Month: June 2024

The Star Wars Hangar: A Display Base That Finally Gives My Ships Somewhere to Live

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased May 27, 2024 · $775.99 CAD via Vonado

A large brick-built Star Wars hangar bay diorama with ground crew figures and support detailing
A comparable large-scale Star Wars hangar bay diorama. Photo: MOC Brick Land

Buying a large diorama base right after buying a large ship is either very smart planning or a very effective upsell. I will let you decide which this was.

The Background

Purchased the same day as the Ghost (VCX-100) covered previously, this large hangar and diorama-style set is designed to give one or more ships somewhere purposeful to sit, complete with ground crew figures, support vehicles, and hangar bay detailing, rather than leaving an expensive ship model to sit awkwardly on a bare shelf. Modular hangar and display bases like this are a popular category within the MOC community specifically because official LEGO rarely produces display bases at this scale on their own, usually bundling smaller docking or landing elements into a ship set itself rather than selling the base separately.

At $775.99, this is one of the pricier single items in my entire 2024 haul, and its value is genuinely tied to what you already own or plan to display alongside it.

Living With It

As a standalone build, the hangar delivers a lot of the same satisfaction as the Coruscant Diorama covered earlier in this series: real detail work in the flooring, support struts, and background elements that make it feel like a lived-in space rather than a blank pedestal. Ground crew figures and small support vehicles add points of visual interest at a smaller scale that contrast nicely against a large ship once one is placed inside it.

Where this set truly earns its keep is exactly what I bought it for: giving the Ghost, and potentially other ships from this collection, an actual context to sit in rather than floating awkwardly on an otherwise empty shelf. Once I placed the Ghost inside it, the combined display genuinely looked like a professional diorama rather than two separate, unrelated purchases sitting near each other, which is the best compliment I can give a display base like this.

On its own, without a ship to put inside it, this is a much harder purchase to justify. The value here is almost entirely relational to the rest of the collection, which is worth knowing before buying: this is an accessory purchase dressed up as a standalone set, and it should be budgeted for accordingly.

What I Liked

  • Genuinely elevates the display quality of ships placed inside it
  • Detailed enough to stand on its own rather than reading as a blank pedestal
  • Ground crew and support vehicle details add scale and life to the whole display
  • Transforms a collection of individual ships into something that reads as one cohesive scene

What I Didn’t

  • Value is almost entirely dependent on already owning (or planning to own) ships to display in it
  • One of the more expensive single items in the whole year’s spending
  • On its own, without context, this is just an expensive backdrop

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Rate this one based on what you already own. As a companion piece to the Ghost, it turned two separate purchases into one genuinely impressive combined display, which is worth something real. Bought in isolation, without ships to put inside it, this would be a much harder recommendation.

Where to Buy

The Tremortusk: The Biggest Build of My Year, Piece for Piece

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased May 27, 2024 · $782.99 CAD via Vonado

A large brick-built model of a Tremortusk, the armoured four-legged machine from Horizon Forbidden West
A comparable large-scale Tremortusk build. Photo: MOC Brick Store

Some builds test your patience. This one tested my table space, my wrists, and eventually my patience too, in that order.

The Background

Like the Thunder Claw covered earlier in this series, the Tremortusk is an unofficial fan design rather than a licensed LEGO product, this one modeled after the massive armoured machine from Horizon Forbidden West. The specific design lineage traces back to well-known MOC creators in the Horizon fan-building space (versions of this build by designers like Kaelfros are widely recognized within that community), running into the thousands of pieces in its larger configurations, making it one of the most ambitious machine builds the compatible-brick space has produced for this franchise.

Purchased the same day as the Ghost and Star Wars Hangar, this was the most expensive single item in that particular haul, and by piece count, arguably the most demanding build in my entire 2024 collection.

Living With It

This is not a build you sit down and finish in one sitting, or realistically even one day. The Tremortusk’s four-legged stance, articulated tusks, and heavily plated shell require careful, methodical assembly, and I found it genuinely benefited from being broken into several shorter sessions rather than one marathon attempt, both for focus and for hand fatigue with a build this dense.

