As part of the 10 year anniversary of LEGO Star Wars, the 8017 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter comes with an incredible movie accurate details on board, sleek firing missiles and measures about 6” long and 7” wide. This is a walk down the path of over a decade of development of the LEGO Star Wars Tie Fighter Sets, showing you the similarities and differences between the various sets and how to choose the best from amongst the series. We’ve briefly reviewed each set, so that you can make your own comparison and decide which set is for you. Your decision may come down to the build, the aesthetic, or perhaps the set that has the best mini figures! 7150: TIE Fighter & Y-wing – 1999 The set consists of 412 pieces, three mini figures: Darth Vader, Y-Wing Pilot and an Astromech Droid and is intended for kids within the age range of 8-12 years old. This set was a straight re-release of the 1999 set of the same name albeit with a different set number. This is something LEGO doesn’t often do. It must of been a popular set at the time! TIE Advanced Prototype is based on the new Disney animated series Star Wars Rebels. The set comes with three mini figures: the Inquisitor, Imperial Officer and TIE Fighter pilot. The design of the minifigures are based on characters from the show, in particular the Imperial Officer who sports his light brown (tan) uniform. Each minifig has improved printing which has been a trend since 2015.

The 7664 TIE Crawler was released in 2007 and is one of the first LEGO Star Wars sets to be based on a vehicle that was never featured in the actual films. The Tie Crawler is a frustrating build and isn’t the sturdiest of models. However, it has become quite collectable and is one of the rarer sets. This may be down to the mini figures though as this set includes 2 of the highly sought-after Shadow Stormtroopers. Update, As you can see I have managed to build my design, during the process I identified a weakness in the wings, causing me to change the design slightly. The funny thing is the redesign actually looks better to me then my original idea. The 8017 TIE Fighter is Darth Vader’s personified TIE Fighter and is made even faster and nimble than other ordinary TIE Fighters. It comes with a customised curved wings, a hyper drive and a deflector shield to protect it from enemy missiles. The 10131 TIE Fighter Collection consists of 682 pieces and four mini figures: Darth Vader, 2x Tie Pilots and the Droid Brain, suitable for kids 8 years and above. For the ultimate Tie fighter fan this set was the best thing since sliced bread. 4 Tie Fighter in one set. The only negative is that they could have included a Tie Interceptor or Tie Bomber in place of one of the standard Tie Fighters. The builds themselves are reminiscent of previous sets if not exactly the same with the Tie/d being a completely new build.Darth Vader’s ship measures over 4” in height, 5” in length and 6” width while the A-wing Starfighter measures 2” in height, 7” length and 5” in width. The whole setup consists of 702 pieces, 4 mini figures: Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, an A-Wing Pilot, and Sabine Wren.

With over a thousand pieces for you to get your teeth into, you’d be more than busy with the ship to care about the missing mini figures in the 10175 Ultimate Collectors Series. Another display piece designed purely for the adult collector in mind.The UCS (Ultimate Collectors Series) TIE Interceptor was designed with adults in mind. The clue is in the name, this set is for the collector, it’s not really a toy, more a display piece and talking point. The TIE Bomber 4479 was released in 2003 as part of the classic Star Wars line. It is the first and to date, the only TIE Bomber released by LEGO. It comes with a total of 229 pieces and 1 mini figure: a TIE Fighter pilot with a brown head underneath the helmet. The LEGO TIE Fighters collection features the empire’s most feared ships and includes the TIE Advanced, 2 TIE Fighters and the TIE/d fighter. It is only trial and error beyond this point. Once you get the planets into the alignment as shown in the combined hologram, they will cue a cutscene. Final alignment of the central hologram after the cutscene. In the movie canon, Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader only flies the TIE Advanced X1 once, in the 3 rd act of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Darth Vader tails the resistance X-Wings through the heat exhaust ‘trench’ of the first Death Star.