The Imperial Star Destroyer LEGO Set
Purchased: Oct, 2005
I recently broke down and picked up the ISD LEGO Set at a LEGO store in MA. This is the second largest set LEGO has to offer, clocking it at an impressive 3104 pieces and boasts to be over 3 feet long when finished (the recently released Death Star II set beats it by about 400, coming in close to 3500 pieces). This set put me back about $300, which is a hefty chunk of change for what most people think of as a little kid toy. But let me tell you, this set blows away any LEGO creation you ever monkeyed with when you were a little kid.
The ISD and the DS 2 sets both cost the same, but I heard recently (after purchasing the set) that LEGO will be discontinuing production of the ISD in favor of the newer Death Star II set since the market doesn’t seem to be able to sustain two $300 LEGO sets. I wouldn’t be surprised if this set becomes extinct shortly after Christmas of this year.
Since most of my friends are either fellow LEGO nerds, or just nerds in general, I’m going to try and do a semi-regular photo blog on the building experience.
Day 1 - The Box (10/8/05)
The first day home with the set, all I did was take a good long look at the packaging. The box itself was pretty large and pretty heavy, so it at least FELT like I had gotten something of value for my $300. I didn’t even start building as I had to start clearing work space on the floor of my office (I don’t have a table large enough to lay out all the pieces. As a part of the preparation process, I took all the pieces out of the sealed bags they come in in the box, and transfered them to little ziplock baggies since I know I’ll be needing to restore them after every building session so my cat doesn’t try and eat them.
Note picture 3, there is a CD standing against the box to give you an idea of how large the packaging is. There is also no real empty space in the box, it’s packed to the gills. The manual is a 226 spiral-bound behemoth.
Needless to say, this set is going to take me a LONG time to build
Day 2 - Base Frame (10/15/05)
This was the first day trying to work on the set itself, so going was slow as I figured out where all the pieces were and such. I got about 23 pages into the 226 page manual, and all I have to show for it is the main base frame of the star destroyer. It’s just a triangle with a cross bar right now… hopefully in a few days though it’ll look a bit more impressive. Just one photo from this day’s work.
Star Destroyer Main Frame
A snapshot of the main frame of the star destroyer. I’m pretty sure this is the middle of the whole thing where the rest of the set will taper inwards from here. |
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