I love the UCS sets just like anyone else, but this one is up there as one of my top 5 favorite sets. The build itself was fun, but as I neared completion I realized how beautiful it was going to look when done. The size is perfect and it's so lovely on display. Well worth the price!

The B-Wing is one of the most unique (or awkward) ships in the Star Wars galaxy, and definitely the most unorthodox out of the rebel starships the A-Wing, X-Wing and Y-Wing. Therefore it only makes sense that the lego iteration would be just as unique. As an owner of many UCS sets including both Star Destroyers, Shuttle, RBR, X-wing, Snowspeeder, etc. I have to say that this is the most unique UCS ship that I have. Well to the review:

I was a bit preemptive when considering this set because of the many negative or lackluster reviews I've read. Many of the reviews came from seasoned Lego fanatics like myself who also own a bunch of other UCS sets. The biggest complaints I read were about the sets stability, many said that it falls apart at the slightest touch and definitely should not be swooshed around. I don't know if my parts came a little differently but after building my B-Wing I have to say that stability is not an issue what so ever. You can quickly feel where the weight of the ship is and as long as you don't grab it from the bottom of the main wing, or a side wing, then you should have absolutely no problem moving the wings up and down, and swooshing the ship around in all it's different positions.

Once complete the set is massive, it's dwarfs my original UCS X-Wing and is a wonderful companion to sets like the Imperial Shuttle or Star Destroyer. The build was also quite enjoyable, I really like the sloped pieces and the look and weight of the wings, especially the main wing. The weapons are also very nicely designed and use unique elements including a whip!? Crazy! There are many pieces I've never owned or assembled before including the chain links that encompass the cockpit. The instructions are straight forward and divided into 3 booklets which coincide with numbered bags. You build all the components individually and then combine them together which is a process I really enjoy.

Now, onto the few complaints I have with the set: I'm not a huge fan of the stand, and while I understand this is a unique ship that is displayed in a non traditional way, I feel that the stand leaves more to be desired. I wish that the stand was adjustable and would support the B-Wing in additional formations like standing straight up, or with the cockpit near the surface and the main wing pointing upward. Instead it's limited to one formation, albeit the B-Wing does look great when displayed and the stand itself is extremely sturdy. My next gripe with the stand is the large pieces that compose it. Most are parts I've never seen before and they just don't look like typical lego parts to me. I prefer the technic and brick approaches that the Shuttle and many other UCS sets have . My only other complaint would be to have included a minifig or two, the cockpit is perfect size for a pilot and considering sets like the SSD had minifigs, there's no reason the B-Wing shouldn't have.

All in all I love this set already, it's a completely unique addition to the UCS line and does offer a lot of great parts. It's beautiful when displayed and should catch the eye of Lego fans and non Lego fans. It's a shame that so many people were disappointed with this set, I personally feel it's deserved a better reputation. If you don't own the set and are on the fence, I extremely encourage you to pick one up, either to build and display or simply keep MISB for an investment. Rumor is the set is going to retire very soon after only a 1 year run and therefore it could end up becoming very valuable because so many may have put off buying it.

This is a great model but it's not perfect. But part of the greatness is being able to change the few things that need tweaking. I'll try to make points I haven't heard in other reviews and not bore you with repeating what they say.

Value:

First of all, it's a UCS set, so automatically the price per piece won't make any sense. Why buy a set that's not even 1500 pieces for $200USD when you can get the R2-D2 UCS, which has over 2000 pieces for $180USD? I think the fact that people jumped all over this set when it was priced competitively is a testament to demand but illogical price point.

The build:

I took my time building it, I was able to assemble the entire set in the equivalent of 3 nights at home with the wife in front of the TV. To me, having directions automatically makes a build less challenging. But it was fun to build and I learned a few new (to me) techniques.

Apparently there are no model-unique parts, which is nice, since I'm generally more of a MOC guy. The new(ish) plates with the horizontal studs is a great, I want more of these for my other builds.

The model:

I'm super impressed with this thing! As I was building it I had to step back a few times and say to myself, "This thing is huge!" There's an abundance of detail and greebling. I love how the s-foils move and have locking hinges. The cockpit self-levels! The essence of the B-Wing is captured and is a great addition to any Lego collection (this is my first UCS purchase).

