The long awaited and speculated Imperial Star Destroyer has been revealed and fans will rejoice as LEGO dug deep and went as far back as 17 years to reissue the Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD). Let's take a closer look at comparisons between the two LEGO Sets - 10030 vs 75252.
Pricing Evaluation
First things first, let's take a look at the price analysis. The new set comes with an additional 1680 pieces, which is over 50% more piece count than the 10030 issued back in 2002. The new set comes with 2 minifigures of an Imperial Officer and an Imperial Technician, somewhat generic characters.
We did our usual inflation calculation, and find that it does not add up like the previous sets that we've analysed before. This seems to be a little more expensive than what it would need to be. Having said that, piece count is never a good way to factor price as LEGO has mentioned, different pieces of elements can very in cost, but nevertheless, this is what Fans of LEGO will ALWAYS analyse and there's no running away from it, so we present you the math as above.
Visual Differences
My first impression of this is a set with a whole bunch of grey elements. And it's tough to make such a build look good. Hence if you look closely at the official images, the photos rely HEAVILY on shadows to evoke a dramatic effect and make the build stand out. If you compare the regular photographed shots of the 10030 built by fans, you'll start to understand.
Top View
It's extremely difficult to get the same top view of the ISD considering that LEGO has professional photography facilities. The next best thing I could do was render the 10030 based on an existing build. Full credits to user kcoon that built this in Lego Digital Designer (LDD). You can find the source material here in Eurobricks. It was imported into Bricklink's stud.io. (Note: LDD builds are never 100% perfect, read the link to see the mods which are mostly things you don't see here). The image below is not to exact scale (the new 75252 is larger), and is meant for a comparison of detailing.
Comparison of an actual ISD built.
Profile Pose
The new 10030 IS at a glance seems to have better greebling and providing more details. The site of both Imperial Star Destroyers are almost the same.
Side View
I'm not sure I'm extremely impressed, but generally looks about the same, minus the dramatic shadow effect.
The Back Boosters
It looks a lot more authentic in terms of detailing and complexity and tons of greebling. The underneath of the ship has lots more detailing as well.
Here's an image of the best angle we could find out there.
Command Bridge
The command bridge looks only slightly more detailed. I'm not sure I'd say I'm impressed at this point.
Heavy Turbolaser
This is one part that I can see some improvements on. The turbolasers.
Tantive IV
The Tantive IV is slightly upgraded with better shaping and colors.
Minifigures
There are two minifigures issued with this new set. Both are generic characters and don the standard respective Imperial uniform.
Imperial Officer
The officer has a slightly darker set of uniform that matches his cap and his ranking is a Lieutenant (2 bars of red and blue)
Imperial Technician
The Imperial technician has a lighter set of uniforms with the same colored hat as the officer
There you have it, a quick visual comparison of the older LEGO Imperial Star Destroyer and the new issue 17 years later. We'd expect it to be a blast but there's only so many ways you can innovate on the exterior of a huge grey triangle. We do know for sure the internal builds are constructed differently and should be able to hold up better.
Photo credit:
Images of the 10030 Imperial Star Destroyer are from marvelousRoland and Hamid. Do visit their Flickr accounts for other great images
If you like this visual comparison, remember to also check out our Millennium Falcon comparison!
