TheOneVeyronian

It's not entirely certain. I've been hearing through one ear that this is the last wave, and through the other I've been hearing that further waves are to come As one of the fans of the theme, I will be sad to see Chima go, but at the same time if Winter 2015 is the last wave Chima gets, it will allow me to redirect money towards the numerous other themes I have an interest in, which isn't a bad thing whichever way you cut it. That said, Chima did give us some very cool new moulds (yes the pun was intended ) that we might not have seen otherwise, like the new claws and the ice cage. Discovering new moulds (that aren't used on minifigures) is always a delight for me upon opening a brand new recently released set, and Chima satisfied that more than anything. Now, just to wait for the other three sets (and maybe this rumoured Mammoth BP) to properly reveal themselves...

Oh no... only days after getting over price shock for my 2015 wants list and a day after taking the plunge on the Target exclusive Lavertus, another previously unknown set I want comes along! I would have been able to skip this set but it just had to include a new Vulture character. Looks like another £30 set to me (minus typical TRU inflation of course). But it's nice to have a new Vulture-centric set here, as I felt that they were somewhat under-represented otherwise in terms of Vulture vehicles Is there any sightings or news of the other three retail exclusive sets yet apart from what's already mentioned in this thread? I need to know if any of them have minifigures I can skip over to save my wallet

Hmmm... all this talk about Constraction on the PaB walls... reminds me a couple of years ago where I had a grab bag of constraction parts in my hand at my local LEGO Store. Foolish not-quite-into-MOC'ing-yet me put them back on the shelf and said "I'll get them next time". There was no next time. By the time I next visited they had discontinued the grab bags But yeah, the day Constraction appears on the PaB walls will probably be the day I stop having disposable income... because I'll be stuffing more PaB cups than the store carries with bones and shells and finally have access to enough pieces to build this human sized Bionicle out of CCBS that I've had planned in my head for a while Slightly more on topic: I'm really hoping that TRU in the UK does what they did last year and release sets early (early release normally never happens in Winter where I am, it's normally reserved for Summer where we had June sets in early May), especially the Bionicle range. How wonderful it would be to wake up on Christmas Day and find a Bionicle under the tree once again!

Thanks for the review VBBN! This has probably got to be my favourite of all the Protectors and definitely one where I'm going to have to buy two copies. The trans-dark purple looks lovely. I've never been a big fan of the "rockwork" shell add-on, but I'm glad to see it in a colour that can be more easily integrated into constraction MOC's. The only bits I don't really like are the hand held weapons (I maintain that a gatling gun chest is pure awesomeness ), but I can see myself getting two copies of this Protector and making an oversized mace weapon for the Protector with two trans-dark purple mace halves. Then giving Onua the gift of more trans-dark purple bones as he desperately needs some in his arms. All in all, I'm really liking this set. Roll on January!

Well, what an awesome contest to be a part of! Words would not be able to describe my feelings if one of my entries was honoured in the top 5... I haven't won in a contest for 10 years, only a few "honourable mentions" along the way. I await the results with bated breath. But... if I don't get anywhere, hey, at least my Constraction and Technic MOC'ing skills have sharpened tenfold recently But I feel kinda sorry for the judges... over 1,000 entries in total and you have to pick just 30 to send off? That's a tough call...

As much as I like Li'Ella, I think I would have preferred to have got a new Lioness (or Lion) General character in the Lion battle pack, just to increase the amount of unique Lionesses we have. Especially when the other Generals are brand new named characters. But anyway, good spot. I didn't read all the product descriptions (only the Lion one out of curiosity) so thaat's why I didn't notice that there were named Generals in the other sets.

I can speak as to why the merchandise stall was completely empty on Thursday and Friday, for those wondering why, as I actually asked why at the help desk when I went there on Thursday: Quite simply: apparently it wasn't delivered in time. Shame though, I always buy some form of show merchandise when I attend a convention, and while it will be apparently be sold online for a short time after, it's just not the same... Otherwise, apart from that, it was a really good convention (though very expensive to attend because I came by car) and was good to see faces both new and old to me. I really would like to try and display a few MOC's there next year if it comes back to London. And, while the marketplace was pricey in general, there were a few bargain gems to be had if you rooted around enough. I don't think I spent quite as much there as I thought I would though!

