(Click here for the regular Star Destroyer).

After doing the Star Destroyer, I was all out of grey. However, the release of the official Mini Star Destroyer provided the opportunity to re-stock (although this time with the new light and dark grey). The official Mini Star Destroyer is perfect for people wanting to build Star Destroyer customs. Not only does it include lots of angled grey "wing" plates, but includes a particularly long one that made it possible  to reasonably accurately do the central cavity on my own large Super Star Destroyer.

Some features of this model:

(Right) Top view: This is the view of the Super Star Destroyer on its death plunge into the Death Star surface. I used a a totally different approach for this model. Instead of layering plates as with the Star Destroyer, the Super Star Destroyer has a central core, on which I built much of the underside, the central cavity, and the spine of the upper surface. The remainder of the upper surface is then attached to this as two angled plates, which are mounted on click hinges near the centre of the superstructure.

The angled plate approach has enormous advantages in that it yields a sleek, pleasing top side. The disadvantage, which will become clearer in the following photos, is that it causes big problems in doing the underside. Effectively, this is two models constructed with different stud orientations that have to be joined together: a central portion with vertical studs, and the outer edges which are constructed with studs at an angle to vertical.

This can be covered over on the topside, but it means that the underside is inherently messier: you have to accommodate the hinges to mount the plates on, work around the varied alignment of plates, and add some detailing without the underside becoming too bulky.

Incidentally, you'll notice the model mixes the old and new dark and light grey pieces. Except for the greebling, I always used these pieces symmetrically and generally I found the result pretty good. I concentrated the light grey on the top: there is more mixing underneath. While I can understand why the new greys upset some people so much, generally I found the colours much more pleasing and wished I had more of them.


Front Angled View: The bridge is oversized, but it allows for more detail and interest on the top of the model. This was the smallest workable approach for the bridge tower.

Engines: Once again, the engines were a challenge, and each group is mounted a different way. The rearmost set of three use an L-shaped piece to mount the engines on a plate as in my Star Destroyer. The middle row of four are mounted using the holes in technic beam, as with the official mini Star Destroyer set. However, it was the outermost six engines that were really hard. The original film model has these engines quite close to the tip of the wings, yet hugged up under the structure. They are also arranged in a horizontal row.

This made them really hard to do. Because they were so close to the edge of the ship, they had to be mounted on angled plates, which meant they weren't horizontal. And the standard L-shaped piece that I'd usually use for mounting an engine at 90 degrees stuck much too far out the bottom of the structure.

What I ended up doing was using a hinge piece to change the stud direction, as this sat flush with the structure. I then mounted the engines diagonally on attached plates, so that when the whole thing was attached to the angled superstructure, it came out approximately horizontal.

Side View: This view highlights the main cheat of this model. The ship in the films is basically symmetrical around its edges: the wing tips form the equator. This version is horizontal along the top, with the wing tips sloped down. I think its a reasonable compromise - it really only looks badly wrong from directly behind or in front of the model. It certainly makes the thing much easier to construct.

You can see here how the model balances on its central section.