Star Wars Legends Diorama, 2026 Convention Season
The R-41 Starchaser is one of those ships that never made it into canon. Budget, reliable, and exactly what you’d fly if you couldn’t afford to be picky.
The R-41 is half-loaded. The turbolift controls are shot out. An ISB officer and two Stormtroopers are converging below.
The pirate on the pad has a head start and a plan. Whether the plan is working is a matter of perspective.
Year built: 2026
Build time: ~2 weeks
Size: 10″ x 10″ (32 x 32 studs)
How It Came Together
The R-41 Starchaser is Legends material. Hoersch-Kessel built it as a budget competitor to the Z-95 Headhunter, and it filtered down to anyone operating on the margins: cash-strapped Rebel cells, Black Sun, pirates working the Outer Rim. That history made it an obvious fit for this scene and an obvious candidate for a LEGO MOC.
The central structure is a round supporting column built from twelve flat hinge-plate segments arranged in a ring. The arch openings use Part 88292, a 1x3x2 arch with an old Mediterranean quality that felt right for an outpost that predates the Empire and has since been absorbed into it. The round turbolift surround was the most demanding part: framing it with two Arch 1x6x2 pieces on their sides sounds simple until you’re resolving that geometry against both ground level and landing pad level simultaneously, with a SNOT dashed outline around the perimeter. All of that had to be worked out in Studio before anything went down physically.
The vegetation was developed by hand rather than digitally. I wanted it to feel aggressive, like a jungle actively reclaiming the edges of the outpost. Darker greens for older growth, brighter greens pushing through at the edges. The landing pad surface took the same approach: mixed studs-out bricks, studs-down bricks, and tiles of varying sizes to read as decades of patch repairs. Two small features on the pad surface open to show industrial detail underneath.
The full breakdown, including sketches, Studio prototypes, and the SNOT geometry decisions on both the pad and the ground, is on Patreon for Tier 1 and above members. Tier 1 (Hangar Crew) includes a 7-day free trial.
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