Minifigure-scale Star Wars Vehicles

Very nice work! I appreciate the effort you always do, Capn! (I see you added the Landspeeder's link!)

Stupid question: Isn't the TCW AT-TE way closer in size to the minifig-scale?

Am hoping that the rumoured UCS ATAT is close to minifigs scale.

At 72cm a minifigcan easily do A UCS version. scale Sail Barge is very doable. If Hasbro can do an 3.75inch scale barge then Lego

@Darth_Mule said:
" @Volfogg said:
"Where's the star destroyer or death star calculation???"

For those who haven't noticed, those sets are very much not minifigure scale.

The death star would be 1:41.369 of the moon."

Lol I know I just wanted to see the numbers. I'm glad they edited the article to add them :D

Yay!!!

So... we are owed a huge UCS sandcrawler of twice the length and width of a 75059. Is that the reason for those new tracks under the upcoming D11T?

I once heard that the UCS Millenium Falcon, the basis for the list, is actually slightly too big by a very small margin.

Excellent analysis and article. I like how the original 1999 Landspeeder set is the most accurate size although my favorite is the 2017 version. Man, I've been at this a long time!

I'm a little late but the AT-RT section shows the Clone Turbo Tank in the description.

Great list tho!

I like how you get a "Canon reference length" from the "Canonical reference book".

So original series Starship Enterprise would be 7 metres long

Fantastic article, really enjoyed it! Thank you
Surprised by the fact the newest x wing is actually the closest match in terms of scale

@marengho said:
"As I am always telling, 3 studs per meter or for foot fetishists a little over one stud per foot"

As an American I can confirm that we’re armpit fetishists, not foot fetishists.

I wanted an article like this so much honestly, there was a thread on the Brickset Forum (I think?) from years ago that went over the closest Star Wars sets to Minifigure scale. They only had a few but it was still pretty cool.

I extended my 75103 First Order Transporter by 12 studs so it could hold 20 stormtroopers in two rows of 10. It now measures 39.4 cm. So another 4 studs would make it nearly exact! As it is, I had to turn the troopers' helmets about 45° to fit- the helmets are a little more than two studs front-to-back. I also modified the cockpit to have a Transparent Brown front so the pilot can see.

Great article!

I'm hoping this is all a bit of a tease for the reveal of a spot-on minifig scale AT-AT - especially considering the use of AT-ATs in the article's thumbnail.

Ah, 'scale'...the boon and bane of collecting in miniature...anything, really:).

I remember hearing that yeeeears ago; when Kenner had 'Star Wars', someone pointed out their Falcon wasn't 'proper scale'. Their counter was: if it was, no kid could lift it (not to mention, how fewer could've afforded it).

I also remember WEG putting out a game called 'Star Warriors', a SW space battle game using square cardstock counters for the fighters...but they actually made Star Destroyers counters in shape (of the first trilogy Destroyers), and relative size to the fighters. In the rule book, WEG mentioned not making Super Star Destroyers as they be 'a foot long in length', and the Death Star would be "the size of the average basement"; so in 'scenarios', WEG included 'the trench run'. No battle on its surface, nor battle get to it, not even a variant to recreate 'the tunnel run' (from 'Jedi'). Oh, and I made SSDs; because I WANTED SSDs (legal size sheet, rough-out a shape along a diagonal-axis, cut, use...:)).

Minifig scale star killer base or plants/moons such as naboo, endor lol

@PjtorXmos:
Die-cast cars like Hot Wheels or Matchbox also tend to have exaggerated curves because they wouldn’t read properly if accurately scaled. For the same reason, Barbie has grotesquely exaggerated proportions to a real person, because otherwise the clothing wouldn’t hang properly on her body (in scale, the material used for her clothing would be about half an inch thick, and super stiff).

TIE 8087 Defender?

Good stuff! I've thought about something like this (and put together a little spreadsheet for the UCS some time ago), so it's great to see it done for all the major movie vehicles. That must've been a lot of work.

"Canon sources sometimes give a length of 23.40 metres, but that describes the fully armoured BTL-B Y-wing Starfighter deployed during the Clone Wars, rather than its later stripped-down equivalent."

I'll admit that's exactly where my mind went when I read the title, it was the source of much debate and wrong assumptions when 75181 came out. Needn't have worried though, the Captain doesn't make rookie mistakes like that.

Minifigure scale Great Spirt Robot when?

Okay I said this as a joke, but now I'm curious. Given Rex's method here, a minifig scale GSR would be
By Faber Measurement: 128.38 Kilometers
By Farshtey Measurement: 294.71 Kilometers

For reference, The Earth's Diameter is around 12,742 Kilometers

Well I’ve got 10 on this list, so I guess my collection is pretty well scaled. Of course it may be 13 if I include the Death Star, Corellian Corvette, and Nebulon B.

However while I’m sure that no other set could be as incredibly under scaled as the Death Star, it makes me wonder which other themes have sets that are way under scaled. I’m guessing that the Black Gate from Lord of the Rings would have to be one of the worst excluding some of the skyline architecture sets.

