Mazin

Dude, You do know this Forum and the entire Contest is just a virtual bonus to our everyday lives, right? It's a form of escape from problems, not the place to create problems, it's not like anyone here is part of the US Congress, we are not working on amendmnets to the Constitution or anything similarly serious. We didn't have to sign anything, we didn't have to give away our intelectual properties, we didn't have to pay to be taken under consideration, we didn't have to invest money, and this wasn't a contest that could seriously affect anyone's career or something any of us would write into a Portfolio. It also wasn't run by a big staff of professionals to complain the way You do, just like it wasn't organized to give prizes away to preselected winners, or to commit a tax fraud, or to bring publicity to the site and not give any prizes after all... And here I thought I was the one who wrote and complained too much. Sure, i thought there were few things to discuss, few things that i didn't like, which is completely normal during such events, but there's always a line. I think. And problems with this contest can't even compare with problems i'v witnessed in plenty of others. So boy, I hoped we were going to have a beer already, celebrate, and additionaly talk about few ideas for the future. Few things that could be changed, upgraded. And it's turning into a COURT ROOM battle, and i don;t realy want to be a part of this. On the other hand my brother owes me 100k, and other owe me millions, them i could take to the court room, and since You're an acting lawyer here, maybe i should hire You. Then we could use all that money to reimburse MisterPhes and sponsor tons of prizes in dozens of categories and hire an army of regulators. So i'll just use few words to defend MisterPhes and the whole Contest... This thing started 3 months ago, THREE MONTHS, and it wasn't in a hiatus for even a moment as it kept going and going trough different phases all the time, and i'm pretty sure most of us, including builders, critics, voters, Eurobricks staff and myself, may have been quite tired after a while and may have already forgotten about certain aspects that were set out in the beginning, as no one kept those rules printed and pinned into the fridge all the time, and the same way we might have forgotten about certain entries that may have been too similar, too big, too small etc. Especialy that some of those rule-breakers You bring up were't even in the rules, but are based on Your own assumptions. So after all those weeks I may have forgotten about certain things in the rulebook, other folks had the right to forgot about them too, even MisterPhes included, and most of contests tend to change as they go. Especially those that aren't ment for serious business, but are for poor fun. After all we all did this after hours, and we all had to invest HUNDERDS of hours, if we wanted to go trough every entry, write reviews, respond to each other, and drop few posts in other contest-related topics. Now do the math. Was it worth doing this just for those xxx dollar worth prizes? Nope. Definitely not. If i was here just to win Eldorado i wouldn't get so involved, and i'm based in Eastern Europe where every Lego set's real cost is typically 4 times more than in the West. Now do the math to guess how much more work MisterPhes had to do. And he's the one who won't be getting any prize, even tho he's the one deserving it the most! Cause we all were only having fun, we were the one basically playing with toys. We didn't have to respond to dozens and dozens of private messages, notifications and reports he probably had to deal with on a daily basis. I'll tell You, I've organised a couple of contest myself in the past, much much smaller of course, and i'm shocked HOW WELL this entire show had been run, considering how big and long it was and that we only had MisterPhes behind the wheel from start to finish. As You obviously have no idea how shitty they can be, with entrants breaking rules constantly, to the point one have to start adjusting those rules in order to finish the whole thing, instead of disqualifying almost everyone, and to stay sane, cause after a while even organizers might get sick and tired of the whole thing ;) It all starts with stricts rules and with a dream it will go smoothly... and then people come in and everything takes a turn.

