Tomsche

Farm Phase 2 / Tomsche / Mitgardia

The second phase of the Agriculture - Farm requires that one builds a field with crops. Now, crops can be quit a wide variety, and I do not have a bucket load of those green Exo-Force hairpieces people tend to use as salad these days, so I tried to build something corn like. This is also the last one of the 4 MoCs I managed to finish the past week, as my attention will be turning now towards the Book II challenge that is coming to Mitgardia and involves a lot of Dwarves, so I`ll be mostly building and drawing for that. Now, for this build I wanted to incorporate the Scarecrow minifigure. I really like the model, and my first idea was to save him up for something Nocturnian in the future. But when I started sorting out all the minifigs I wanted to do `something` with one of these months, I saw I already had a big stack of Nocty candidates, so the Scarecrow went to the Mitgardia plate. I decided to go for a corn like field, including a small waterway for irrigation purposes, and the farmer arriving to start tending his plants. And now... I`m going to have to start thinking on what to build in the coming AoM settings. I have a VERY (perhaps TOO) ambitious idea for the Wall phase 3, but I think the next ones on the menu will probably Stables 2 or Barracks 2. I`ll just have to do a brick count on brown 2x1 bricks first I guess...

Wait till you see the plan for the `production` I have when phase 3 (ever) comes about... *evil laughter*

Thanks all Well, the reason for that is a bit two folded. The first is that I don`t have that much darker greens around anymore as they are in other builds atm (and the light green I have heaps due to the PAB wall) The second is that it actually doesn`t have to be 100% `in` Mitgardia, I did my mill in the desert as a trade relation to my sigfig from Mitgardia

I`m not entering this as I said, but I like Gunman`s concept. However, maybe it might be an intresting theorem to replace the four characters with actual ones from the Collectible Minifig range. With the MMO popping up officially in a month, expect an influx of lego fans over the whole guidl and those miniatures ARE recognisable to almost every collector as there is always something for someone in every Series. I would suggest for example the Viking Woman, Heroic Knight, Genie and Cyclops for the four guilds, giving new members an immediate idea what every guild is inhabited by in a rough speaking way... (And I just sprang an idea for a future moc with that line right now...)

Store Phase 2

Store Phase 2 / Tomsche / Mitgardia

The second phase of the Store tree, this build dictates to make a Market Stall. Phase one had been a merchant and his cart, and in my case was the small boat, and for this build I decided to incorporate as much elements from that little sloop into his stall itself... meaning basically the table only. The final phase is to be an actual store, and for that, like the Storeroom, I`m planning on incorporating the stall itself as the storefront. But that is still far away music... Ambrosia wanted a nice diamond to go into the ring her grandfather had given her. So when she learned when a diamond merchant, specialising mostly in ice coloured diamonds had set up his stall at the edge of town, she took gramps along. After all, he had the money... Displaying a selection of his finest gem stones (the `mirror` on the table is from a Space `Explorers` set), the merchant also carries a whole lot more of gemstones in his storage chests, including those connection pieces you got in the early days that held the transparant studs. At first I thought to also put a bodyguard or something in it, but in the end went against that idea as it would make it all to military looking, and Mitgardia might be a land of warriors, it is not under Martial Law (at current, the Book 2 Challenge is nearing our borders). For the rest, the build is pretty straightforward for a market stall, because in the middle ages, they consisted usually of a table, a sail, and some supports. Which is basically how markets still look these days, hurrah for slow evolution ;-)

It wasn`t the plan originally though hehe, I wanted to go tree by tree to complete it, but time restraint issues (and a lack of decent size baseplates until recently) forced me to take another route to work for the tag ;-)

Hehehe, finally got all my phase 1s done... It`s time for some Banale to celebrate!

Ale Vendor - AoM Inn Phase 1 / Tomsche / Mitgardia

And with the ale seller, I finally completed all the `phase 1` builds of the Age of Mitgardia project, this final one being part of the Town - Inn line. The build is stated to evolve from an Ale Seller to a Beergarden to an actual complete Inn. Now, I must say this was actually the hardest for me to get completed. Not the build itself, but the fact of WHAT needed to get build. I could get an image of an inn in my mind`s eye without problems, even a beergarden (Octoberfesten!) but a simple ale vendor... The fact that this doesn`t seem to be the most popular treeline within my guild didn`t help that much either, as I couldn`t take look for references around that much, I believe only Jodocus had done one so far, but that was about it. So in the end I went for a simple cart with barrels, add in a bit of fluff text and hope I was on the right track on what to build. Captain Grumphs Banana Ale, or Banale as it is known in Mitgardia, is an exotic product created by the gorilla people of the south. Though no one actually knows where or how it is produced, let alone how a heap of mammals manage to recreate a brewery process, it is however a welcome guest often seen at the `not per se in October Octoberfesten` in the village of Merak. So now with all the little starting moc`s completed (and some over the past months already disassembled again for parts, as I don`t have the truly massive collections of especially newer parts and colours, aka everything from after my Dark Ages), I`ve started planning a couple of next phases and builds on paper. Yes, I`m that old style, even though I have LDD installed, I rarely actually use it... I just draw a rough sketch on whatever piece of paper I have at hand at the moment an idea pops in my head. Though I won`t be able by a longshot to finish all the treelines during the rest of the year, I HAVE set myself a personal goal of at first try and complete at least every line if the AoM carries over into 2015, then at the very end expand on builds that need to be corrected to obtain the relevant subtitle or title (like my Defenses - Tower). Because that special AoM tag is my target to obtain since AoM kicked off ;-)

