TheOneVeyronian

^ So I'm guessing it's going to be a Smyths exclusive for the UK in that case (Smyths is the one place I don't check as I don't live near any of their stores). But it appears that it's going to be put out on the 1st January at (presumably) S@H and brand stores. A bit annoying, since it's the only set I haven't got from the new wave yet and it seems very odd that they'd put out all the sets (not counting 70225-7 given they have a completely different release date) out early in my local brand store - except the Sky Scavenger

In the midst of all this talk of the Summer wave (which sounds enticing, especially with 2 dragons and a Titan Mech in the mix!), I happened to go to the London Westfield LEGO Store today, and in their UK January 2015 store calendar, they had an advert advertising the new Ninjago sets (pic below, presented in a way that shows it's the January UK store calendar). So I asked the store manager when they were going to be released, showing the advert to them, and they said the 1st... of January. Things have suddenly become quite contradictory as I believed that Ninjago would see a March release everywhere, but now I'm not so sure Is it possible we're going to see a similar staggered worldwide release as last year, with the UK getting sets before the US? Why else would they be in the UK store calendar for January if they were seeing a February or March release?

Speaking of the Sky Scavenger, has anybody in the UK seen it yet? I've been able to find all the sets intended for January release... except that one. For some bizarre reason it's not even available to pre-order like the other Chima sets are on the UK S@H, so now I'm confused - is it getting a January release here or not? I'm going to my local LEGO Store later anyway to scoop up some more of the Chima sets, so hopefully they'll know what's going on with it. But if it's a Target exclusive in the US, it probably means it's an Argos exclusive here - and due to the unique way they're run, they don't get new set stock in until mid January

An Ocean HQ? That certainly ties in with the minifig eating shark we saw earlier, so that'll be the set it's found in I reckon Sounds interesting so far though!

Nope, no DC sets were found there unfortunately. But a friend told me that it's not long to wait for them now, they'll be out in a LEGO store on New Years Day I should just add that Chima and City were all I could find in my TRU so far, though I forgot to take a note of Creator, and I completely forgot about the more girl-oriented themes (as my TRU puts them in a completely different area to the other LEGO), so those could potentially be there too.

Now I've built the Claw Driller itself, I feel like sharing some of my thoughts on it. The Bear vehicle Bulkar rides is okay, nothing special. The Ice Bear mech is certainly imposing and a satisfyingly long build (asides from the repetition in the legs, but that was unavoidable), and looks decent enough on display. But somehow, I just can't believe the set has over 600 parts in it as it's not much bigger than the Ninjago Samurai Mech which had about 200 less parts in it As for playability: it really doesn't pose well at all. The arms have such a construction that the shoulder joint can only move sideways when the arm is horizontal (as opposed to many other mechs). The elbow joint is constructed from hinge plates which don't really help poseability either, and therefore, due to the unusual and limiting joint placements, it's quite an awkward set to get into a decent pose and that hurts what is otherwise a good set. I may just swap out the click joints for ball joints (not sure why they didn't go for them in the first place, the bricks with ball cup are available in Trans-Light Blue) on the shoulders. Sorry, no pics - I just don't have the time to take them

Technically not a sale, but TRU (Hayes/Southall branch) had most of the 2015 Chima and City (Construction and Swamp Police) sets on the shelf today if anybody around the area is looking for them. Only place in the whole area I'm aware of that's selling them Unfortunately I forgot to take note of whether or not they were selling S13 CMF's. They were also on sale at the TRU shop set up in Brick 2014 in London last month, but great find nonetheless as I've never heard of them appearing for sale in the UK outside that exhibition until now

Your wish is my command! Sorry the pics aren't the best quality, but winter doesn't provide ideal lighting conditions and I didn't have time for all the extensive editing I normally do

Eight of them feature that chestplate, each one with a different tribe emblem, so there's one for Lions (Laval), Crocs (Cragger), Eagles (Eris), Wolves (Worriz), Ravens (Razar), Gorillas (Gorzan), Bears (Bladvic) and Rhinos (Rogon). On a slightly different note, I was able to find many of the Chima sets on sale in my local TRU today, so I bought the Claw Driller and the Sabertooth Tribe Pack (I wanted the Ultimate Phoenix, but that was one of the two they didn't have out, and staff said it didn't exist when they clearly had it in the stockroom ). I've only pulled the minifigs out of the Claw Driller at the moment (saving the actual build for tomorrow), but I've got to say that they're fantastically exquisite I might post pictures of them later if anybody's interested. I do remember someone saying they were disappointed with Rinona not getting a Fire CHI suit, but I think that's okay since neither Bulkar nor the Lions or Crocs in the tribe packs have one either.

