Col. Whipstick

Cool to see how people can improvise without having the brown hull parts. I'm guessing you don't have that much Pirate Lego which is a good thing when it comes to MOCing as it encourages greater creativity, the sort of thing we saw more in the days when Basic Lego was the only thing going. What did you use to make the customised hat and eye patches? I'd like to see some more metalic stuff get into the Pirates range and really wish Lego had made silver helmets for the Armada forces rather than or in addition to the black helmets which don't feel right for Conquistadors for me.

My condolences Lord of Pies, do you think it's contageous, have you sought a second opinion? X-D And what's with all this nationalist crap getting into 'my thread' X-D If people want to reffer to Scots, English, Irish, Americans, Canadians, etc etc etc as turds find another thread, this is meant as a basic denotative explanation of cultural adjectives surrounding the British Isles.

One of the old helmets witn the bottom portion cut off would be best though I don't know how that could be done.

Why are you resorting to Mitre hats TinyPies, because Shakos are getting so hard to come by? Or do you just want to fully replicate those troops?

I have more pirates than anything and more Blues than Reds, in fact I have more Islanders than Reds but I still voted for the Reds. X-D

This came to me last night when I was in bed funny enough. I thought if I was to make a large French battleship that I'd call her 'The Maid of Orleans' as this reffers to Joan of Arc which is a very potent symbol of French nationalism from the Hundred Years War. Also as we think of ships as 'she' it seemed appropriately strong, fierce and graceful but then that was just my thoughts obviously.

Dude, I know all about the Cornish Celts but the simple reality is I'm trying to keep this all as simple as possible given about 90% of the world out there thinks we all speak the Queen's English, that London is our only city and Scotland is a state in England. Anyway, the time of Cornwall being independent of the seven Saxon kingdoms predates my explanation. You'll note I said nothing about the Roman province of Britannia etc, how there were 7 Saxon kingdoms etc etc etc. Anyway, this wasn't meant as a political discussion forum for every Home Country Nationalist etc so I'm not going to get into and I want to immediately discourage any comments about how one group violated another etc. Save all that for another forum, this is just so our American and European friends can stop using English as an adjective for British and vice-versa which they do continually. Don't start... That was as absolutely as short and sweet as I could keep things for people's extremely limited 21st century concentration.

Okay, obviously this has come up a few times before in this forum and no doubt a lot of members have heard me moan over this but nonetheless I feel it is worth the moan. However rather than continually moan I've worked on a map some time ago but thought I'd post it here to help visually explain the difference between English and British etc and why it's important to get it right. Without going too far back into history because it gets very very complicated but working within what is roughly the timeline of our forum here's a crash course in the recent history of the British Isles. Basically the two main islands that make up the British Isles are Erie/Ireland and Albion/Great Britain, the Great part comes from the need to distinguish Britain the island from Brittany (now part of France). Basically the names of these two islands are as much geographical names as political. During the dark ages England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were formed as independent kingdoms though not without lengthy wars between various fractions prior to this. During the 1100's England (Now under the rule of the Normans) invaded, conquered and annexed Wales and subsequently although Wales has maintained a somewhat more distinctive Celtic, rather than Saxon culture and language it became fused into The Kingdom of England. England (Still under the rule of the Normans) then attempted the same invasion of Scotland which largely failed. Thus towards the end of the medieval era and the start of 'The Golden Age' and 'Elizabethan England' there was The Kingdom of England which included Wales and Ireland as a colony and the fully independent though extremely intwined Kingdom of Scotland. By this time however the Normans no longer rule Britain and likewise Norman parts of France are now a complete part of the Kingdom of France. This period continues right up until 1707 AD when James I - King of Scotland inherits the throne of England and he replaces the Tudors with his royal family - the Stewarts and politically unifies the two countries creating the country - Great Britain This is seen in the creation of Union Jack flag etc and so loosely speaking the combined Welsh, English and Scottish as well as their outlying dependencies are reffered to as 'British' which compliments the geographical name of the larger island. Ireland then in effect becomes a British rather than English colony but it is recognised as a seperate 'home country' in the same way as England, Wales or Scotland. In the early 20th century the southern portion of Ireland gained full independence and formed The Republic of Ireland whilst the northern part, largely Protestant remained under the protection of the British Crown and thus a newer political term is used being The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, previously the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This means that in effect if N. Ireland joined the Republic of Ireland the 'United Kingdom' would cease to exist and the country would go back to being called 'Great Britain' and likewise the union jack would take a step backwards. The outlying islands often regarded as tax havens such as The Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are countries within their own right and in particular the Channel Islands - J and G because of Norman history were linked to the English Crown so they maintain a form of Federation with the UK. So I hope that clears things up for a few folks. Sorry for the lengthy lesson but it's really really hard to condense this sort of information, obviously I could go into a hell of a lot more detail but this should do.

Hmm... Well that's already happened... look at the Frankfurt, it was a town and now it's a sausage probably better known to the non-German world than the town is. Likewise Hamburgers are now the edible residents of the city of Hamberg. Mind you there are a few cases of serial cannibals in Germany and I think I'm finally beginning to understand why. X-D Personally I'd like to see a Fort Blueberry Waffles with Maple Syrup as the name of the governor. :-P

Ah... Hmm, okay. Well I'll be in Oxford for the next few days but I'll get to work on it soon enough. I better understand what you want.

