kyreii

Elves sets for parts?

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I recently picked up 41075: elves treetop hideaway on sale. I thought it would be useful for parts, especially with all the dark reds, browns and colored foliage.

 

From your experience, are Elves sets generally a good source of parts for castles/villages/fantasy or is it only specific sets? I'm torn whether to buy multiples of the treetop hideaway and starlight inn or to pick up different Elves sets.

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If you are willing to use the fairly frequently used colour pallette (pinks / purples / azure bricks) in buildings, then yes, they are a good source for parts. As always with sets from any range, check the inventories before buying.

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A little biased as someone who is primarily an Elves fan, but I can definitely see the use of Elves sets for fantasy builds. A lot of Castle MOCs tend to strike me as a little lacking in the color department, so the bright colors of Elves don't hurt in that respect. And like with Friends, even the use of bright, "girly" colors is often overstated—in many of the sets the majority of the parts still tend to be in more conventional colors like tans, browns, and greys.

The Starlight Inn and Elves Treetop Hideaway are great choices for parts, but here are some other sets you might find useful:

  • 41176 The Secret Market Place: This set is a decent source of tan and brown architectural parts, but also features all sorts of interesting detail elements.
  • 41180 Ragana's Magic Shadow Castle: This set's purple and black color scheme is a great foundation for an evil castle, especially if you consider grey and black too mundane or red and black too overused. Other great details of note are an abundance of Trans. Bright Green crystals and ornate Chima flame elements.
  • 41078 Skyra's Mysterious Sky Castle: The lavender roofs of this set might not be for everyone, but there are plenty of good tan and grey architectural parts to be had. As a two year old set, I've also seen some pretty steep discounts on this one, making for a great value.
  • 41076 Farran and the Crystal Hollow: Like the treetop hideaway, this set is a great source of earth tones if you can still find it.

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I find quite a lot of the sets very interesting as they are, interesting pieces aside. But I fully can see the appeal of getting a couple just for the bricks. The only thing stopping me from buying them are the actual Minidolls. In my opinion there is only one way a Lego figure should look like and that's not doll-shaped. :wink:

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If you're thinking of buying multiples of sets just for the pieces, I have a suggestion. You should look up the Elves sets on Lego Bricks&Pieces, or Bricklink and find out how much you'd need to spend to buy only the parts you want.

I've found that I save money and avoid clutter when I just buy specific parts I'll be using.

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^ and ^^ The Elves minidolls are very easy to sell if you are realistic about pricing, and some of the Elves exclusive parts also sell well. It is quite easy to recoup quite a bit if you sell on the stuff you don't want.

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

A little biased as someone who is primarily an Elves fan, but I can definitely see the use of Elves sets for fantasy builds. A lot of Castle MOCs tend to strike me as a little lacking in the color department, so the bright colors of Elves don't hurt in that respect. And like with Friends, even the use of bright, "girly" colors is often overstated—in many of the sets the majority of the parts still tend to be in more conventional colors like tans, browns, and greys.

 

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That's true. I'm just sorting a mixture of used Friends sets. I've sorted the Grand Hotel (great for white and tan) and Jungle Rescue (browns, tans, dk orange and some foliage). I always thought the hotel was really purple, lavender and gold, but the amount of white is amazing, you just don't see it.

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2 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

The only thing stopping me from buying them are the actual Minidolls. In my opinion there is only one way a Lego figure should look like and that's not doll-shaped. :wink:

Couldn't agree more.

1 hour ago, tkatt said:

If you're thinking of buying multiples of sets just for the pieces, I have a suggestion. You should look up the Elves sets on Lego Bricks&Pieces, or Bricklink and find out how much you'd need to spend to buy only the parts you want.

I've found that I save money and avoid clutter when I just buy specific parts I'll be using.

This is also my suggestion, especially with the pricier sets.  I've saved a lot by buying parts on BrickLink and B&P, and didn't have the hassle of trying to sell of anything I didn't want or need.

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The Elves sets always look so promising, but they just don't have enough high value pieces for me. There are too many brightly colored pieces that are hard to use. I would say about 1/6 of Elves set pieces are pretty useful, but the rest seem to be average or less in value to me. The tans and browns are nice, but I have been relying on Bricklink or parts drafts for the parts I want.

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I tend to buy Elves sets occasionally, mostly for ladscaping pieces. All the friendsy pieces are actually used for sub structures you can' t see afterwards. Heck, I even use Duplo for that. So in the end I just need to get rid of the minidolls, anyone interested ?

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2 hours ago, kabel said:

I tend to buy Elves sets occasionally, mostly for ladscaping pieces. All the friendsy pieces are actually used for sub structures you can' t see afterwards. Heck, I even use Duplo for that. So in the end I just need to get rid of the minidolls, anyone interested ?

I have a lot of strange colors for the same purpose.  And I have nieces, so that's where my minidolls tend to go.  But not getting minifigures in a set kind of spoils some of the fun.

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3 hours ago, kabel said:

anyone interested ?

Yes, but mostly for Elves if you have 'em. I don't do a lot of town/city building (more Sci-Fi or Fantasy/Historic) so Friends torsos/legs don't do much good. Unfortunately, TLG doesn't care to introduce more Elves characters quickly so it really hampers being able to ccustomize them.

As for colors, I think it depends on which sets. Obviously a set with a bright orange dragon will have lots of bright orange. Friends sets do have a lot of bright or pastel colors, but the amount in Elves is pretty reduced. Purple shades are much more common than pinks, and more useful in a variety of settings.

Besides the treehouse and inn, the Queen dragon rescue is a great source of white and black and I often see it at 40-50% off, once as low as 70% off.

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Oh, one thing preventing me from just heading to Bricklink is the fact that there are so few sellers in my country. International shipping + customs would eat into the savings I get if I tried to order from the US. I'm a new builder too, so most new parts will be good parts :)

Thanks for the recommendations! The Farran sets shows up at around 9-10 USD and contains a lot of foliage so I might get multiples of that, sell the fig, sack, trans pieces and the baby dragon. Ragana's Magic castle also has some lovely unique parts so I might get that.

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16 hours ago, rodiziorobs said:

Unfortunately, TLG doesn't care to introduce more Elves characters quickly so it really hampers being able to ccustomize them.

 

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Now there are a few of each of the main characters, I find you can mix and match the legs and torsos between them to create a bit of variation in a small tribe. You need to pinch some heads from Friends characters for head variations.

This is for my daughter of course, not for me :-)

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