Artanis I

This was shaping up to be very interesting with the orange soldiers as a new faction, but then TLG went and announced a new wave of sets that were 'more of the same' as other reboots (but less interesting than the AFOL ideas and minifig designs) and that was the end of that for most folks

The base expansion set 60439 comes out on Monday, is there any indication that it might be exclusive to Lego? Or should I expect to see it at eg Kmart for a more palatable price? The answer dictates whether I get it with my next S@H order or not. Viking Village is finally in stock (but how long will it last?), and the D&D castle is also calling my name... And before I forget AGAIN, regarding how 'Space' the City Space sets are: the designs are very 'Space'-patible. If the colours were that of the Friends Space (how cool is 42602?), it would be even more 'Space'. If the jumpsuits were just a bit more colourful (even just the legs being the same colour as the arms & helmet - they wouldn't even all need printing, just plain legs would work fine), they would also be less 'City' and more 'Space'. Calling it "City Space" makes the sub-optimal colouring forgiveable... but the purple, orange & white on these sets would've been amazing - a missed opportunity.

For new parts, if you are careful in how you do it, nothing should break. But parts can become brittle over time (especially if they've been sitting in the cold), and the most likely thing to go wrong is that the outer half of the arm snaps off. My process is to rotate the arm so its hand is behind its back, firmly grab as much of the arm as possible between thumb & finger, and bend outwards (pushing with the thumb) and the shoulder just pops out.

Well, there is an active dedicated thread about it:

Good thing that the Blacktron 2 torso is useable for a normal (ie non mutant) minfig. But most of the rest of it would need to be replaced. The Ice Planet helmet needed more orange on it. (Trans neon, ideally)

It's not ideal, but the City Space subtheme this year is a lot better than the previous 10 years of absolutely no Space subtheme. Too close to home for me to ever properly consider "A1 tRUe sPAcE" but much better than nothing, as others have expanded. I picked up most of the sets and am making extra coloured factions, but I left the space station alone, all the other sets could kinda pass as Space-Space if you pretend enough. I took another look at the CMF series and realised it's not that great either - not from a "tRUe sPAcE" point of view anyway. A handful of usable ones in there, for secondary or tertiary Space purposes. And the Icons/Moments/whatever rumour ended up being not what we expected or hoped for. So now I'm wishlisting... how cool would it be, if we got a tribute set (over time) for each of the vintage Space subthemes! Obviously we got a large Classic ship, and a medium Blacktron ship. Monorails are off the cards, so how about a roller-coaster-type Futuron transport system? A Space Police 1 capital ship something like the Mission Commander? M-Tron would surely have to be 6989 MCM of course! So many cool possibilities...

Folks that clean computer towers often use spray cans of compressed air. I've never done it, but I imagine that to be a reasonable option too.

Blue dome with sticker is from the Spyrius base, the other trans parts are probably from Insectoids, and the blue castle wall piece was in a small Castle ship.

Nice. I agree about the 1987-1996 being the peak, but it was fading away towards the end. I do rate the 2010-2013 sets much higher than what happened in the post-Exploriens period.

And we have Aquazone to thank for the trans-green 1/4 domes for building the absent Space Police 2 base

Another one that's better than the original

Same, I was really impressed by the green one. Smaller sets can be under-rated too easily. I'm glad about the siege weapon set - except for how long it will take for them to release it! The seaside castle thing I didn't vote for, but I might buy that and convert it to a different faction.

I guess it's settled, and so apart from the CMF series, the only "Space" releases this year are the umpteen from themes that are not really Space... (ie City, Friends, Technic etc) Seems like we're being trolled by TLG.

Yeah, it explains everything, sadly

I don't know what to think... Was hoping for a remake or tribute to a vintage Space subtheme, that description doesn't sound like it is.

I like most of these. Bye bye more money...

3.5 skeletons!

Wow, I have all of those sets except the Technic one at the end (okay, so most were only picked up 15-20 years ago through Bricklink & eBay). And they are amazing! Yes the style is outdated now, but the play features, colours, and part usage are great.

The funtionality sound interesting, it would be great to add a video sometime showing us the functions, since your build relies heavily on them.

You could probably call these mercenaries. The individual colour coordinations are excellent!

So much going on here, so many cool things. And a roller coaster... I like the cannon, but I hope it doesn't have too much kick-back!

Space Pirates or Pirate Spaced? Nicely done with the restrictions you put on it!

I don't understand what this bit is for/doing. Everything else looks great, and is very cool.

Immediately, I know exactly which set this is representing. I feel that that is (or should be) a key attribute for this contest category. It fully captures the Spyrius aesthetic too, and feels Space Piratey. The way you've used balloon-type wheels to resemble hovercraft tubes, unfortunately makes it look like they actually ARE wheels for a vehicle, as such it kinda seems like the symmetrical details are sideways. I'd like the 'front' to have actually been the longer edge in that case, and it then becomes a trundling 'raft' ground vehicle. The alternative would be to somehow add wings or something, to stop the wheel pieces looking like they are actual wheels. It just reminds me too much of the Spyrius robots that roll along on front-facing wheels to see straight away that it's meant to be a flyer. Maybe also having 2 guys facing the side in the main photo greatly encouraged my misperception. But I like this one, and the good old space grid background is always cool.