wedge figure, and last year's podracer.

Latest Star Wars magazine with Bespin Luke. A really neat figure, I think I'll pick up another one.

That would be reasonably accurate, yeah. The first Incredible Cross Sections book actually has an illustration of a scout trooper on Hoth: He has slightly different armour, and it looks like there's a snowtrooper backpack mounted behind him on the bike, connected to his suit. So if you want to, you could go all-out, give the scout white hands and legs, and add the heater pack on the bike. But a regular scout trooper minifig is already a lot more accurate than a snowtrooper.

With very few exceptions, knee-high black riding boots. Our man Capatin Needa demonstrates: A pretty distinctive part of the costume, I think, and perfectly represented by some dark bley/black dual-moulded legs.

Latest Lego Star Wars magazine with Mini Sith Infiltrator. It's not a great model, but it has some interesting techniques, and the new 3x3 dome in grey is neat.

The latest Lego Star Wars Magazine with a pretty decent little TIE Striker.

Bought the 75218 X-Wing as a Christmas present (for myself).

Finally picked up this year's Microfighters, and the advent calendar is also in the bag.

Picked up a second U-Wing Microfighter that the local TRU Smyths had on sale for 7€, so my full-size U-Wing can also be flown by a U-Wing pilot in proper U-Wing pilot gear (and for the parts).

20th Anniversary Snowspeeder polybag. It's... okay.

Picked up the Vader Pod at my local Lego store. And not strictly a Star Wars purchase, but I noticed online Pick-a-Brick had plain black minifig heads, so I order 100 to replace the abhorrent Angry Clone face.

No, 10019 is not a CR70, it's just wrong. For decades, both various official depictions (e.g. the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, which is probably responsible for a lot of further mistakes by people who used it as a reference) and endless fanart have been messing up the proportions of the Corellian corvette. Notably by cutting out the space between the docking tubes and engine block, and squishing the whole ship down, making it far stockier and less elegant than it really is. Lego fell into the same trap with the set. Eventually, Episode III in 2005 actually included a ship with those proportions, as a devolved, "20 years earlier" version of the classic corvette, and the CR70 designation was created for it the next year ("CR90" for the OT-era ship had been established with the game TIE Fighter in the mid-90s). That's why I'm always a little confused when people get so excited for 10019, or even want it rereleased. Regardless of age, it was never a very good or accurate model, and to me has always looked annoyingly inaccurate.

Got the Cloud-Rider Swoop Bikes, an AT-DP polybag to put me over the 30€ threshold, and the Han Solo Mudtrooper.

This year's advent calendar is in the bag.

The best X-Wing, hands down. My absolute favourite part is what icm already mentioned, it's so smooth! Sooo many other builds have all these little bits and bobs that technically form the correct shape, but look just a little too messy or distracting (I'd always be tempted to open the click-hinge panels on the Psiaki model for example). This has none of that, the shaping is even better than most, and it seems sturdy. A hard model to beat.

I don't think we're likely to see much articulation on AT-STs and other small walkers, because it's really difficult to get right. Devising joints and connections that walk the line between being poseable and solid enough to actually hold a pose is already a challenge, and on top of that, sets have to stand up to being played with. AT-ATs are probably going to remain the walkers with the most articulation and poseabilty (even though they still can't splay their legs out to the side like in the films, nor raise and lower their heads).

If they can make Duel on Naboo and even include Qui-Gon's "I just got stabbed through the stomach"-face, that doesn't seem entirely out of the question. In fact, with up-to-date, non-TCW figures of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Dooku, and Palaptine, it would be a very appealing set and I'd buy it.

Master Builder Series is the large playsets that were under the UCS label in the past, so people can finally stop going on about how they're "not real UCS". Everything else will stay the same: Big, expensive sets, limited retail, big announcements with a lot of hype. I'd bet they'll settle into a pretty regular release schedule and put out one UCS and one MBS each year, and that anyone who thinks this will free up a slot for another UCS (i.e. big display model of a ship or vehicle) per year is kidding themselves. It's a branding move to hopefully put an end to fans complaining about how the UCS name has been so terribly tainted by playsets, and how those should go away. Even if ten years of such sets (provided we count 10188 as the first) shows they're not going to go anywhere. Since they have never bothered officially defining UCS (which makes it extra funny that people get so up in arms about it), I doubt they will do so for MBS.

The latest Lego Star Wars magazine with an Episode II pilot Obi-Wan. Might just get another one.