Fans of grey–especially grey plates!–this post is for you! Today let’s look at another Star Plan set: this is a 3,250-piece (does anyone ever count to verify these things?) clone of the leading brand’s classic set 10030, one of the early Ultimate Collector Series sets, from 2002. If you missed out on it 16 years ago, you could always grab the original set for about $3400 on the secondary market. Or, if that’s a bit rich for your toy budget, this clone set can provide a very solid substitute for $163. Sporting the tell-tale red “R” logo, this set is immediately identifiable as a replica of a leading brand set.

My twelve-year old son and I built this together and had a blast. The set is targeted at the 16+ crowd, likely because of its size and several tricky building techniques. And honestly, thanks to a rather poorly engineered design on the part of the original brand, even less experienced older builders will encounter some frustrating moments. Kids much younger than 16 or so will also be frustrated by some of the tricky alignments required and also be overwhelmed upon dumping out the box’s contents, which include an appropriately massive spiral-bound instruction manual. But if you’re up for a challenge and understand what you’re getting into, this set can be lots of fun and feel like an accomplishment once you’re done.

Builders will notice that this set pre-dates the era of numbered building stages. Since you will probably not be finishing this set in one go, I suggest figuring out a scheme for parts sorting and possibly a way to move your workspace before jumping in too deep. We used these large bins, and put like parts into small piles (or in some cases, just left parts in the bags when the entire bag was full of one element) within them, so that they could easily be relocated or stacked to make space when needed.

Beginning the build, we create the frame that will become the core of the Star Destroyer. I’ve placed a mini figure in front of it for scale, but there’s no figures included in this set. It’s not so much a play set. In fact, once the frame is covered with the wings and external features, you’ll basically never see the interior again since this set does not open for play within the model. This is an Ultimate Collector Series, remember, which is meant for display much more than for play.

Once we’ve got the frame built, further evidence of this being a showpiece is the stand, which gets permanently built into the ship’s structure. It’s dang solid, too. Good thing, since this creation is quite hefty once it’s finished. Thanks to the clever use of technic pins and technic girder beams attached to system pieces, we are able to make the bottom half of the frame “upside down”, which looks kind of cool, I think:

Whilst the frame is mostly built of technic parts, the stand is a good mixture of technic and system pieces, with a nice, wide base. Everything fits together with perfect clutch, which you’ll want for a set which rests so much weight on its base. I have not attempted to weigh the completed model, but I believe the shipping manifest stated the parcel’s entire weight was 9.8 kg. All it had was an outer box and a couple pieces of foam in addition to the very thin clone box and it’s contents.

The outside of the frame has lots of fun details, as you’ll note above. I didn’t count, but there’s hundreds of vents, nozzles, hooks, cones, and other doo-dads and widgets that will surround the entire perimeter of the frame, giving it a very mechanical appearance. It’s quite the effect once you see it all together. This is one massive and massively complicated ship with all the powers of intimidation the Empire needs to wield its purported authority.

The engines on the back are fun to build, though our set came with 5-length axles instead of the 6-length the instructions call for. That makes them a bit precariously perched on the tips of the axles, rather than solidly mounted on them. But they look great, just the same. The small engines consist of two sizes of barrels per each. The large engines consist of large tires, molded of grey plastic, of course. And, adding the very minimal colour seen on the outside of this build, translucent blue satellite dishes make an appearance as rocket fuel exhaust. There is a bit of red and blue scattered inside the craft, but none of those bricks will be visible from the outside.

You’ll also notice the magnets on the inside. As you’ll find when assembling this set, these suckers are strong! That’s good on one hand, because they are the major connection point for the wings, which we’ll be building next. But we’ll also see that these magnets become a bit of a pain when we put the wings over the frame. But more on that in a moment. First, one more glance at this beautiful structure and its exterior detail. So far, this thing is rock solid:

If you’ve never built something entirely of large grey plates, here’s your chance! This set has more plates stacked up than the all-you-can-eat buffet. As you might expect, this can be a bit trying at times. You’ve got to press them all down very firmly and make sure they grip together at every possible contact point. Many people will want to use some glue on the wings, perhaps. We did use some glue, though we did not glue every single plate: just a few key structural plates on the lower portion of the wings, where they would already be fighting against gravity to stay up.

