Artanis I

We've had umpteen roundabouts since forever, and yet I still occasionally have to jump on the brakes because someone who was meant to give way to me did the wrong thing. Only occasionally though. Haha, local police will book you for anything against the road rules. Our crime rate doesn't give them enough to do sometimes? Not just for speeding, but for failure to give way, failure to indicate, excessive noise, following another vehicle too close, running a red light or stop sign, faulty headlights, using a mobile phone, excessive blood-alcohol/drug level, no seatbelt, smoking with children in the car, "dangerous driving", open alcohol in the car, not keeping to the left lane unless overtaking or turning, obstructing traffic, driving while distracted, not carrying a current licence, broken glass, driving or parking an unregistered vehicle or with neither front nor rear plates, incorrect coloured lights, exceeding the window tint limit, crossing double continuous lines, parking on the wrong side of the road or in front of a driveway or outside the lines etc... and everyone's response when booked is "I didn't know..." "Ignorance is no excuse." Having said that, I respect the police. If you do the right thing they leave you alone anyway. I wish they'd book MORE people for speeding past my house (at 3am thanks very much).

I like both, but:

That annoys me, when the person in front of me stops to give way to someone that is far enough away to go before. Or when people turn left without indicating, and I'm sitting there giving way to fresh air. "Thanks, goose, you made me go back to 1st gear when I could've gone straight through..." Those roundabouts that have little ones going the other way look like fun. But if you want scary traffic, when I went to Sri Lanka there were 2 main highways merging into 1 in peak traffic that had 4 or more lanes each, no lights, no roundabouts, no nothing. No accidents! Everyone just paid attention to where everyone else was going. Made me realise how precious the locals can be here with their personal space on the road. "Hey man, don't cut me off! HOOOONNK!" Remember that Chevy Chase movie where they get stuck on a roundabout "Big Ben... Parliament..."

Don't watch The Mighty Boosh then. "I'm the Moon" "I'm the 'itcher" "I'm Old Gregg"

So now you face the dilemma of whether to settle with what you had back then, or to instead spend all of your money on Bricklink boosting your armies and castle collection...

So now it's an "endo-suit"?

I stuck my CMF elf straight in with the forestmen a few years ago, I think it's just too obvious. Rehash forestmen with elves, TLG. Thanks. And bring back cute orcs. Thanks.

Funny, I felt the same as both of you. "This Smaug chase is boring, get back to the intrigue of Dol Guldur!" Maybe some yellow skinned ones, in time. Despite only getting the ranger type of generic elf in MEA, that was better than anything else non-orcish provided for army building. 1 generic Rohan soldier. 1 generic Laketown soldier.

Sounds good! Fine by me! "What's that there, TLG?! Who cares anyway, it looks cool. Have my money"

Yeah that set is now $8AUD at a nearby Target, but I already have 4 unopened boxes plus a few stored up to give away. I don't know where they got their stock from, I haven't seen it anywhere else this year! It was a bargain for us at the original price...

Friends has hit Target too. Wait, is that a pun or broken English?

I have read that before, but thanks for being detailed again. I was just wondering yesterday, if anyone knew of a process to do the reverse! I want to "yellow" some white parts, but in a uniform manner. So I don't want to just put them in the sun, because the colour won't be consistent enough. I intend to make my own "tan" wargs!

It wasn't just a single incident at a single store.

Difference? I thought it was just 2 names for the same thing. The only difference besides the change in label - which on BL appears to have occurred in 1990, is the simultaneous addition of 3 new items: scale-mail print, armour piece, and helmet with visor. The other 3 torso prints continued, as did the 2 shields. It's less of a difference than the Black Knights adding the same torso print, armour piece, helmet with visor, dragon plumes and new ovoid shield with new print - also in 1990. I could understand you thinking that the Black Knights & Dragon Knights/Masters were the same side (due to the ovoid shield) then finding out later that they were different. That and the reuse of dragon plumes was the only similarilty with those 2 factions. But Crusaders different from Lion Knights? I don't think that they are. Check out the entries on this page for the sets labelled Lion Knights or Crusaders, 1984-1992.