Complaints:

During the build of the cockpit the rear section fell apart a few times. I used my own pieces to fix this up; a cross-axle to reinforce the cylinder and a 1x1 round plate to attach the satellite dish. The rear end still seems a little wobbly where it connects to the wheel, I might revisit this later- but at least it won't fall apart like the other section.

The s-foils are sadly lacking any detail on the underside; the model can be set at any angle, so it would seem natural to me to continue the technique on the underside of the wings.

Lastly, the stand: It is fair and probably the weakest point of the model, which is weird because this model is meant to be displayed. In my opinion it's about 2 plates short; I had to add a few pieces to the base section to get it to the correct height. The model is top heavy on the cockpit side so although it hasn't happened yet, it seems like the model could topple over easily.

No minifig pilot? The Imperial Shuttle had 4 figures.

Overall:

Again, the price point makes the difference. I think this set should be ~$160USD RRP since it should be less desirable than the new X-Wing UCS (which has more parts for same price).

As my title reads: Great but not perfect. It's definitely a solid model, very swooshable. Details and accuracy are good and it looks like it's minifig scale, so I might try putting a pilot in there. I wish I could have justified buying two so I could have one model to display and other for parts. 9.5/10

Compared with X-Wing, Y-Wing and A-Wing, the B-Wing has always been the "odd one out": It has a bubbly appearance, strange proportions and an odd symmetry. Star Wars folklore has it that due to its shape, the model was very difficult to film in front of blue screen and thus had little screen time. At the same time, its weird appearance is probably one of the reasons why it has remained popular with the fans despite its virtual non-existence in any battle scenes.

Although between one and two UCS models are released by Lego every year, this is the first UCS Rebel starfighter since the Y-Wing in 2004, and the first starfighter from the original trilogy since Darth Vader's TIE Advanced in 2006. So it's been quite a while since Lego has released anything comparable, and it is interesting to see Lego revisiting these categories after six years.

Box/Instructions

The B-Wing box is one of the larger Lego boxes with a frontal area that can rival the Death Star box, but is not quite as thick. The box is filled to roughly 40%. Instructions are spread over three booklets. The set is accompanied by one sticker sheet with four stickers. Instructions and stickers come in a cardboard-backed plastic bag so they can't be crumpled by the fifteen bags in which the Lego elements come in. All bags except one are numbered. There are no loose parts in the box.

Parts

The B-Wing comes in 1487 parts. Unsurprisingly, and as a glance at the box image already suggests, the vast majority are Light Bluish Grey and Dark Bluish Grey, with a bit of Black for the stand. Many of the internal elements, i.e. the ones which can't be seen in the finished model, are Yellow, Green, Red, Tan and Blue.

The set contains no truly new parts. Technically speaking, the 6 x 6 tiles are new, as they now have bottom tubes. Another never-before seen part is the cockpit canopy. While it looks just like the already-known 10 x 6 x 3 bubble canopy windscreen sporting a new print, this new canopy has eight connectors for a stud and two 2-stud wide cut-outs at the front and the back, where the previously used canopy has four connectors for a stud and two notches for an axle.

The set contains a couple of previously unseen part-colour combinations, e.g. 4 x 3 open wedges in Light Bluish Gray, an fuselage curved aft top in Light Bluish Gray, tread elements in Light Bluish Gray, a large wheel with small cleats in Dark Bluish Gray, and 4 x 2 slopes in Dark Bluish Gray.

The B-Wing fighter itself is built largely of plates and contains very few classic bricks. This doesn't mean, however, that there are no interesting parts: there are a rather large number of curved and angled elements, such as bricks with curved tops, curved slopes and left/right wedges with curved slope, etc. As will be explained later, due to the nature of the build, there are also a lot of different brackets, inverted brackets and plates with studs on the side. Most of these are of the recently introduced kind. There is a fair number of tiles, noticeably the already mentioned 6 x 6 tiles and 4 x 4 tiles with studs on edge. Last but not least, the set contains a number of interesting parts used for greebling and detailing, in particular two 4 x 3 open wedges, two 75 mm motorcycle wheels, treads and four large black engines. Hilariously, the set designer managed to include a black minifig whip! Notable parts supplied by the stand are two black boat masts and four fuselage curved aft top sections as well as the 8 x 16 tile in Black, ubiquitous in Star Wars UCS sets. The remaining parts are mostly common. The amount of technic elements in the set is modest. Interestingly, the set comes with two brick separators.

