Grover

If you get a site-wide fix or script going, please let me know. Otherwise, I will continue slowly fixing links here in the Guilds. Thanks!

After some experimentation, you have to remove: applications/core/interface/file/index.php?file=/index.php?/ from between the forum/ and forums/ directories in the link. Apparently the php has been replaced by a direct link. So, an old link that looks like this: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/applications/core/interface/file/index.php?file=/index.php?/forums/topic/173390-book-iii-challenge-iv-the-turning-point/ Should be edited to read: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/forums/topic/173390-book-iii-challenge-iv-the-turning-point/ and then it should work. I'm going to start updating links, trying to hit the most relevant stuff first.

We have enjoyed having you as a guild leader! Thanks for all your help and we look forward to Book IV! Thank you! Book IV here we come! Great feedback! It seems we have a common theme from most everyone: I think almost all of us here came to learn by getting feedback on our builds, which is great. We as guild leaders are discussing how we can best incorporate that into Book IV, since this is a true strength of the Guilds. I'm glad that you mention the timing and expectations/pressure. We aim to have this be a low pressure setting for builders to build as much or as little as they want or have time for. I have had many times in the past where life has prevented a lot of building. We would much rather have you build your own sigfig and story with the quality you want rather than rush a small build out to meet some arbitrary deadline or the feeling that you have to respond or the story dies. My own story was conceived around the construction of a castle and town from start to finish, so I have been slow to establish my town on HSS since I am not building random structures to meet requirements, but rather as the story unfolds. The pace of the Guilds has allowed me to do that, which I have really appreciated. As for the challenges, they will of course have deadlines, but you haven't missed out on a lot... we haven't had much going on in the last year, which we hope to change, so look forward to that! I will be cleaning up the major threads here over the coming weeks (or maybe months in the case of some of the huge multi book threads) to include some synopsis parts for broad overviews. One of my goals is to build in every guild. I think it will not only be a challenge, but fun, and I am looking forward to seeing all the new builds we will have!

How did I miss that?! Apologies, corrected now!

As @Henjin_Quilones did a few years ago, I am going through and updating the list of Historican settlements. The Royal Cartographer's Guild of Albion is pleased to announce every settlement listed in the Royal Registry of Historica's Locations of Note: Barqa, Kaliphlin (@Gideon): Port City Mpya Stedor, Kaliphlin (@Maxim I): Port City Sionnach, Avalonia (@de Gothia): Port City Dalig Ulv, Mitgardia (@MKJoshA): City Mophet, Kaliphlin (@adde51): City Zamorah, Avalonia (@Zilmrud): City Euosmos, Mitgardia (@Gunman): Port Town Osgard, Avalonia (@MiloNelsiano): Port Town Trifork, Avalonia (@Bregir): Port Town Daydelon, Mitgardia (@soccerkid6): Town Estolad, Kaliphlin (@Adair): Town Belynia, Avalonia (@Simon_S): Port Village Dandelume, Avalonia (@T-86(swebrickLUG)): Port Village Prenmôr, Avalonia (@Grover): Port Village Thorshaven, Mitgardia (@kabel): Port Village Druidham, Avalonia (@Henjin_Quilones): Village Helenia, Avalonia (@mlongworth): Village Kashgar, Varlyrio (@narbilu): Village Khadira, Kaliphlin (@Muakhah): Village Batuhan, Kaliphlin (@jtooker): Hamlet Burrium Aqua, Avalonia (@Kerntechniker): Hamlet Embervale, Avalonia (@Aurore): Hamlet Marginea, Avalonia (@Sympatik Brick): Hamlet Shadowmere, Nocturnus (@Lord Vladivus): Hamlet First, let me apologize to those whose settlements had been previously recognized and were somehow accidentally removed when the thread cleanup occurred here. I was one of those, so there may have been a few more, but everyone should be back on now. And, to the rest, Congrats! That means @jtooker for Batuhan, @Aurore for Embervale, @Sympatik Brick for Marginea, and @T-86(swebrickLUG) for Dandelume! I am excited to watch these settlements grow! Several others here have some very nice builds and are only 1 build away from being recognized. Check the first post or PM me if you think that I have overlooked your settlement for some reason. When you do update your settlements, please let me know, as this thread won't pop back to the top from editing alone. Please note that, at the moment, typically Challenge builds do not count.

