Artanis I

A set I bought had 2 of the old style coins-on-a-sprue, which is fine, but I'd like a gold bar. Hopefully they'll send me the right stuff.

Whatever your capital be named, Arcanis I offers the following message to The Avalonian Trading Company: Be warned, not all in Nocturnus share the same sentiment regarding trade with the West - each case will be very different, and I do not speak for all in power.

Does the Fire Chariot manage the icy environment of Mitgardia? Shame it leaves a scorched trail when travelling through Avalonia.

Arcanis I offers the following message to Avalonia: Fellow no(ta)bles of Nocturnus: we must not let our aggression be our enemy at this time. Now is the time to build, and to use the peace to our advantage. We are strong-willed, our confidence may bubble over at times, and when the inevitable war does come we shall be victorious, but wisdom dictates that our words & actions towards the West be at the very least low in venom. Their numbers may appear to be great, but it is only a greater number of voices that will ultimately pull them in more directions when the time for quick military decision comes. We are less in number with power, with greater number under our command - our armies will be stronger and more unified, our strategy more accurately carried out. but that time has not yet come, and may not be for awhile. We should say to them what they need to hear for now... and perhaps even allow them to think we consider that we may be "equal" Your map is pretty good other than that. Maybe some more grassed and wooded areas within our borders before the mountains though.

I imagine Whitefang will review series 6 before they are available ANYWHERE for purchase. He did series 5 before they even started showing up in Germany.

And Toyworld has the lighthouse $5 cheaper. @$50. Also Whitecap Bay is @$110 if that's good enough to bite.

My parts are showing?!

Nice clean tower - so kind of you to provide for me a forward base for our imminent border expansion. We may even allow you to give it up without bloodshed. The octagonal shape makes for a spacious interior and roof without making it too vulnerable on the outside. The lamp posts are very good, but we will most likely add something from nature to it for charm - a skull or two may suffice. We will of course have to change the flags. See you soon!

Question: do we have a "capital" of any sort or a main fortress? Or is our guild decentralised? If we do have one, whereabouts is it located? High in the mountains, below or beyond them? Our Great and Repulsive Leader must be based somewhere of significance. I am wondering where would be the best places for us to place our secondary defensive positions. Little point building defensive watchtowers in the swamp if noone is going to bother going near there. Okay, so that was more like 4 questions.

General, might I suggest adjusting the bottom of the tower so that a balcony juts out slightly over the pass - for the obvious purpose of pouring boiling oil over our pathetic enemies attempting to make a dash for it. Your men on ground could stand around the corner ready to attack should the oil run out, or some lucky spell neutralise its potency. It may even benefit if we were to deliberately cause the ground on the approach to be difficult to traverse. Makes "advancing" armies easy pickings for archers at the top of the tower. We could place obstacles for horses, siege weapons etc or muddy the ground to bog down their heavy knights.

Haha, you guys are a crack-up... Lisqr: I'll like what I'm going to see, I'm sure. I'm going to work on a watchtower, probably start tonight. I'm thinking dark colours, but can't decide on the setting yet. Marsh? Labyrinth? Forest? Mountain? I can't imagine why you'd build a watchtower in a mine...

But they did just buy him some time...

After great hesitation (most of my Lego is packed away for at least a year - I was really scraping the barrel to come up with even this) I have decided it will be more fun to participate in a small way than not at all. As this guild appears to be the least popular and most dark, I thought I'd join Nocturnus. Let me present to you the 2 latest notable characters to the region: Arcanis I (*groan* ) Defector from the West - possibly affected by enchantment or some other magic encountered deep in Avalonia. Not known how it started, only that the soul became increasingly tormented until he just had to leave his old life & companions. Battle scarred & socially unstable his current home is in Nocturnus, under the tutelage of a mysterious creature of great power: Kargzaskzin From the depths of the earth, or swamp, or something. Unpleasant in every way possible, given over to the dark arts. Armed not only with a powerful sceptre but also a crossbow, you never know when your powers can be rendered useless: there is more to the darkness than any being could ever master. Well, how many cartoons have I watched where the supposedly all-powerful evil magic guy gets bested by some good guy with a cool sword... No! Do! Or do not! There is no try... My attempt at the official organised Nocturnus army of soldiers: I've gone with the speckled helmet & armour, black torso, red (or skin coloured - option to go sleeveless) arms, skin coloured or any colour gloved hands, black & red/dark red legs. Standard issue weaponry is not compulsory, but most common: black or speckled spears/axes & standard Lego weapons. The official army stationed in a fortress etc would be dressed as such. Few shields, and often two handed weapons. Officers are less armed, wearing the black hood (maybe a cape too? Didn't think of that before) and epaulettes - gold & black go best with the red arms. An officer would be more likely to use a staff etc. This one also throws knives... So what do you all think of those? I like the Reptrians & some other bands people have presented. I think (apart from just using Kingdoms Dragon Knights) we need a more affordable official guild army option for mocs than what I've seen in this topic so far. We need to use common pieces in a way that represents our colours and style. So far most of the ideas are 2/3.

