The UCS Razor Crest set is LEGO’s tribute to one of the newest ships of the Star Wars universe, the Razor Crest. It was announced at the end of September and around two weeks later the set was officially released on October 7, 2022.
I was able to get my hands on it and it was a memorable occasion with good and not-so-good experiences. But, the big question is if it’s worth it, let’s find out.
The Razor Crest in-universe
The complete name of the ship that we saw in The Mandalorian is an ST-70 class Razor Crest M-111 Assault Ship. Din Djarin aka “Mando” lived in it and also used it as his primary transport to hunt bounties across the Outer Rim.
The Razor Crest is equipped with a pair of laser cannons and two massive engines, as well as an escape pod and a small carbonite freezing chamber.
For the most part of the series, the ship took Din Djarin to multiple planets; Pagodon, Arvala-7, Nevarro, Trask, Corvus, and more. Like many people in Star Wars, Din Djarin deeply cared about his ship. For him, it was more than “just a ship”.
The gunship’s design is simple but effective, it’s easy to know that it’s a powerful ship just by looking at it. I didn’t love it when I saw it for the first time but it slowly grew on me and now I love it. It was such a sad moment when it was destroyed by Moff Gideon’s cruiser.
General specs and overview of the LEGO UCS Set
The Ultimate Collector Series Razor Crest is set #75331, this is the first Star Wars UCS set that makes its appearance in a tv show and not a movie.
With 6,187 pieces, the UCS Razor Crest is the third largest Star Wars Lego set with only the UCS Millennium Falcon and UCS AT-AT surpassing it. It includes 5 Minifigures: Din Djarin, Grogu, the Mythrol, Kuiil, and a Blurrg.
It is 28 in. (72 cm) long, 10 in. (24cm) tall, and 20 in. (50 cm) wide. The set is enormous, and it might be hard to find a proper location for it unless you have a dedicated space for your LEGO sets.
Of course, you can do what I did: buy first and then worry about where to place it later.
The retail price is $600 USD, I had to pay around twenty percent more due to import taxes and fees. Even if it’s “only” six hundred USD, this set is far from being cheap.
Hopefully, this review will help you decide if you should spend your hard-earned money on this set or not.
A brand new experience
This was my first experience building a LEGO set of this size. I built some small sets when I was a small kid and it wasn’t until this year that I returned to the wonderful world of LEGO Star Wars.
I built the recently released AT-TE and BD-1 sets but both of them are just over 1,200 pieces, five times less than this monstrous Razor Crest.
The unboxing was simple but very cool, the gigantic box contains two more boxes and each one of them has concept art of The Mandalorian series printed on both sides.
Inside these boxes, there’s a total of thirty-six bags and four manuals. I won’t lie, it felt a little overwhelming for someone who has just returned to building Lego sets.
The bigger bags contain smaller bags that carry the small pieces. In previous builds, I criticized the unnecessary use of small bags, I thought it was just a total waste and for the most part, I still do. But, in this case, I totally understand the need for smaller bags.
With so many pieces it can be very easy to lose one or spend unusual amounts of time trying to find the smaller ones. The small bags allow you to have more control over all, I put the smaller pieces in separated spots from the bigger ones, and even with this precaution finding some pieces was a pain in the butt.
For smaller sets, I still believe it’s a waste of plastic, but for the UCS Razor Crest, it made sense to have everything separated into two or three bags.
The building experience was relatively easy and straightforward. This set design is made so that it “corrects itself”, what I mean is that if you misplace a piece it won’t be long before you realize that something feels or looks odd.
It happened to me multiple times and while it was time-consuming and annoying, I’m glad that I was able to re-do it properly so that the build was one hundred percent correct.
A LEGO fan’s worst fear
I was a few pages into the second manual when one of my worst fears became a reality, a missing piece. At first, I thought it could be on the floor but after nearly two hours of searching, I confirmed that it wasn’t there.
As you might imagine, this delayed my progress significantly, I ordered the piece right away but since it appears out of stock on the Lego page I was told that it would be delivered in approximately five or six weeks.
The next day, I headed to my local LEGO store, the employees there genuinely cared about my situation and even tried to find the piece among the displayed sets so that I could take it home with me.
Since it’s a very specific piece there was no luck, they gave me something similar that I could possibly use until the piece arrive.
I had no choice but to move on with the build. When building a section of the cockpit I found a piece that was almost the same as the one that I needed. The only difference was the color but at this point, I couldn’t care less about it, especially since it was not visible.
