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Posted in: Collectibles, Games | Tagged: C-3PO, chewbacca, death star, death star droid, emperor palpatine, emperor's royal guards, han solo, lego, lego death star, lego star wars, Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, princess leia, r2 d2, stormtrooper, stormtroopers
Building The LEGO Death Star Part 3-This Battle Station Is Fully Operational
The ultimate show of power in the collecting galaxy, the LEGO® Death Star. This has been a holy grail of collecting for me since I heard it existed. All those bricks! All the mini-figures! I could not even wrap my head around it.
Back in 2008 I missed the boat on the very first release, and also the Death Star 2, and it has been retired and taken out of retirement so many times that the timing never seemed to line up. The secondary market is always insane on these when in retirement, so once it came out again with the release of Rouge One, I knew this was my shot. This third version, set number 75159, which features scenes from both Death Stars from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. It is almost the same as the first release, but with more updated mini-figs and some extra updates to things like the superweapon. It is the biggest LEGO Star Wars set available, and one of the biggest sets period. And now it is mine! Over the last few weeks I chronicled the building of this battle station, and now it is all done!
Bag 7-8 were a beast to get through. Building the detention block was pretty fun as it came together, I love the look of the hallway, although I will say that the black bricks pick up finger prints really easily. I just took a damp rag and wiped all the finger prints off when it was completed. The optical illusion with the hallways makes this entire scene work, and its cool that they made they space for it. The firing room for the weapon was also started here. Not much to that part, just building out walls and the platform that holds the main event, and the part I was most looking forward to.
Bag 9 features the superweapon itself, and man as much as I was looking forward to it, it was a pain to build. Word to the wise: once you build the chain that bends into the dish, do not flip it over, you will build it backwards and you are screwed. Also, when placing the little 2×2 flat bricks, hold the chain up so that the other pieces don't constantly come off. Probably pretty basic stuff, but they are mistakes I made, master builder that I am not. Once that is all done and you attach it to the Death Star though…man that was a cool moment.
The last set of bags is the final layer at the top, including a curve-ball! They include a second elevator through the middle of the Death Star, so again as with the other one, leave yourself plenty of slack in the line so it will go all the way through the build. Other than that, the last couple floors build very quickly since you have already done it a bunch. You also build the turrets, and my favorite room: the conference chamber. One of my favorite scenes in A New Hope is when Vader chokes Motti. So to have that recreated in LEGO form is pretty awesome. The final touch is the round topper on top, and that's it!
The last of the mini-figures continued to impress as well, with the standouts to me being the molded body on the Chewbacca and just how awesome it is that Tarkin is a mini-fig. The troopers are cool, the Han Stormtrooper figure and R2-D2 are just as good as all the other releases. Every single mini-fig is this set is pretty awesome. Placing them into the various scenes and changing them up all the time is going to be so much fun. I placed them for picture purposes now.
All in all, the total build time when added up fell just short of 30 hours for me. I did screw up a couple things, and I for sure took my time with some parts that others can probably do much quicker. I wanted to be precise and left very little to guesswork with placement of certain elements. At $500, with the build time, size of the set, and amount of fun I had, I for sure feel like it is worth it, but I can understand why some people would hesitate to purchase. This truly is as good as it gets for Star Wars builders though, I have to say that any other build I do will feel much easier after this. And now I have a cool centerpiece on my table forever, one that can constantly be played with. I feel a sense of accomplishment.
Ok, now to recreate a bunch of scenes for the next forever. You know where to find me.
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