Slegengr

I really hope they leave the second-hand market mostly as it is, but I have my doubts. What seems far more likely is that TLG has discovered (surely it did not take this long?) why they estimate only 5% of their sales going to adults: most adults spend far more on the second-hand market due to TLG focusing on children. I know as a child, between my own purchases and gifts from others, I probably had a couple thousand dollars worth of LEGO(R) purchases (no Dark Age for me). As a working adult, I have spent many times that amount, almost exclusively on the second-hand market to purchase sets I missed in my childhood as well as pieces in bulk for MOC-building that are just not available or are very expensive from TLG. Most likely, I see this as a way for LEGO to make the second-hand market expensive to improve their business profit. If the rare chance occurs that this becomes a way for TLG to sell bulk pieces for MOC builders, I may be pleasantly surprised, but this seems like a very slim chance. I know I have wanted to be able to buy certain pieces in bulk for reasonable prices, but I do not have access to the rare chances for such due to no LUG connection or unmentionable opportunities that some have had. New pieces directly from TLG would be nice, but the prices on Bricks and Pieces are quite a bit higher than those on BrickLink. It looks like it is time to make my BL purchases before changes are enacted. With 500+ orders on BL, I have done my share of supporting their business model. I also assume that eBay is quite pleased with this announcement, as they will likely see an increase in LEGO-related sales, no matter how this is handled by TLG.

Since this was a theme I loved as a child, I always like to see MOC's like this! Overall, I really like the design of this train. The color scheme and most of the style is very true to the classic M-Tron design. For some reason, I have always been partial to simple rail transportation systems in the LEGO Space setting! I will offer a few critiques: ---The pod design for the train engineer is an apparent reference to classic Blacktron 2, so I would prefer to see a design that more closely represents the cockpits seen on classic M-Tron ships instead. This is mostly just personal opinion, though, since I consider the removable pilot pods to be a distinguishing feature of Blacktron 2 specifically. ---As nice as I think the cars look, the design with black hinged plates for the doors on the cars will not physically work with the hinge method you used. The inside corners of the doors will collide too much to allow the doors to close when open or open when closed. Whichever way they are built, they will become locked. I do not know if this is an issue for you if you never build it with real bricks, but it is a design consideration I like to see even for digital builds that they could be built in reality. The doors might work if they are only 1-stud thick, since the tolerance of bricks may be enough to allow the doors to close with a hinge design like this. There is still interference opening or closing the doors even with doors only 1-stud thick. If you try to use the hinge tool in LDD for opening these doors, it will jump from fully closed directly to the point where the bricks no longer collide due to interference issues.

@Corellian Corvette I am pretty sure that it is built as shown in this image with cheese slopes under the Technic pin connectors. This is an LDD build, which verifies all connections as legal according to TLG.

@ProvenceTristram Though I think some of your sentiment is mostly correct, I feel compelled to chime in with my view. It would seem that these days, there is very little MOC activity on EuroBricks as a whole. Some people continue to build, but few comment. The most activity seems to be garnered within specific communities, such as the Guilds of Historica (in which I was once active), where builders begin to recognize one another. On that note, though I rarely log into EuroBricks and comment anymore, your name is definitely one I recognize for an LDD builder that makes models I quite enjoy. I do enjoy LDD MOCs and also make my own, but they are a different consideration in my mind than physical MOCs due to a number of differences. Renders are getting pretty realistic which helps a lot, but digital MOCs will always be missing some of the elements of a physical MOC. I personally build in LDD as a map of parts required for physical MOCs, but this is still limiting at times, since I prefer to just build with actual bricks. The digital MOCs will never have the accomplishment of the investment in acquiring parts, and I find this to be an interesting aspect of building. Considering the use of parts I have rather than always buying all parts adds a nice limitation to design that spurs creativity. This is one aspect that I do not like with LDD: unlimited parts with unlimited colors does not drive my creativity like actual limitations do. Because of this, and since I use LDD as a map for physical MOCs, I am usually pretty careful in LDD to only use parts that actually exist, especially if I already have them. One thing I think about when considering digital MOCs is that the design is only one element of a physical build. LDD only incorporates design, while physical builds incorporate the time to build, investment in parts, and playability/viewability/tangibility in addition to the design. These are valued by those who have fought with these aspects and are more likely to be appreciated when seen in the MOCs of others. There will also always be an element of added perceived value when builders use rare parts or mass quantities of parts, thus demonstrating the difficulty of completing the actual build. This is probably due to synthesized value from supply and demand, but I doubt people are apt to change their minds about the applied extrinsic value (I think my thought here runs along the comparison to why people value gold even though most people are not using it directly but rather are just enjoying the beauty and the value in having something someone else wants). This element of added value will always be missed with LDD and may instead be replaced with the opposite effect since it seems a bit like a cheat of this system since there is unlimited supply. Of course, real limitations apply to physical MOCs that do not apply in LDD, such as gravity effects. Stability is not an issue in LDD like it is in reality. Because of this, I think more value is placed on the physical build, since the photograph is evidence enough that it is physically possible (also why I do not really like MOC photos that are photoshopped for reasons other than view quality). In order to garner this same value with LDD, one must find a way to prove stability, such as building elements in reality to test concepts. Otherwise, it is unproven, which is not to say that the LDD MOC is not stable but just uproven. For me personally, I value the process of building, the touch of the bricks, the sound of rustling through bins, etc. more than just the design, so I prefer physical builds over digital builds. Because of this I will also naturally place more value on the physical builds of others over digital builds. I still really like some digital builds that show obvious time investment into building and rendering unique pieces, but I would prefer to see them in real bricks. If you do not have physical bricks and enjoy digital building, keep doing it regardless of what others think. In the end, I have learned that it is best to do what I enjoy regardless of what anyone else thinks since reliance on others to guide or determine what I like always results in disappointment at some point with someone. I doubt you will ever see me commenting to convince someone not to continue making LDD builds. ...and I did fail to mention that part of what shapes my view is that I am a working engineer with a decent salary who has made a significant investment into physical LEGO pieces. I just try to make good investments into nostalgic sets that may gain value and into MOC pieces that have more than one use for many types of MOCs.