Unlike the US, the UK version of S@H almost never puts "Coming Soon" listings for it's sets (the only exception being D2C exclusives) so I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. The UK should get them on January 1st like the US and Canada, or so I've been told. Unfortunately, no Bionicle sets to be seen on this side of the pond yet in any of the stores (including those that have put out other 2015 sets), so looks like they're sticking to the January release date (it's a similar story with Star Wars).

To be honest, I can't see it being a February release all around Europe, especially as I have heard from a person or two that Bionicle will be put out by the 1st January in the UK. Okay, it's probably unhelpful for mainland Europe, but it's still Europe (I think release dates can vary wildly by country even within a region) so there is hope But at the same time, as Shakar said, if any country sees them being released after January 1st, it is contradictory to what LEGO originally said on Facebook whichever way you cut it. It's bad form to misinform and not keep promises... BUT... if a February release was true for the whole of Europe, I actually probably wouldn't mind too much as it'll let me spread my spending (Chima and Star Wars are already proving to be cash sucking leeches for me)... and it would also give some time for my BFTGM prizes to arrive and see which elements I've got before I buy the rest of them Speaking of the statues - I'd like to see one of those as a set. It'd be interesting to see a scorpion creature race even if Chima beat them to the idea (but no Ultrabuilds were made of the Scorpion Tribe so it's okay). Bring on the rumours!

I hope you don't mind this question too much, but may I ask when the 3 winners of the Eurobricks side of the contest will receive their respective tags? i.e. these ones: Sorry, I thought they were going to be added at the time the winners announcement was made, so please forgive me for asking

Wow, those were some great entries, and I'm quite surprised I won 2nd place here! Congratulations to the other winners, it was one tough competition, and some of the winners on the other sites were simply jaw-dropping p.s. I don't mean to be picky, but is it possible that you could change out the photo of my creation used in the post out for another one of the model from my Flickr, maybe this one instead? The other two winners get nice front-on views and mine gets an ugly side-on view especially when the side-on view shown wasn't the showcased picture in my entry post for that model... just saying. Thanks!

Got some Iceklaw's Mech polybags in the post today (bought them last week) and popped one open to build. It's a cool polybag (pardon the pun) and it signifies that my 2015 LEGO collection has officially begun

I must admit that some of the prices I quoted earlier did genuinely surprise me (Enter the Serpent especially, I thought it'd be £50), but Amazon.co.uk are generally quite reliable with RRP's of new sets so I trust that at least most of those prices are correct. And also, it appears they weren't all taken down from Amazon.co.uk after all. Most of them were removed, but I managed to find that Jungle Trap is still up on there for pre-order still (not sure if it was supposed to be removed though, but it'd be interesting if someone did try to order it and Amazon stuck to their 3-5 week shipping estimate, knowing Ninjago's release date is potentially March).

The sets actually appeared on Amazon.co.uk briefly back at the end of November (have been removed since), and they quoted these GBP prices which sound about right (yeah, I was crazy enough to make a note of them, but I was budget planning myself!): 70745 Anacondrai Crusher: £17.99 70746 Condrai Copter Attack: £24.99 70747 Cole's Boulder Blaster: £24.99 70748 Titanium Dragon: £34.99 70749 Enter the Serpent: £39.99 70750 Ninja DB X: £59.99 70752 Jungle Trap: £5.99 70753 Lava Falls: £7.99 70754 Jay's Electromech: £12.99 70755 Lloyd's Jungle Raider: £17.99

Nice find Aanchir! I just knew we'd get Bladvic and Rogon in their fire harnesses. Though I must express my utter dismay with the fact that the Mammoth stronghold actually contains no new Mammoths whatsoever. We just get Maula and Mottrot again. There's a new Sabertooth Tiger in the Crominus set, and it appears that Iceklaw (the polybag Ice Bear) also makes an appearance in the Bladvic set. And nice to see the gold beast feet make an appearance in the Bladvic set too! All in all, I think I'm going to skip over the Mammoth Base (to be honest, it looks rather weak to me) and go for the rest of the sets. I'll probably buy Rogon in his fire harness via other means instead. But 70225-70227 apparently aren't going to be released until MAY (if my very fragmentary German serves me right)? Doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me. Unless these are in fact Summer wave Chima sets and not retailer exclusives... but I hope that I'm wrong and all the sets will be released simultaneously.

I could always try and see how Hordika necks would look instead of the Glatorian necks. I think the only reason that I used Glatorian necks is that they're more readily available in black (DBG I feel clashes with the colour scheme too much). Hordika necks in black actually do exist (I have one in hand actually!), but they're expensive (about 1 euro EACH) since they're non-production, so Glatorian necks was the way to go. Well, I could also try more Technic ball joints with through axle hole instead of the Glatorian necks, but then that would just put me back to roughly where I started...

