Guilds of Historica Introduction/General Discussion Thread

[Balthasar]

I wouldn't use a conversion, like 1 minifig stands for 10 figs. Noboby looks at at a MOC and actually makes this conversion in his mind. Just keep it real.

Historica is a fantasy world. We use the "Stand of Technique" of the middleages, but our world is a lot smaller then medieval Europe. Compared to medieval France our castles are small, towers are small, houses are small, armies are small. Even the capital city of Albion is just a tiny medieval village compared to medieval Paris.

I think we should accept that Historica is a fantasy world that is thin populated. For us, an army of 100 men is a large army and Albion is a big city. It's not realistic to pretent that 100.000 people live in Albion. Also, if you see 100 minifigs in a MOC, I find it quite imposing.

So my suggestion would be: don't convert the numbers of medieval europe to our world, but take realistic Historica numbers and talk about a battle between an army of 100 men against an army of 150 men when writing your lore :)

[Artanis I]

I wouldn't use a conversion, like 1 minifig stands for 10 figs. Noboby looks at at a MOC and actually makes this conversion in his mind. Just keep it real.

Historica is a fantasy world. We use the "Stand of Technique" of the middleages, but our world is a lot smaller then medieval Europe. Compared to medieval France our castles are small, towers are small, houses are small, armies are small. Even the capital city of Albion is just a tiny medieval village compared to medieval Paris.

I think we should accept that Historica is a fantasy world that is thin populated. For us, an army of 100 men is a large army and Albion is a big city. It's not realistic to pretent that 100.000 people live in Albion. Also, if you see 100 minifigs in a MOC, I find it quite imposing.

So my suggestion would be: don't convert the numbers of medieval europe to our world, but take realistic Historica numbers and talk about a battle between an army of 100 men against an army of 150 men when writing your lore :)

:thumbup:

[Rogue Angel]

I wouldn't use a conversion, like 1 minifig stands for 10 figs. Noboby looks at at a MOC and actually makes this conversion in his mind. Just keep it real.

Historica is a fantasy world. We use the "Stand of Technique" of the middleages, but our world is a lot smaller then medieval Europe. Compared to medieval France our castles are small, towers are small, houses are small, armies are small. Even the capital city of Albion is just a tiny medieval village compared to medieval Paris.

I think we should accept that Historica is a fantasy world that is thin populated. For us, an army of 100 men is a large army and Albion is a big city. It's not realistic to pretent that 100.000 people live in Albion. Also, if you see 100 minifigs in a MOC, I find it quite imposing.

So my suggestion would be: don't convert the numbers of medieval europe to our world, but take realistic Historica numbers and talk about a battle between an army of 100 men against an army of 150 men when writing your lore :)

The problem is, we are already doing scaled representations for Historica with our builds. When I build 1 farm MOC, that does not mean I have one farm in my entire territory, it means: this is an example of what my farm looks like. Also, with the mini builds that have been going on, we are representing 50 or 100 buildings in a town, which would be populated by 100-200 people by today's standards, meaning 500-1000 minimum with the larger families and higher population density of the medieval era. Historica is based off of presenting a sample representation of what you have. Likewise, our armies should also be a sample representation.

If we do a 1:1 for our troops, then you end up with territories having armies that don't scale up to our buildings. I don't think that our populations should be even approaching those of Medieval Europe, but I don't think they should be tiny either.

[Angeli]

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Dear Historicians,

I can not finish challenge 3 until the deadline. I need at least 7 more building days, and that is five days over the top.

I could say "finished" and just take a picture of what I've built but it is just partly done, or I could not participate in a challenge, and publish finished castle 7 days later...

If I am the only one who could use few more days, than nothing, but if there is more of you there that could use few more days for fine-tuning, maybe we could make another extension, until 17th, or even 15th, as every day counts.

I am no sitting over my half done cloud, looking at foundations for one of the buildings that bridge is attached for, and thinking about all of this. What do you think?

[Sirens-of-Titan]

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Dear Historicians,

I can not finish challenge 3 until the deadline. I need at least 7 more building days, and that is five days over the top.

I could say "finished" and just take a picture of what I've built but it is just partly done, or I could not participate in a challenge, and publish finished castle 7 days later...

If I am the only one who could use few more days, than nothing, but if there is more of you there that could use few more days for fine-tuning, maybe we could make another extension, until 17th, or even 15th, as every day counts.

I am no sitting over my half done cloud, looking at foundations for one of the buildings that bridge is attached for, and thinking about all of this. What do you think?