These lots will be posted to eBay in a few days. The bonuses will not be able to be offered once posted to eBay. If there is any interest in taking advantage of the Eurobricks-exclusive bonuses, please let me know soon.

Do you collect LEGO Star Wars sets and minifigures? Are you a Star Wars army builder? Do you need some Star Wars gifts for the holiday season? ...well, keep reading! After many years of collecting, I have amassed an extraneous collection of Star Wars LEGO builds and minifigures. When I was younger, I had some friends that collected Star Wars sets and minifigures, so I got into it with them and sort of kept it up through college. I really do not have much LEGO time anymore and my LEGO-related interest is in building MOCs mostly in the Castle theme, so this Star Wars collection is for sale. Available are three groups: PREQUELS: Episodes I, II, III (Group Price = $3000, includes builds and minifigures) TRILOGY: Episodes IV, V, VI (Group Price = $2000, includes builds and minifigures) CLONEWARS: Clone Wars (Group Price = $1000, includes builds and minifigures) All currency is in USD or United States Dollars Shipping to continental USA will be free. I would prefer not to ship this order internationally, but I may be willing to consider it at buyer's cost. This image is the first landing image in the album. I have a set list on Rebrickable that covers most of this, though please keep in mind that it is not as good a reference as the pictures. There also may be some items on the Rebrickable list that are not included in the sale, as there are a few sets I plan to keep that are Star Wars related. At the time of this posting, Rebrickable values this collection around $7500 for a very loose reference. The pictures in this Flickr album cover everything offered. They are titled based on the group they fall under. All picture titles starting with "123" are in group PREQUELS All picture titles starting with "456" are in group TRILOGY All picture titles starting with "CW" are in group CLONEWARS Pictures are in a specific order, with an overall group photo of builds or minifigures followed by detail photos where needed. Builds are shown first for each group (no minifigures included in these pictures), and minifigures for each group come after the builds. Many of the instruction booklets will be included, though they are not pictured. If you want to know specifically about the availability and condition of instruction booklets, please ask in a PM. I also have quite a few boxes for these sets, though not nearly all of them. These will be included for their respective sets. Parts and minifigures will be shipped packed in the boxes to save on shipping space. If you want to know about the availability and condition of boxes, again please ask in a PM. The descriptions should be fairly distinct about condition, though I can safely say that these are all in excellent condition or good used condition. All old, marred, nicked, bitten, discolored, etc. parts have been removed (except the cracked slave Leia torso...). Some of the older parts were played with, but most of this entire lot is an adult collection that has been built, disassembled, and stored. Some parts and minifigures are from Bricklink/eBay purchases, but I have verified that all parts are in excellent/good condition. Please note that I took these pictures in May of 2016 with the intent to try to sell then. Life got busy, and I never posted the lot for sale. Since then, The Star Wars collection has been stored in plastic tubs in my basement in the same area as the rest of my LEGO collection. Please send me a PM with any questions/interest. Feel free to make any requests, though I really would rather sell these lots complete rather than parted down. If we work out a sale, I will send a money request through Paypal with the order total. I will NOT accept payment as a gift or money to family to avoid the Paypal fee. To make it simple for the buyer, I will pay the Paypal fee from the amount I receive rather than increasing the total on your end. I am on the Eurobricks' Straight Shooters list through a few small deals and trades, though this is really a leap of trust to verify a sale of this magnitude. If interested, I could make this a superlot for sale through Bricklink, but BL will charge an additional fee for the sale, so the price would be higher. Bonus offers: Total discount of $500 on any 2 Groups (PREQUELS and TRILOGY = $4500, PREQUELS and CLONEWARS = $3500, TRILOGY and CLONEWARS = $2500) Total discount of $1000 on all 3 Groups (PREQUELS and TRILOGY and CLONEWARS = $5000) Extra pieces, incomplete sets, and minifigure parts will be included if buying all 3 Groups (PREQUELS and TRILOGY and CLONEWARS = $5000) If you would like to make offers, reasonable offers may be considered, though I reserve the right to deny any offer for any reason. Please be reasonable and respectful with any offers (well, really with any communication, please). Now, the overall pictures: PREQUEL: TRILOGY: CLONEWARS: Thanks and have a great day, Slegengr

