Bricking Dynamics

[Elander]

Hello Together,

At first: I was unsure if I shall put this theme into the Historic Forum. But since I've noticed that this theme could become relevant for all LEGO themes I've decided to put this theme in the General Discussion Forum. However will this theme accompanied by examples of The Lord of the Rings.

Bricking Dynamics

In advance, it is for TLC realistic to merchandise complete landscapes in LEGO style. And certainly are those landscapes able to become bigger than the Death Star.

As you know are Creator sets (also known as the 3 in 1 creator sets) the key in order to create those huge landscapes. They will provide to LEGO no financial risk and will provide to us the additional option for army building. But hereto later more.

As mentioned, I would like to introduce to you Bricking Dynamics with an example: My example is creating of Mordor with only 4x LEGO sets.

In advance, it is essential to take a look of the structures and colors of the buildings. And we can discover that the structures of the buildings of Mordor including nearly the same design and the colors of the buildings are mainly black. Additional we're discovering gray colors for the rocks and yellow/orange/red colors for the lava.

The scope of the sets:

The two Center Pieces were: 1x medium sized black tower of Barad dur ($60 - $80) and 1x medium sized gate of the Black Gate ($60 – $80) with only one tower.

The two Extension Pieces: 1x Creator Set A with mainly black bricks and 1x Creator Set B with mainly gray bricks.

Center Pieces and Extension Pieces:

-What are the Center Pieces? Each Center Piece would constitute the central core of each building. They’re including the demanded main characters like Bilbo or Gandalf.

-What are the Extension Pieces? The Extension Pieces (creator sets) were required in order to extend the Center Pieces to the demanded big buildings. They’re also be used for army building because they does including only usual secondary characters like worriers or civilians.

1. Modular Building & Connecting

That’s a very simple processing: Imagination the creator set A (which included mainly the black bricks) would be assembled to the second required black tower of the Black Gate. As a consequence you could connect the Center Piece (Black Gate) with this extension set and you would receive a small Black Gate with two towers (one tower at the left side and one tower at the right side).

2. Creator Building & Connecting

The Black Gate doesn’t consist only of two small black towers and one gate. The complete building consists of several pieces which must be connected. Each piece will be named (A, X, Y, Z) but hereto later more:

big black tower (piece X) – big black wall (piece Y) – big rocks with wall (piece Z) – small wall (piece A) – small tower (piece A) – gate (center piece) – small tower (center piece) – small wall (piece A) – big rocks with wall (piece Z) – big black wall (piece Y) – big black tower (piece X)

The creator set A (will be also named piece A) must now providing two further options: The possibility of wall assembly (for the required black walls) and the possibility of super-size bricking.

3. Super-Size Bricking

How to create the two required big black tower pieces (pieces X) and the two required big black wall pieces (pieces Y).

The solution is super-size bricking:

5x creator set A (creator set A; small black tower) will be assembled into 1x big black tower (piece X).

5x creator set A (also creator set A; small black wall) will be assembled into 1x big black wall (Piece Y).

4. Dynamic Bricking (hidden Easter eggs)

The piece Z (big rocks with wall) is a hidden Easter egg and can only be assembled with 2x creator set A (mainly black bricks for the wall) and 3x creator set B (mainly grey bricks for the rock).

The complete Black Gate will be assembled with:

2x piece X (the big black tower; hereto are 10x creator sets A required)

2x piece Y (the big black wall; hereto are additional 10x creator sets A required)

2x piece Z (big rocks with black wall; hereto are 4x creator sets A and 6x creator sets B required)

2x piece A (also creator set A; small black wall)

1X piece A (also creator set A; small black tower)

1x Center piece (black gate + small black tower)

Result: You have in order to receive the complete Black Gate to buy 27x creator set A, 6x creator set B and the main set (the center piece). There’re summed up: 34 LEGO sets.

And LEGO has released/produced only 3x LEGO sets:

-1x Main set (the center piece) including main characters like Aragorn and Gandalf. (ca. $60-$80)

-2x Battle Packs (the creator sets A + B; named: extension pieces) for landscape building and army building ($30-$40)

And if the worst comes to the worst you would have to pay $1400 for the complete building.

That’s for TLC not bad.

