LEGO Star Wars Summer 2021: Best Star Wars Wave Ever?
Overview
Yesterday, a Japanese Catalogue gave us our first glimpse at the new Summer 2021 LEGO Star Wars sets. Since then, LEGO have today officially revealed two of the sets themselves, specifically the Clone Wars-related sets. This means we have a plethora of ‘high’ quality images to look at today.
These sets originally leaked months ago, but this is the first time we have proper pictures of the sets and minifigures. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to go through the wave set-by-set and share my thoughts.
If you don’t care about a set-by-set breakdown, skip to the conclusion at the bottom.
The Sets
Duel on Mandalore (75310)
Starting with the cheapest, we have the Duel on Mandalore. Based on the final arc of Season 7 of The Clone Wars, the set features Darth Maul and Ahsoka as they fight in the Mandalore Throne Room. The set contains 147 pieces and will retail at €19.99 starting August 1st.
My initial impression of this set was that the build is comically small. You have two builds contained within these 147 pieces, meaning about as much substance per build as a battlepack. There isn’t much to say about the build itself, really. I was worried that the cell build will be a solid cube, but the details are a sticker placed on a regular window piece. This is great because you can see Maul standing inside, just like in the show.
Build aside, the main reason I’m interested in this set is for those minifigures and my god they are good.
This is easily the best Darth Maul minifigure they’ve ever done. It shares the same head/horns pieces as the Darth Maul from the Star Wars Character encyclopedia, but it has a completely new torso and leg pieces.
Sadly, it’s the exact same Ahsoka minifigure as from the AAT set last year. It’s a shame for anyone who got that set for the figure, but it’s a huge W for anyone who wanted it and held off.
I feel like the Maul minifigure will convince a lot of people to buy this set despite the duplicate Ahsoka and small build. Myself included. Can’t wait.
Trexler Marauder (75311)
The next cheapest, at €39.99 for 478 pieces, would be the Trexler Marauder. Also known as the Imperial Troop Transport, the set is based off Season 2 of the Mandalorian. The set comes with 4 minifigures, namely Greef Karga, a Mortar Stormtrooper, and two regular Stormtroopers.
Much like the Duel on Mandalore, I’m much more interested in the figures of this set rather than the build.
The Greef Karga figure actually leaked a few weeks ago, so I can say with confidence that it looks incredible. It honestly puts the figure from the Razor Crest set to shame. The figure has a grey beard now with a much more detailed torso print too. The biggest improvement is definitely the new leg-printing , which you can’t see too well in these images.
I’m very glad they included two regular Stormtroopers along with the Mortar Stormtrooper here. It almost makes this a good army-builder, for those interested. I love the Mortar Stormtrooper here. The yellow pauldron looks great and I’m sure that printing will look great on the newer dual-molded helmets.
The build itself is okay looking on first inspection. I imagine it’ll be a build with some mass to it. It’s a boring looking vehicle though, so it’s hard to get too excited about it, honestly. Like I said, it’s the figures here I’m way more interested in.
Slave 1 (75312)
The Slave 1 was a set I originally wasn’t interested in at all. The initial leak stated that it was another downscaled play-set like the Imperial Shuttle, X-Wing, and TIE Fighter sets from January. The leak also suggested it would be an Original Trilogy version, with more Boba Fett and Han Solo minifigures. Thankfully, either the leak was wrong or LEGO changed their minds.
The Slave 1 is actually based off Season 2 of The Mandalorian. It’ll retail for €49.99 with 592 pieces and two incredible minifigures. The ship itself is scaled somewhere between the Slave 1 from the Betrayal at Cloud City and the 20th Anniversary one. The cockpit won’t rotate like the UCS version or the 20th Anniversary one, it seems. The build looks really clean and smooth. I honestly can’t wait to build it.
The minifigures in this set are probably the highest quality duo of figures in any Star Wars set ever. I couldn’t be more thankful that it’s not just another Episode 5 Boba Fett and Han Solo combo.
The Din figure is the same as you’ll find in the Trouble on Tatooine set from January. This is, in my eyes, one of the greatest minifigures ever made. It’s unclear whether this set will have an actual face print for Din or not. He does get the Beskar Spear though, which is a much cooler weapon than the sniper in my opinion.
The Boba Fett minifigure absolutely exceeded my expectations by miles. We get new torso and leg prints as well as arm printing on both sides. I couldn’t ask for more here. By the blurry looks of it, they captured this version of Boba absolutely perfectly.
I’ve seen some people say that the set should have Mayfield too, to make up for the price. As much as I’d love a Mayfield minifigure, if you gave me the choice between 2 god-tier minifigures or 3 good minifigures, I’d take the former 100%. I understand these are not mutually exclusive, but I’d be very hard-pressed to complain when we’re getting such a great Boba Fett here.
