Lego World Utrecht 2013

A couple of week ago I went to the Lego World event in Utrecht (The Netherlands). It was quite busy, but overall a fun and well-organised event.
I was a little disappointed with the museum section, and the Star Wars section only had prequel sets on display (although they did have the Death Star and Super Star Destroyer on sale - with a decent discount).
I liked all the private collections on display, even though most of them had the same theme; I'd say about 90% were City sets. Some as a fantasy city, others as a diorama of a famous street or their home town. Some of them had some nice unique features (the cinema was particularly impressive, and I really liked the circus/theme park), but after a while it was boring to see the same sets of bricks over and over again. I was far more impressed with some of the fantasy sets, as they required a bit more imagination.
The Zoo, with animals built out of Lego, was great to see, and my cousin had fun with some of the activities they organised. And watching all the trains, of course. And getting free goodies.
Are we going back next year? Not sure, although this year I had no money at all, if I can set aside a Lego budget towards the end of next year I'd definitely go back to pick up some minifigs and sets.

Some pictures:

There are a lot more (over 200!) pictures on my Flickr page, click here to see them!

TIE Interceptor

I found instructions on how to turn the regular TIE Fighter into a TIE Interceptor. Result:

It's very basic but at the same time quite cool to make this with the same pieces as the regular TIE Fighter. It's not very sturdy though, so the playability factor is a bit low, but it looks great I think.
Would be fun to have a regular one and this one...

Here's the link so you can try it for yourself!

Lego key chains

When I was in the Lego shop in London, I picked up 6914 - T-Rex for my cousin (he loved it - I quite like the set as well), and 2 key chains...

I needed that Hulk one, and I like all the Star Wars minfigs but Luke in his flightsuit is pretty cool.

Hulk even has two faces, slightly mad, and HULK SMASH mad.

The head, torso and legs are one piece and can't be seperated. Arms and hands can, though I don't see why you'd want to do that really. Otherwise it's as flexible as any other minifig.

I'm happy with the keychains, currently I'm using Hulk to hold my house keys and he's doing a good job at it!

Super Star Destroyer vs. giant octopus

Two pictures of a Super Star Destroyer being attacked by a giant octopus! Found on this blog. Click on the pics to see the larger version - it's worth it to see the detail on the octopus.

The "little" Star Destroyer ramming the octopus' head is a nice touch hehe. The whole thing must've taken quite a lot of bricks to put together, also keeping in mind the Super Star Destroyer is almost 125cm long!

Captain America's Avenging Cycle 6865

Another birthday present, by a friend who knows I like Lego :)

It has three minifigs, plus the Captain's bike, a "General's craft", and a missile turret. 

The Captain America minfig is awesome, good colour and prints, and I like that his head is one piece without a helmet or anything. The shield is great as well.

The bike looks like a standard Lego bike model, but it's nice that they included a piece to hold the shield. 

The flying craft and the turret are nice, I like the beige/golden look. The minfigs are quite cool as well, but they don't exactly look like the Chitauri from the movie (then again, it is a pretty complicated design to lego-fy). I also don't remember the Chitauri having a turret with missiles in the movie... but I suppose it does makes the set more playable. 

The soldier has a lighter colour than the general, the general has a more complicated chest piece design and a big gun. 

Overall, it's a nice little set. As far as I know, it's the only set with Captain America in it, so fans of him should definitely get it, it's a great minifig. I don't really care that much for the bike and Chitauri stuff, even though I like the minifigs and the golden look. One negative is that there are 6 stickers to apply, but they're not really that hard to get right.
It seems like this set is now pretty rare, it's sold out on the Lego store, and on Amazon it's being sold at quite a bit above the recommended retail price. At the RRP (€15) it offers decent value for money, but I definitely wouldn't buy it myself if it was more expensive.

All in all, a nice little set that you'll probably like the most because of the Captain America minifigure.

Lego Star Wars Gold Leader's Y-Wing 9495

I bought this one for my birthday! I was looking online from time to time to compare prices, in the end I bought it in a local toy shop. Apparently they're the only shop in the country that sells it. You'd think that means an inflated price, but no - they actually sell it at €10 cheaper than the official Lego shop. Even the European Amazon shops couldn't offer me it at that price.

Anyway, the set itself. First the minifigs. You get an astrodroid (R5-A7), the Gold Leader pilot (Dutch Vander) and Princess Leia in her award ceremony outfit (complete with cape). Not sure what she is doing here, but it's a nice minifig. Her head has two sides as well, angry Leia and happy Leia.

Then building the ship. You start out with the middle part, and for some time you actually have no idea what you're actually building.

Yeah, it doesn't really look like much does it? But then you start building the cockpit...

This is probably my favourite part of the build, the yellow looks great, and it's big and sturdy, and I love the bricks used to build it. Then it's time to put cockpit and body together...

Now it's starting to look like something! The last bit to add are the engines...

There you go! One finished Y-wing. Well, without the stickers at this point, I added them later. 

The engines take quite a bit of time to build, and it's very repetitive work. It's about the only negative about this set, but since it takes a fair bit of time and is quite repetitive, it's definitely a negative worth mentioning.

Of course, the end result looks great. As a Star Wars fan, I've always loved the design of the Y-Wing, and this set does the ship design justice. Since I'm new to Star Wars Lego I can't compare it to the older models, but on its own I'm very happy with it. Maybe two little things, unlike the X-Wing and A-Wing, it doesn't have a landing set. And just like with the X-Wing you have to put the droid "sideways" to fit in. 

I really love this set though. It's big, sturdy, long (longer than the X-Wing) and with a fair amount of detail. I'd say it's just as good as a display piece as a play set (it has missiles and bombs). Again, it's a fairly expensive set, but it's a good build that will take you about an hour to an hour and a half to complete. The X-Wing might be more satisfying to build, but all things considered this set is a very close second for me and very much worth getting. 

Lego Star Wars TIE Fighter 9492

My second Star Wars Lego set, and the obvious buy after the X-Wing.

It's a quicker, but also a less fun build in my opinion. Most of your time will be spent on the two wings, so that part's pretty repetitive. While putting them together, the wings are very flimsy, it's only when they're finished that they have some sturdiness.

The end result is great though, it's pretty big and looks good. The minifigs are great as well, I love how they all have this evil grin on their face haha. The pilot is my favourite.

I got this one for about €30 - if I had paid more than €40 for it, I would have considered it a bit of a rip-off. Like I said, the end result looks great, but the build is pretty simple and not that interesting. It does make a good pair with the X-Wing... but if you only have money for one set, skip this and get the X-Wing.

Some pics:

(don't throw black balls at crying baldies)