Angeli, the deadline was extended once to account for over-ambitious planning and busy schedules; it's not something we can keep doing, as it'll grind the forum to a halt. We need to get things moving with challenges, prizes, and introduction of challenge 4 on a somewhat timely schedule, and while I don't speak for everyone I'm not too keen to keep pushing the deadline back.

Is there any way you can salvage the build or do something with what you've already got? There are still two days to make changes and submit your MOC.

[Angeli]

:)

There is always a way :)

Pity, few more days would really get the pressure off, but it was a long shot anyway; if I've started building on time, I wouldn't be in this situation :)

[Dr.Cogg]

how many points are Guardians worth in this challenge?

[Sirens-of-Titan]

how many points are Guardians worth in this challenge?

Guardians fall under the category of how well you address the theme. It's not more than 2-3 points out of 50. But even a few minifigures will do, there's no reason not to include a random bandit or two.

[Basiliscus]

I wouldn't use a conversion, like 1 minifig stands for 10 figs. Noboby looks at at a MOC and actually makes this conversion in his mind. Just keep it real.

Historica is a fantasy world. We use the "Stand of Technique" of the middleages, but our world is a lot smaller then medieval Europe. Compared to medieval France our castles are small, towers are small, houses are small, armies are small. Even the capital city of Albion is just a tiny medieval village compared to medieval Paris.

I think we should accept that Historica is a fantasy world that is thin populated. For us, an army of 100 men is a large army and Albion is a big city. It's not realistic to pretent that 100.000 people live in Albion. Also, if you see 100 minifigs in a MOC, I find it quite imposing.

So my suggestion would be: don't convert the numbers of medieval europe to our world, but take realistic Historica numbers and talk about a battle between an army of 100 men against an army of 150 men when writing your lore :)

Totally agree with this post. I don't understand why we need to multiply it up. You can look at it one of two ways - either this is only a sample of the total army, or the armies are small. The latter might seem hard to believe, but who says we need to have population densities like the middle ages? In the dark ages, armies were probably only a few hundred, and more than 20 men would be considered a war-band (especially since most people were farmers, and professional warriors were very expensive).

The Emir of Gorr can field 150-200 men, most (around 120) of whom are tribesman who cannot be kept in the field indefinitely, as they are needed to tend to their cattle etc. His household troops, who are professional warriors and are available all year round, probably number less than 50. If say that 10 men using the techniques of the time (e.g. subsistence farming, herding etc) can produce an excess of 10%, then to keep 50 men fully fed would require 500 farmers! Therefore I'd like to think that is a pretty impressive army!

Edited May 13, 2012 by Basiliscus

[NiceMarmot]

So is anyone else completely overwhelmed by the task of going through all the Challenge 3 entries and reviewing them all? 33 entries, each with probably an average of five photos, and maybe 1000 words of story text (some a lot longer). It's going to take me days. It's an incredible output of awesome MOCs. I've never seen such an amazing amount of great adventuring and questing going on all at once. I'll tell you one thing, Historica's population of monstrous guardian creatures has taken a nosedive recently. They're going to put crystal guardians on the endangered monsters list.

I think this is by far the best challenge so far, at least in regards to the results. I think the tower challenge was very good also, and easier for the builders, as the scope was fairly constrained. The embassy was an interesting challenge, mostly because of trying to combine the styles of two different guilds. But after a while, all the embassies started to look pretty much the same. This challenge is much more open-ended, and the sheer variety of builds and stories is great. As I go through them, I'm definitely not bored at all.

[Kayne]

This challenge is much more open-ended, and the sheer variety of builds and stories is great. As I go through them, I'm definitely not bored at all.

I totally agree....the stories and builds were all extremely entertaining and inspiring. I agree, that the other challenges, while fun did start to blur together a bit. Whereas the Guild Leaders did an amazing job of giving structure to this challenge, and at the same time allowing for far more creativity.

[Erynlasgalen]

So is anyone else completely overwhelmed by the task of going through all the Challenge 3 entries and reviewing them all? 33 entries, each with probably an average of five photos, and maybe 1000 words of story text (some a lot longer). It's going to take me days. It's an incredible output of awesome MOCs. I've never seen such an amazing amount of great adventuring and questing going on all at once.

I can totally agree, I am whittling down my list, but now I find there are entries that I completely missed the first time through. I love the story of this one, the build of that one, the guardian of this one, the colors of that one, characters of that one over there, its overwhelming, lol.

[Blaze]

I pretty much knew already which ones I liked more than the others, so when I saw the voting topic I just read the ones I thought were the best again. And then I decided how I would divide the points.

