Assassinate! ASSASSINATE!!!

Wait, sorry, wrong franchise...

So the Assassin Droids here are kind of marketed as being part of the Separatist Army with the gray and dark blue color scheme on their speeder, and never an instance in The Clone Wars were they used as such. They were in Gha Nachkt's junker, and he was secretly allied with the Separatists because he found R2-D2 after a battle and was selling him to General Grievous, and any other time the Assassin Droids popped up, they were bounty hunters because they're just IG unit variants.

The only time they were really shown to be allied with the Separatists to my knowledge is the classic Tartakovsky microseries where they have lances and sped around on speederbikes tearing through Republic forces. There's also a bunch of Clones on speederbikes with lances, too, and Obi-Wan disguises himself as a Clone to get close to Durge, a bounty hunter that was leading the Separatists on Muunilinst. The Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries takes the Rule of Cool and cranks that dial till it breaks off. Nothing about Clones and Droids on speederbikes with lances makes any sense and yet it works.

As for this set, yeah, it's an instance where LEGO just made a thing up to make a battlepack worth the price and not just the three metallic colored droids. Even the clips for the neck were lacquered. They look great. The Elite Assassin Droids, eh, they're just black. Cool, but, eh. Now had they made the speederbike and included the lance...

Somebody just reviewed this on Brickset a couple of days ago, what are the odds?

Considering there’s no actual minifigures this set is pretty good.
I wish they would start making more prequel, and animated show sets like rebels, and clone wars.
Instead of remaking another Anakin ship and a bunch of OT sets.
Does anyone else agree or disagree?

Shiny assassin droids are excellent

The last (and only) OG "Clone Wars" set we got was Anakin's Custom Jedi Starfighter in 2015. I'd say we are about due for a random debut of Obi-Wan's Clone Lance Division vs. Durge's IG droid lancers.

I got the shiny Darth Vader minifig in this set! This inspired me to look him up on eBay....woah.

@nick3c said:
"Considering there’s no actual minifigures this set is pretty good.
I wish they would start making more prequel, and animated show sets like rebels, and clone wars.
Instead of remaking another Anakin ship and a bunch of OT sets.
Does anyone else agree or disagree?
"

Although I like the OT sets and Anakin's starfighters, I do agree. I liked Rebels and the Clone Wars better than many of the movies anyway; I understand they are not new but I would like to see some rebooted sets from those eras or some sets based on those series, like TLG did with Ninjago Legacy. Legacy is one of the greatest things LEGO has done in years, for fans who couldn't/didn't buy the original sets and are very nostalgic (me), for strengthening the Ninjago theme, and for making a larger profit themselves. It's genius and I'd like to see them do something similar with Rebels and/or the Clone Wars.

I remember this set was featured somewhat prominently in "The Search for R2-D2," a comic storyline from LEGO Club Magazine that (I think) ran from 2007 to 2008. After R2 went missing, Count Dooku ordered them to hunt him down (despite them apparently not being allied with the Separatists), since R2's memory had valuable Republic intel.

So yeah, it borrowed pretty heavily from a certain Clone Wars season 1 story... I loved following it as a kid though, because it was the only other real ongoing Lego storyline besides Bionicle. Alongside the LEGO Magazine comics, there was an animated webcomic following the misadventures of a squad of Clones and some comic relief battle droids both searching for R2-D2 as well. I still remember how invested I and my siblings got in the lives of clone troopers 1137 and 1139. Good times...

Just like IG-11, this army building pack nobody asked for seems to have found its way to the heart of a few here. I'm somewhat impressed.

Back when battle packs featured actual blasters rather than stud shooters.

I'm guessing the silver droids aren't ACTUALLY IG-88 units, despite looking almost the same as IG-88 in 6209; but still, seeing several assassin droids all together reminds me of the character's classic-EU origin story, where there were five IG units, and the first IG-88 copied himself into three of the others (the fifth went his own way) - making four IG-88s referred to as A, B, C and D, identical in every way, with big goals for a droid uprising and B took on bounty hunter work in the meantime to pay the bills.

And after Boba Fett single-handedly scrapped three of them on independent occasions when they tried to steal the frozen Han Solo from him, IG-88 A went ahead with the plan to upload himself into the Second Death Star's computer core right before the Battle of Endor, where he was in control of the most powerful 'body' in the galaxy and NOTHING COULD STOP HIM NOW.

(The story finished there, but we all know how THAT ended xP)

My other memory of Assassin Droids is completely getting the PANTS scared off me when they popped up unexpectedly in the Star Wars Droidworks kids PC game. The first three waves of missions were all just carefree little 'drive your droid around and accomplish some simple objectives designed to teach you about physics in a non-threatening way', in the name of preparation to shut down an Assassin Droid factory; and they you get to the more final missions, and the music is far more ominous and you get points where you turn a corner and there's just ANGRY ASSASSIN DROID OUT OF NOWHERE. It was one of the first involved video games I played as a kid, so I was NOT prepared for that, and it traumatised me somewhat... I ran my droid away to hide in a corner and was too scared to try finishing the level for *months* out of fear that I'd encounter it again xD

I don't have anything to say on the set itself... I was entering my 'dark age' about this time, and had no investment in The Clone Wars series either; so I was aware of its existence, but nothing more than that. Then again, that's the case for *most* 2009/2010 sets for me... xD;;;

@MCLegoboy said:
"The Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries takes the Rule of Cool and cranks that dial till it breaks off. Nothing about Clones and Droids on speederbikes with lances makes any sense and yet it works."
It was so good :D I couldn't get into the 2008 The Clone Wars, but I loved the classic microseries a whole heck of a lot!