So waaaay back in 2013, my wife and I built a new house, a house that was bigger than what we currently had, but somehow had less space for collections and Lego sets.

So in a somewhat boneheaded move, I sold off a pile of my UCS Star Wars stuff, for a hefty profit, but it still was something I was regretting for years.

No more so than with my UCS Millennium Falcon, I miss it it every day since I sold it, and pretty much wrote off getting a new one as there was no way I could or would pay the 3000usd and up to get another one.

So when Lego announced they were rebooting the iconic ship into a 8500 piece behemoth, I was over the moon with glee.

Not only could I get my beloved Falcon back, but a much more refined ship too.

The only hurdle was sadly, the new flagship set from Lego was a major dig at fans, Lego knew just how badly people wanted this ship, as the resale market was through the roof, so they opted to gouge fans for $899cdn for the set this time around, instead of the 499 that the previous Falcon sold for.

Even so I was a desperate man, and 900 is way better than 3000, so I set out on Force Friday in Sept 2017 to purchase one, and low and behold, it sold out before I even woke up that morning.

It was this single event that actually drove me into the arms of Lepin, until that morning, I had never even heard of Lepin. I was looking online at all the angry posts from fans who could not get one, and someone mentioned they can;t wait til Lepin releases it.

To Google I went, to see if I could find out what the heck he meant. Well what I found was a collectors dream, all the old sets I sold, for pennies compared to the Lego used market, and on top of that, the new Falcon was “coming soon” for a mere 213usd at the time.

Flash forward to the release in November and I snatched one up right away.

And this folks, is the the Lepin Millennium Falcon:

Complete with an amazing custom stand I put together from Bricklink and instruction from the MOC community.

The build itself was not so challenging compared to the sorting process, while not nearly as bad as the Republic Cruiser, it was still the largest build I had ever done, trumping the original 2009 UCS Falcon by a couple thousand more pieces.

25LBS of tightly packed bricks!

5lb of which is just manual!

There was around 150 bags, and 15 different groups.

Sorting was made easy by numbering grocery bags and putting all the numbered segments into them, took about an hour and a half to organize, but made things much smoother later on.

The frame on the core of the ship is fairly similar to the original Falcon, it is well designed and meant to hold the massive weight of the set with ease.

One of the main differences this time around though is they made a few areas of the ship we saw in the movie, recreated in meticulous detail.

One of the first hurdles I ran into though was the blue engines on the rear. The tubes used for this section were a bit too long, causing them to bow in an unnatural way. They are also in 2 pieces, so this adds a ugly little seat to the arch, what I had to do was carefully trim of about 1/4 inch to accommodate for this. Still not perfect, but better than it was out of the box.

Now that the core of the ship is finished, you can start to see the immense size of the set.

At over 3 ft long, you best have room to accommodate this beast.

Second hurdle I hit was on the arches around the gun turrets. ON the Lego brand sets, the arch does not have a middle support, the interior of the arch is free of obstruction and therefor the domes glass of the turret fits snugly into the arch.

The Lepin counterpart however put in a small middle piece that stops the dome from fitting and pushes the whole turret assembly open.

To remedy this I took a exacto knife and a dremmel and cut the offending piece out.

This allowed the dome to fit as intended.

The last little hiccup was on the top of each front section of the ship, the beige sections attach with long blac 2x elements, they were suppose to snap into the frame, but for some reason they are a little bowed and short, and would constantly pop back off.

A little glue fixed this right up and kept them laying flat as intended.

The little details on this set are what really set it apart from most Lego sets.

All in all it took me about 20 hours spread over 3 days to put this beat together, but the finished product is well worth it.

Up Close Turret

Aft Section

The amazing custom stand

Can you spot which sets are real and which are block-offs?

And here she lies safe and sound

This was hands down of of my favorite builds of all time. Little sad to see it complete as it means I will likely never get to build it again.

But for anyone looking to save themselves $600, be sure to check out the amazing Lepin version, it is definitely worth the price of admission and a whole lot more.

A very solid 10/10 and a must by for any Star Wars Lego fan.