So the annual deals for Brick Friday through to Cyber Monday are reportedly right around the corner - 28^th of November to 1^st of December - and this will entail the usual goodies on offer. Free exclusive Winter set for £50, 5% off for £100... you know the deal. Apparently US and Canada are seeing these two bits in particular today as part of an early-early-access scheme before it hits the rest of the world next week, so hopefully people know what I'm getting at.

Based on the last two years, starting from the 28th there should also be some exclusive early access to sets that would otherwise go live in January. For me, I'm keeping a very close eye on that delicious 75060 Slave I, and if you've noticed the title of this blog you should have no reason as to doubt why.

In fact, it's become a "tradition" of sorts that the only directly-asked-for Christmas gift is a UCS LEGO Star Wars set. This started a couple of years ago and this has included the AT-OT (cheapest "big" thing the store had to offer, although I was going through a minor Clone-army-building phase), R2-D2, and the Red Leader X-Wing. As the Slave I is also one of my favourite ships from the Star Wars universe, and as I have been neglecting to get any of its most recent set iterations* due to not being too keen on "standard sized" iterations of classic ships as I feel that the detail and grandeur is lost somewhere in the "scaling-down", I do feel quite a base need - let's not deny it - for this beauty.

Also the new Detective's Office is rumoured to be on early access. Any material I have seen promoting Brick Friday indicates that two exclusive sets will be on offer, and I don't see any other which would be appropriate for an early access. It's something that has caught a lot of people's eyes, and it's something that people who aren't into Sci-fi can get their grubby mitts on whilst adding to their Modular collection or creating a very stable foundation for a first-time one.

Time shall tell, of course, so until then I shall satisfy myself by finishing work for this term at Uni and simultaneously preparing for SWTOR's Shadow of Revan expansion on 2^nd of December.

* The only LEGO Slave I versions which I own - not including any free miniatures from any Advent Calendars - are the 7144 from 2000 - yes! - and the 7153 Jango Fett from 2002, so it has been well over ten years since I have owned and/or built any non-miniature versions of the ship. This even beats the Millennium Falcon, the only iteration of which I own is from 2004, and the reasons for not "replenishing the stock", as it were, are the same as listed above.

That, and the UCS was too expensive and size-y for my liking, even though that does mean that I am now technically (?) contradicting myself. Ah, well.

Additional:

If there's one thing this hiatus has proved, it's that I need to get back into the proper "swing" of blogging and proofreading entries. I've had to edit this entry about five or six times because of things I got wrong or misspelt or what-have-you. Seriously, I had even left a sentence hanging ("As the Slave I is...") without even realising it.