I'd like to see the math done to calculate how close (or far) these "closest" sets are in terms of scale...and then see them ranked from closest to Death Star. :)

Also, I was curious how The Ghost would do (since I know it's WAY undersized, but I'm not sure how much)...but alas, it wasn't on the list.

It's nice to see that most of the fighters are almost upto scale.

@PDelahanty said:
"Also, I was curious how The Ghost would do (since I know it's WAY undersized, but I'm not sure how much)...but alas, it wasn't on the list."
Article was written well before midnight so no sign of a ghost at that time...

The Ghost is 43,9 metres long which results in 132 studs or 1m5cm which is pretty much accurate for brickvaults Ghost which you can find on rebrickable or on my shelf next to the sandcrawler. And a minifigur looks good next to it.

It's nice to see confirmation that ships have grown out of proportion these last few years. Whenever people talk about the UCS Falcon being minifig scale, I can't do anything but shake my head in disbelief. The play set versions feel so perfect. The 2018 TIE also feels way oversized to me, so I guess when people say that's minifig scale it's because it looks good next to the UCS Falcon, which means this year's TIE is a pefect fit for the normal Falcons.

@Norikins said:
"I once heard that the UCS Millenium Falcon, the basis for the list, is actually slightly too big by a very small margin."

That was probably someone going by 1:42 or 1:48 scale, common model kit scales.

@alfred_the_buttler said:
"However while I’m sure that no other set could be as incredibly under scaled as the Death Star, it makes me wonder which other themes have sets that are way under scaled. I’m guessing that the Black Gate from Lord of the Rings would have to be one of the worst excluding some of the skyline architecture sets. "
You could represent the scale accuracy graphically using either the ratio of model size to minifigure-scale size (as provided in CapnRex’s article) or the scale of scale accuracy I suggested earlier in the comments (which is also based on those ratios). To make the visualisation mobile-friendly, you would want to arrange them vertically with the most accurate at the top to the least accurate at the bottom.

Great article! This makes me wonder if there's a niche market for micro/nano figure scale vehicles? It would be interesting to have a LEGO Tantive IV at that scale of roughly 1 meter long... It might also work well for a new, and slightly smaller UCS Sandcrawler (or an MTT or Clone Turbo Tank) that's actually nanofig-scale, or even a Star Wars location à la HP Hogwarts Castle with nanofigs.

@DBMartin:
Millennium Falcon 7778 looks like it’s close to the trophy figs in scale. Beyond that, there might be some polybag or Advent Calendar models that are the same scale.

The buildings and locations seem to be the most out of scale, from the Death star to Cloud City, but wonder how far 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina is out? Guessing would 2x or 3x the size be about right?

@ambr:
Are we talking the entire city of Mos Eisley, or just the portion that’s represented by the set? I think Chalmun’s Bar in the current set is probably a lot closer to minifig scale than most of the vehicles on this list. Cloud City gets a bit trickier, since it’s depicting a small portion of the whole, but presented in a way that also represents the whole (same for the two Death Star playsets).

I love these deep-dive articles, but I think this one might be too comprehensive for its own good — I quickly got bored of scrolling thru all of the stats without any additional analysis.

I think it would have been more interesting to highlight a subset of ships, like the ones that were the closest to actual mini figure scale. Then perhaps follow-up articles about ones that are further away from “true” minifig scale.

Having said that, I’m still always impressed by articles like these, and they are my second favorite part of Brickset (after the comprehensive set database).

@BJNemeth said:
"I love these deep-dive articles, but I think this one might be too comprehensive for its own good — I quickly got bored of scrolling thru all of the stats without any additional analysis.

I think it would have been more interesting to highlight a subset of ships, like the ones that were the closest to actual mini figure scale. Then perhaps follow-up articles about ones that are further away from “true” minifig scale.

Having said that, I’m still always impressed by articles like these, and they are my second favorite part of Brickset (after the comprehensive set database)."

Whilst I enjoyed the article, this bothered me a bit too. I really enjoyed the glimmer of extra analysis we got with the gunship and would have really like to see this expanded for the entire article taking a dive into exactly where each set suffers scale issues and analysing the best methods to improve scale for the minifigures.

Thank you! This article is a fantastic resource. Much appreciated…

Thank you so much for this article. I started doing something similar a little while back but never finished it.
I have often wished that every Star Wars set was to minifigure scale. I guess to keep every age group satisfied, varying price points, along with the lack of parts, means this will always prove to be difficult.

@BJNemeth:
Think if it as less recreational and more resource. A few years from now, if you want to know how close a particular model is to minifig scale, you can refer back to this article. If you’re trying to build a diorama, this could be helpful for picking which builds to incorporate. Or if you end up in an argument over which set is more accurately scaled, this is like having a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records at a bar.

@SpinyDino said:
"I'm a little late but the AT-RT section shows the Clone Turbo Tank in the description.

Great list tho!"

I just realized i was incorrect sorry!

Forgot to mention last time: Thank You @CapnRex101 , for using Boba and Jango Fetts' ship's PROPER NAME...yesh, don't know what's worse: revisionist history, or the name their trying to replace it with...But I digress...

