Tereglith

Eurobricks Knights
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About Tereglith

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    My toothbrush plays the SW theme.
  • Birthday 11/18/1995

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  • What is favorite LEGO theme? (we need this info to prevent spam)
    Star Wars

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies (usually)
  • Interests
    Lego, writing, pretty much anything Spieldberg, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek (except DS9 and Enterprise), most classic fantasy, math, board games (any other Khet fans here?), Rubik's Cube, and hating Twilight in any way and at any time that I can.

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  1. Tereglith

    DC Superheroes 2016 - Rumors and Discussion

    The price is a bit offputting, but I've got some VIP points that will soften the blow. I'm definitely going to get this, though. I think they really succeeded in capturing the essence of the show's batcave, and especially the vehicles and the Wayne Manor bit look just fantastic. And I'm sure I can think of something more creative to put on the big studded wall (which I bet is there to hide the costume-switching mechanism). No matter the value? Value is the only thing that matters about currency. You wouldn't expect it to only be 270 Yen if you lived in Japan, would you? $270 USD is currently $380 AUD - anything you pay less than 380 is a discount!
  2. Tereglith

    LEGO Ideas WALL-E

    This seems likely to me. I've just ordered it from the US shop.lego.com, and it says that it's backordered until February. That's unusual for any lego set - usually it'll be a two-week delay, or if it's to be longer than that it'll say "Will ship within 30 days". For them to name a specific date that's four months from now makes it seem like there's something else going on behind the scenes, like a full neck redesign.
  3. Tereglith

    Legal / Illegal lego builds?

    Legal builds are combinations of elements that are 'in system' and don't stress the plastic of the elements involved. Conversely, illegal builds are any that are 'out of system', as well as those that appear to be in system but cause undue stress on the elements. For a quick primer on which seemingly-legal combinations are actually illegal, check out this powerpoint by Lego designer Jamie Berard. As for who polices them, it's Lego company policy to police their own builds internally to ensure that everything is legal and in-system. The last out-of-system assembly that I'm aware of in an official Lego build is the 1x2x4/3 curves being slotted into arch on Green Grocer. When it comes to your own builds, there's nobody stopping you from breaking all the Lego laws you want.
  4. Tereglith

    Slave I Retrospective and UCS Comparison

    You fixed the non-neon orange boat stud on Jango's! I will accept my Kudos in the form of cash or gifts
  5. To start things off, here's a couple of theme connections that can be considered 'canon' due to definite shared set elements: -Power Miners and Atlantis. This the most solid connection I can think of, since the Atlantis set 7984 Deep Sea Raider literally contains a Power Miners character. -Space Police III and Classic Space, due to the statue of a classic spaceman in 5974 Galactic Enforcer. Since Classic Space can definitely be considered to coexist with a bunch of other older sci-fi themes (Blacktron, etc) this mainly just draws Space Police III into the broader sci-fi lineage. -This is important, however, because the coexistence of the Octan corporation in both Lego City and Lego Space themes indicates that most Lego space themes can be considered a canon future for the civilization depicted by Lego City sets. Those are the big three I can think of. (Except, of course, for how The Lego Movie ties all themes together with its meta genre-bending awesomeness )
  6. An unnamed planet, unless the Swarm gives names to their worlds. Either way, the remains of Galaxy Patrol Troop 783 do not know the name of the world on which they will earn their Grand-Admirals' Stars. Their ranks thinned by the Swarm until there were only three left, The 783 staged their last stand behind the meager barricades provided by the airfoils of their downed dropship. The 783 attribute their survival entirely to the presence of an experimental Galactic-Class Combat Exo-Suit on their mission. Trooper Phillips, who piloted the suit, attributed his record-setting number of combat kills to its agility and incredibly aggressive weapon loadout. "The railgun was a lifesaver. Those plasma pellets could slam through a bug's carapace like it was a wet piece of toilet paper. When I took down the Queen who attacked us near the end, it was emptying the railgun between her eyes that finally got her to stop crawling for good," Phillips recounted. "And that B.R.O.A.D. Sword! They need to start shipping those out to every exo-suit across the galaxy, stat," Phillips continued. "It thinned out troops like nobody's business." (The Sword in question is an experimental weapon. An iron ball is anchored to a super-thin carbon nanotube filament, and then suspended in midair by the projection of super-strong magnetic fields from the Sword's bulky hilt. This draws the nanotube filament incredibly taut, allowing it to slice through most materials with easy. When in use, the Sword tends to glow orange due to the inductive heat generated by the magnetic fields.) "Of course, Luiz played a critical role as air support. He was my eye in the sky. And Kovacs picked up any strays that got by me so that our distress beacon wouldn't get destroyed before help arrived." The three survivors will be commended at a ceremony on Terra next week. Some more pictures of the suit: It can directly hold a Patrol figure! Troopers, meanwhile, have to already be wearing a Gunpack (standard equipment for the Heavy in most squads) in order to slot into the exo-suit. The attachment point on the rear of the Exo-suit can have a variety of additional hardware mounted on it. Engineers are currently trying to give it a jetpack, but for now the standard module is an S-14 Survival Pack. The pack holds two holdout guns should the suit ever run out of power or ammo, along with a buzzsaw for cutting teammates out of wreckage, an antenna to maintain connection with orbiting ships, and a tempered titanium sword as a weapon of last resort. The box on the bottom of the pack further holds a number of tools for suit repair, a water purifier, and enough nutrient bricks to sustain a troop of five for two weeks while waiting for help to arrive. After this great success, be on the lookout for the Galactic-Class exo-suit coming to an active front near your planet! (Notes on the model: it has 12 points of articulation with 18 degrees of freedom (14 of those in the legs!) and is ~140 pieces. Not counting the antenna, it stands around 10 cm tall)
  7. Tereglith

