It's rare for a set to be a day 1 purchase for me, but I ordered Red Dragon's Tale at the stroke of midnight just to make sure I secured a Mimic Dice Box, and it didn't disappoint!The set comes in a window box, with the instructions slotted in to show an image of the completed set. The set itself comes as around 200 pieces in a single bag.

The first thing to note about this set is that it contains no stickers! The eyes and the keyhole are all printed pieces, making for a much nicer quality finished product which will stand the test of time well.

The build itself is relatively straightforward without any advanced build techniques - after all, it is basically a box with a little embellishment. The face of the Mimic is nicely achieved, with the quarter-circle pieces shaping the gums around the creature's gaping teeth. The tongue looks good if the lid is closed, but does look a little odd if the lid is open in a biting pose. Either way, it can be folded back fully to just have the Mimic bearing its teeth.

Most importantly as a dice box, it does hold a full set of 7 standard sized polyhedral dice and can be closed fully, even if the tongue is in the retracted position. While I could use it for dice storage, I now use it exclusively as a long overdue dice jail.

As a regular D&D player, this is an awesome set, and will see a lot of use at the gaming table. For anyone who isn't a huge D&D fan and just bought Red Dragon's Tale as a general fantasy set and ended up with a Mimic, it's also a great way to store the spare heads etc from the main set. Either way, if you've ended up with this GWP, you're probably going to appreciate it.

At the time of writing, the Tallneck is the only set Lego has released from the Horizon series. While I hope to see more in the future, if this does turn out to be the only one then they've absolutely nailed the brief with a memorable and wonderfully detailed set.

The set contains 1222 pieces, so even if you're paying full RRP it comes in comfortably under the 10p/piece threshold which a lot of AFOLs use to gauge a set's value for money. The fact that the set only contains one minifigure is largely contributory to this relatively low price (especially for a licensed set), but in no way detracts from what an overall great display piece this is.
As with many 18+ sets, the instruction book includes several pages talking about the Tallneck's presence in the games, and the process of designing its Lego counterpart. It's a feature which I believe started with the UCS Star Wars sets, and for those of us who enjoy a little background knowledge, it's great to see it appear in more and more sets outside of a galaxy far, far away.

The build time for myself was a whisker over 4 hours, and that was taking things at a leisurely pace. The set comes in 8 numbered bags for ease of construction, with the first 3 being dedicated to the large scenic base, and the following 5 to the colossal Tallneck itself. The base could have easily ended up being a tedious build, but the Lego designers put in enough detail to keep the process interesting. I'm particularly fond of the sagging traffic lights, overgrown with plant life, but the miniature Watcher is also a delight, with options of blue, yellow or red lenses, to indicate a passive, alert or hostile status accordingly. You'll also find a small patch of tall grass, perfect for Aloy to take cover while she stalks her quarry.

The Tallneck build involves very little repetition. While the left and right legs are mirror builds of each other, the front and hind legs are different enough in design to keep you from feeling bogged down whilst building. The disc-shaped head is accomplished using some interesting build techniques, and results in an almost perfect circle, often difficult to accomplish with Lego's blocky nature. The bulk of the Tallneck is comprised of black and white plates, with some blue-grey and sand coloured pieces thrown it to give it some much needed contrast, and a few gold pieces to really make the set pop.
Once assembled and on display, you could almost be forgiven for overlooking that it's a Lego set. The Tallneck itself is very short on visible studs, presenting a very clean looking model which looks incredible. The base has a much more classic Lego look to it, which personally I'm a fan of as I still like my Lego sets overall to be identifiable as Lego (otherwise you may as well just buy a model kit).
Additional touches of detail are provided through the use of stickers. These are a divisive point amongst AFOLs, for me personally I'm happy enough with them as long as a set doesn't go overboard. The Tallneck doesn't include a ridiculous number, and the metallic silver detailing on some of them contribute to giving the set that nice little technological touch to drive home the world Aloy lives in.
Once the Tallneck is built, the unarticulated legs slot into technic pins on the base, holding it securely in place. It makes the set surprisingly sturdy, but at the cost of losing any kind of posability. It took me a few adjustments to get the Tallneck's posture correct to match the box art, but once I did it was very satisfying, and it certainly has a majestic feel to the pose.

On the subject of Aloy, her minifigure is one of the best I've seen in any Lego set. There is a ton of detail on the printing, including arms and legs, and two alternate expressions on the front and back of the head, so you can set her mood as desired. The hairpiece is long and drapes down over her shoulders, but has a softer, rubbery texture to it, enabling her head to still face slightly to the left and right. Her Focus is printed on the side of her head, and the hairpiece also includes a strategically placed hole to allow the Focus to be visible through it.
My only criticism of the minifigure (and to be fair, it's not actually an issue with the minifigure itself) would be the bow. Her spear is a nice mini build, with the end result being undeniably Aloy's spear, but the bow is just a generic, single-piece Lego bow. It would have been nice if this was a mini build in itself, in order to have it looking more like it belongs in the same world as the rest of the set.