Minifigures

Unlike some previous UCS models, the B-Wing comes with no minifig.

The build

The almost 1500 parts for the B-Wing come in bags numbered 1 to 10. The B-Wing build is interesting because it is highly modularised. Not including the stand, the B-Wing is built in seven separate modules: Cockpit, cockpit-drive connector, drive section, primary wing, two secondary wings, and weapons pod. Three of these, cockpit-drive connector, primary wing and engine section, are further split down into two sub-modules each. So, not including the stand, the B-Wing consists of ten modules and sub-modules.
With the exception of the weapons pod and the cockpit, all of these are practically repeat builds: The two secondary wings are virtually mirror images of each other with differences only in three small bricks. The two halves of the primary wing as well as the two parts of the cockpit-drive connector are mirror images of each other. And the two engine halves are in fact identical repeat builds.
This might suggest that building the B-Wing is boring and repetitive, but that's not actually true. While there is a certain repetitiveness, the modules and sub-modules are built so quickly, you don't really notice it. In fact, this modularized build saves you the toil of slaving away at one large section. Instead, assembling the completed modules into the final model is a very enjoyable meta-build of its own.
Another upside of modularisation is the way in which the sub-modules are assembled into primary wing and cockpit-drive connector: The subsections are put together bottom-on-bottom and connected together through bricks on brackets on two sides - this is why the set contains so many brackets, inverted brackets, and plates with studs on the side (see above).
Last but not least, the modularisation allows for disassembly of the B-Wing into four sections: Weapons pod, primary wing, a middle section made of drive and secondary wings, and an upper section made of cockpit-drive connector and cockpit. These four sections are mostly held together through technic connections, which are sturdy enough to keep the model firmly together, but can still be separated easily enough to be reasonably able to dis- and reassemble the model without having to worry about its structural integrity. Since the overall model is quite large, disassembly into these four subsections makes storage much, much simpler.

Beyond modularisation, there are comparatively few surprises in the form of interesting building techniques in the model. Although there are a couple of nice SNOT (stud-not-on-top) usages, especially in the way the subsections are joined (see above), the B-Wing is mostly a bottom-up build with conventional part usage. The strange symmetry and odd proportioning of the ship has been solved well through the above-mentioned modularisation, and many of the studs, especially on the wings, are neatly covered by tiles, which gives a good finish. However, the part usage and shaping left me unsatisfied because the curvy, almost organic shapes of the B-Wing model elude its Lego counterpart: They have mostly been reproduced with hinge parts and wedges, and that is, frankly, not very innovative. During the build, there were a few inspiring moments, for example use of caterpillar treads in the cockpit nacelle. But moments like these are left unfulfilled as a stroke of genius, a "Eureka" moment, never comes around. The cockpit nacelle is probably the most interesting section to build. Noteworthily, the windscreen canopy is not connected to the studs and only held in place by elements pushing down from the top.

Overall, building took me about three hours. Building instructions are easy to follow, the built is thankfully devoid of annoying fiddling. There are a few odd and counterintuitive moments during building, however.

The build had one emotional moment: Without spoiling too much, I had to cringe (and smile) a bit when it was time to put the black minifigure whip in its place.

The completed model

The completed model is very sturdy and very swooshable. It is also well-balanced, which is good since the completed model is surprisingly heavy. If in the context of a Ultimate Collector's Series, swooshable e playability, then this is a clear 10-out-of-10. Some reviewers reported that the back of the cockpit falls off easily. I felt that, although it's certainly the weakest connection, it's reasonably stable. It appears to me that it's really the only part which can possibly come off without a strong blow, and that's why everybody notices. In other words, it just emphasizes how strong this model really is.

Generally, I feel that the Lego B-Wing looks incredibly good, very original, and very eye-catching. I always preferred the B-Wing to any other Star Wars space ship - the Star Destroyer the only possible exception. It is also a testament to the ship's original designer that it can look more menacing than some other Star Wars ships, thanks to the many gun barrels sticking out. I absolutely love the engine with its (space-defying) air intakes. All these aspects have been fabulously addressed by the set designer, put almost perfectly into bricks, and realized astoundingly in the final Lego model.