The payoff for that time investment is real. Once complete, the sheer scale and weight of the finished model communicates the source creature’s intimidating presence in a way smaller builds simply cannot. Leg joints held their pose under the model’s considerable weight without sagging, which speaks well of the engineering behind the design even though it is an unofficial, fan-originated build rather than a professionally tested LEGO Group product.

If I am being fully honest, this is the one build in my whole collection where I would genuinely recommend clearing your schedule before starting rather than assuming you can knock it out over a single weekend the way I did with some of the other large sets in this series.

What I Liked

  • The single most impressive and imposing finished build in my entire collection
  • Strong structural engineering, held its pose under real weight without sagging
  • Genuinely challenging and rewarding build process for anyone who enjoys the assembly itself
  • A machine design that has no official LEGO equivalent at any scale

What I Didn’t

  • A serious time commitment, realistically multiple sessions rather than a single weekend
  • Physically demanding to assemble given the sheer part density
  • Among the most expensive single items in my entire 2024 spending

The Value Verdict

Rating: 5/5

If you love Horizon and want a genuine display centrepiece, this delivers more presence and engineering ambition than anything else in my collection. Just go in with realistic expectations about the time commitment, this is not a weekend project, it is closer to a small ongoing hobby of its own for however many sessions it takes you.

Where to Buy

The Ghost (VCX-100): Finally Getting the Rebels Ship LEGO Never Scaled Up

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased May 27, 2024 · $584.99 CAD via Vonado

A large-scale brick-built model of the Ghost, the VCX-100 light freighter from Star Wars Rebels
A comparable large-format Ghost (VCX-100) build. Photo: MOC Brick Land

Three months after the big February haul, I went back for more, and this was the first purchase of round two.

The Background

The Ghost, the VCX-100 light freighter piloted by Hera Syndulla in Star Wars Rebels (and later appearing in Ahsoka), has a devoted fanbase that LEGO’s official catalogue has never fully satisfied. LEGO has released Ghost sets before, but always at a smaller, more compact scale than fans of the ship have wanted. The compatible-brick and MOC community has filled that gap repeatedly, with several well-regarded fan designs running well past 2,500 pieces and including full interior cabin and cockpit detail that the official smaller sets simply do not have room for.

What I bought from Vonado follows that same large-format tradition, and at $584.99 it represented my first big purchase of a second, separate haul in late May, alongside the Star Wars Hangar and Horizon Tremortusk sets covered next in this series.

Living With It

The scale difference versus LEGO’s own official Ghost sets is the whole point, and it delivers on that promise. This build includes real interior detail: a cockpit you can actually see into, a cabin area referencing the ship’s crew quarters, and a level of hull articulation and greebling (the small mechanical surface detailing that makes a sci-fi ship look lived-in rather than smooth and toy-like) that smaller official sets simply do not have the piece budget to include.

Assembly ran a full weekend, broken into clear sub-sections (hull, interior, mandibles, landing gear) that made the overall size manageable despite the piece count. Structural rigidity held up well once complete, an important detail on a ship this large where sagging or drooping sections would undercut the whole display.

For anyone who grew up on Rebels or came to the ship through Ahsoka, seeing this ship rendered at a scale that actually matches how significant it feels on screen, rather than the compact official version, is a genuinely different experience than owning the smaller LEGO set.

What I Liked

  • Scale and interior detail that no official LEGO Ghost set has matched
  • Strong structural rigidity despite the large footprint
  • Manageable, clearly organized build sequence despite the high piece count
  • A real payoff for fans specifically because the official market has underserved this ship

What I Didn’t

  • A serious weekend-length time commitment, not a casual build
  • Large finished footprint that needs a genuinely sizeable shelf or display case
  • Price reflects the gap-filling nature of the product, this is not a budget option

The Value Verdict

Rating: 5/5

For Rebels and Ahsoka fans specifically, this is close to a must-buy within the compatible-brick space, precisely because it does something the official market has never done. If the Ghost means something to you, this is the version of it worth owning.

Where to Buy

Destiny: The Final Shape Collector’s Edition, A Year-Long Wait For a Shelf Piece

Collectibles Review · Pre-ordered 2023, charged 2024 · $274.41 CAD ($202.39 USD) via Bungie.net

Destiny 2: The Final Shape Collector's Edition
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Collector’s Edition. Photo via Noble Knight Games.