I've had some time recently to try constructing the trans-light blue edition of LOSS, and thought I'd take a quick photo of it. It's still WIP: it still needs some black 4M shells (I need to buy some more!) and the chestplate with the LOSS face print, but it is otherwise done. The only changes here compared to the LD file and renders are that I implemented Leewan's suggestion to attach the string, and changed the chestplate abdomen for a Chima fur abdomen. Lord of Skull Spiders TLB edition WIP by TheOneVeyronian, on Flickr The grabbing function still works as normal (though I admit it's a pig to use it as the joints make the legs longer) and keeps faithful to LOSS' original design. Sorry about the photo, it's dark and miserable and really hard to take any decent photos here

Well, it's sad that these never really made it into the wild really. All the evidence that I've probably already pointed out at some point points towards "they had started to go into production or at least in the final stages of pre-production planning, but they pulled the plug". There are gaps in the card numbers where the cards in the unreleased sets would have sat, weapons that didn't exist in any of the known sets made it into the weapon bios on Chima.com, the numbering is right in the middle of the Summer 2014 Speedorz sets, so these were unlikely to be fake, and lastly, they've pictured Rogon in a Fire Chi suit (possibly one of the minifigs in one of the unreleased Speedorz sets) for months on the Chima microsite My best guess is that they met a similar fate to what the Chima constraction line suffered this year in North America. But I'd really like to know the truth behind it all. There's still a slim chance they simply got pushed back to 2015 after all.

Just out of curiosity, I went onto the Chima microsite, and found they'd updated the Posters part and put some up with 2015 set stuff in it! Amongst other things, it shows a crystal clear picture of Icebite's Claw Driller and much of Tiger's Mobile Command as well as showing all the tribe leaders in fire wing harnesses. I think there's a strong possibility that the Bladvic in 70225 will have his fire wing harness, and I hope Laval and Cragger do make an appearance in one of the sets. It wouldn't make sense to leave those two out when we're getting harnesses for all the other tribes, would it? Also, is that a new Mammoth character I spy in the corner of this PDF? Doesn't look like either Maula nor Mottrot to me. I've got to say though, seeing these has got me really stoked for these new sets! EDIT: Just realised there's Rogon in a fire wing harness too. I wonder if that variant of Rogon will appear in a set too?

It reads Iceklaw. And it looks like a previously unknown member of the Ice Bears as he doesn't appear to come in any of the other sets we have pictures of. But neat find though, and what a fine polybag mech! Those Mixel ball joints are so useful in that respect. And silver spider legs! Fingers crossed this polybag appears in the UK, or Iceklaw appears in one of the three retailer exclusives we don't have pictures for. Chima just keeps releasing so many new variants and new members, it's causing a real display problem for me. Even my A1 custom minifig display board is just 2 spaces from being full, and we still don't know if we're getting any new Mammoth or Bear characters!

Oh my... I normally don't like minidolls and more girl oriented sets, but some of these sets are... wonderful. I may even be tempted to pick one up here and there since some of the designs are pretty neat. But for me, it's the plethora of new parts that are pulling me in. Just from what I can currently see from the two newly revealed sets, I am going to need to get hold of some of the six-stemmed flower stems, the pearl gold grass, the new fence piece and plenty of those trans-purple chains. And are those five-point crystals in the bakery in a new colour? Not sure if it's just a trick of the lighting, but they look trans-dark pink to me. I look forward to picking those up most of all! No idea what I'd do with the parts though!

Interesting! I'm only really interested in obtaining the Anacondrai snakes and cultists (the ones with the snake skull helmets, the others are nice but I don't need them really). Out of the sets, the Titanium Dragon and Enter the Serpent are of most interest to me, and I may also pick up a couple of the inexpensive Tournament sets (Jungle Trap looks very similar to a set we've already seen... no prizes for guessing which!). I'll probably end up turning to Bricklink for white Pythor and all the cultists I can't get from TD or EtS or the <£10 Tournament sets. If I didn't have so many other themes all fighting for my attention (and many are higher up my list than Ninjago unfortunately), I would probably buy most of this Ninjago wave as the sets do look really good to me compared to last year's That said, if March IS the release date in the UK for these... then things might change as that'll give my funds a chance to recuperate from a bumper January!

I'll admit straight away that this is probably my least favourite of the Protectors, but I still like the set to a degree. The arms could probably do with some Dark Azure shells both to bulk them up a bit and let the mask fit more with the colour scheme (and I'll do some experimenting with bars in order to re-attach the propellers to the arms most likely). The dark stone grey upper legs will probably also be ditched. And as for skull spider colours? I'd love to see red and black ones myself (I do wish the Spring Yellowish Green spiders were glow in the dark, so I pick GITD too), and maybe have the skull spider legs cast in a different colour too so we can have a bit of variety in that area.