Ah, but factories make money... I make er, er... *pulls out pockets and watches the moths flutter away* Damn, there goes lunch! X-D

Also, seeing as you are new and I should have noticed before... *slaps self on wrist with riding crop* Welcome to the forum Captain Cavinano! Always nice to see another Lego Pirate enthusiast join the ranks. :-)

I've posted loads of flags and I was expecting someone to ask that but I guess people haven't been using them so finally someone else has picked up on the problem, or atleast I think it's a problem. The layout of the rippling flag was taken more or less from the design on the original flags, however as I haven't had one of the original flags with me since designing all these I've been unable to see if the overall pattern is different on the otherside, I'm guessing that it's the same printed design, in which case one would have to just print twice and stick the image onto both sides. If this isn't the case and another side has to be designed we have a significant problem - flags where the design isn't centralised such as the American ones would end up with the Stars in the wrong place. Quite honestly I haven't thought of the solution yet, unless you might want to save and open the flags in MSPaint and using 'Image Attributes' reverse the image horizontally. That should give you 'the other side' but as I said it will only work on the flags where the image is perfectly balanced, so some of the flags would work but not others. If someone could scan both sides of the original flags I'd have a better idea what I'm working with. It's been bloody difficult designing these without actually having any lego on hand to compare and work against. |-/ I shall certainly look into it though I will be away for the next few days so perhaps only in a week's time. If I'm able to do them I'll add them into this thread.

Well quite honestly I have yet to print any of my creations. My living circumstances are somewhat awkward as I live out of a suitcase, that means no lego and no printer. Perhaps someone else could tell you.

Funny you should say that, that was the one I was considering modifying to make a Green Hair flag, having the hair flare out at the back of the skull. He also apparently used a flag of the same design but with a red background instead of the formal black which is the first case I've seen of pirates deviating from the 'status quo'

You certainly can... I've watched all the Sharpe episodes but can't remember much in the way of regimental flags. Was there a specific design or flag used in the series that you want me to try render or is it a case of designing something totally from scratch but with a British feeling to it? I've posted the PIRATE flags finally by the way.

The Armada really isn't doing very well so far... So far it's fairly predictable but I thought the Armada would do better than the bone-noses. I wonder if it's fair to declare a victory when we reach a certain number of votes, every war has to end sooner or later and we're going to run out of cannonballs though I suppose we could all just throw coconuts at each other. X-D

The Armada figs look stupid? X-D This is cool, I'll let you and Mr Phes slug it out on that one while I sit and watch with my box of popcorn.

Well there may be more added to this thread as time goes on, depending on who requests them etc but in the meantime I've offered Lord of Pies his own personal flag for helping me out with the original measurements in the beginning.

At long last and due to some popular requests I have done a run on pirate flags! If anything these were easier than any of the national flags because the intricate dimensions aren't an issue and all the pirate flags are generically the same - a white icon central to the black background and thus resizing has been relatively easy to fit the official lego size whereas with things like the Union Jack it took excessive re-designing. Now I picked 6 designs which to me looked the most different and appealing but I will attempt to provide links to the various pirates which are: Edward Teach 'Blackbeard' Henry Every John Rackham 'Calico Jack' Stede Bonnet Thomas Tew Edmund Condent Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) In addition this is a very useful and interesting website for pirate reading: History of Piracy Hope you all enjoyed these!

Nothing wrong with pirate vs pirate, if anything they were scumbags so they are very likely to have had disagreements about command and turn on each other or compete with each other over prizes etc. I'm just posting some pirate flags if you wanted to present two different pirate fractions. We always tend to show pirates fighting imperials... in reality pirates would have avoided fighting the navy any way possible so really the pirates attacking imperial ships and forts in most the lego movies is a good stretch of the imagination in the first place.

Nice to watch but I was a little muddled by what was going on. Every lego pirate movie is gold however because I recognise how long and arduous stop-motion animation is. Don't let my comment discourage you from making more movies as with enough practise I'm sure the films will get better.

Interesting side point but somewhat relevant considering the War of 1812 - Did you know that the US/Canadian border is the longest undefended border in the world? That brief period from the revolution to the conclusion of the war seems to be the only real period of hostility between the US and the British Empire and as is certainly clear by history ever since the two are sinonymous militarily and culturally as they were prior to the Revolution. I've been across the border between the States and Canada a couple times and once across the Great Lakes via ferry though that was some time ago. It's interesting how some of the islands are declared Canadian and some American but that both countries had to agree to some strange set of rules as to what qualifies as an island - apparently it needs to have 2 trees and be atleast 20 square metres or something like that. Anyway going off topic there but found it amusing enough to share. For that matter I'm sure I recall the ferry operator saying something about piracy operations within the Great Lakes so perhaps that brings it all even closer to this forum.

More than anything it's because the creator isn't here to answer questions and make comments the way he/she usually is. At any rate I've taken the information from Boni and e-mailed him to join our discussion so he might show up, we'll see.

That's assuming once again that as Reds we're British and as Blues we're French X-D I'm trying to keep nationality out of this given Lego were just generic about the fractions and those Portuguese Dons were always in league with the Brits far more than our other protestant friends. Anyway, if this poll were about the nations/empires I would have started it like this: 1. British (Reds) 2. French (Blues) 3. Spanish (Armada) 4. Etc. Vote!