Pre-ordering a collector’s edition means making a bet almost a year before you know if it paid off. This is how mine landed.

The Background

I put money down on The Final Shape Collector’s Edition back in 2023, well before the game’s story content, release timeline, or even final box contents were fully locked in. That is simply how Destiny 2 collector’s editions work: Bungie announces the tiers, you pick a lane based on trust in the studio and love for the franchise, and then you wait. The charge did not actually hit until 2024, closer to launch, which is why this shows up in my 2024 spreadsheet despite the pre-order going back a year earlier.

The Final Shape mattered more than a typical expansion because it was billed, correctly as it turned out, as the closing chapter of the entire Light and Darkness saga that has run through Destiny since the very first game. For someone who has put real hours into this universe, that context is the whole reason a collector’s edition made sense at all.

Living With It

Collector’s editions live or die on physical execution, and Bungie’s track record here has genuinely been inconsistent across past expansions, some tiers landing beautifully, others feeling thin for the price. This one landed on the better side of that history for me: the included statue and art book both felt like genuine collector-grade items rather than an afterthought bundled onto a digital purchase, and the packaging itself was clearly designed with display in mind rather than just shipping efficiency.

The digital side (season content, exclusive cosmetics, and the expansion’s exotic weapons and armor) delivered exactly what was promised at launch, and playing through The Final Shape’s campaign with the knowledge that this was the actual conclusion to a decade of storytelling gave the whole experience a weight that a standard edition purchase would not have carried in quite the same way.

The honest caveat, and the reason I cannot universally recommend this to anyone reading who is not already a Destiny player: none of this makes sense outside the context of years of investment in the game’s lore.

What I Liked

  • Physical items felt like genuine collector-grade quality, not an afterthought
  • Meaningful send-off for a decade-long storyline, which added real emotional weight
  • Digital content and exotics delivered exactly as promised at launch
  • A noticeably stronger collector’s edition than some of Bungie’s past efforts

What I Didn’t

  • Pre-ordering a year out is a genuine leap of faith with no guarantee on final quality
  • Entirely dependent on prior investment in the franchise to justify the price
  • Bungie’s collector’s edition track record has been inconsistent enough that trust, not certainty, is what you are buying on

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

For a general audience, this is an easy pass, it simply does not translate outside the context of the game. As a longtime Guardian who wanted a real physical marker for the end of the saga, I got exactly what I hoped for: a well-made shelf piece and a proper closing chapter, at a price that only makes sense to people already this deep in.

Where to Buy

Memorrha: A Small, Moody Game That Punches Well Above Its Price

Game Review · Purchased May 31, 2024 · $12.09 CAD via PSN

Key art for Memorrha, a moody puzzle-adventure game
Memorrha. Photo: Steam

The Setup

Memorrha is a quiet, atmospheric puzzle-adventure about piecing a broken world back together, built around environmental storytelling rather than dialogue or exposition, in the same general lineage as games like Gris or Rime.

The Review

At just over twelve dollars, this was one of the smallest financial commitments in my entire year, and it delivered a genuinely distinct mood and visual identity that a lot of much more expensive games never manage. The puzzle design is not the deepest or most challenging in the genre, but that was never really the point, the game is more interested in atmosphere, sound design, and the slow reveal of its world than in testing your problem-solving skills.

Games like this live or die on whether the specific mood they are chasing lands for you personally, and this one landed for me: a short, contemplative experience that felt worth the handful of hours it asked for.

What I Liked

  • Distinct, moody atmosphere and art direction
  • Strong environmental storytelling with minimal reliance on dialogue
  • Extremely low financial risk given the price
  • A satisfying handful of hours rather than an overstuffed runtime

What I Didn’t

  • Puzzle design is fairly light, not a game for anyone wanting a real mechanical challenge
  • The mood-first approach will not land for players who want a stronger narrative throughline

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

A small, low-risk purchase that delivers a genuinely distinct atmosphere you do not get from bigger-budget titles. Easy to recommend at this price specifically.

Where to Buy