A grand Hello to all of our current Historica guild members! I am honored to announce that I am the new guild leader of Avalonia. Currently, we are looking at starting Book IV, as we have some new members and current member activity is somewhat slow. We are planning on offering a number of traditional activities (challenges, etc.), but also would like to take this opportunity to hear from all of you, old and new members alike, as to what you would like to see in Book IV. For those of you who are newer, I would like to ask some questions: • What drew you to Eurobricks and the Guilds of Historica? Did you want to have a place to post awesome builds? Were you hoping to get feedback and grow as a builder? Did you like the cohesive storyline? • What aspect of the Guilds here do you like the most? The least? • What questions do you have about the Guilds that might help you understand the activities here better? Technical questions about the various ongoing challenges (age of Mitgardia, University of Petrea, etc.)? Short synopsis of the history of the various books? • Although you have likely chosen a guild already, how would you rank the guilds in your level of interest and why did you rank them this way? Any other thoughts or questions are welcome. We are taking a look back at what has worked well in the past and what is no longer relevant to make everyone's time more enjoyable. We all build for fun, and our time is precious, so we aim to make this an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for everyone. For our veteran builders: • What of our ongoing challenges (settlements, age of Mitgardia, Avalonian tasks etc.) do you like the most and least? • Which challenges did you like the best and least? For example, I joined some years ago when I returned from my dark ages and was looking for a place that had experienced, high quality builders who were willing to critique my castle builds and help me get better. To this end, I found the Guilds, which is filled with some really amazing builders, and joined up. As a mostly castle builder, this was a natural place, and I loved the story aspect to the Guilds that provided a cohesive theme for everyone's build, and a collective narrative. It struck me more as a collaborative story than a role playing game, and as such, no one was stuck waiting for you to 'take a turn' and you could contribute as much or as little as you had time for, making for a more relaxed pace that I could sustain for a long time. Those builders who have critiqued my builds have helped me the most, and I love when builders will show the techniques for their various builds. @soccerkid6 and @LittleJohn have done a great job with some tutorial builds in the Historic forum, and comments from them and others on my specific builds have been incredibly valuable to me as learning tools. Were I to rank my interest in the guilds, it would probably be Avalonia (duh!) > Mitgardia > Nocturnus > Varlyrio ~~ Kaliphlin. That's not to say I dislike any of the guilds at all, and I plan to build in all of them (I think I need to build in Mitgardia and Kali still...), but I have always loved the traditional castle setting, and have a love of the viking scene. Nocturnus I found fun, open to about anything, and almost whimsical at times. Valyrio is very interesting to build in and allows some more modern techniques, and Kali has some cool desert aspects that don't appear anywhere else. For my character's story, I wanted to work on my traditional castles, as I love that genre, so that made my decision. Don't worry, we have plenty of fun too. I try to do a joke build for each challenge with my alter ego, Bob (search for Bob the Unemployed Avalonian Plumber if you want to see ridiculous builds), and you are free to have a blast. Thanks for all your input, and I am excited for the upcoming Book IV!

Now that I have my latest freebuild posted and updated the settlement list, I now have my plate cleared off, and I am ready to officially make the announcement: I have been asked to take over as the guild leader of Avalonia, and with much humbleness and gratitude, I have accepted this responsibility. I am very honored that @Henjin_Quilones has asked me to take over this great role, and to have the support of the other guild leaders that are still active here. A *huge* thank you to Henjin, who spent a lot of time organizing and cleaning up the various roles, tasks, lists, and other administrative tasks that keep Historica together. His efforts have helped me keep on top of things, and he has some really amazing builds to boot. Currently there is a forum hiccup that prevents links from working, but you can still find these pages with an internet search of "Eurobricks" and whatever thread you're looking for. Hopefully the links will be fixed shortly. I'm going to try and organize some of the intro threads a bit more to help with finding some of the legacy ongoing threads such as the settlement index. In any case, I would like to formally welcome all the new members to our guild! We are working on getting Book IV started, but we would like some of your input, so when you have a chance, please take a look over in the Book III thread and let us know!

There's a couple of reasons that I like the 1x1 plates and tiles for details: 1. Most people usually have at least a handful since they are frequently 'extra' parts in a set 2. If you want a lot of one, they are usually cheap direct from Lego 3. Small parts can be combined to make larger parts, but not the other way around, so you can use them in microscale, full scale, as detail in a setting etc. Occasionally they appear on the PAB wall, although I've only once seen them in what I would consider to be a useful color for medieval building (dark stone grey). It really isn't a big deal, since you don't need a lot of them to be effective.

Thank you! I thought I might be doing something wrong, and I was! Appreciate the help!