Haha, I like the midichlorian one

I am in the process of trying my hand at this with green Futuron prints. Waiting for the solvent and waterslide "paper" etc to arrive. I have designed the print and done a mock-up with standard paper & sticky tape... it will work so long as your decal application skills are up to scratch!

Just thought I'd throw in some thoughts from my perspective. When I visit the site (okay, so I have a tab open 24/7) I don't view by subforum. I just click on "view new content" and scan through the 6-7 daily pages to see what may interest me and comment if I feel the need. The only time I go to a certain subforum is if I'm searching for a certain topic that I imagine would be stickied (eg Such-and-such sets 2011 discussion). So what I'm getting at is I'm oblivious to "not a lot of activity in this section" and "we should do something to increase interest", and I never look at the front page. Seems I'm in the minority on that? I think there's been some cool ideas so far, I will probably go along with whatever. But to be honest, I found as a new EB member all the organised member involvement stuff isn't really explained anywhere so I had no idea what the crap were all those goings-on in the pirates area , or the games section (I know there's lots of mafia games played in there - which doesn't interest me, and it appears there's a lot of Heroica stuff at the moment, but I don't think it has anything much to do with the board games) but no idea how any of it worked or that. If we're going to do "stuff" in this section I think we should really explain clearly in a sticky post so the new members can have a clue by just reading an explanation of what happens, how it's organised and how to join in! Put it in a prevalent position, and not just expect people to use the search function (when they don't really know what to search for), or else have a myriad of locked threads where a moderator answers the "wtf is all this / how does it work / how do I participate" with "click here" (link to obscured post lost in the archives somewhere) Regarding the "Castle heavy-ness" of the guild ideas: I think the problem is that on EB, we have lumped vaguely similar Lego themes together, then said "if anyone wants to post a MOC that fits closer to these themes than the other Lego themes, chuck it in here too" for some subforums like "Historic" & "Sci-Fi" but completely different story for others like Star Wars & Pirates. (If you think about it, Pirates is an "Historic" theme, Star Wars (mostly) a "Sci-Fi"...) Those 2 forums are so successful in their EB community involvement because there's no other stuff lumped in with it. We'd be better off having "european medieval castle" as a separate subforum from all the other stuff if you want to ramp up the community involvement for Castle theme, or maybe separate the MOCs from everything else (Watto's Junkyard?)... just some thoughts. (Another problem we have is the cross-over with many themes where a lot of eg PoP, PQ, PoC, Ninjago or Indy inspired realistic MOCs are fitting in the Historic setting but if posted here would be met with "nice MOC but it probably belongs in the Licensed/Action/Pirates themes subforum with all the other underground temples/dojos/camel trains/pyramids".) the good bit of the post I think a rotation could be a plan, where 3 times a year you could have a month of a special focus on something non-euro-medieval-castle, (be it a limited run Lego theme OR something original. Wild West, Ancient Greece, Samurai, Viking, 19thC, Maya/Aztec etc) and for the other months do a medieval castle/army thing with the guild ideas or whatever. Reset the scores each time? Maybe even change the guilds however often? Keep churning out the ideas.

Great article again. I quite like the Black Knights, they have TWO very awesome castles! The combination of the new helmet & armour pieces with either the triple plume or the large feather made for the most awesome looking knights to date. The dragon plume a few years later was even better! Interesting in the second photo that's posted (I've not seen that one before) there is a MOC version of the 6085 castle complete with Black Knight flags & shields manned by both Crusader and Black Falcon knights... Regarding the alternative builds, those pictures come either from the back of the box or the instruction booklet. I would buy almost any of those alternate castles as a set in their own right, they look so good! PS there's a typo at the top where it says 6075 instead of 6085.

I didn't realise it was out already! (At long last) Ninjago... haha. Now I understand what the go is with all the sets and characters, it didn't make much sense before... BTW I was only thinking the other day that a Tintin licenced theme could be pretty cool. But, if the movie is out already, probably too late.

always two, there are: a master and an apprentice

I think I recall Dave saying it wasn't returning in season 4

I had a recent observation: a boy was loitering in front of the Kre-o Transformers. He pointed one out (Optimus Prime I think) to his mother who said "isn't that stuff just like cheap Lego?" +1 to Mum...

As my favourite colour was green, these guys were definitely my favourite. The Forestmen's Crossing set was only available in USA, I didn't even know it (or the female minifig) existed until I happened upon it on Bricklink.

I would snap up the Kreons...

I wonder why that is?

Awesome video - hilarious! This is my favourite of yours. Your armies have many similarities to mine.