Lego 6243 Brickbeard's Bounty

Final Thoughts

This set was bought second-hand on Bricklink and was quite a good price. It is a must get set if you like pirates. No pirates collection can be complete without this flagship of Brickbeard. It has the very cool shark as well which is quite rare. If offers cannons which shoot and the funky cargo net system with a monkey on it. My Imperial flagship would now have contemporary to be with. Chronologically in terms of release, this set was release first but no matter, these 2 sets got well together like peas in a pod. Pirates being red themed and Imperial Guards having blue. I leave this review with pictures of the whole set.

Back: The Build - Captain's Cabin, Bridge and the rest

Lego 6243 Brickbeard's Bounty

The Build - Captain's Cabin, Bridge and the rest

Here is the captain's cabin at 25% build. The dark red and pearl gold goes well with the reddish brown in the rest of the ship.

It is fantastic to see how well dark red, reddish brown and pearl gold all blends in to make the captain's cabin looking rather majestic. This is at 50% build.

At 75% build the captain's cabin looks pretty complete.

The fully complete captain's cabin adds a cannon, the lamps and rails at the bridge level.

Finally, we add the bridge and the captain's cabin together. We cannot leave the gold treasure chest behind. I do wonder whether real ships of that era had stern facing cannons though.

Mounting the bridge and captain's cabin together with the ship base. The ship looks quite empty at this stage and later additions would start to fill it up nicely. In fact at this stage the rear of the ship is nearly complete. As mentioned earlier, the colour scheme just looks great.

Now to the part of filling up the ship. At 25% build, we add on one of the mast with the pirate flag and the mermaid figurehead.

After that, at the halfway mark, we have the other mast and the cargo net system thing.

At 100% build, the sails are up and they are ready to sail and plunder the riches of the sea and world

And here is the rear shot view of the ship. Gorgeous.

Next: Final Thoughts
Back: Prologue

Lego 6243 Brickbeard's Bounty

Prologue

This is the first pirate II set I bought second-hand from Bricklink and is a large sized one. Below is a cover art of the set. Like most Pirates II sets, it features marine creatures, pirates, jewels and Imperial Guards in this one. The person who sold it to me packaged it quite well but somewhere along the way the box got squashed. Thankfully I did an inventory of all parts and none were lost. Unfortunately some parts were quite scratched but cannot say for certain that it was due to the shipping. This set was bought with 2 pieces missing which I luckily managed to buy from Lego speciality shops as loose parts.

Parts List

Here is a shot of the parts of this set and since it is not that large, we are able to capture it all in one screenshot. This set has some large pieces like the row boat, shark, masts and ship specific parts. The colour assortment is what is to be expected of a ship though pearl gold is found in abundance here but later you can see how well it makes the ship stand out.

 

The Build - Ship Base

The base of the ship is quite ordinary. Here is when it is at 25% build. You can see the rails where the cannons will be sitting on.

At 50% build, you can see the rear of the ship where the store is. A barrel of drink with a rat standing guard. I guess manpower is low on this ship

At 100% build we see guns mounted at the forecastle of the ship. Every pirate's play feature, the plank, can be found on the starboard side. Lovely. The stairs that will lead up to the captain's cabin also built at this stage.

Next: The Build - Captain's Cabin, Bridge and the rest

Lego 9492 TIE Fighter

Prologue

This is truly an iconic starfighter together with the X-Wing Starfighter. Below is a cover art of the set. Like most Lego Star Wars sets, it features minifigures galore that are stuffed in sometimes with no reason at all. There is only a cockpit for the TIE Fighter but we get 4 minifigures as well like the X-Wing. 

The Complete Build

The build was not tedious and repetitive, the whole fighter consists both sets of the wings and the centre piece with the cockpit. Here is the full frontal view of the set.

Here it is with the cockpit raised where a cramp cockpit houses the TIE pilot. The fighter console is sadly not realistic at all and just consists of a red translucent flat grille tile. The top printed piece is a nice addition to an other wise quite featureless TIE Fighter.

The rear looks slightly funny, like a bee's bum but I think we can let that one get away. Maybe they could have used a dome piece instead.

Here is a side shot of the TIE Fighter. The wing panels look quite awesome.

 



Finally here is a scan of one of the last few pages of the instruction manual showing notable features of this set. Which is not too much I am afraid. It is the TIE Fighter after all. Just 2 wing panels jammed into the cockpit sides flown with an expendable TIE pilot.

Final Thoughts

This set was bought when Bricksworld had their annual 20% discount on sets together with the Lego 9493 X-Wing Starfighter. It is not as exciting a set as the Lego 9493 X-Wing Starfighter. So the question then comes, is it worth buying? I have looked around the internet on the reviews for the other revisions and I must say this is really a significant improvement over them. The only weakness of this set is that at a certain angle there is a gap between grey and the black edge of the wing panel. I think if budget allows, get this to complement the 9493 X-Wing. The colour scheme in this set are more representative of the TIE Fighter as well, instead of the black and blue of the previous version. I leave this review with a 3/4 view picture of the whole set.

 

Lego 9493 X-Wing

Prologue

This is truly an iconic starfighter together with the TIE fighter. Below is a cover art of the set. Like most Lego Star Wars sets, it features minifigures galore that are stuffed in sometimes with no reason at all. I mean come on, this one has 4! There is only a cockpit and a droid bay on this starfighter. Of course some would not complain since the minifigures are usually very detailed and well done though somehow one cannot shake the feeling that they are throwing them in to simply jack up the price of a set.

The Complete Build

The build was not tedious and repetitive although both sets of the wings need to be build in mirror image of themselves. Here is a 3/4 view of it in the attack mode. Had to perch it on a box to show it in this mode.

Here is a frontal view of the set. The overall design is quite good considering that Lego bricks are generally quite angular whereas the X-Wing Starfighter has some subtle angle here and there. I do love how the engines and lasers look. The front of the starfighter is not too badly recreated in this set as well.

Here is a close up of the inner wing and cockpit. The mechanism to open apart the wings is not too noticeable except it is rather colourful.

The mechanism used to close the wings are by means of 2 sets of rubber bands. That kind of spoils the overall profile of the X-Wing but I guess for such a small set, there is no better way to do it effectively. The X-piece is turned in order to open up the wings.

Finally here is a scan of one of the last few pages of the instruction manual showing notable features of this set. Which is not too much I am afraid.

Final Thoughts

This set was bought when Bricksworld had their annual 20% discount on sets together with the Lego 9492 TIE Fighter. It is a fun set to own and certainly a person would want to hold it in attack mode and swoosh it around. So the question then comes, is it worth buying? I have looked around the internet on the reviews for the 2 other revisions and I must say this is really a significant improvement over them. Even if you own the previous 2 versions, I think if budget allows, it is justifiable get this set together with the TIE Fighters to do aerial combat with each other. The colour scheme in this set are more representative of the X-Wings, it is the core of the Star Wars franchise and most of all, it looks quite good on its own as a display set as well. I leave this review with more pictures of the whole set in swoosh poses no less.