Belchher

2 points to Jan for a new take on the whole modular concept 1 point to Bojan Pavsic for his Circus

That's a great MOC, nice assortment of techniques ( including the borrowed ones ), and makes me even more depressed I have sooooooo few parts for making trees! I'm not going to ask about the pants burning comment, I'll assume you mean the friction on the ground if he falls off and leave it at that

Gawd, I don't think there's much you can say other than amazing, simply amazing.

I don't suppose anybody popped into Target late tonight to see if they'd snuck anything interesting onto the shelves? I meant to but totally forgot the sale starts tomorrow

That's a stunning MOC, great work. I love all those black and white Tudor style sections, and some nice little details added in without making them seem out of place or over the top.

In 1977 I was 8 years old and my folks where kind enough to take me to see a movie called Star Wars. Then they where harassed into taking me around 8-9 more times that same year! The movie blew my young mind and started me on a life of reading and watching SF and fantasy. E43D by Mos_Eisley is such a different approach, and so amazingly encapsulates the movie that is a huge, big grinned chunk of my child hood, I have to pick that as my stand out. Absolutely no hard feelings should be felt my the other entrants regardless of who wins any of the voting categories, the entries in this competition where great all around and far better than anything I could come up with. Congratulations to all on brilliant efforts!

Might also have been either this one, although its a rebel hangar not the death stars, or this one by Eb member ACPin. edit: just re-read your description, sounds a lot like ACPins, his death star modules are filled with all sorts of cool little details like you describe.

I love it! My favorite is definitely the use of the red bush as the cannon takes out that red coats head. Also realistic given there's not much in there expect blood to splatter!

Looking good sir, nice and "real life", if you will, like all your creations. My only suggestion would be perhaps you could stick the tell-tale bulge at the upper front of the storage section to turn it into a refrigerated truck, just to be different! If you really wanted to give it that Aussie feel, you could also try and be tricky and whack a roo-bar on the front as well, given you're going for that small country town vibe.

That really is a great looking ship, you must have so much patience to do that rigging. Did you end up tying it all, or going with the glue? Either way, its looking phenomenal.

Hmm...the one on the left ( it is two different ones in that picture isn't it? Not just one in 2 pieces? ) looks like a demented Chameleon. The one on the right remands me of a fantasy castle line Troll with what looks like the start of the worlds biggest propeller hat on his head!

Wow, that's really odd. On mine the bottom left where you have that big blank white area has an image of the MOC in question.

Its at the bottom LEFT, not right as the OP stated, and yeah it's that one Black Rabbit linked.

I was just wondering if it would be possible to find out if TLG had any plans in the near ( key word near! ) future to open Lego stores in any other countries. Of course given my location I'm particularly curious as to Australia, but I find it odd that there are NONE south of the equator. Given they seem to have stopped producing the parts packs they made up until the early 2000's ( I would assume due to the availability of PAB both in Lego stores and S@H ), the lack of official stores within a reasonable distance to those of us in this part of the world can make it really hard to get the pieces we want as shipping tends to blow the prices out of proportion. I'm guessing its due to sales figures for the oceanic region, but I would have thought having a store in Sydney at least, and setting up that store to handle posting out orders from S@H from people in this region, would make things much more affordable for all of us.

Damnit Cammy, why did you have to spot those prices? At that sort of discount they're great value just as parts packs, now I feel an uncontrollable need to rush to BigW and spend even more money!

It might just be how you've used them ( and to be honest, I couldn't spot the part you where talking about in that set, can you give us a hint? ). I've seen MOCs where a smattering of old light grey was used randomly throughout light bley walls ( or vice versa ), and it helped give the walls a weathered look. I don't think it would work if you used small quantities of one of the greys in a big group amongst the other style grey though ( unless there was some particular effect you where going for that for the life of me I can't think of ).

Looks amazing, good to hear you had such a nice ( and long! ) day. Now if only TLG would open some Lego stores south of the equator.

That extended balcony looks great now, worked a treat! And I like the mini fig with the binoculars

Target catalog up here. Nothing that I want thankfully, my wife wont need to kill me yet! For those interested the CTT is $189 and the City Airport $98. edit: OOops, just noticed, its also 20% off Lego in general, so probably worth heading in once the sale starts and seeing what you can find. Now if only I could remember WHICH target I was in that still had a couple of Brickbeards Bounties!

I like it, but given the height and location of it, why not raise it 2 more plates and expand that tiny balcony on the 2nd floor to cover the carport? You'd even have enough room to put the BBQ up there so they could snack while perving gazing at the people out on the bay.

I think "extreme" is a bit over the top to describe where they're at these days, to me that would be more along the lines of something like a Resident Evil line with very high levels of violence. The sets are, though, definitely progressing into the more modern, I guess you could say, definition of action. I suspect this is a trend we're going to see more of, and lets face it, even if you don't actually like killing things ( and lets hope nobody does ), who doesn't like blowing stuff up? And without meaning to be offensive to anyone, I suspect given the large portion of TLGs sales that the U.S. represents, we're most likely going to see more guns, flick fires and the likes in the future. It wouldn't surprise me if they slowly crept into the City theme some time over the next few years, although I suspect an official Lego modern military theme is still a long way off. Just to put it in perspective, I bought my kids one SW impulse set, just to see if they where interested. As with all ( or at least most ) SW sets, it had blasters in it, which are now happily toted about by their city police force and the "naughty men", and much pewing has been known to occur ( my kids are only 3 1/2 and 5 lol ). They're also big fans of the so called "technic competition arrows", and the catapult from their single castle set is also used more than it should be for the launching of poor, defenseless mini figs for no real reason. Personally I don't think its anything to worry about, as with everything it's all there to provide more fun and sell more units, and its up to the parents to make sure they can separate reality from harmless fun.

Just noticed Targets main site has been updated to say the catalog will be out on-line tomorrow ( weds )!! Heres hoping it has prices in it, and that its less of a let down than the Big W and KMart ones.

I asked at my local K-Mart today, and if you go to the front counter once the sale starts with the catalog in hand, you can put anything in it on lay by and ( according to them ) WILL get it. The catch is that only applies if you do the whole lay by till Christmas thing. Just for the record, my local had about 12ish of the xxxl brick buckets, and I'm guessing those suckers will go REALLY fast off the floor given its going to be cheaper then the smaller brick bucket from Big-W ( these "mega toy sales" really are crap this year ). Thankfully they had an enormous number of fire stations in stock, which ( apart from the xxxl ) is the only thing I'm really interested in.

TRU Catalog now has prices. Sadly it still only has the same 7 Lego sets advertised and mentions nothing about a store wide discount, so I'm guessing the only way to see if any other sets are worth getting will be to go in-store once the sale starts.

Yes, I too have experienced the ( sometimes painfully ) chipped and split nails from separating stubborn bricks, and a couple of cuts on the backs of my fingers when the nails gave way and the corner of a block got me. Guess I should stop being cheap and get a proper brick separator or two