I do agree this was a thrilling challenge and I liked building an entry as well as reading all the great entries! Can't wait to see what challenge 4 has in store for us.

[NiceMarmot]

I can totally agree, I am whittling down my list, but now I find there are entries that I completely missed the first time through. I love the story of this one, the build of that one, the guardian of this one, the colors of that one, characters of that one over there, its overwhelming, lol.

I'll make it easy for you -- just give all five points to me!

BTW, it will be interesting to see if anyone is gutsy enough to vote for themselves!

[Derfel Cadarn]

Glad to hear you enjoyed the challenge. We thought it would be more enjoyable if we allowed you guys to build your own adventure scenario and have the freedom with it. It's turned out very well indeed, so many great mocs, settings and ideas. Some of the nicest builds I've seen during GOH so far.

[Erynlasgalen]

I'll make it easy for you -- just give all five points to me!

BTW, it will be interesting to see if anyone is gutsy enough to vote for themselves!

Ohh I totally could, but that's against the rules, how about three for me and two for you

[Ecclesiastes]

I'll make it easy for you -- just give all five points to me!

BTW, it will be interesting to see if anyone is gutsy enough to vote for themselves!

I think that won't happen! Because of this system. If you would use voting by a poll, it would definitely happen. So this is a fair voting! But nevertheless interesting indeed

[Kayne]

As much as I would love the joust, I know that the quality of others builds surpassed mine. There is no way in good conscience I could have voted for myself!

[soccerkid6]

I totally agree with Kayne, there were many way better than mine so I didn't even think of voting for myself. Not to mention it wouldn't have made me win anyway

[NiceMarmot]

Yeah, I wouldn't have voted for myself either. I'd give myself a few points for a hopefully decent story, and an OK guardian. But clearly my building and design wasn't at the high level of Cara, Taz, and some of the others. I think Cara has this one in the bag. I'm just amazed at all the high quality builds. I think that at least a dozen or so are totally top-notch. Determining who to vote for was so tough, once I got down to the top fifteen, I couldn't figure out whom to cut. I had to create a spreadsheet and rate them all on a bunch of criteria.

[Angeli]

My fellow historicians, I have a fare question: what would be the best (read cheapest) way to get my hands on a few hundred of these:

color is not important

Bricklink is expensive (the cheapest I've found is 0.18 per piece)

Do you still come across them in PaB walls?

Or maybe there is a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who sells them in kilos? :)

I do think that Drow will look same menacing with some green foliage around them :)

[Zach Mills]

My fellow historicians, I have a fare question: what would be the best (read cheapest) way to get my hands on a few hundred of these:

color is not important

Bricklink is expensive (the cheapest I've found is 0.18 per piece)

Do you still come across them in PaB walls?

Or maybe there is a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who sells them in kilos? :)

I do think that Drow will look same menacing with some green foliage around them :)

Ha, sounds like a cover up to the fact that your building a forest. I sure hope you know what your getting yourself into, us Avalonians take no prisoners!

[Kayne]

My fellow historicians, I have a fare question: what would be the best (read cheapest) way to get my hands on a few hundred of these:

I don't live very close to a Lego Store(about 3 hours away), but I end up out there once a month for work, so I always stop in! I have not come across these in the PAB wall as of yet though, because I would certainly stock up if I could. 0.18 was the cheapest I found on Bricklink as well, and I did order about 50 of them last winter. Expensive....yes, worth it....hard to tell, but I really needed the foliage as well. Drow aren't the only ones who look good in green leaves

[MikeyB]

I don't live very close to a Lego Store(about 3 hours away), but I end up out there once a month for work, so I always stop in! I have not come across these in the PAB wall as of yet though, because I would certainly stock up if I could. 0.18 was the cheapest I found on Bricklink as well, and I did order about 50 of them last winter. Expensive....yes, worth it....hard to tell, but I really needed the foliage as well. Drow aren't the only ones who look good in green leaves

I found the smaller three prong ones in the PAB wall a three years ago or so. I filled a large cup with those. About a year ago I was at a store and there was now foliage out. I asked the guy working there and he went in the back and came out with some of the three leaf plants and some of those bigger leafs in a bright green.

If you go into a store and don't see what you want, ask. They have always been very helpful when I asked.

[Angeli]

Ok, this is then a request to all: if anyone see them, or goes to PaB and does not see them, please ask personnel if they have it in back (or in those carton boxes that were 70$ a piece). If you do see it, please grab me a big cup (or a box), I am sending money ASAP trough any means (a suppose paypal, but other ways are ok too)

Thank you :)