    [Review + comparisons] 76031 The Hulkbuster Smash

    Ah, man! I can't believe I forgot to do this when I was first making the review. I knew I was missing a suit, and it was sitting right there on my shelf too! Oh well, looks like Krikkit's got you covered on that and many other fronts.
  8. Tereglith

    [Review + comparisons] 76031 The Hulkbuster Smash

    Just thought I'd add an addendum about the relative sizes of the Hulkbuster vs. the Hulk - in the new trailer that came out today, we see our most direct comparison yet between their sizes, and it shows that the Hulkbuster's legs alone are very nearly the same length as the Hulk's body when he's in a hunched-over pose similar to the bigfigs. The Hulkbuster is indeed nearly twice the size of the Hulk, making the Lego version only slightly too large to be in scale.
  9. In the grand tradition of pre-cyberpunk science fiction failing to predict just how quickly computer tech would advance, I like to imagine the Neo-Classic Space universe as one still filled with enormous, clacking mainframes, gigantic reels of magnetic tape, and endless stacks of binary punch cards, the relics of a fiction forever frozen at the data storage levels of the late 1970s when the original Classic Space sets came out. This is why the explorers of the future must rely on intrepid crews of humans embarking on journeys to the far reaches of the cosmos, and not simply probes like ours. Still, even in a fleet not dependent on Big Data, there does end up being some considerable digitization in the more developed regions of space. When one massive sector-managing station needs to exchange billions of binary digits with another, they rely on the sturdy, speedy, but often vulnerable fleet of data courier ships. The earliest, Babbage-class ships, capable of transporting 2 billion bytes at a time, have nearly been phased out. Now the Core Worlds Courier fleet is almost entirely composed of Lovelace-class (4 gigabytes) and Turing-class (8 gigabytes) courier ships, the latter of which is pictured below. The Turing-class Data Courier takes a crew of three spacers, who ride high in the cockpit, as well as two Data engineers, one of the most arcane jobs the Fleet has to offer. A sleek design disguises a large rectangular cargo bay which is carefully protected from external forces, to better preserve the data within its eight refrigerator-sized hard drives, each of which can store a billion bytes of data. In addition to these, each Turing-class contains a single mainframe which administrates the data within it and can perform basic analytic tasks while en route to the destination. And now... I promised a twist, didn't I? The major advance of the Turing-class Data Couriers is their external Serial Bus prongs. Emerging from the Turing-class' blunt nose, these twenty-foot conductive prongs can interface with external data-reception ports built into all modern space stations. Thus, the ship can transfer its information contents into the mainframes of stations without the need for the back-breaking physical punch-card transfers that were a hallmark of the Babbage- and Lovelace-classes. This advancement has made the Turing-class Couriers a prized assignment among new pilots in the Core sectors, since being able to dock the prongs successfully on the first try without having to adjust the ship's attitude by 180 degrees is considered a major sign of prowess. And now I'll drop the NCS act - it's a Lego flash drive! Since it came in blue, I had no choice but to doll it up as a Classic Space-colored microbuild. Here it is plugged into the laptop I'm writing this post on:
  10. Tereglith