Overall, this is an amazing set if you're a fan of Horizon and Lego. Even if you're just a Horizon fan, this may be the Lego set which gets you hooked! With a thoroughly enjoyable build, an excellent final display piece, a good price-per-piece value, and one of the nicest minifigures Lego have produced to date, I can't recommend this one highly enough.

For all of the flack they drew at the time of release, the Star Wars prequels have aged remarkably well, with Revenge of the Sith being named as many fans' favourite movie of the franchise. But love them or loathe them, one undeniable thing about the prequels was that they gave us some fantastic looking vehicles, particularly from the Clone Wars era, including the Jedi Interceptor as seen in the opening battle of Episode III.

This is the third Lego incarnation of the yellow Jedi Interceptor as flown by Anakin Skywalker, but with this being the only version I've built personally I have no point of comparison, so will be assessing this set purely on its own merits.

With an RRP of £25 and coming in at 248 pieces, this is pretty average as far as value for money goes. However, possibly due to so many fans already having a previous version of this particular ship, the price seemed to have sharply dropped upon release, and it's frequently seen on the likes of eBay brand new for just under £20, making it excellent value.

The build is split across 3 bags, and as you'd expect from the design of the ship there is some repetition to be found. Bag 1 gives you the minifigures and the cockpit, and bags 2 and 3 are the two wings, so are mirror builds of eachother. As an adult, this took me around 40 minutes to assemble, and I can't imagine younger builders taking much more than 1 1/2 hours to have their Interceptor ready to take flight.

It's certainly a satisfying build, taking shape nicely in quick time. As with many Star Wars ships, the canopy is a single moulded and printed piece to give the Interceptor its iconic look which would have been difficult to achieve with multiple bricks. Otherwise there aren't any particularly unusual or unique pieces involved in the build, making it a quick and simple job.

There are a few stickers on this set, and while there are more sticker-heavy sets out there, this does feel like at least a couple of them could have been replaced with printed pieces. Would it really have been that much trouble to print a Republic logo onto a 1x1 round tile? Because applying that sticker was a little fiddly!

Once assembled, Anakin's Jedi Interceptor is a really nice little ship, and certainly looks the part. The build is sturdy, so should survive younger fans putting it through its paces. Anakin fits snugly into the cockpit, even though he does have to lean back at a slightly awkward angle in order to close the canopy, and of course R2-D2 fits into the astromech slot on the wing. There are two spring-loaded shooters tucked under the cockpit, which only protrude slightly from the back of the ship for firing. The wings and fins can each be adjusted. And there's even a clip subtly placed under the wings to store Anakin's lightsaber while he's flying. All in all, a really nicely designed model.

Minifigure-wise, this is where the set becomes a little controversial. R2-D2 is R2-D2, there's nothing special or different about him, but of course you can't have Anakin's Jedi Interceptor without him. However, Anakin is the issue for many collectors. While he is a nice minifigure with a good level of detail all across the board, Lego have reused the torso and legs from the 75269 Duel on Mustafar set, meaning he has the dirt and burn marks from his fight with Obi-Wan... which doesn't happen until much later in the movie. At this point, his outfit should be pretty much spotless. As the first Anakin of my collection I wasn't put off by this, but it is a bit of an oversight on Lego's part, and has caused some frustration among AFOLs.

So overall, I thought it was a fantastic set. Yes, it is another Anakin's Jedi Interceptor (at least it's not as regular as his son's landspeeder!), and the question could be asked as to why we didn't get Obi-Wan's instead, which has only been released once to-date. And yes, some of the stickers really should have been printed pieces. And yes, we have the issues with the innacurate Anakin minifigure. But it's a clean build, sturdy, playable, displayable, and is great value for money if you have a good look around.

A worthy addition to the Grand Army of the Republic.

At the time of writing, fans around the world are eagerly awaiting season 2 of The Mandalorian, and the continuation of Mando and The Child's story together. While season 2 will undoubtedly bring with it all new Lego tie-ins, to date there have only been two Mandalorian Lego sets: the AT-ST Raider, and the Razor Crest.

The personal ship of the titular character, the Razor Crest has become a fan favourite, possibly even standing to become a new Millennium Falcon to the latest generation of fans. As such it has justifiably been brought to life as a large-scale set, coming it at just over 1000 pieces for £120. As far as price-per piece goes, this is leaning slightly more towards to the expensive side of average, but there is so much about this set which makes it worth every penny.