@PurpleDave : Reading over your various points about scale and other toy lines; and you are, of course right. Reminds me of another toy line, one of SW's competitors back-in-the-day: G.I. Joe.
-Back in '83; I got the 'Skystriker', based on an F-14 Tomcat...through 'current eyes', I'm guessing it was out of scale for 3 3/4 inch, but that's not the point...
-Two year later, Hasbro released the 'U.S.S. Flagg'...the 'Joes' dedicated aircraft carrier. Let me write those left two word down again: AIRCRAFT CARRIER...in 3 3/4 inch scale...8|. As big as it was (had second-hand 'sightings' as a friend, who I trust, had a friend who had one...oh, and a local comic store got a 'scrap condition' one, the owner wants to take a shot of repairing...), there nooooo waaaaay the 'Flagg' was accurate. Memory serves; the one I saw was too 'skinny'. Likewise, I also believe the thing isn't long enough...but if were, compound 'the Falcon Problem' with a storage issue (funny story: My friend's friend's dad put hinges on that Flagg; so it could be folded/'sandwiched' for storage)

Excellent article!

@MrKoshka said:
" @gorf43 said:
"As someone who is (unusually) interested in scale and how minifigs relate to it, this is probably my favorite article Ive read on Brickset. Thanks for putting so much effort into this CapnRex101. I really enjoyed this!"

Same and same. This was a slice of heaven.

Star Destroyer and Death Star could have been fun additions just to put their true magnitude in another perspective. Minifig scale Imperial Destroyer would be about 24.4m long based on their purported length of around 1km. "

ISD is about 1 mile long, approx 1.6km.

@brick_r:
Yeah, I can’t find actual dimensions, but it looks like the Skystriker was under 2’ long. At exactly 2’ it would represent a plane that’s 38’4” long compared to the action figures. The real F-14 is just barely narrower than that with the wings closed, and was nearly 63’ long. I’ve got “Battle of the X-Planes” on DVD. It’s a Nova episode about the real design competition for the Joint Strike Fighter project that produced the F-35. The plane it ended up beating for the contract was the X-32, a dinky little sci-fi styled single-seater plane that’s still 45’ long. So, yeah, the Skystriker would probably be smaller than the P-51 Mustang.

As for the Flagg, at 6’ long, that would only be 115’ long. Even helicopter carriers seem to start at about five times that length. The USS Gerald R Ford is right around 100x that length. I can’t find any hard numbers, but based on photos, I think I did find one “aircraft carrier” that was shorter. In 1849, the SMS Vulcano became the first “balloon carrier”, when it was used to launch bombs carried by hot air balloons against Venice. Over 40 years earlier, the 127’ HMS Pallas was used to launch kites bearing propaganda against Napoleon. So, when you get down to the length of a football field, you’re largely talking about unmanned aircraft, or at max maybe one small helicopter.

But I probably asked to get the Flagg for Christmas. And my parents probably laughed at the idea. Even at 6’ long, finding a place to store it would be difficult. Make it 30’ long, and you’d need to have it delivered as freight. And build a playroom out back to house it.

My preferred minifig scale is one stud per foot, ie one stud per twelve inches. That's quite a bit larger than many of the numbers quoted here, but it's easy to calculate and it's well within the range of allowable minifig scales based on different measurements of the minifig.

I've always considered the UCS 75060 to be a proper minifig scaled version of that ship.

@iwybs:
I did mention that one member of my LUG specifically builds in that scale. Besides being easy to calculate, many features on buildings, like windows and doors, are built in 6” increments, so it also scales well.

When I build cars, I stick to 6-wide. Most of them are completely original designs, so there’s nothing to scale them off of, but I was able to figure out an easy way to make bucket seats, and then a bench seat, both of which allow two minifigs to sit side-by-side in a car that’s only six studs wide (and no cheating by moving Chewie’s seat back one stud). Build them any smaller and the cars look like go-carts. Build them any larger and the minifigs look like toddlers. There are a few limited exceptions. The first 8-wide vehicle I built was a box truck. Many of them look like they have van cabs, but with a cargo box that sticks out a bit wider, so I did a 6-wide cab with an 8-wide cargo box. Next was my vintage Routemaster bus, because busses also tend to be wider to accommodate 2x2 seating with a center aisle (mine only allows one minifig per seat, and some seats won’t even accommodate a minifig unless it’s missing one arm). Then, I built Lightning McQueen and Holley Shiftwell 8-wide. I originally designed Lightning to be 6-wide, and he looked fine on the computer, but stretched out when an built the first prototype. Comparing the die-cast cars I’d been working from, they both are notably wider than any of the other Pixar Cars cars that I’ve designed, so my MOCs are as well. Finally, there’s the Shellraiser. A ground-up redesign of 79104, I figured the same logic from the Routemaster applied to subway cars, so the body is 8-wide (it also allowed more complete features on the two ends). And then the giant wheels bump it up to 13-wide, which sometimes poses a challenge for our club layouts, as I like to run it on the train tracks. Only a few of the bridges other club members have built can accommodate its width, and tunnels and train stations are right out. Another member sometimes likes to add the Detroit People Mover to our layouts, and the wheels will knock the 4-stud stanchions out from under it if he runs it down the gap between the tracks.