    [Review + comparisons] 76031 The Hulkbuster Smash

    Yeah, it really emphasizes how oversized Groot is. From the looks of things in the trailer, the Hulkbuster suit is probably somewhere around 14 feet tall, compared to the Hulk's 8 or 9 feet. Groot is no taller than 8 feet most of the time, so it's pretty ridiculous that he's the same height as something that's oversized to be nearly twice his height. I can forgive Groot a little though because he is in scale with the also-oversized Rocket
  11. When we first saw the pictures, I thought that the Age of Ultron lineup was pretty uninspiring, with one big exception - the Hulkbuster! Even if the set didn't look great, the suit's been the centerpiece of the AoU advertising. It was up to Lego to do it up right, but I couldn't really tell from the pictures whether they'd delivered. When the set went up on Amazon for roughly 48 hours a couple days ago, I zipped right in to buy it, and a couple days later it arrived at my door. Now that I have it in my hands, I like it way better than I thought I would! The box has sort of weird dimensions - more square than most sets its size. It showcases the major aspects of the set quite well, and has that lovely Marvel dark red as its main color. It feels a little light for its size, and the reason for that is soon clear. The build is divided into three bags, and for the most part they're waaay too empty for their large sizes. You also get a bag with the Hulk in it, a single instruction booklet, and an underwhelming little comic book of the type we've all gotten used to, plus a sticker sheet with the two decorations for the hexagon flags. (I didn't apply these stickers because I might want to use those pieces for something else someday without the stickers on them.) Bag 1 pieces by Tereglith, on Flickr The incredibly empty first bag nevertheless has some huge pieces in it, making up the little cage for the Hulk. Of particular interest are the 45 degree angle pieces, the grey hexagonal flags, the clear pole that holds up Scarlet Witch, and the Galaxy Squad trans-blue sword pieces she uses as magic. (There's also a little cameo from my swiss army knife in the corner, kept on hand to snip open bags and such). Here's the finished contents of Bag 1. Scarlet Witch hovers above the cage on the clear pole which is mounted on a frictionless pin. When using the super jumper you can have Iron Man fly up and knock her down, but I neglected to use this figure because a) it's pretty lame and b) I've heard the super jumper can damage the legs of figures. Bag 2 pieces by Tereglith, on Flickr Bag 2 has a more substantive piece count. The most interesting bits here are the three trans-blue skeleton arms (one extra!) and, of course, the Hulkbuster head. I know many people dislike the use of CCBS pieces in system sets, but they kept it to a minimum here - there are only 4 CCBS pieces in the whole thing, forming the suit's upper arms. Bag 2 builds us a big ol' torso, and there's a few pieces left over as well. Bag 3 finishes things off with the arms and legs, and the pieces here are perhaps the most mundane. Plenty of brackets, though. This is also where we get the final minifigure of the set, the Ultron drone/avatar/thing. And here's the whole thing! The Hulkbuster is the obvious star, and the perfunctory little cage thing can't help but be shoved off to the back when trying to photograph it. It's probably a bit too large compared to the Hulk bigfig, but until we see more shots of them together than we get in the trailers it's hard to be sure. What is clear is that the Hulkbuster suit is definitely larger than the Hulk, so at least it's qualitatively accurate, if not quantitatively. The figure selection is great - we have a new Iron Man suit, the new, Ruffalo-y Hulk with his techno-pants, the lovely Scarlet Witch (who shares her angry face with DC winter's Supergirl figure), and an Ultron who could pass for the comics version with its red mouth. The three normal minifigures are endowed with double faces. Ultron has a closed-mouth face that also functions as the back of his head in his main configuration. Scarlet Witch has a generic female face without creepy red eyes. And Tony has the normal double-sided head we've all gotten used to him having. The three of them also have nice back-printing. Scarlet Witch's skirt rides up onto the back of her torso, so it'll be tough to use the torso separate from the printed legs if you care about little details like that. The Hulk is the real star! With his new Olive Green skin, comic-book-style purple pants with Avengers printing, and mussier hair, he looks great and very accurate to his appearance in the new movie. Here he is compared to the old Hulk, who looks positively comic-booky now. The long hair on the old hulk is much closer to how the character appeared in the 2008 version with Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. As you can see, the entire face print has been redone to evoke Mark Ruffalo's version of the character. Needless to say, the olive green is far more accurate to the movie version than the old figure's bright green. From behind, the differences in the molding are much more apparent, particularly the seam across the new Hulk's back. This is not separable by the consumer, so I assume it's to aid in the manufacture of future bigfigs who have the same buff physique as the Hulk but a different head. The Iron Man Suit is familiar-looking. Round arc reactor, gold and silver highlights. It looks good, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell it from some past versions of the figure at a glance. The only substantive change is the new printing of lines on the helmet, which are very sharply printed and look good. Mama suit and baby suit! Note how the Hulkbuster's hips are mounted on axles that extended a couple studs further than they need to. This actually aids in posability, as you can widen the suit's hips as necessary. Yo dawg, I heard you like suits, so we put a suit in your suit so you can fight villains while you fight villains. I... what's that? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm being told that 2007 is calling me asking for their Xzibit meme back. Anyway, this fold-open feature isn't strictly necessary, since the Iron Man figure can be slotted into his spot just be lifting up the head, but it does look pretty cool to raise the chest up and encase the smaller suit. Not too bad a likeness! If anything, the figure's head is too large in relation to the Hulkbuster suit around it, which seems like a discrepancy until you remember than the Iron Man minifigure itself has a notoriously oversized head. And here it is in all its glory. The print on the new dome piece is spot-on. It really sells the appearance of the Hulkbuster suit. The side profile is pretty good, dominated by that beefy gorilla arm. As in many official Lego models, the back gets short shrift, though the inclusion of directable rear thrusters is nice and really helps the appearance of the back of the torso. It poses quite well. Here, for example, it might be reeling from a punch delivered by the Hulk. It's also showing off that the bottoms of its feet have integrated trans-blue cylinders to indicate its ability to fly. Remember what I said earlier about the extended hip axles allowing for better poseability? Here's where that really comes into play. By pulling the right hip all the way out to its greatest extent, you can recreate Iron Man's most famous pose: the three-point landing! And here it is winding up to throw a punch. With shoulders, elbows, fingers, hips, knees, and ankles, really the only point of articulation that's lacking is the ability to turn at the waist and neck. Unfortunately, these are biggies, since they're the junctures that determine the action lines of a pose. The Hulkbuster can only direct its action dead-ahead. Still, it's not too big a detriment to its poseability Comparisons So how does the Hulkbuster stack up to some other Lego mechs? Well, it's just a wee bit smaller than Metalbeard. No wrist-mounted attack shark either. This would definitely be a fight worth watching. And the poor Hulkbuster doesn't stand a chance against my modified version of Lex Luthor's power armor! Seems that the poor buster doesn't have many things its own size to hang out with... Aww, that's more like it. They're the exact same height! This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Until Hulk comes in and smashes it, that is... Final Opinion When the first pictures came out, I was skeptical - the Hulkbuster looked like a bit of a mish-mash, and too big for its own good. But now that I've built it and held it, I have a great appreciation for what the designers managed to do. They packed a ton of detail and articulation into one of the smallest Lego mechs yet, and the end result is really slick. And when it comes with three great figures and an awesome new version of the Hulk too? Well, that's just icing on the cake. (The weird little cage thing is irrelevant, as always). I give it a 9/10. Thanks for reading!
  12. Tereglith