@SimWies, congrats on getting front paged! I'm glad that @MKJoshA made this a featured post. I learned a lot from his builds, particularly since he was gracious enough to share some of his techniques with the rest of us. I hope that with this featured post, we have a few other outstanding builders who may contribute some thoughts. We have a lot of talent on the forums here, and I found it one of the best places to learn, so I try to pass on knowledge others have shared with me and various tips and tricks I have learned as well. There are variations on what I posted above, too. If you have, say 1x1 quarter round tiles in med. stone grey or dark stone grey, these can replace the same tiles in green as rocks. More spotty vegetation suggesting poor soil may be accomplished by leaving a hole in the green plates to a brown plate below, maybe with some grey 1x1 round plates as rocks, etc. The options are limitless. Rather than simply write a suggestion, I thought I'd make a few example builds, and since I still have the small scene together, I can try to incorporate others' ideas and get pictures for a more complete look.

Now that we have spoilers back ... (yay!) I haven't had an issue embedding flickr links, but https links, such as in imgur, will not embed, such as this: https://imgur.com/kdVXhea Is this a forum issue or is this new? I have never had issues previously. Thanks!

You are quite welcome, and your build is lovely. I also appreciated that your tree stump is right in the line of fire for the tower, and this tree would have likely been cut down not only for being too close to the road and overhanging travelers, but also because it blocked the line of sight for the archer in the tower to fire on hostiles in the road. As @T-86(swebrickLUG) said, you can add to your build with some foliage, and of course, with more variety in parts comes more detail. This takes more pieces and with a limited piece count, you did very well. I also appreciate that you didn't reach and use too many shades of green or clutter up your build with so many great ideas that it was too busy and you lost the overall feel. Going a bit further in detail with common pieces can be challenging, but I wanted to take a quick opportunity to do sort of a master class in this, if you will, that I invite our other members to jump in on. To start, I tried to reproduce the landscape you had, at least in the foreground: Then, using some common 1x1 grey elements, and the more elusive but not entirely uncommon 1x1 dark tan, scattered a few about the path to make some loose soil. Additionally, I added a 1x2 brown slope as a tree root from the stump. The next step would be to try to smooth out any blocky corners with things like 1x1 quarter round tiles in green, a 1x2 rounded slope, and a couple of olive 1x1 round tiles to fill in odd corners or break up long lines. Fairly small additions, but these small things can help bring some detail and break up long lines in more organic matter.

Very nice job! It's nice to see some more builds rolling in!

Wow, what a fantastic piece, and a great story too! Before I go further, I must stop and marvel at your English. It's fantastic! I am always so impressed on these international boards how everyone's English is so amazingly good. I am very humbled as I cannot write in another language as good as everyone else here. Back to Lego... this is an outstanding build, and I think that maybe it shows that GoH is still doing the right thing. It is obvious that you have read through many comments and threads here, and you have avoided so many of the mistakes we all did when we started out. For starters, I love that you have integrated the path beneath the grass (and not built above as many of us did initially) which makes is much more realistic, and then you smoothed the edges with wedge plates to make it even more appealing. You have some really nice texture to your grasses with plate height changes, which is nice and smooth, and you have an amazing irregular base. On top of that, the tower is great! The roof has some nice tiling, and has a gorgeous flush seam at the top! The railing on the top of the tower is genius, and has a very minimalist feel to it while still looking clean. I also appreciate how you mixed old and new grey bricks together, something that I think gives a nice texture to the stone. The SNOT ingot tiles are beautiful and really drive home the brick effect of the stone. (I should have used some of these in my recent castle build!). You also included a door on the top of the tower, something many times neglected, as well as a stone merlon for cover (although flanking this archer may be easier due to the minimal railings on his sides, at least he can protect his own door!). The two trees are solid, and you have attached enough of the limb pieces that they don't look thin. Trees are particularly hard to do, and you did a fine job with a limited piece count. I would also like to say that this is one of the first builds that I have seen that truly holds to the 'You don't need a lot of pieces to make a nice build'. I usually don't like hearing that because it was just said by someone who made an 8x8 build of sand blue, sand red, dark brown, and olive. You did a nice job with the mini positioning and the photography as well. Everything is in focus, the lighting is pretty good, and all the minis are clearly positioned. I like the story! I'm excited to see where Sam and Alric go, which is great! If you can make people want to keep reading, you have succeeded. I want to learn more of their homeland and their travels, and look forward to seeing more builds!

I'm trying to get in touch with leadership here to get things rolling again. I hope to ignite some builds and keep things going on GoH. I'm currently building a hops farm, a collab started with @Kai NRG, so we should see some builds soon!