I think @Stoertebricker 's Ironman is the perfect ship for this mission, no other vessel in our contest's fleet carries more guns ;) "i didn't sign for this!" ;) Well, i suppose we could simply use american Lego cannons then, i think they weren't capable of firing any projectiles anyway ;)

About the future... I think in order to run a smooth contest it should be all about the setting clear rules and enforcing them among contestants, cause everyone said they had a great time, but we still had some issues in here. Like with voting, the most important thing is to decide whether we won't to give future prizes to well deserved entries, or do we want to give them domocratically, cause democratic way will always give advantage to popular entrants, or someone with more friends, family, followers, like in all those controversial "most likers = winner" contests on FB. Having contests were someone gets advantage not because of an amazing entry but because he/she has more friends, who will vote for him/her without even checking others kills fun and is an insult to someone's elses effort. Thus, perhaps voting for oneself should be out of the question too. I mean, it wouldn't be a problem if someone should realy think his/her entry was the best. But it's problematic when people have different ethical approach, a lot of folks didn't decide to vote for themselves even tho they had excellent entries, and we saw some bad entries getting votes from their own creators, o courtesy voting, where it was clear that a vote was given to an entry for other reasons then it's attractiveness and compliance with contest's rules. After all, i thought the sole idea in this contest was to pitch ready-to-produce sets and to then draft those best among them, finished sets, digital or hand made, NOT ideas. Still we saw some of those ideas getting a lot of votes or even winning in one case, which was not fair for those who worked hard to have their own sets finished. One particular set managed to kinda roll over the rules, as i thought it was goofy and got accepted only because it was obvious it wouldn't generate votes, or so i hoped, but it turned out people did give quite a lot of points to it, hell, even its builder voted for himself, and i find it very distastefull. And that's just one of the examples of sets that didn't realy follow the basic rule, to pitch someting that could be greenlighted and in compliance with classical Pirate theme, as we've seen quite a lot of builds that Lego wouldn't allow, because they went into a sphere of fantasy, or gore or alcoholism... or because they were just MOCs, not something that could be a legit set. So in the future perhaps it would be best to dissalow such entries from even entering the voting phase, since a lot of folks vote for them anyway, which should be against anyone ethics. Or we should just consider dropping the "legit classic sets" rule and allow everything, no matter how MOCish or goofy they are, or if it's leaning too much into other themes. I'm just sad i've witnessed a couple of contests for new toys recently, and they always have rules, and then a lot of entrants and voters don't realy care about them, often leading to chosing winners that should be actually disqualified because they didn't fulfill original requirements... and yet, everyone is cool about it, completely ommiting the fact that it turned out unfair, ignoring the fact that some people even dropped from entering because they thought they would fail to fulfil requirements. So it's important to talk about this issue in my oppinion. But the biggest problem of our contest to me were not those controversial entries i've mentioned above, but all the repetitive stuff. It was very tirying to see so many similar ships, or remakes of ships charging at me at the very end. I hoped that people will use this great occasion that this contest had offered to them to think about builds that would be quite new and original, that they will come up with things that weren't done in the Lego Pirate world before, but for some reason many of them decided to do yet another version of a Clipper or Barracuda, whether it was called that way or not. So i'd like it very much if we could come up with ways to encourage more diversity and originality among builders, like, maybe in the future contestants could pitch their ideas first, and then they could build them only after getting approval from organisers? So that they would have to "register" that idea first and and slots for rafts or treasure islands would be limited to those who would pitch it fist. Like, that they would have to come up with ideas for new types of vessels before actually building them, so that we could "ok" it before they will do anyting? Say, someone says "i want to make a merchant vessel that is is not realy a merchant vessel, but a pirate ship disguised as a merchant vessel", and so we would respond "great plan! go with it!". And then when someone else would ask "could i make an another galleon with plenty of guns?" we could respond "no, to hell with it, we've seen this already, go back to the planning desk!" ;) And so on... Anyway, whatever turn a new contest will take, a contest is always a contest, it's always fun to follow, and it's always a chance to win something ;) And finaly, it always brings more people to the Forum leading to many of them staying on message boards and creating new topics and sharing more builds. And lastly, i think we would all agree that @Mister Phes should be properly reimbursed for all his time and effort, right boys? I mean, a lousy million $$$ is the least he could do with ;)