Mandalorian Starfighter (75316)
As alluded to earlier, the second Clone Wars set LEGO officially revealed today is the Mandalorian Starfighter. For €54.99, you get 544 pieces and (I believe) three exclusive minifigures.
The thing about this build I’m most excited about is seeing the mechanism for that rotating wing section. I’m immensely curious about how that works, moreso than anything else. Other than that, the build looks great with it’s Mandalorian colour-scheme and smooth middle section. I think the visible-studs-to-tiled ratio is solid, and those strong diagonal blue stripes look very good.
The minifigures in this set, just like the others, are exceedingly good. All of them have a highly-detailed mandalorian helmets, as well as unique torso, hip, leg, and foot printing. They also have jetpacks and semi-automatic machine gun pieces. The only thing they don’t have are arm printing, but that’s completely acceptable.
The Gar Saxon minifigure has a new, custom-molded mandalorian helmet. I believe it will be reused in the future Mandalorian Forge set, but for now it’s unique to Gar Saxon.
This is the first time we’re getting Bo-Katan as a LEGO minifigure. I think this figure will prove to be very popular because of her appearance in The Mandalorian Season 2 aswell as her prominence in The Clone Wars. This is greatly helped by the fact that she hasn’t changed her clothes in the 28 years between the shows. She has a custom printed face and a spare hair piece too, which is nice.
The Mandalorian Loyalist figure is also exclusive to this set. With that said, it’s also a spiritual successor to the Deathwatch Mandalorian in Pre Vizsla’s Mandalorian Fighter set. He’s a massive upgrade over the old figure, which didn’t even have leg printing.
I really think this set could’ve had a second Mandalorian Loyalist figure, considering the price. The ship looks great, but those wings are quite thin so I can’t imagine it has too much weight to it. We’ll have to wait and see I suppose.
Moff Gideon's Light Cruiser (75315)
By far the most expensive set of the wave would be Moff Gideon’s Light Cruiser. You get 1,336 pieces for it’s retail price of €159.99. It’s based on the final episode of the Mandalorian Season 2 and comes with six minifigures. Of these six minifigures, only three of them are exclusive, and one of those three is a ‘massable’ character, not even a named one.
The build looks similar in terms of scale and detail to recent Star Destroyer sets. The shaping reminds me of the Republic Frigate set from 2011, but with a much beefier and more detailed body. It has a long gap for ‘launching’ advent-calendar-scale TIE Fighters out of. It’s a shame to see so many blue technic pins visible though….
I think the minifigure selection here from looking at the catalogue is a little disappointing. The first three figures have been seen in plenty of sets already. Grogu, for example, is seen in 3 sets already, excluding this wave. The Din figure is in 3 sets of this wave alone, and the Cara Dune figure is seen in the AT-ST set from 2019. There isn’t much to say about these, but the next three are very noteworthy.
We get a brand-new, exclusive (for now) Fennec Shand figure. She looks to have a custom molded helmet and unique torso/leg printing. From the picture, it almost looks like she has some small arm printing, but I highly doubt it. Similar to Bo-Katan, I imagine this will be a popular figure given her appearance in the Bad Batch recently too. Clothes unchanged too, of course.
The Moff Gideon figure looks great, but is slightly disappointing to me. He doesn’t seem to have any leg-printing, which is one thing. But the Dark Saber being just a regular lightsaber but with a black hilt is a great shame. I think the Darksaber is so important within the world of Star Wars that it deserves better, to be honest. If the blade is shorter than a regular saber blade, I can maybe forgive it. Otherwise, there’s room for improvement for sure.
The Dark Trooper looks amazing, I think. Whether that head is a single molded piece or a helmet on top of a black head isn’t too important to me. It looks beefy and menacing, which is perfect. What’s disappointing here is that there’s only one of them… For a set of this price, especially given the context of the scene, there should’ve been at least two Dark Troopers. Hopefully they come out with a Dark Trooper battle pack in January of next year to ‘remedy’ this.
Conclusion
So, to summarize, this wave is full of great sets with incredible figures. The minifigures, in particular, exceed my expectations at every opportunity. An extra Dark Trooper in Moff Gideon’s Light Cruiser set, and an extra Mandalorian Loyalist in the Starfighter would make this wave pretty much perfect, from what I see.
This is easily the best wave in years, but is it the best wave ever? In my opinion no it isn’t. 2013 had so many incredible sets release that year that it would be recency bias for me to say 2021 is better.
BUT this 2021 summer wave is easily the second best. I also think that right now, in 2021, we have the best catalogue of sets in LEGO Star Wars history. Between this wave, the helmets, the MBS Mos Eisley Cantina, the UCS Falcon, UCS Star Destroyer, UCS A-Wing, the Sith mosaics, the pseudo-UCS R2-D2 and Probe Droid, the future UCS Republic Gunship and UCS AT-AT sets, I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be a fan of LEGO Star Wars.
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