The B-Wing is quite large on its stand with extended secondary wings, ca. 65cm wide and 50 cm high. When the starfigher rests on its stand, the weapons pod will practically touch the ground, so it requires quite a bit of space. Funnily enough, although it is large, its odd proportioning - wide, tall, but short - made it easier for me to find a spot for it than, let's say, Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighter, which is half the bricks, but takes up more floor space.

There are two parts of the set which could have been improved:

• The display stand comes across as a bit flimsy because the whole weight of the model rests on two mast elements. I say "comes across" rather than "is" because it holds the model actually fine. It just "seems" a bit shaky.
• The cockpit windscreen is the one part of the model where I felt the original's appearance had been completely missed. The original B-Wing cockpit is distinctly conical. Hence I felt that something tapered, e.g. along the lines of windscreen 10 x 6 x 2 curved, was a natural choice. In that light, the use of a 10 x 6 x 3 bubble canopy struck me as "interesting", but not necessarily bad. However, the print on the part is very far off. It doesn't follow the lines from the film model at all, where the pilot has a panoramic view. Instead, it now looks as if the pilot looks upwards out of a lead bullet. The model actually looks better with no print, or even better, no canopy at all. The tragedy is that somebody at Lego must have seen this, as the B-Wing image on the typical UCS fact sheet sticker for the display stand base sports a much larger windscreen print.

Unfortunately, I also feel that Lego missed a couple of great opportunities here, as some features simply don't work, or don't work well:

• The "rotating, self-levelling cockpit" is indeed cool when you swoosh the spaceship. Unfortunately, it doesn't rotate very well on its own because the nacelle bottom is not nearly heavy enough.
• Worse than just appearing a bit flimsy, the display stand unfortunately does not support the main B-Wing features. While it shows the model in a nicely angled, swooshing position, the secondary wings have to be deployed. The display stand should at least allow to display the model with deployed or retracted wings. Ideally, it would have allowed to position the model at different angles of rotation. Allow me to go to full Nerd-mode: In Star Wars canon, it is not the B-Wing cockpit which rotates inside the ship, it is the ship which rotates around the cockpit.

It's hard to imagine this model becoming a classic, primarily because it's not in minifig scale. While it sports nice parts in nice colours, I don't expect any of these colour combinations to remain exclusive to this set. In that sense, the set has nothing special apart from a cockpit windscreen printing which is, unfortunately, off to begin with.

Nonetheless, while you don't have to go absolutely ecstatic over the UCS B-Wing, it is a fun build and a good display piece with reasonable playability, as far as this applies to the UCS model range. For a model this size, the price is good, as you get a lot of brick and a good build for your money.

Summary

Finally, Lego has released its rendition of this maybe not-so-iconic, maybe not-so-classic space fighter from the Star Wars original trilogy. But boy, the six years since the TIE Advanced have been put to good use: X-Wing, Y-Wing, Snowspeeder, TIE Advanced... they all look aged in comparison to the B-Wing. A verdict is quite simple: From all Star Wars starfighters Lego has released so far, this one is the best yet.

I've been a big fan of LEGO as a child, but around the time I turned 16 I neatly packaged all my Lego sets and put them away for cold storage. I thought that was something you were supposed to do to get ready for adulthood.

Fast-forward 20 years I noticed these Star Wars kits. I know I was very late to the party and missed a lot of sets that are now worth a leg and an arm. But better late than never right?

So I purchased quickly this set along with 10240 X-Wing Red 5, first I thought of them as an investment. I waited for a few years for their value to go up, but it didn't much. So I decided to build this set.

Getting back into Lego after 20 years was like riding a bike. But this set didn't really win my complete approval. The construction was pretty frustrating for me. Lots of repetition, and mundane parts. Not much finesse going into it.

And unfortunately the complete model is very fragile and wobbly, it barely stays together. The foils are supposed to open / close but I dare not touch it.

The stand is awkward, a b-wing should either rest on its side, or stand completely upright. Plus the centre of gravity is above the stand, so if you just breathe too hard near it, it wants to topple.