So, I took it out of the pilot’s seat and put it where it was needed most, I’m sure Din Djarin won’t be bothered to have a seat without a headrest for a couple of weeks.
One day after this, I received an email confirming that the piece was on its way. I don’t know if I was lucky or if they give priority to expensive sets when it comes to sending missing pieces, but considering every piece of the set is labeled as out of stock I consider myself very fortunate.
This was very annoying and I hope that this situation does not happen regularly, it’s so frustrating to pay a premium price and have these types of issues. I wonder how frequently this happens.
The UCS Razor Crest Building Process
I would have loved for the paint of this set to be chrome instead of grey, but I understand that this would have increased the price of an already very expensive set.
Considering that this is an Ultimate Collector Series set, I’d say that it is very friendly for people that aren’t super experienced.
The instructions are fairly easy to read, even when there are many pieces shown on the page. The mistakes I made were because I wasn’t careful enough, around ninety percent of them were because I got distracted and ended up placing a piece facing the wrong side, nothing too serious.
As with every LEGO set, you have to build each section separately and then put them all together, none of them were problematic.
Tedious would probably be the appropriate word to describe it, having to repeat very similar processes can feel monotonous at times.
The biggest example of this is the engines. Not only do you have to do the entire base structure, but you must repeat the entire process for the second engine.
What made it a little easier is the fact that it was the last big section of the ship. After more than twenty hours of building a couple more is nothing, it’s so exciting when you’re just a few hours from finally finishing.
The Razor Crest is a heavy and sturdy build, it’s not easy to move around but fortunately, it’s super easy to detach some of the bigger assembled sections (like the engines) to move it around without having to worry too much.
I can’t imagine how hard it would be to take it upstairs/downstairs with everything together.
The unexpected details are so fun and cool to see: the carbonite chamber, the eggs of the female reptilian that Din Djarin take in “The Passenger” episode, Boba Fett’s armor, a small armory full of weapons, and a little plaque with Grogu’s silhouette with an Aurebesh sign that translates to “Child on board”.
Some of you might be wondering if there’s a toilet inside, but that’s not something included on the set.
The Minifigures are pretty decent, Din Djarin has new printing on the arms, extra details, and a hairpiece when you take his helmet off. Grogu is not new but it’s the first time that we see his hovering pram with accurate colors.
The Mythrol is the one that Mando captures in the first episode of The Mandalorian. Kuiil needs no presentation, the Ugnaught that helps Mando on multiple occasions is here, but this time he brought company.
A brick-built Blurrg is also included in the UCS Razor Crest set. You can put all of them inside the ship or display them on the character plaque.
Pros and cons of the UCS Razer Crest Set
Pros
It is beginner friendly, the hardest thing about building this set is spending so many hours sitting on an uncomfortable chair. It looks incredible, I’m sure it’s going to be the center of attention as soon anyone sees it.
Despite its intimidating size, it’s super easy to move around once you remove some sections, doing this only takes seconds, and putting them back is just as easy. There are so many details inside of it, you’re going to have a very good time building it.
Cons
The most obvious one is the price, this is a premium set with a premium size. For six hundred USD you could buy more than a few of the smaller sets.
The UCS Razor Crest is not considered a toy, it was made with the idea of having it displayed. If you want something to play with, there are better and cheaper options.
It might not occupy as much space as the Star Destroyer or Millenium Falcon, but you need a dedicated space for it.
This thing is heavy, I wouldn’t ask a kid or someone with limited mobility to carry it. Also, avoid placing it on a feeble surface like a glass shelf.
Should you buy this LEGO set
With other Lego sets, it’s not that easy to say if someone should buy them or not. I’m never going to say that you should definitely buy (or not) something because everyone’s situation is different. In this case, the weak and strong points make the decision less complicated.
If you have a proper displaying place for it, love The Mandalorian and your wallet can handle spending six hundred bucks on a Lego set then you should consider buying it.
But, if you are limited in terms of space, want something to play with, or have a curious cat that loves jumping onto everything then this set might not be the best option for you.
This is just my opinion and you can spend your money however you want to. This was my review of the Lego Star Wars UCS Razor Crest, if you have any questions feel free to ask and I’ll answer them as best as I can.
UCS Razor Crest LEGO Set Mini Gallery
I took so many more pictures of the finished model and even more during the building process. In this mini gallery below I will share a few more that I could not fit properly in the Review above but are worth seeing as they show even more of the incredibly thoughtful details of this build.
