943 replies to this topic

[DraikNova]

I think the armor piece adding the extra arms to the red Stone General is pretty beautifully detailed.

[Aanchir]

DraikNova, on 13 October 2012 - 09:11 PM, said:

I think the armor piece adding the extra arms to the red Stone General is pretty beautifully detailed.

I agree. Much more stylish than Lord Garmadon's extra arm connector piece. Of course, Lord Garmadon's looks quite impressive with Lloyd ZX's shoulder armor, which makes me wonder if that might have been considered when designing the piece. I wouldn't put it past the designers since they similarly made sure Samurai X and the new Sensei Wu minifigures had emblems printed on the back right where they would show through the sword holder on the ZX armor piece.

[Prominence]

The Ninjago 2013 sets are available for pre-order, right? The sets usually aren't up for sale until the end of December?

Edited by Prominence, 14 October 2012 - 12:00 AM.

[Dannylonglegs]

Ninjago just got real. I'm seriously impressed by the villains this time (I liked the snakes too, but some of them were a bit goofy looking.) The faces of the stone warriors are actually quite cool, and I'm actually inclined to try and collect them.   Their masks and costumes are also really cool, and somewhat bat-like and crab-like at the same time. Also, the kimonos are really stylish. I want them all!
I like the gold dragon too. He's allot better then the strange four headed one from last year.

~Insectoid Aristocrat

[Wall E2624]

My goodness! Go away for just 10 days and all this happens ! They all look superb! The Golden Ninja and Dragon are all I ever hoped for. Lord Garmadon's new helmet is lookin' good. Sensei Wu doesn't look different to this years variant. The ninja's new outfits and vehicles look and astonishing, and those swords . The Stone Army and their vehicles are great, especially Garmatron!

I hope, due to lack of spinner sets, we see card art for the 10(?) new characters in the instruction booklets. They did one for Pythor, and he didn't get a spinner.

[horizon]

Btw, the box art of the Golden Dragi\on: what is going on with the golden ninja's legs?

[DraikNova]

I know, they appear to be shorter.

[Aanchir]

horizon, on 14 October 2012 - 08:12 AM, said:

Btw, the box art of the Golden Dragi\on: what is going on with the golden ninja's legs?

I think they're just inside a sort of a brick-built "saddle".

Anyway, I can see why a lot of people prefer the Stone Army to the Serpentine, since the Stone Army minifigures on the whole are a lot more like traditional minifigures in their design. For starters, they all have basic minifigure heads. And even with their incredible detail, they all have simple dot eyes with little sparkles, just like "human" minifigures. While I did gradually warm up to the many different eye styles of the Serpentine (especially since apart from color scheme those were one of the main unifying features among each tribe), I do tend to prefer simple dot eyes in most cases.

[DraikNova]

The eyes also have a sort of robotic look.

[Kalhiki]

I still haven't given my thoughts on these:
-Kai's Fire Robot looks good, but I would have preferred if he was sitting up a bit higher. More reminiscent of the Mine Mech.
-The Warrior Bike is great. Loving the whole central tread in the front. And the giant face.
-Cole's Earth Driller is fine I guess. It's growing on me I must admit, but something about it just doesn't look right. I guess it just doesn't have that nice flow that the Thunder Driller had, which makes this seem like they stuck a huge drill on the front of the vehicle.
-The Golden Dragon looks cool. I would have preferred the regular dragon head since I feel it looks better overall, but that's a minor issue. The set still looks great.
- Garmatron is insane. I love it. It's a giant face with treads. And it looks scary with those angry eyebrows and that open toothy mouth.
- The Temple of Light is nice, but nowhere near as cool looking as the Fire Temple. The robot is nice and seems to be a step up from the Samurai Mech.

Overall, the sets don't look as good as they did in the Serpentine story arc, but still pretty nice. Most of them are quite good, and I feel the ones I don't really like are mainly because it was something I wasn't expecting. But they are growing on me, that's for sure.

Kalhiki

[Prominence]

Prominence, on 13 October 2012 - 11:57 PM, said:

The Ninjago 2013 sets are available for pre-order, right? The sets usually aren't up for sale until the end of December?

Could someone answer these, please?

[wghost]

I just don't understand why the golden dragon's eyes are printed on the place they are now. This way they're out of proportion compared to the head as a whole (same with the Ultra Dragon). Why did they depart from the Earth Dragon in that regard?

[DraikNova]

Prominence: Yes.

wghost: Actually, I think that in the earth dragon the eyes look like they have been placed wrong, about one socket too early.

[Aanchir]

wghost, on 14 October 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

I just don't understand why the golden dragon's eyes are printed on the place they are now. This way they're out of proportion compared to the head as a whole (same with the Ultra Dragon). Why did they depart from the Earth Dragon in that regard?

I don't think it looks so bad, and the placement of the eyes on the Golden Dragon and Ultra Dragon feels more consistent with the other dragon heads. It should also be noted that the Ultra Dragon's head doesn't look nearly as bad in real life as it does in official images-- the version in the official images has a large black and dark brown blob for an eye, while the actual piece has smaller black eyes with an almost indistinguishable dark brown rim. (the overall change is that all the black shapes but the eye itself are changed to white and all the dark brown except that directly touching the black eye is changed to reddish-brown). Overall the heads of the Ultra Dragon look magnificent side-by-side, and the Golden Dragon's more distinct eye printing looks like it may end up even better.