You’ll build four wing segments: a top and bottom for each side. They are largely similar, and they all consist of plates with a few hinges that will connect on the sides to the frame. The top portions of the wing also have some mounted guns.

Now, what the pictures cannot show is the frustration encountered placing the wings into position. I knew what we were in for: this set is famous for its magnets that are so strong they cling to each other whilst pulling the plates they are attached to off of the building structure. This problem is exacerbated when the bottom wing pieces are held upside down and already fighting gravity to begin with. The most feasible solution to this is to glue the magnet-holding plates into place, or buy some LEGO-branded magnets on a secondary marketplace such as BrickLink or BrickOwl. That will cost anywhere from about $35 USD used for the 28 magnets, to over $100 USD for all new magnets. Even at $100, that’s still a far cry from over $3,000, right? However, a little super glue is easily obtained. If you decide to build this set, be forewarned this is necessary. If your sensibilities are offended at the thought of gluing bricks together, this really is not the set for you. Luckily, as a display-only model, you won’t be likely to want to modify or take apart and rebuild the star destroyer.

Placing the wings into position, we now move onto the flight deck and above. Here as well, the focus of the model is on exterior detail, with only a skeleton beneath for support. Everything fit together nicely and snapped together firmly, even the large stack of blue and grey plates that make up the centre support (see below).

Once we’ve built the top portions, they all more or less “slide” or “set” into place, rather than click into place. Even so, they all nestle into each other firmly, so that nothing moves around when the ship is picked up and carried. There are quite a bit of unusual building techniques in the later steps, because of the angles at which parts must meet other parts. It’s all rather cleverly designed and looks very nice. Each completed part made me think “that’s cool!”

One difference between this and the original is evident in the spherical-ish pieces on the top: on the original brand set, these elements are a rounded large “insect eye” semi-sphere on top and a meteor-moulded semi-sphere on the bottom. According to Brickset, those elements appeared only in set 10030, this set, and never again. In the replica, the pieces are more like boulders. If one were looking closely, they’d be able to tell this is a replica. But odds are, no one will notice and/or care.

Like the Ultimate Collector Series original, the replica comes with a model Rebel Blockade Runner and an informational plaque (reading Star Plan, of course). For those who would rather have a plaque reading “Star Wars”, various vendors on eBay sell custom-made stickers (also unlicensed, you can be sure!) for around $5–10 USD. Altogether, it’s quite a nice display! The build is a challenge in some spots, but not too often. The bigger challenge is going to be where to display this thing! It’s about a meter long, so start looking for a place to put it before buying it!

My son and I enjoyed working on this. He did most of the building, and I helped with the tricky bits and deciding how to deal with the magnets and glue. I’d say the results were well worth the better part of three days which were spent building it. It’s quite impressive. For scale, here’s the Imperial Star Destroyer we just built, along with a smaller sibling star destroyer.

All throughout this set, the pieces have been high quality. We were missing a 10×2 dark grey plate, but at the end we had tons (dozens, literally) of extra pieces, including two of the large smooth plates seen on the wings, and a bunch of 4×2 system bricks in blue, and many other plates and smaller elements. The only decal to place is the large plaque: it can be a bit tricky, because it is so large.

If you decide the cloned Imperial Star Destroyer 05027 is for you, pick up yours today from Building Toy Store, and be sure to use the exclusive Alt-Blocks coupon code to save $10 on your order: K7CXYREL.

If you’ve enjoyed this review, please feel free to post and share it, “like” it, subscribe to the blog to receive all of our reviews to your inbox, and support us by buying your bricks through our partner site, Building Toy Store. Thank you for reading our reviews!

Like most blogs, Alt-Blocks.com is supported by readers clicking affiliate links within posts, which links result in Alt-Blocks.com receiving a small commission on purchases made by readers. Your support is appreciated and helps us to keep providing thorough reviews and photos of brick sets. All block sets reviewed have been purchased.