5. Global Bricking

The two creator sets A + B were already used for the Black Gate. Now will they global used and will be insert for the entry area of Mount Doom.

Here in this case will the Mount Doom be made to a hidden Easter egg and consists only of the two creator sets A (mainly black bricks) and creator set B (mainly grey bricks). That’s possible because the structure of entry design and the internal design of Mount Doom including nearly the same structure design like the other buildings of Mordor. Suitable bricks for the lava were included in both creator sets (A + B).

The entry, the bridge and the crater would be assembled with 7x creator set A (mainly black bricks) and 13x creator set B (mainly black bricks).

TLC has the effort (working hours) for the instruction but can therefore sell the two creator sets (together counted) additional 20x times. Frodo, Gollum and Sam were already included in other sets.

And if the worst comes to the worst you would have to pay $400 for the complete building.

Sauron’s Barad-dur is an extraordinary building.

A compelling case: The center piece is the tower itself. Therefore must the tower be extended with multiple creator sets (the already used creator sets A + B). It would be required a combination of dynamic bricking and super-size bricking.

The count of the required creator sets would be immense…

Summary:

Ok, it was my intention to exaggerate this theme ($1400 for the Black Gate) because the creator sets contains a lot of possibilities. My intention was more to show to you the unlimited possibilities of Bricking Dynamics in compliance with Creator.

The creator sets could become playable when TLG would include into the sets a small playable option for the minifigures. Like a small catapult which would be assembled with max. 10x pieces.

TLC’s effort would only contain an extra instruction for larger buildings (here the Black Gate, Mount Doom and Barad-dur). TLG’s effort are the extra work hours and those hours can be limited and doesn’t contain a high financial risk. This instruction must only be in line with the two creator sets A + B (which would be also used for army building) and the center pieces (central core of each building).

It would be advisable that the instruction includes a special minifigure like (for example) Sauron. This minifigure could upgrade the instruction and the people were being more interest to extend their buildings (center pieces or also named main sets) and would, in order to assembly the complete landscape, buying the both creator sets (A +B) multiple times.

Yep, the collecting (multiple acquisition) of the both creator sets could start and the landscapes and armies could growing.

I think you've already noticed that this proceeding is also adaptable for all other themes. Therefore I’ve decided to put this theme in this forum.

I hope Bricking Dynamics will become for you a matter of reflection!

Greetings,

Elander

Edited January 27, 2013 by Elander

[Hrw-Amen]

Um, I have read through this three times now and I still do not know what it is you are talking about? I get the impression that you want to build some extra scenes to go with your LOtR sets and are asking if there are creator sets available to o this, is this the correct interpretation? If so then I am not sure that the creator sets have a large number of LBG, DBG or black bricks in them, you may be better off getting what you want from TLG's online PAB facility or from Bricklink. If this is not what you mean then I am sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick.

[Gryphon Ink]

I think the biggest problem with this suggestion is that anyone who would be willing to expend $1400 on building one scene has almost definitely already discovered Bricklink and uses it extensively, rather than paying the premium for official sets. I liked your concept of LOTR "Creator" sets better when you applied it to specific structures. The premise can only be stretched so far. When you try to apply it on a large scale you are inevitably going to run into a problem of waste: pieces that need to be included to make a building interesting, but noone needs 32 copies of them. This goes for minifigs, accessories, doors and animals, as well as specialized bricks. A person who wants to buy 2 copies of a set will generally accept a certain amount of waste, thinking that somewhere down the road they may need those special pieces, but when you're working at a huge scale you'll probably want to get only the bricks that you actually want for the project.

It's also wasteful from TLG's point of view to try and tell people "look, if you buy 10 of these you get Barad-Dur" instead of just making a Barad-Dur set. If they think the demand is there, they will just design a Barad-Dur set. If the demand isn't there, they won't be spending all that money to design modular/Creator/LOTR systems on the off-chance that AFOLs will go crazy for them.

This reminds me of the train system that they had a while ago, where they sold individual cars for people to pick and choose to build a unique train. Lego Train fans still talk about what a great concept it was and how they wish TLG still did something like that, but the fact is the system wasn't profitable for TLG. They make a lot more money selling complete trains and only having a couple of them on the market at any given time.

[cortman]

I don't understand. Are you trying to lay out your opinion on what TLG's set strategy should be?