Orange Trooper – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, March 2023

February is of course a short month, so here we are already again with the latest LEGO Star Wars magazine for March 2023.

The first comic has The Mandalorian and Grogu in it, which is a bit unusual, given that last month we got a similar comic already, though it was the shorter one.

In the second comic we see General Grievous facing off against some Storm Troopers, which of course is a not so subtle hint at the included extra (no, it’s not Grievous)

For the poster I picked the back side featuring Yoda‘s unforgettable “Do it or don’t! There is no try!” quote. If the text was slightly smaller it would be even better. The front side has a standard Death Star trench chase scene. That’s okay, just nothing special.

The extra has some people’s underwear in a knot and to some degree makes them go bonkers. The facts are simple: The  212th Clone Trooper so far has only appeared in the AT-TE Walker (75337) and there are only three in this set. This apparently makes this coveted minifigure quite costly on Bricklink and other secondary markets. That seems to be reason enough for people to buy stacks and stacks of this magazine to deck out their battle dioramas. It’s basically still cheaper to pay 5 Euro for the mag instead of 7 Euro (in an optimistic case; most times it’s around 10 Euro), but it’s still a lot of money to throw around you could just as well on some real sets. It always amazes me how people fall into this “battle pack (substitute) craze”!

That said, the figure itself is just fine and has some detailed prints. With its Orange demarcations it will look distinct to the 501th Storm Troopers with their Blue insignia or the upcoming Dark Purple ones (forgot which unit they are) as well as the many standard white and grey ones. Personally I will be happy that the next issue comes with a buildable extra again, though. I get why people want minifigures, but at the end of the day you clearly cannot cover enough ground to make everybody happy, anyway, for a multitude of reasons. Having something brick-built will make a nice change after four minifigs in a row.

For me this is one of the more enjoyable issues because it doesn’t veer too much in the “silly nonsense” direction with the comics and there’s at least one serviceable poster. If you’re part of the Storm Trooper/ Clone Trooper crowd you cannot avoid buying this, anyway, multiple times if necessary.

Space Wedge – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, December 2022

The LEGO Star Wars magazine remains one of the staples of that whole LEGO magazine business and while not always outstanding, it usually has at least something interesting to show. Let’s see if the December 2022 issue lives up to that.

I’m not a friend of those “Palpatine behaves like a teenager” as you know, so the main comic doesn’t really go down well with me. Too much implausible nonsense and too way off the mainstream canon even if you take a liberal approach and allow for some wackiness.

The secondary comic isn’t doing much better, in particular since the vehicle it is supposed to promote as the extra, the Imperial Light Destroyer, isn’t really shown that much.

The poster on the front features Captain Vaughn from the Armored Assault Tank (AAT) (75283) set in all his glory. Stylistically it is similar to the one in the last issue, so they would look nice next to each other. The backside has an X-Wing zooming toward the Death Star, but it’s not nearly as interesting.

The extra is the Imperial Light Destroyer mentioned earlier. It was introduced in Rebels and recently played a bigger role in The Mandalorian. As you would expect the model is pieced together from a few wedge plates, which is sufficient to match the contour, but does not really provide the necessary volume for the ship’s body. In terms of pieces there isn’t too much special here. There’s a pair of triangular tiles in Light Bluish Grey, which are always nice to have, but the rest is standard fare – with one exception: Inside there’s a Black 1 x 5 plate (!) for the central spine, which I think is the first time ever this element has ever been used in one of those foil packs on any of the LEGO magazines. If you never encountered it up close and personal in a set (since it’s still being used rather sparingly) here’s your chance to get acquainted with this marvel of modern engineering. 😉

This edition of the magazine holds very few surprises, but is overall a solid affair. The posters are decent and the comics are serviceable, though I’d prefer them to be a bit more serious and in line with the rest of Star Wars. Though personally I prefer buildable models, fans of minifigures will be pleased that next month there will be another one in the form if a Hoth Luke Skywalker with snow goggles, vest and all.