Good observation, i agree that Islanders are absolute winners of this contest, but as i've said in my final thoughts during the voting phase, it doesn't neccesarily mean that they got more popular than Pirates and Soldiers, it's just their sets were generaly better, more interesting, more original, while Soldiers for example brought plenty of remakes that had to share a lot of votes. In short, we didn't strike gold in Pirate or Soldier section contest during the contest, but we did strike gold in the Islander zone ;) Congratulations to Winners and sincere thanks to Organizers for coming up with this show and then running it to the end :)

I guess they would do that if they could give away more prizes, but then again approving entries to such categoties could be controversial, as we've seen some "remakes" that were different enough to be considered completely new builds, while some "originals" seemed to have be too similar to older sets ;)

Lets just blame Hungarians for it ;) They started confusion in the Contest, so we should now use them as scapegoats for everything ;)

Good idea to share those charts with us, cause i did find one mistake in my votes @Mister Phes :) In the Mini Build Category i voted for this entry by SevenDeadlyStreamers... while You gave my point to this entry by Janhansson :) Guess that i should have entered a full name of the entry, as I didn't call it "Remake of Renegade Raft...", but called it simpler "Renegade Raft..." and perhaps that might have fooled You ;) Anyway... better check those votes folks :) And maybe we should make it a rule to use full name for every entry next time :)

there were some problems with entries Index, as some of the builds were not included as the deadline clock was ticking, so we formed a special top secret mission force to find all those entries missing from the roster, among them Yours ;) Your welcome ;)

Mission acomplished then ;)

Realy nice :) Is that a little waterfall coming out of that rock? Tho, seeing that You've made somg pig droppings this might be an urinal just as well ;) And I like Your raft, somewhat unique, but works :) Does the skeleton have some play feature behind him? I mean, maybe that's just the way he's attached to the baseplate, but it looks a bit like if pulling him away from the rock would trigger some effect :)

But then again You have to remember that one of the reasons this contest was created was to bring more people into the Pirates Forum, as either viewers or participants, voters too. Or at least i understood it that way :) Allowing only those registered before the contest would play against those promotional goals. @iragm 's idea with allowing accounts that had some activity sounds wiser. Or You could always do it like with reviewing part of the contest, where it was obligatory to register first in order to participate and then participants that didn't realy participate were out of the contest... I guess this simple rule worked here, so it could work for voting just as well :)

To be honest, it didn't look like he was about to win at any point from the moment voting started, tho of course it could change, there's still time and he did receive some legit points, but i thought he would do much better when the contest started, since he did bomb us with his great entries. He was among my own favorites initialy too, tho, luckily or not, it became more and more interesting as the whole show proceeded.

nice job, and i like the fact that You've added a strap of honey to mark Yourself let's have a moment of silence for all those poor fellows with no votes for their entries ( yet ) done now if we could get someone to turn those stats into a musical piece

Wonder if that would help create statistics to check how many voters made similar choices :) Especially in the main category, cause in mini sets it's already quite clear that folks have a much more similar taste ;)

@Yoggington Bear You, i guess You need to change Your vote :P Did a quick check to see how many voters would have to edit their posts in the voting thread and i already thought that it won't be a problem, since no seemed to have actually voted for Alexu's entry... but naaah... :) Wonder what will You pick up this time...

hehe, very cool scene :) i wouldn't mind grabbing one of those, as a diplayable statue to keep somewhere beetween my books ... even tho i'm scared of sharks ;)

Awesome stuff :) It's very first moment where that face starts to talk already sold it to me :) And that scene where a guy is pulling that body, leaving a blood mark behind is pure gold :)

A bit too far for me, but thanx :)

After dealing with entries battling over my dreams for days, and then carefully counting contents of all envelopes from Contestants, these are my final choices: MAIN BUILDING CATEGORY: 1. Le Scorpion by Jansued ...................................................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 2. Redbeard's Rocky Island Escape by Dilligan ..................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 3. Lost Lagoon by Brick Stop ................................................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 4. Islander Palace by BrynnOfCastlegate ............................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 5. Skull Island Remake by Glowboy .......................................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) MINI SET BUILDING CATEGORY: 1. Fortune Idol by Oky ................................................................ ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 2. Renegade's Raft by SevenDeadlyStreamers ....................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 3. King Kahuka's Outrigger Boat by Kritch ................................ ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 4. Great Pirate Treasure by Xoona .............................................. ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) 5. Carribean River Soldiers by Rogue Redcoat ......................... ( check my final thoughts and reasons behind this vote HERE ) And of course the Honorary Oscar goes to Mister Phes for running the whole show My reasons behind these selections below: My finals thoughts on the entire Contest:

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS AND REASONS WHY I'VE DECIDED TO RANK THIS SET AT THE 5TH PLACE IN THE MAIN BUILDING CATEGORY Pirates are THE GUYS of this franchise and everyone, kid or adult, will always choose sets with them as first, if given that chance, after all, it's named after them. And this might be the best searats-focused set we actually saw in these entries. It's quite big and got plenty of cool stuff, with inviting cartoony skull, that looks like it would kill everyone who would dare not to buy it. And that's just for starters, cause there's plenty of characters to go with it, boats, great building, hell, even those stairs would constalty work as a battlegound for my scenarios if i was a kid. Some might say that that big jetty could use some more development, and they might be right, but i feel that even with it's huge empty space it can be a fantastic playing spot, and some kids actually prefer if sets their get leave that option to them, instrad of having every corned completely build up. That tower is already build up, and i guess it's concealed muskets alone could win a prize for the best playfeature, together with the rotating skull, or a crane. Brilliant. And even the fact that it's "only" a remake, doesn't change my oppinion that it's somewhat unique. The use of vegetations and little spots of sands under that pier, as well as rockwork are trully stunning, making it a perfect example of using budgetary amount of pieces to create someting that could overshadow more complicated designs. Even tho that i think that using only red bricks is a bit too far, and they could welcome some other colors as well ;) And it's minifigures could be more attractive, given the large number of them included, as they could offer more attractive types, especially on the pirate side ;) And that's why SIR lands on the 5th place in my list, tho i'm still happy i could squeeze it into the charts ;)

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS AND REASONS WHY I'VE DECIDED TO RANK THIS SET AT THE 4TH PLACE IN THE MAIN BUILDING CATEGORY Islander Palace is the type of a set I'd swear i saw multiple times on my father's ferry crossing between Poland and Sweden, or in that small toy shop that stood by the terminal, or in any other shop i had a pleasure to hunt Legos in back in that day. This is just a product that even tho you know it wasn't there, it should have been there, that it was always a part of that childhood, and i would dream to be able find myself in a room filled with those beautiful boxes or to by them in multicopies to surround myself with them. That's how cool this stuff are, and it's sorta unique, it's very appealing, t's classic, it's actually kinda brutalistic in it's simplicity, cause many other Entries were far more detailed, and this one leaves certain areas to buyers hands in order to decide whether he/she should fill them with more bricks... but it's still incredibly attractive. Visually at least, cause i'm not sure if i would constantly play with it, even as a kid, after all, it's "only" an Islander set, which were always "worse" then Pirate and Soldier builds. Still, we just didn't get enough cool designs from these other factions to kick tribesmen out of the top together with their palace. Thus, i was happy to still squeeze it at the 4th position in my own ranking. If we would make a category for "best catalogue" then it would probably be at 1st, it was incredible to have a chance to see something like this in this contests, as these pages are perhaps even better than the build, still, it's the build that counts the most for the final ssessment, not bonus materials :)

