Lego 6848

It is my pleasure to bring you another quaint entry from Futuron's exhaustive theme.  Today I bring you Strategic Pursuer, the only true mech in the Futuron lineup.

The Mech is by all accounts hunting rogue Black-tron miscreants, though during work hours I could see this little dude helping to load a certain space train at the depot given its arms and claws, or even doing dangerous repair work on damaged spacecraft.  If only taken at face value this set brings a welcome variety to the Futuron theme.  I kind of wish more Futuron sets had been built with a goal towards dockwork.  I mean, the train carries cargo, and the common theme of the series is carrying something smaller; albeit not in this instance.   The whole cargo carrying thing would be most prominent in the later theme M-Tron.  It certainly seems as though Futuron was presaging that immensely excellent play feature called crates.  Of course to be fair, even Classic space had crates aboard space ships from time to time; and in my opinion, a good crate and carrying combo will always win over flick fire missiles any day.  For one thing, crates don't vanish into thin air like missiles do if you're too enthusiastic with your flicking.

Of course packages do get lost in the mail, but who are we to kid ourselves, this is the future.  Nothing bad ever happened in the future.  Unless those Blacktron dudes showed up.

Strategic Pursuer is an intriguing design that pushed the limits of Lego building technology for the time.  It wanted to be a walker, but was restricted to a degree by the choice of hinges from the then current selection.  It was visually successful to a degree, but from a play perspective the footwork is just not quite there.  Tilting is no problem, but walking?  Not so much.

The other sophisticated building technique is in the arms.  The Lego designers swung the plates out at a 45 degree angle.  This added a bit more scope of movement to the reach and function for the mech.
This also serves to highlight the restraints still holding designs of the time back.

I'm one to fuss about new Lego not being what I grew up with, and that's my own personal nostalgia.  I think the sets of today have marvelous functionality, and looking at Strategic Pursuer certainly highlights just how well the newer mecha have turned out.  It's just that I grew up with Lego that looked a certain way, and they were beautiful, and they still are, whereas the back of Exoforce robots make me shudder at the hideously exposed rear ends.  There are some construction solutions I just can't get behind.

Here's a selection of unique to Futuron parts.

First we have this angle plate in black.  There are two of these in Strategic Pursuer, and while the theme contains several in the white color, this is the only set with black.

 Second we have this inverted slope in white.  The set has two of this piece, and the theme contains no other examples in any color.  It's too bad as this is sometimes a very handy piece.

The only other piece that might be notable is this octagonal window.  Of course you can get two of these in Stardefender 200, and with that set hovering between 30 and 50 dollars it'd be criminal not to.  But if you're that cash strapped, then this set is certainly a good way to add the window to your collection.  It is the solid top variant, as opposed to the cross axle variant introduced in Spyrius.

Overall the set is a decent mix of pieces, favoring plates over bricks as the Futuron theme is wont to do.  I get annoyed by the high plate count; but only because I have plans for building a purist mothership with the Futuron parts sometime in future, and all the plates with smatterings of bricks are making me wonder how well my plan will work.

But enough said about the set, lets see what else it can be.

For its size Strategic Pursuer feels quite varied in its part selection.  There are only nine unique parts (primarily from the yellow spaceman) but the variety of parts and their quantity are greater than the finished model would have you believe.  Broken down this set just feels big.

And here are some spacecraft.

All in all 6848 is a very nice set that brings a lot to the table, it doesn't quite hit a home run, but if anything its failings only serve to highlight just how close it was to perfection.

Final score A-
Pros: Excellent Part variety, octagon canopy, decent second hand prices
Cons: Yellow Spaceman, almost good articulation