Lego Star Wars Set 75133: Rebel Alliance Battlepack Review

Today I will be taking a look at the Lego Star Wars set 75133: Rebel Alliance Battlepack. This set was released in early 2016 (December 2015 in Europe, March 2016 in the US). It contains 101 parts and 4 Rebel Trooper minifigures. It retails for 20$, bringing the cents-per-piece ratio to about 19.6c/piece. Pretty expensive. It is one of the 2 Star Wars: Battlefront inspired battlepacks. Many fans of the original trilogy were very excited about this set, as it has been more than 6 years since the last battlepacks based on the Rebellion/ Empire factions.

Disclaimer note: I have bought this set with my own money from the local store, paying full price. The Lego Group had no entanglements with the way I aquiered this set and is probably unaware of my existence anyhow. The opinions here are therefore my own; they are not reviewed before being posted here by anyone else but myself.

Box, Instructions and Build process


The boxart shows the built set and some details (including set number, title, the number of parts, age rating) on the front side and some play features on the back side. It is basically just a standard Lego box, nothing special about it.
Front side of the box and instruction booklet

Rear side of the box

The instruction booklet is rather small, but it does not contain any mistakes or inaccuracies. At the end you can see some sort of catalog with all minifigures included in the early 2016 wave of Star Wars sets.
The building processs is pretty straight forward, since it contains only about 100 parts it does not take long to build it. Also there are no special or unheard-of building techniques involved.

Minifigures and accessories


With this set you get 4 minifigures all  of them are fighters of the Rebel Alliance (as the name of this set suggests). 2 of them are Human, 2 are alien (1 Duros and 1 Rodian). Their uniforms are not as diverse as they should have been. There are basically 2 different types of torsos and 2 different types of legs that are mixed up to give the illusion of diversity (which I think is a shame), while still being generic enough to fit in any diorama. Also, it is very rare to find alien races in these battlepacks.
I find the print on the leg parts quite impressive, it makes them look like they have some camouflage netting stitched to them.
Minigigs - rear

Minifigs - front

As far as included accessories go, you get 4 studshooters 3 of them are to be held by the minifigures, while one of them can be mounted on the speeder-bike to mimic a rear machine-gun. 
Two brand new jetpacks are included, which is excellent given that they provide an important tactical advantage in Star Wars Battlefront. They also  appear in white in 75134 Galactic Empire Battle Pack but here their color is different (dark bluish grey) and a 1x1 printed tile is attached to them. Trans-light blue 1x1 round plates are fitted on the nozzles to represent the jets emanating from the pack.
Jetpacks

The completed model


We have seen a lot of speeder bikes from Lego in the last couple of years. This one, however, is is different then most, due to its ability to fit 2 minifigs. A similar design was employed back in 2007 for 7655 Clone Troopers Battle Pack, one of the earliest Star Wars battlepacks, but has rarely appeared since.
The reddish-brown armour plating is very common for the ground vehicles used by the Rebel Alliance. In the Star Wars: Battlefront game we've only seen 74-Z speeder bikes. This one has clearly been inspired by that model, since it has those iconic  steering handle bars, although the rear section is of a different design. I really like the way it looks and can see such vehicles alongside infantry units in battle.



Both the pilot and the gunner are equipped with studshooters; while the gun next to the driver is faced forward, the gunner can swivel his weapon up, down, left and right.

I think there is plenty of detail to this model as well, despite the limited part count. Those reddish-brown engine turbocharger elements on each side of the gunners seat act as some sort of engine exhaust. Curved slopes are part of the main body, while the wedges are used as bumpers on either side.

Overall


I always avoided buying these rebel battlepacks due to their rather specific nature and I always ended up with a bunch of Imperial or Republic battlepacks, since the minifigs were rather generic. That is not the case with this set, however. The minifigures are very generic and can be used in a variety of environments, while still looking good. They also offer some impressive army-building potential, because you can mix their parts around however you would like. I'm not excited when I see a Lego Star Wars set containing a speeder bike, because I have so many speeders. Compared to my other ones, this one has great play-value and looks pretty nice on display. It really adds to the concept of speeder bike with that rear gun.
The only thing I am not very happy about is the inclusion of those studshooters. I get it: kids like them. But would it hurt to include some standard (moulded) blasters as well for collectors? I'm getting tired of ordering every now and then new blaster rifles.
This is how the set looks with some "normal" rifles

To sum it up, I think this set is a worthy addition to any original trilogy collection, whether or not you like the Battlefront game.

Interested in buying this set? Check it out on Amazon:
http://amzn.to/2kGvayq

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