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS AND REASONS WHY I'VE DECIDED TO RANK THIS SET AT THE 3RD PLACE IN THE MAIN BUILDING CATEGORY I must admit that i was sure this Contest was almost over and i had my votes practically selected when this brickifull beast popped up and it's blowned my mind, as I believe that Lost Lagoon is THE SET of this Conteast, should we throw best Entries into Lego's new catalogue. It's simply the kind of set that we all would have dreamed of if we were still kids, or if it would be released back in the 90s. None of us would probably afford that tho, nor would get for Christmas, but that's just the thing with every toy line. There were always some favourites we would eventually claim, and holly grail that would be fat from our reach. And that would also enchance their attractivness. Thus, Lost Lagoon is what The Flagg Aircraft Carrier was for Lego, what Castle Grayskull was for He-Man, and what Cats' Lair was for Thundercats. It would be a dream of dreams. With all those awesome playfeatures, with it's brides, craft, animals, great number of minigures, and visual appeal, it blends so well with it's size, that it's actually an amazing playground, where every area and every brick is realy well placed and useful for kids endless scenarios, and so it's not just a enormous bunch of Lego parts thrown together into an oversized composition. This is actually a real beaty, and something every fan of Lego and Pirates would opt to have. And it's very and classic looking original too! Still... it's an Islander's set and this tribe was always sorta 2nd class among Lego Pirates factions. We liked them because they were part of Pirates theme, but it was the same attaction we had to all those bad Gijoe or He-Man figures, that we wanted to get only because they were part of those world, not because they were attractive on their own. And for the same reason I believe people would prefer to choose more boxes with Pirates and Soldier if given a chance, rather than forcing themselves to get only one, but giant product focusing on the natives. Thus, i'm ranking it "only" at the 3rd place.

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS AND REASONS WHY I'VE DECIDED TO RANK THIS SET AT THE 2ND PLACE IN THE MAIN BUILDING CATEGORY I'm still a bit mad at Dilligan for listening to whispers from the darkside and altering his original vision, despite the fact it was a great set, as those changes didn't realy help to make the RRIE more attactive, the roof got smaller, and even that sun/rain protection i've proposed got slighlty too big and raised to whole stucture a bit. BUT it's still an awesome and unique project within this Contest and the whole Lego Pirate world. It's got the right look for tha classics and soul and brings some novelty to the franchise as this kind of riverside/swampy/port building was never done before and so it's a complete novelty, that offers plenty of fun. Kids who will be lucky to grab it wil have a chance to play with a one of a kind multifloor hideout that is not oversized yet, and provided great accesibility to every corner, and every corner is better than another, offering lot's of great play features, with that collapsing bed being one of my favourites. And it's not just a toy set, it's the type od architecture i'd like to live in. It's got great docking spot for two boats, a chimney, fireplace, nice cosy bedroom, and an awesome place to sit and relax on the roof. I'm not sure if i'd like to have my own prison and a pet crocodile tho, but i'd certainly grab into that if i was a pirate character. And there's even Indiana Jones or some other adventurous fellow making a cameo ;) Who wouldn't opt for that? :)

Yeap, just let me finish thoughts on my other votes and i'll post my selections in the proper Voting thread :) Still, looking at folks' favourites right now, it seems its gonna be battle between Your idol and the Outrigger Boat if nothing will change. Or at least these are the choices are mostly note ;)

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS AND REASONS WHY I'VE DECIDED TO RANK THIS SET AS THE 5TH PLACE IN THE MINI SET BUILDING CATEGORY Now why am i even voting for this set. I should probably boycot it as Rogue Redcoat still didn't admit that that i was the one to convince him to turn his original idea to something river-oriented and to provide these fellows with a canoe ;) Still, it's an undeniable fact that for a miniset it's damn cool, as it gives whole lot of great storytelling items within very limited amount of parts. We get 3 soldiers, a canoe, a jetty, and even a palmtree. And a spider included too. Normaly one would probably have to buy 3 sets or a bigger and more expensive type, to get all those things in hands. The only problem is that even with so many folks at one's disposal it would be little hard to play with them, as they represent the same faction, and it's highly unlikey that they could fight each other. Spider doesn't seem like a real threat either... even tho i'm affraid of spiders. Ano no one can canoe nor camp forever. Thus, perhaps it could benefit from changing one of those soldiers into a pirate, so thay they could have someone to battle with. Still, i voted for it as it's the only army building pack withing the mini entries and that's what realy counts. And i guess people could by them in large countities for parts, as they come with stuff that could be well welcomed into everyone's collection.