I got no idea, I think it`s the age of the camera kicking in

Phase one of the Gatehouse tree, aka The Cave

The Cave - AoM Gatehouse Phase 1 / Tomsche / Mitgardia

The next build in the series for Age of Mitgardia, and together with the Inn tree the only ones I still need to start up, is the Gatehouse series in the Defenses tree. Now the tree specifies at first a simple gatehouse, then a defended Gatehouse and finally the whole shabang with oil and such. This all results if you pass in the Gatekeeper subtitle. Now, I had a good day in MoCcing today, as you will see over the coming days, but I managed to start and complete no less then 4 builds. So to kick it all off, here is the Gatehouse phase 1. In the earlier days of rural Mitgardia, when it was still all rough lands, inhabited by savages (which, on the contrary to what a Kaliphlin dandy would tell you, was not `last week`), the `gatehouses` where nothing more then cave passages. These often where cut from the surrounding hill sides by early dwarven miners, then when they got abandoned over time where often taken over by the first human tribes who inhabited both the caves, as build their early settlements on the other sides of the passages, making great use of the natural defenses that way. The gatehouses where usually nothing more then raised platforms hewn from the rocks, where the watchers, well, watched for potential dangers, while maintaining fires to one the one hand scare off wild animals, and on the other give travellers a chance to find the passageways.

Thanks for the comments @ Scaevola: I mostly use studs as I have a bucketload of the dark blue, light blue and clear ones from the PAB wall, got to do something with them hehe @ Thomas: hmmm hmmmm, I`ll have a peekaboo there, I`m on MOCPages as well (as Flickr is to complicated for a relic like me, what devilry is this required yahoo mail thing)

Well, when I explained it to the GF for example (someone who just goes a bit like `hmmm hmmm` when a 36 year old starts rambling about bricks) and she asked `what if the munchkin wanted to do this', I answered * If he has mostly Monster Fighter sets: Nocturnus * Kingdoms / Castle: Avalonia * Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit: Midgardia * Pharaoh`s Quest: Kaliphlin * Space or City sets: another forum I know, it`s not a golden rule at all, but I personally think these (more or less current) ranges give a good indication to someone wanting to start to MoC in this `area` for the respective atmosphere, style etc...

The new Artic sets 60032, the scooter with the ice crystal Don`t credit me to much, I just wanted to do `something` with that particular minifig, but it doesn`t really fitted into my short term plans, so I knocked this together yesterday morning in an hour or so while I was waiting for the store to open to get the new desktop pc... It was just a `freebuild` that then happened to actually fit into LoM, but it wasn`t intentional when I started tinkering yesterday

Landscapes of Mitgardia... it`s in the first topic of the Mitgardian sign up post Basically, MoC`s of how the lands would / might / should look like

Ah okay, it`s called MCB II I see, I just had it dubbed LoM due to having no ideas Thanks all for the comments!

Ice Fishing

Ice Fishing / Tomsche / Mitgardia

Every AFOL goes about differently in how they start building a MoC. Sometimes you get inspiration from a picture, from a visit to a museum, something you see outside, a range of Lego or related toys... ... or in my case, I often get it from a particular minifigure that I like and for some reason want to do something with. Same was with the Lincoln minifigure for which I specially build the Gettysburg Adress MoC a few months ago. The same happened with this particular minifig from the Collectible Minifigures line. An Inuit fisherman, suitable in his traditional clothing for setting like Historica, but which I couldn`t find an exact build or idea for to incorporate him with. So I went to build a small MoC scene especially for him, a small scene of some landscape in Mitgardia where he had punched a hole in the ground and went fishing. This I can incorporate in the Landscapes of Mitgardia series, wherein members of the coolest (pun intended) guild contribute to let others see their homeland. Under the watching gaze of the local wild animals ;-)

Considering my computer skills are from somewhere in the 386 era, I think I'll be watching and enjoying this challenge from the sidelines