Regarding KKII, I really liked the Shadow Knights, and the shields were all quite interesting, you are right. The heroes' coloured helmets, hands & limbs were all necessary for my multicoloured Futuron customs, but man, were they silly looking knights. I didn't much like the colour scheme of the later generic good guys either. But, Vladek's Dark Fortress is one of my favourite castles. Again, the Shadow Knights are cool.

All exclusive monorail parts are here: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catID=237 The track needs to be connected using 1x4 plates, and if you are using elevated track you need to put stanchion/supports underneath. The weight of the train means that you should put those supports at both the joins and the middle of each track section, in most cases. For the train, you need a motor assembly, 2 bases and 2 bogeys + bracket/pivots. They clip together. To run the train you need a 9V battery box (with a battery of course!) plus an electric connector wire (with the 2x2 plates on each end) to connect the motor to the battery box. The rest is appearance, maybe you want lights etc, they need to be connected to the battery box too. Make sure your train is designed such that changing the flat battery doesn't require too much disassembly.

Looks like he has a collar with DOG written on it

I noticed that the Monster Fighters ghost hasn't been reused. I'd like to see that in Castle sets, the skeleton has been overused. More "troll" (Fantasy Era orc) sets including buildings/caves etc would be cool. Imagine a trolls vs elf/forestmen situation set in the woods. (Let's be honest, there are going to be 2+ opposing factions no matter what we want.) I agree that lions vs dragons needs a rest. Red & blue need a rest, I know there was no blue in Kingdoms, but we had blue all last decade. Time to tastefully (not in KKII style) use other colours for minifigs, highlights & heraldry. Orange, purple, brown... BTW sorry, I have 0 interest in civilian sets. and LURPs.

The "buying Lego from overseas web sites" topic kinda died when Amazon started making Lego unavailable for Australia. That was 1, 2, maybe 3 years ago. Until then, there were bargains and more discussion. Use Bricklink, eBay, or buy from retail.

There's a good reason for that

When I do reviews of any kind I want to include as many of the things that I've found interesting in other reviews I've seen. Some of those things take a lot of work. It seems to me that most video reviewers just want to set up a camera, shakily show you the final build and talk unnecessarily - ie do pretty much no work, and just get channel views. Give the standard price, part & availability info. Set all of the parts out neatly. Pick out the new, interesting or rare parts. Compare this new part/print/minifig with an old one. Show/discuss the artwork. The inventory. Demonstrate the play features. Give a sense of size perspective, show the model from different angles. Show the reverse faces. Go into detail about certain points of interest, but don't ramble. Give a stop motion or time-lapse video of the build. Compare the set to previous or similar versions. Use clean stills/footage, not blurry, shadowy or grainy. All of those things are possible in a YouTube video, but few are usually included. Add to that the issue of hearing presenters voices & accents, having to look at some ugly mug or his hands, the unending unscripted rambling, the inability to easily (and cheaply) jump from one part to another or stay a while, and you find why I rarely even look at video reviews. I think the ultimate review would be comprehensive text + photos with an added short video demonstrating play features, 3d & size perspective, and a video to show how the build comes together. Obviously that is a lot of work, and why no one does it. When a high profile set is released early for EB staff to review, they do a very comprehensive job on the text & photo side of things. (Clean photos too!) I think the only improvement would be to add some short videos, and then no one would be saying "pictorial reviews are great, but, video reviews have _____"

058. Siercon & Coral - 1 point 064. Bob De Quatre - 1 point 102. Yatkuu - 1 point 122. Mr Brickman - 1 point 124. Jarren - 1 point 143. moctown - 1 point 156. Galaktek - 1 point 214. PixelFox - 1 point 264. Cara - 1 point

I laughed. But I think the warning from staff about not continuing where things may have been heading kept me & others quiet. I also didn't realise at first that it was a hoax.

Prometheus (again). I pretty much get what's going on with the "engineers" now, but still don't know how the pilot got that information. Or why this thing turns into that thing turns into the other thing turns into another thing turns into Geiger's alien.

None of those sets minifig selections lend themselves to multiple purchases. So I will just get one of each. Thanks heaps for the pics.