LEGO unveils 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City playset

August 21, 2018 | 16

Hello, what have we here?

Props to LEGO for keeping this one under wraps. The next big Star Wars set of 2018 is a homage to Empire Strikes Back – LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City.

This 2,812 piece mega-scale play set is split into four quadrants, each containing an iconic scenes from Empire.

The set is priced at US$349.99 in the US and has a release date of 1 October 2018. There will be a VIP early access preview sale for this set on 13 September 2018.

Costing $500 here in Australia… this is not going to come cheap at all.

See below for regional pricing:

• LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – US$349.99 [US]
• LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – AU$499.99 [AUS]
• LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – GBP£299.99 [UK]
• LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – CAD$399.99 [CAN]
• LEGO 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – €349.99 [EU]

I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan, so when I first saw photo of this set, I was pretty underwhelmed. This is the first large-scale Star Wars playset since the critically panned Assault on Hoth.

Given the Star Wars community’s vociferous reception to Assault on Hoth, I can understand LEGO’s hesitance in investing in large Star Wars playsets.

Curiously, this set doesn’t bear the UCS logo, unlike Assault on Hoth, which I think is a great move. It’s great to see LEGO take fan feedback on board, as one of the major criticisms of Assault on Hoth was that it wasn’t a terrible set, but a terrible UCS set and didn’t deserve the badge.

The set comes with two vehicles, the most notable one being Slave 1. I may be spoilt by the UCS Slave 1 which is imho, THE definitive version of Boba Fett’s ship, and this one just looks ugly as sin.

I am not a fan of the proportions and the transparent cockpit with Boba Fett sitting in it, just looks plain wrong. The green and grey section is also too skinny and narrow, making this look nothing like the real thing.

Thankfully, the minifig-scale Cloud Car looks great. Fans should be happy with this one.

Let’s take a short tour of the interiors.

The first section is the entrance, where Lando warmly greets Solo, Leia and Chewbacca before leading them into…

The dining room, where Vader is awaiting them!

This then culminates with Han getting frozen in carbonite, in the Carbon Freezing Chamber as Chewie and Leia helplessly watch.

The Carbon Freezing Chamber has a working mechanism to “freeze” Han Solo, which I think is a really fun play feature to include.

Lastly, we have the railing, where Darth Vader duels against Luke, for fans to recreate one of the most famous scenes in movie history.

The entire playset is reasonable large, measuring over 16cm (6″) high, 58cm (22″) wide and 56cm (22”) deep. Good luck trying to find space to display this sucker!

For a set this large, we get a whopping 20 minifigures, including some cool new additions such as Bespin Luke and Leia, Lando, Cloud Car Pilots and everyone’s favourite dude, Lobot.

Overall, unless you’re a massive LEGO Star Wars fan, I don’t think 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City will excite you much. It’s extremely pricey, and playsets are usually geared towards play features instead of being purely for display purposes, although given the size of this set, it would still make a decent display piece.

I do wish they had done a better job with Slave 1 as it just looks awful. I admit that I’m spoiled by the UCS Slave 1, but this one just looks off.

That said, for fans that missed out on the last Cloud City set and can’t afford to drop a thousand bucks on it… this seems like an absolute bargain.

So yeah, that’s my thoughts on Betrayal at Cloud City. Are you going to pick this one up? Let me know what you think in the comments section!