On a side note, that official image I linked of the Ultra Dragon makes the preliminary Earth head's eye look a lot more flattering than the box art does. If the dark brown had been changed to Reddish Brown or White and some Dark Brown were added somewhere else on the head, like above the teeth as in the case of the other dragon heads, I think that version would have been ideal, since it would have black elemental patterns behind the eyes just like in the case of the other three heads.

Edited by Aanchir, 14 October 2012 - 05:39 PM.

[wghost]

DraikNova, on 14 October 2012 - 04:55 PM, said:

wghost: Actually, I think that in the earth dragon the eyes look like they have been placed wrong, about one socket too early.[/color]

If you place it backwards like the Golden Dragon, it just feels weird. That's why I thought the Earth Dragon head was aesthetically better.

Aanchir, on 14 October 2012 - 05:39 PM, said:

I don't think it looks so bad, and the placement of the eyes on the Golden Dragon and Ultra Dragon feels more consistent with the other dragon heads. It should also be noted that the Ultra Dragon's head doesn't look nearly as bad in real life as it does in official images. [...] Overall the heads of the Ultra Dragon look magnificent side-by-side, and the Golden Dragon's more distinct eye printing looks like it may end up even better. [...]

I have to admit, the actual piece looks better than the official art because of the reasons you pointed out. What really bothers me on the Golden Dragon that the eyes are too large and too cartoonish in appearance. Maybe they will be less obtrusive in the actual set like the Ultra one.

Edited by wghost, 14 October 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[DraikNova]

Backwards? How?

[wghost]

Like you mentioned: one ridge closer to the end of the headpiece (like the Golden Dragon compared to the Earth one).

Edited by wghost, 14 October 2012 - 07:16 PM.

[DraikNova]

Personally, I think the one problem with the golden dragon is that it's claws are facing 90 degrees to far inwards.

Edited by DraikNova, 14 October 2012 - 08:37 PM.

[Aanchir]

DraikNova, on 14 October 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

Personally, I think the one problem with the golden dragon is that it's claws are facing 90 degrees to far inwards.

I can definitely agree there. That's the main flaw that stood out for me when I first saw pictures of the set.

[DraikNova]

Oh well, at least there's one thing to MOD. That and it's overdose of green.

[Kai NRG]

It just occured to me that the main difference between this ninjago release and the previous ones is that (as far as we know), there are no functions like Big Blade attack, the chomping action on the skeleton vehicles, etc.  Especially with the Temple of Light, most of the sets could use something like that.

[DraikNova]

You're absolutely right, the only function, if you can even call it that, is the golden dragon's shooter.

[Aanchir]

DraikNova, on 15 October 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

You're absolutely right, the only function, if you can even call it that, is the golden dragon's shooter.

And the blunt shooter on the Garmatron, and the minifigure catapult in the Golden Dragon set, and the flick missile on the Samurai Bike. There's probably also a Technic gear function in Cole's Power Driller. Still, not many truly innovative action features as far as we can see.

It makes me wonder if the designers had as much time to work on these ones as they did on the other waves. At Bricks Cascade earlier this year, Kevin Hinkle erroneously said that Ninjago was ending after 2012, but he later clarified that that was simply the last he had heard and he had since learned that there would be one additional wave after the 2012 sets. This makes me suspect that initially, the sets may have been intended to end after 2012, and as such, the designers were forced to draw inspiration from what they knew would be in the show during its final season, rather than having longer to brainstorm possible function-intensive sets that could be worked into those episodes.

Alternatively, it's possible that they'd simply decided that kids weren't digging the functions. Or perhaps the designers were simply spread too thin, what with Chima being the high-priority item for most of the adventure theme designers. Whatever the case, it is a real disappointment to see the functions on the wane next year, especially when the two previous years had such brilliant functions throughout.

Edited by Aanchir, 15 October 2012 - 06:22 PM.

[Algernon]

Aanchir, on 15 October 2012 - 06:21 PM, said:

It makes me wonder if the designers had as much time to work on these ones as they did on the other waves. At Bricks Cascade earlier this year, Kevin Hinkle erroneously said that Ninjago was ending after 2012, but he later clarified that that was simply the last he had heard and he had since learned that there would be one additional wave after the 2012 sets. This makes me suspect that initially, the sets may have been intended to end after 2012, and as such, the designers were forced to draw inspiration from what they knew would be in the show during its final season, rather than having longer to brainstorm possible function-intensive sets that could be worked into those episodes.

I think it's safe to say that NinjaGo's massive success was a little surprising for LEGO, so they had to move quickly to capitalize on it. You do make a pretty good argument. However, I don't think the designs look very rushed. I think it's more likely that LEGO is trying to make a few extra bucks off of the brand equity they've created with NinjaGo before launching Legends of Chima, which seems to be a high priority for them. They don't really need a boatload of functions to sell the sets if they're only really marketing to the fans they've already gained since the line launched.

[DraikNova]

Not to mention that the functions from pre-2013 weren't too complicated either.