Col. Whipstick

Looks pretty interesting though I seldom seem to ever have the time for any games *sad* It reminds me of a game I have called Sea Dogs, a few years old but you play as a privateer and can change your fraction between Spain, England and France and take on missions, earn money, trade, upgrade your ship, guns etc, hire proffesional crew... all the usual kinda thing. This looks like a considerably more advanced version of that and I still haven't been able to play Age of Empires III which looks the best of the lot given it's the Europeans vs The New World. Then there's Sid Meier's Pirates which I've yet to play or even the POTC games and that's just the few I can think of on this topic, let alone all the other games. I dunno... all these games are great but it just feels that I'd need another five lifetimes to be able to fully appreciate what's already out there. The sheer depth and variety of play within these games means that to do them any justice you'd have to spend hours and hours on them and that just seems like hours and hours I don't have. The day I become a multi-millionaire and have loads of scurvy peasants to do all my bidding and peel my grapes for me then I can really get into a game like this. :-P

It's nice to see more in the way of artificial sand made with yellow bricks. Also an inventive use of the wild west wood walling which sadly came along too late in the manufacture to feature highly in the original lego sets. I always thought it a pity that ghosts and skeletons weren't featured more in the same way. Anyway, I like the tower like elevation of the island, it's kinda a pirate version of Fort Sabre.

What can I say... the Barracuda always deserved to be a part of the legends section. Took me a long time before I got mine. She's a beauty of design, size, firepower and by far the most important set to the entire pirate contingent. Who thinks of Rock Island Refuge, Forbidden Island or the Renegade Runner before the Barracuda or as it was always known to me as - The Dark Shark. The bright red and white striped sails made her the obvious nemesis of the Caribbean Clipper and the fear of all imperials everywhere. The only thing she ever lacked was men, the ship came with a fairly generous 8 but would 10 men have been too much to ask? Then again maybe I'd ask for 12 if I was given 10... at any rate the ship has the suberb ability to transport a small pirate army for a full scale attack on any imperial base.

What a minute... why are us Brits, the Dutchies and that one Norweigan contingent worrying about the Austrians... so long as Napolean is there we're all allied. Anyway... it's nice to see someone can give that little Corsican pip-squeek a run for his money... watch out buddy, the Happsbergs are back! :-D

I remember getting mine very well... think it was the first set I bought for myself and wasn't out of dear ol' mom and dad's wallet. Even back then I was travelling too much to have access to all my lego and I had that little set with me the whole time so kept taking it apart and putting it back together and conjuring all sorts of combinations with just those few pieces. It is probably the set I've spent the most time on of the lot but here are my pros and cons nonetheless: It is a little too much of a toned-down lagoon lockup, there's no palm, no big flag, it's a little on the duller side. Two soldiers to guard one prisoner means that the prisoner should be a little more important, if not a redheard, than atleast his first mate with the tricome and eye patch but not some little foul mouthed swab who isn't worth the gost to his majesty's government for his daily allowance of grule. Let's just hang him and be done with it! Another interesting quality I find with this set is that because of the all stone, concrete looking surface I've long thought of Broadside's Brig as something more like a sheriff's office, i.e... it should be a holding cell on the street inside a settlement rather than a big fort like eldorado which would be on the outskirts of the colony to defend it from attack.

*sits and counts what troops he has on his fingers* Blast... if only my men had AK-47's to compensate for the overwhelming superiority of Napolean's forces. Ofcourse, the French may have the army but there's still the matter of a small channel for him to cross and we know who controls the high seas! :-P *starts humming Rule Britannia*

It could always be argued from his appearance that Ironhook is a fighter and a survivor... so there's a plus for him. Woodhouse over Broadside any day though, I'm with you... and let's be honest... who's gonna vote for fright face in a grass skirt :-P

Yeah I like it, hard not to. i agree with what you said though Mr Phes, ideally it should be inland a bit and maybe the rowboat could be replaced with a carriage of some manufacture. All the pirate sets tend to be adjacent to water but it would be nice to see some sense of elevation or inland design. Broadside's Brig seems to show itself that way, like it belongs on a street in the colony. But that little MOC gets the thumbs up for me in terms of the general architecture because whilst it's tempting to make the mansion more elegant and elaborate the thing has to be in keeping with the level of design in the official sets to carry off the compatability. Certainly get yourself a copy of 1492 and have a look at the mansion they build in San Salvador, sure it will inspire you.

Ugh... Do we have to keep looking at all those Frenchies? It's bad enough we can smell them. :-P On me the reds!

It's a nice pad... The red roofing certainly helps add an imperial quality. We really are in sad need of more civilian styled buildings. Has anyone else ever wondered exactly where the troops and pirates go to sleep at night given there isn't exactly much in the way of dormatories.

NO!!!! Was creating bitmap images of pirate figures so that the colouring etc would be easy to change and display and my laptop froze while i was saving so just lost an entire day's work on it all! Aw man, should I really start recreating all of it?