I noticed that listings for the 2015 sets started showing up on Amazon UK - not much of note apart from that we now know the GBP prices, but what intrigued me most about the Chima listings though was the description for the Lion Tribe pack, particularly the first bullet point: It turns out that one of the Lionesses in the pack IS indeed Li'Ella. It's not even a "generic Li'Ella clone" (as I'd originally written it off as)! Not sure if that bodes well for army building for those into that sort of thing But then again, Star Wars battle packs suffer similar problems so I guess this sort of thing is normal for LEGO to do. Still no sign of either the supposed Speedorz packs we heard about with this year's Summer wave sets, or any sign of any listings for 70225, 70226 or 70227 (though if they were all retailer exclusives, that would make sense I suppose).

You know their release is imminent when Amazon starts listing them for pre-order to be shipped in 3-5 weeks time. So, out of curiosity, I looked on Amazon UK to get some GBP prices for the Bionicle sets... and somehow I can't quite believe some of them: Protectors: £9.99 Small Toa/LOSS: £12.99 Large Toa: £14.99 Just thought it was rather strange as I was expecting the Protectors to be £7.99 or £8.99 and the large Toa to be £17.99 when comparing the USD/GBP price ratios on similarly sized/priced Hero Factory sets. And Amazon, from experience, tend to be right with their RRP's on new sets... but I hope they're wrong with the UK prices of the Protectors and right with the Large Toa Slightly off topic thought: It's curious that Amazon UK still used preliminary pictures of the sets when finalised ones are out there...

Well, I didn't expect to see a review of this series so quickly! But it's certainly got me excited as this series seems to have more CMF's of interest to me than ever. It's just such an annoyance that they're £2.50 a piece now But anyway, while I really dig the capes of the Classic King and Evil Wizard, the design of the Alien Trooper, the cobra in the Snake Charmer and that new space armour on the Galaxy Trooper, what's the real highlight for me? A 1x1 round tile printed with an ammonoid ammonite As a female palaeontologist myself (I studied palaeontology extensively at university), I will absolutely HAVE to get myself a Female Palaeontologist minifigure first. It's such a shame that they're only 3 to a box so getting good quantities of the printed fossil tile might be tricky/expensive. They would make good additions for a fossil museum or excavation MOC And funny thing is - I was just thinking about printed fossil tiles the other day (though more Archaeopteryx on a 2x2 tile really), so seeing this has just made my day. But all in all, an excellent series, probably the most interesting of all the series so far to me. Good job LEGO

I made another step towards acquiring all the Star Wars minifigs I'm interested in the other day, and picked up a brand new K-3PO minifig for £9. That one had been troubling me for months as all the online prices in Europe were twice that, so I just had to jump on it when I saw that price! Now to just acquire a reasonably priced Kit Fisto and Max Rebo before the 2015 wave hits the shelves... that's very unlikely for now.

You've given me a good idea actually. I'm buying both of those sets upon release, so I'll see what Protector of Fire looks like with the Phoenix flames and maybe post a photo of the result. Also, I meant to mention this months ago, but that Phoenix set also contains RED Protector feet...

I was at Brick 2014 yesterday, and, amongst other things, I bought a brand new K-3PO minifigure for £9 and some Rocket Raccoon polys for £4.99 each. Words cannot explain how pleased I am with those purchases especially when the former costs double the price online and I thought the latter would never be on general sale in the UK Though I do wish I had known that they would be for sale there before I went and ordered some Rocket Raccoon polys from the States a week beforehand

One more entry from me: Skakros the Skakdi: Skakros by TheOneVeyronian, on Flickr Not much a backstory to this one I'll be honest, it was more of a random build that ended up being very loosely based on the Piraka. LDD file here. I should point out that Skakros' spikes and feet do come in silver, they both appear in some of the 2015 Bionicle sets which some people do already possess.