The build is split into 6 sets of numbered bags, accumulating in a 3-4 hour build. There are some very cool pieces included in this set to bring the shape of the Crest together, most notably around the bulky twin engines. There is also a brand new canopy custom made for this set, perfectly recreating the cockpit shape in a way that would have been extremely difficult to achieve otherwise. There are a few stickers in this set, as you'd expect on a build of this size, but thankfully the canopy isn't one of them, so there's no risk of leaving conspicuous sticky marks on this beautiful new piece when attempting to get that perfect sticker alignment. Obviously stickers are a divisive point amongst the fans, but do give some added detail to the hull which again would have been tough to achieve just through bricks.

The initial part of the build comprises largely of Technic pieces, forming the bare bones of the Razor Crest on which the hull can take shape. Once this is done, the rest of the build is mostly made up of more traditional pieces. There is a little repetition to the build, most of which comes from the engines, as you may expect. But as these are the final part of the build, you'll most likely be feeling anxious to finish by this point and there isn't really any tedium to the process.

Out of the 50ish Star Wars Lego sets in my collection at present, this is only the second one I've built with an error in the instructions. Interestingly enough, the other was the AT-ST Raider, leaving me really hoping Lego will up their game a little for the season 2 sets! As with the AT-ST, this isn't a build-breaking error, but is just an error in the "list of bricks needed for this next stage" box on one instruction. It's easy enough to spot and correct, so shouldn't cause any issues for most builders. My other issue with the instructions is one quite common to larger sets, where some stages will only feature the addition of one or two smaller pieces, but the instructions aren't clear as to where they're being added to, leading to a game of spot-the-difference with the previous frame to work out what you should be doing next.

Small instruction nitpicks aside, once you've built the Razor Crest it's a sight to behold, and you absolutely feel like you've got your monies' worth. It's packed full of play features, with an accessible cockpit with space for 2 minifigures, a detachable escape pod, again with room for a minifigure. There are a pair of spring-loaded shooters, both of which are fully integrated and fired using buttons set into the top of the ship. The front side panels fold down to access the Madalorian's sleeping quarters on one side, and a small storage area for weapons and spare missiles on the other. The rear boarding ramp lowers, and the rear side panels can fold down, all of which provide access to the cargo hold, which includes 2 of Mando's bounties frozen in carbonite. Unlike the Han in carbonite slab which comes with several Slave-I and Cloud City sets, these aren't moulded pieces, but are just flat slabs with stickers. While moulded pieces would have been a nice touch, the flatter ones don't really feel like they're detracting much from the set, and it makes them easier to slot into the provided spaces in the hold.

The minifigure selection for this set is also top-notch. Obviously you get the Mandalorian himself, but as with the AT-ST Raider, he comes with his episode 1 & 2 armour, so no beskar for us. He also comes with a plain black head, so anyone hoping to see a little Lego Pedro Pascal will be disappointed. Aside from that, he's well detailed and a nice figure in general. You get Greef Karga, who at present is still exclusive to this set. He does have a nice torso print and and a reversable head with two expressions, but the figure is let down a little by having plain red legs, with no printing at all. Then there's IG-11, mostly consisting of grey battle droid parts, but a decent figure nonetheless. The Scout Trooper is a great minifigure, with nice torso and leg printing, and a fantastic helmet mould. Growing up on Return of the Jedi, the Scouts are my personal favourite Imperial troopers, and this one really does them justice.

And of course the most eagerly awaited minifigure: The Child, or "Baby Yoda". The box art doesn't do justice to how small he is, and he's just the right size to clip onto one of Mando's hands to allow him to be carried around. The head is nicely detailed and slightly rubbery, giving a bit of flex on those adorable ears. Due to his small size, the rest of his body is cast as a single fixed piece, so the only posability on the little guy is in turning his head left and right.

Overall, there is very little bad I can say about this set, and am happy to rate it 5 stars in every category. As mentioned, there's a slight error in the instructions, but nothing to justify marking down what could well be the best Star Wars Lego set of 2020.

Where to even start with this? While there have been some pretty impressive sized models released in the UCS and Masterbuilder series, at the time of writing only a mere handful have been immortalised in what can be considered colossal-sized Lego form. Coming in at almost 4800 pieces, the Star Destroyer Devastator is one of these.

As far as price per piece goes, the Star Destroyer has taken a little flack from the fans. The obvious comparison is the 2017 UCS Millennium Falcon, selling for the same price, arriving in the same sized box, but with a piece count a little over 7500. This might leave Star Destroyer buyers feeling a little shortchanged, but it honestly shouldn't. While the design of the Falcon lends itself to a lot of smaller pieces, the sleek lines of the Empire's trademark capital ship gives way to a stack of huge plates, with anything up to a 16x16 making up the bulk of the hull.