Yeah, the red epilets tend to take that responsibility and I'd find too much variation on the torso design maybe a bit overkill. Rather than changing torso design I'm more inclined to changing the overall colour. We're able to do that because of the library - how I made those green troops but it's a crying shame the only epilets are red, brown, blue, yellow and white... Had lego made green and orange ones we could develop a kind of code fo representing the nationalities. As it stands we're reliant on yellow epilets depicting rank and i'm fond of it being that way and the red/blue reversal, to me it creates a real kind of antithisis between the imperials. Most people rightly believe that all reds with yellow epilets would make good British troops and all blues with red epilets good French. That it stands as red with blue epilets was lego's answer to the blue imperial but it's a more ambigious design in terms of nationality as is for that matter the blue imperial with yellow epilets. Headgear is a great way to really designate nationality. The helmets are very much Spanish, Portuguese and English (not British), the troopers hats (forgot the name) are very British and French but not so applicable to other nations and the tri-hat (forgotten that one too) serves all nationalities as does the bandana. The admiral hat is a mark of authority likewise for all factions.

More French? Nah... that's the last thing we need :-P We're all agreed on the subject of green imperials though whoever they represent and the Iberian conquistadors were not developed enough as a concept. Beyond that in terms of distinctiveness most seem to vote Dutch and Portuguese as a priority. Here's another unknown use for your bluecoats... Scotland had it's own little, highly unsuccesful colony in the New World, prior to the union with England. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_colo...of_the_Americas So depending on the date of your colonial scenerio one could have independent Scottish and English forces with Welsh baggage handlers :-P Anyway the bluecoats do use the fleur de les which although always considered French is known to have featured in feudal Scottish rigalia owing to the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England back in the long gone days of the hundred years war... So when Mr Phes maintains that both red and blue could be British forces, this is another reason I'd offer to back up his argument.

No!!! Our Norweigan allies are giving away all their military intelligence to the French! :-P

Well Napolean should be some way off Northern Norway :-) so hopefully you'll be able to get away without a fight but anyone who's the enemy of the French is most welcome to call for my reinforcement, not that you'll need anyone to fight your battles for you with a force like that! Hell, I think I can count my troops on my fingers. I'm guessing the forestmen are Sharpe's Chosen Men? Something like that?

That just reminds me of an old British/German joke... What do you call 10 000 Frenchmen with their arms in the air? Answer: An army :-P

Cool beans or cool bananas... depending on which side of the Panama canal you are. Being our governor of Australasia what about a scenerio in your waters? No Portugese or Arabs but plenty Dutch, British and French influence that way... What if anything else could make a distinctive theme for the south Pacific theatre? The Polynesian culture is already well enough represented by The Islanders, how about Oriental Pirates from up north, have we every considered them... After all it's in southeast Asia that piracy is still strong today. An MOC of Tasmania as a penal colony could be fun, maybe I just wanna see pirates fighting over a bowl of grog. X-D

And this is what's important - screw reality and dream up whatever you like! Didn't I just say something along those lines anyway? X-D

Wow Capt. K! The design of the mini cannons blew me away (no pun intended) to see the Cannonball next to the Leopard shows just how huge the later ship is. I'm guessing it was hard for that thing to find a parking space in the shipyards at Portsmouth. :-) Are you going to have to destroy the ships for pieces? Seems a tragedy if that's the case. *sad*

Lagoon Lock-up *drule* If only I had one... A friend of mine had it donkey's years ago, should have made an offer. I just love the look of it, feels so tropical and holiday like because of the canopy, maybe it's not so much a fort as a great place to order margeritas and look out to sea. The set just reminds me of all the holidays I've taken to the coasts over the years.

Green hair's needle work could put a retirement home to shame! *sweet* The design aside I applaud your patience in creating something like that. So the Denise has sunk? I like the sound of that 'The Denise has sunk', could be used as a metaphor for breaking up with a girlfriend. You realise that such a fine looking ship can't stay in the hands of the Dutch, we will be watching it with envious eyes across the channel and slowly and surely drawing our plans against you! :-P

I hear what Imperial Shadows is saying about the marketing of newer themes but I have a few opposing points. 1. Lego if anything is extremely international and it's not necessarily reliant on US sales which is good because I've heard some staggering statistic about how many American kids don't know that Canada is north of them 8-

Dude, Henry Hudson wasn't Dutch :-P He did temporarily work for the Dutch though but he'd do the job if we wanted to represent the English taking over New Amsterdam and turning it into New York which is what happened. Had to check the date there, wanted to be sure I was using the word English correctly. lol Willem Verhulst seems to have been the name of the Cheesehead (Colonial slang for Dutch) that founded New Amsterdam but he's not the kind of well known explorer/governor name that we want for feature lego characters, in other words he's no John Smith or Magellan, probably just a paper pusher. Here's the link to the history of the city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam

The truth of it is there's no shortage of Portugese or Spanish names... most the Dutch ones are a little less known as they were the least succesful of all the western europeans. However, if we talk about Magellan and using him as the Portuguese head in the South Pacific the same way I've put Vasco Da Gama in the lead for the Portugese in Southern africa then the perfect Dutch counterpart would be Abel Tasman. Jan van Riebeck was the first to land at the Cape of Good Hope and establish the Dutch there but Abel Tasman was the Dutch explorer who put Tasmania, large parts of Australia and the south Pacific on the map. Really the Dutch found the Antipodes first and Australia was called 'New Holland' but the Dutch made no real effort to settle it. I wonder who to consider as the Lego Dutch leader of the New Amsterdamn colony in N. America...

*scratches head* *thinks a bit longer* *scratches butt* Yep I downloaded it but I was stuck in some plain room and that was it... I'm far far behind when it comes to the gaming market and have had very little experience with these online things. Are there any standing servers to join and does this mean i can get into the game world and roam around on my own or does it need others to gather before I can get in? Look at this forum, we know more about rum and grapeshot and cheap female entertainment in the taverns than we do about computers :-P