Well this was something I was not expecting to hear about so quickly! I am into many things, and nature/animals is one of them so this set is right up my alley. I love how they put the scientific names of each bird on the name plaques. And, most of all, these are looking like complex and intricate builds, so I love them for that reason as well. So these are a must-buy for me to go on my desk, alongside my Research Institute set which currently sits there. I guess the only caveat for me is that I wasn't expecting it to be a £40+ set. My wallet is really going to hate me come January 1st, that's all I can say! Next year just had to be the year I have less money than usual too

Thanks for all the positive comments! Unfortunately, making the trans-light blue version of LOSS has now meant I have committed to buying two LOSS sets because I like the trans-light blue edition so much, and trans-light blue Technic beams are actually relatively inexpensive. I better start Bricklinking the extra parts then!

I forgot that part existed Oh well, thanks for the tip! I also thought my LOSS modification could do with a mate - so here's LOISS (Lord of Ice Skull Spiders). It's basically LOSS with trans-light blue rather than trans-neon orange, which as I've said before, is also possible to build using existing parts. Ignore the red axles, they were supposed to be black but I'm making these renders using a speed render trick and I was too lazy to re-render the all bevels part again just for a minor colour change (especially since Technic/Constraction models take ages to render all bevels on my ancient laptop), so they're red Lord of Skull Spiders - Trans-Light Blue Edition! by TheOneVeyronian, on Flickr

This render that I did for a bit of fun (please don't pretend you didn't see a fight scene between my BFTGM villain and LOSS coming! ) just so happens to show the rear of the LOSS modification. I admit the blue 3M pin is a bit unsightly but one can always use the new Technic spacer piece (which come in some of the Protectors) to hide it. The purpose of it for me is that it is where the string will be tied to when I go to add a hook and string (a la Shelob). Battle for a Gold Mask - Spidrion vs LOSS by TheOneVeyronian, on Flickr I got that it was a joke when I saw the Aanchir code But how on earth have I been missing it for the past year and a half? I can't open LDD right now to have a look because I have LDD2POV-Ray running again, but I might just take another look and adjust my file if need be. But maybe I just prefer trans-orange to trans-neon orange?

Thanks for the replies so far! I see what you're saying there, however the modification is designed around the set and tries to keep as much of it in tact, as it were. And I'll be honest - it's also a cost-saving measure for those who want to replicate the mod in real life (as I intend to do). 12 trans-neon orange 5M bones (the best CCBS limb replacements) amounts to at least half the price of the whole set, and even with my binge buying of the 2014 Chima Ultrabuilds I don't have that many Oh, and as I point out on Flickr (and somehow forgot in my original post), I do use the wrong shade here, but that's because I can't find Tr. Fluor. Reddish Orange in LDD (is it really not there or am I completely missing it?) rather than me not knowing my colours It's the Lord of Racing Car Spiders In all seriousness, that was the part that actually gave me the most bother (aside lining up the mechanism perfectly in LDD to make it connect together). A torso shell made the abdomen too big (from the artwork I've seen on the box, LOSS isn't intended to have an abdomen like, for example, my BFTGM entry Spidrion). A regular shell wouldn't really fit without it making it look really odd. And the Savage Planet spikes would make working the function, erm, less pleasant. So the chestplate was kind of the best compromise until I see a part that fits it better. By the way, a render of a trans-light blue version of LOSS, which is also possible to make with currently available parts, will be coming in the next couple of days so you can see what it would look like with a different set of colours. Oh, and I should add that it was the first time I've ever manually Photoshopped a decal onto a render and it somehow turned out quite well. I normally let LDD2POV-Ray work it's magic in that department

Lord of Skull Spiders MOD by TheOneVeyronian, on Flickr Hi all! I was kind of bored yesterday, so I decided to have a crack at improving the Lord of Skull Spiders in LDD, constructing the original set using just a parts list and whatever pictures I could find of the set on Eurobricks and BZPower (first time I've actually built a set this complex without instructions), before making a few modifications and improvements. The main modification here is to the legs - here I've added an extra ball joint to each leg for much improved poseability in the real model. The abdomen handle has been filled out a little whilst retaining the function squeeze handle, and exposed balljoints have been put to good use to fill out and shape the model a bit more. The model you see in the picture was rendered using LDD2POV-Ray. Post-processing through Photoshop was applied to add LOSS' face since the chestplate does not accept decoration. For those of you interested in using this for the basis of your own modifications, I provide the LDD file here. A few things to note about the LXF file however: it's missing the rubber band which is vital for the leg function. Wherever I use a black 3M axle (2 instances), this actually is supposed to represent the new 2M axle piece with pin (picture of it here, the piece on the left) which appears in LOSS (but having built a replica of the mechanism myself, a 3M axle would also work in it's place). I'm aware the trans-orange colour is all wrong as trans-neon orange does not appear to be in LDD. And the pose achieved in the render probably isn't possible in real life as the mechanism is set at an almost closed position due to LDD limitations (I couldn't get the knob gears to mesh properly at any angle except right angles!). The design is open to further modification (I intend to add a hook and string to the abdomen to let it hang once I get hold of the set itself), and while building this I realised you can just as easily build a trans-light blue (in place of the trans-neon orange) version so I might upload what that would look like to my Flickr a bit later. Thanks for looking!

