SDCC Brickmaster 2009 Review

[bigospedros]

No pictures of the box or anything here, because I couldn't bring myself to pay for this set on ebay! So, I ordered the parts via Bricklink for the Dropship and combined it with the AT-TE I received through an existing Brickmaster subscription.

Name: San Diego Comic Con 2009 Brickmaster Exclusive : Republic Dropship & AT-TE Mini
Theme: Star Wars Minis
Year: 2009
Pieces: errr ?
Minifigs: None
Price: $50 (if you were lucky enough to "win" the chance to buy one!)

First up, all the parts laid out in a nice and orderly fashion ... how organised!


A couple of random parts in the build ...




And here's the final build Dropship :


And here's the Dropship carrying the AT-TE


So there you have it. I'm glad I spent the time getting the instructions and working out the parts list. After a few Bricklink orders, I had all the bits I needed and I was away. It's a pretty good model once built and looks good as a display model.

It even inspired me to make a mini AT-OT companion model to go with it, which you can see here

The Ratings :

Playability/Swooshability : 9/10 (pretty swooshable, but the "dismount" is a bit fiddly and sometimes leaves bits of the dropship behind)

Design : 8/10 (Quite an accurate depiction, although as I said, bits get left behind on "dismount")

Price : 2/10 (if you buy the actual set ... FAR too expensive) or 7/10 (if you just buy the parts like I did!)

Overall : 8/10 (A few tiny flaws, but pretty good overall)

[meeotch]

Now I know this might be just me, but I think by default, the price has to be 1/10. If I recall correctly, the AT-TE portion has right around, if not just under, 100 pieces, and by my count from your picture, the LAAT/i has just over 100 pieces. What should be 20, maybe 25 dollars worth of pieces is 50 dollars. And that's IF you went to Comic-Con and IF you were lucky enough to get one. I think a strong argument could be made to either partially factor in travel expenses for those who were able to nab one in person, or aftermarket expenses for the rest, pushing the end cost even higher. I'd challenge anyone to find a worse price / parts ratio for a set 1 week after initial release date.

[bigospedros]

Now I know this might be just me, but I think by default, the price has to be 1/10. If I recall correctly, the AT-TE portion has right around, if not just under, 100 pieces, and by my count from your picture, the LAAT/i has just over 100 pieces. What should be 20, maybe 25 dollars worth of pieces is 50 dollars. And that's IF you went to Comic-Con and IF you were lucky enough to get one. I think a strong argument could be made to either partially factor in travel expenses for those who were able to nab one in person, or aftermarket expenses for the rest, pushing the end cost even higher. I'd challenge anyone to find a worse price / parts ratio for a set 1 week after initial release date.

this was pointed out in this review on another forum. Given that I bought the parts for this then price wasn't all that bad, but I take your point and will add the same edit here, as I did on Eurobricks!