    75095 TIE Fighter

    I don't see why the scale is even a question. This is clearly about twice as big as anything that could be considered 'minifigure scale'. It's about in scale with the UCS X-wings by my reckoning, but not much else.
  13. Yeah, there's only so much I can do with the figures on flatter ships like this. If I make a Slave 1 or Tantiv IV in this style they should be able to sit up a little better. I sort of like how cramped everybody looks in the hangar, though. It goes quite well with the overall fussy and superdeformed nature of 10188's interiors. Thanks! What's the larger ship will your Theta-class will go along with? I don't remember it ever being associated with any major capital ships.
  14. Tereglith

    Is LEGO dying?

    Yes, Lego just had its biggest year ever and briefly became the largest toy company on Earth, but because some reviewers (who I might remind you are the most likely to be jaded about new sets simply because they've looked at every previous set in depth; see also jaded movie critics) are complaining about some subset of new sets, that means the entire brand is dying. [/sarcasm]
  15. Tereglith

    What's your recent LEGO Star Wars Purchase?

    I bought a couple microfighters (X-wing and Snowspeeder) as an easy way of acquiring pieces needed for my Death Star style Lambda class Shuttle MOC. It's weird; normally I keep almost all the sets I buy together, or with slight modifications. But every single microfighter I've bought so far has been dismantled for parts about ten minutes after I build it.