System still uses "Dark Green" (LEGO)/"Green" (BL) by the bucketload. As far as I'm aware, it's the most common of all the green colours. Bright Green is much less common in System. But I'm fairly happy that Lewa uses Bright Green - it makes the Green Lantern parts suddenly a bit more useful. Though having said that, they introduced shells in Dark Orange for Pohatu (Red. Brown could have sufficed) and Dark Azure for Gali (Medium Azure or regular Blue could have worked), so I'm really not sure why they didn't pick the classic Green for Lewa, thinking about it. Both types of shell that appear in Bright Green here are new in that colour, so cost-wise, it probably wouldn't have made a difference to cast Mata Green shells. But I'm not complaining either way. Now I have a new roster of Bright Green parts to add to to make the two Green Lanterns I bought a few years ago a bit less useless in terms of parts. And, of course, new Keetorange shells are a bonus (I knew I bought 2 8M shells from 70134 in that colour for a reason!) But the set as a whole: it's meh. Not good, but not bad either. It's one I'll need to have in hand before I can make a final opinion on it, but for now, I rate the parts more highly than the set as a whole.

I normally have a soft spot for the villains of any given theme, and that's still true for LoSS for me. Sure he's not the most interesting set of the wave to look at, but by no means is he the worst set I have ever seen. And now I've seen photographs of the construction, I'm beginning to think that this little bad guy will be quite easy to modify. For better poseability, I can always experiment with some Glatorian or Hordika necks and high friction joints. I'll probably also fill out the small abdomen a little bit to make it blend into the model more rather than have it look like that bit that was tacked on as an afterthought. And the yellow gears - while the colour denotes function, I'm not really a big fan of the colour so I'll likely be swapping those gears out on all the models in favour of black ones. Oh, and I am going to turn that beautiful gold Skull Spider mask into an "elite" Skull Spider. Just got to wait until the legs are available to buy. That or I can de-tail the Skull Scorpions

I haven't heard anything about it anywhere other than on this site. I'd say it's still a possibility but still treat it as an unconfirmed rumour. We may not know for sure until the sets start appearing for sale or images for it appear on LEGO's server. And while I'm here, has anybody else noticed that the site that has given us some pictures of 2015 sets has now taken all the 2015 set listings down (site linked a few posts above)? Looks like we're going to have to wait until the images appear on LEGO's server at Christmas for the 3 sets which are yet to have pictures (that or they get spotted early at TRU again). A bit disappointing, even a minifigure list for those would suffice for me at the moment...

That photo of LOSS in that pose... suddenly my interest in that set has peaked again based on that one pose. Now suddenly it's gone from derpy to rather menacing for me. Good job with the pose VBBN I look forward to the next batch of reviews in that case.

Thank you Aanchir for saying this! I am so glad I'm not the only person who thinks lower legs being longer than upper legs here is odd especially as the femur (upper leg) should be longest part! Ahem. Anyway, another great review. I'm aware it's the Protector of Fire, but to be honest, this set is lukewarm. It has good bits, but it also has bad bits, which in turn leaves this set a rather mediocre effort overall. Agreed with all the points in the review, and I figure that a couple of basic limb changearounds and additions which would take a mere matter of seconds to fix will improve this set leaps and bounds. Any chance of some photos of what the Protector of Fire looks like with the upper and lower leg parts reversed and addition of some 3M bones to give him lower arms perhaps? Just wondering...