When you first open the box (as long as you've followed the tabs and opened it on the right side) you'll be greeted by a sleek inner box containing the hefty instruction manual. Due to its sheer size it's ring-bound, and as is standard with UCS sets the first few pages are dedicated to facts about the ship itself, the Lego design process, and interviews with the design team. When opened up this instruction book takes up a lot of space, so you'll need a decent sized table to get to work on this.

Once past the instructions there are four inner boxes, which when stacked show an image of the Star Destroyer printed along the end. With the Falcon, each of these boxes carries a famous quote from the original trilogy about the iconic vessel, however there is nothing like this with the Star Destroyer. It's a bit of shame, and smacks slightly of favouritism towards the Rebellion, leaving us Empire fans feeling a little cold.

Within the boxes you'll find the build split into 19 sets of numbered bags (for example you may have 3 of bag "5" and 5 of bag "8" etc), as well as a handful of non-numbered bags containing the largest pieces of hull plating, engine housing and so on. Normally in a review I'd now say "It took me x hours to build", but not wanting to rush such an investment I did one set of numbered bags per day, stretching the build out across almost 3 weeks. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say the days averaged out to an hour each, so you're looking at an 18-20 hour build process. The only sticker in the entire set is the data plaque, giving some interesting little tidbits of information on the ship.

The initial part of the build makes up the display stand and the skeleton of the ship. There are a lot of really interesting Technic pieces and guild techniques that go into making the backbone of the Star Destroyer, allowing the frame to not only take the weight of the rest of the build, but remain stable when moving the completed model. The stand itself may look a little flimsy, but also carries the weight well, and has a little flexibility which helps during movement. Again I draw a comparison to the Falcon, and point out that the Star Destroyer obviously has no landing gear, so the stand is an integrated part of the build and can't be removed without extreme difficulty once the build is even just half way done. This does mean you won't have a "pure" Star Destroyer model, and there will always be gaps in lower hull where the stand connects. In the grand scheme of things it's not a huge issue, and is just the price to pay for building a faithful replica of a ship which was never designed for anything but being suspended in space.

Once through that initial Technic build, the hull plates begin to come together in satisfyingly large sections. With my one-set-per-day building, each session ended with noticeably huge progress having been made since the previous one. There's a surprising amount of detail added to the larger hull plates to prevent them from simply being flat, featureless areas, but when you reach the command area and the bridge section, that's where the build really become incredible, with anything from ice skate blades to frying pans being used to ingeniously add extra levels of detail to the ship.

By the time you're finished, you have a 3 foot long monstrosity which really captures the might of the Empire. The detail, as mentioned, is brilliant, and the set even comes with a Tantive IV and a single TIE fighter, which mostly feel like they're there to give the ship a sense of scale. The TIE sits in the docking bay on the underside of the ship, while the Tantive IV is designed to fly alongside using a clear rod. You do have the option, however, of removing the rod from the Tantive IV and fitting it into the docking bay alongside the TIE, which I've done simply because I think it looks a lot tidier. When relocating it will require both hands to carry, either carefully picking the set up from underneath or removing the detachable top section to access the carrying handle (which will still require a second hand to stabilise due to balance issues). The biggest issue you'll have at this point is finding a place to display the Star Destroyer, and preferably somewhere it won't attract a lot of dust! For me personally, it sits on top of one of my Lego display cabinets, looming menacingly over the rest of the collection... and unfortunately collecting dust as it goes. I've just had to accept the fact that dusting Lego is now a regular part of my housework.

So the big downside for this set comes in the playability category, but in fairness a UCS set of this size really isn't meant for playing. As mentioned, the display stand is integrated, so "swooshing" the ship around isn't really an option, although the size and weight would have been an issue on this front even without the stand. Comparing again to the Falcon, unlike the former this doesn't have any kind of interior. The entire space under the hull is dedicated to the Technic skeleton holding the ship together, so anyone hoping to be able to pop the top off and see the recreation of the Star Destroyer bridge will be sorely disappointed. The turbolasers along the sides and upper hull can swivel, but that is the entirety of this sets playability.

The minifigure selection with this set is again disappointing. The Imperial Officer and Crew Member included may be exclusives to this set, and the printing on them is very nice, but compared to the Falcon's lineup of iconic characters, getting 2 generic nobodies is certainly a let down. Considering the presence of the Tantive IV shows that this set is really supposed to be recreating that memorable opening scene to A New Hope it would have been nice to include an exclusive Vader variant, or even one of the lesser known Imperial officers on board such as Nahdonnis Praji or Daine Jir.

Those nitpicks aside, if you're a fan of the Empire and have the money to spare, this set will make a truly incredible addition to your collection. The build process is tremendous fun, and the sheer size and detail on the ship are awe-inspiring. Top marks to Lego.