@MovieMocs I would recommend checking out Eurobricks' Guilds of Historica. There are many builds that include amazing forests. You may need to dig a bit, but references for Medieval techniques abound. For some quick advice, I recommend less tan. Usually, you should try to use a limited color palette of 2 or 3 colors for each portion of the terrain, such as only 2 colors for the earth and only 2 main colors in the foliage (aside from flowers or small details). Using too many colors in small scale causes a disoriented and jumbled appearance that is very distracting. I also recommend using reference pictures to ensure color and texture accuracy, as well as to determine what type of forest or any terrain you are trying to build. In your case here, the tan looks like sand from a desert or wasteland mixed with green foliage from a dense forest. These seems out of place together. Putting a palm tree in a snowy terrain would seem out of place. What I mean is to make sure the elements of your terrain and foliage make sense together. This goes for parts usage as well as color usage. Another thing to remember is that using round or wedge plates in addition to square plates gives a more natural and organic appearance. There are very few straight lines in nature. This requires a more diverse set of pieces, but investing in some round plates and wedge plates for terrain may be a very good investment. Avoid using tiles for terrain that is not meant to be completely smooth. Most terrain is rough rather than smooth.

You are welcome. I would not have known about these until I got some from purchased collections.

I know what you mean about this. It is a bother trying to ensure the bows are the right colors when trying to refinish inventory to sort sets. My earlier reference, though, was to a pretty rare early version in "dark brown" that does not match the modern dark brown exactly but is noticeably darker than the old brown. This leads me to believe that the weapon plastic, due to the thinner plastic and the play purpose, was different than the ABS used in bricks. The same applies to the cutlass material, which is currently much more flexible than ABS.

Thanks again to @Itaria No Shintaku for running this game and to all who participated in voting!

@Jetflap I am fairly sure that the very earliest cutlasses were made of ABS, just as the early castle short swords were. The switch to a more flexible material was probably due to the blades snapping off from the handle. I have seen many of the ABS castle swords that snapped cleanly off at the handle or had very noticeable white stress marks left from a bend that was straightened. I do not think I have ever seen a sword or cutlass that is made of the newer flexible material get broken. I have a few of those cutlasses that appear to be made of ABS. They were found in some collections I bought off eBay that included parts from sets made in the early 80's. Included were some flags with stickers instead of printing, as well as a number of extra stickers. I do think these ABS cutlasses are interesting (like the very early version of the bow and quiver that are a darker brown), but I do not think they are particularly rare and valuable. Some collectors would likely value them higher than the flexible plastic versions, as the ABS version is not nearly as common as the flexible ones. Most people probably do not even notice the difference. @XBrickmonster The one advantage of the newer flexible material is that they have to be bent much worse before a permanent effect is made. Usually, the bends can be straightened without any ill effect. ABS is much more likely to break or have stress marks from even the slightest bends.

@Tyndale Welcome to Mitgardia! I am looking forward to your contributions to the coolest guild!

See the linked post in my earlier response. It includes a tutorial on how to deeplink from Brickshelf or Flickr so that the image shows in the Eurobricks post.

@move5 Eurobricks is not an image hosting site, so your limit is very small for things like a profile picture or some small images on your profile page. You will need to make an account with a separate image hosting site and deeplink images from there to your Eurobricks posts. Flickr and Brickshelf seem to be common hosting sites for Eurobricks users. See the middle of this post for information about deeplinking from these sites:

@XBrickmonster I will be looking forward to seeing your cottage! P.S. When you want to tag another member here on Eurobricks, use the @ symbol as you did, but choose the username from the dropdown that appears. This will cause a notification to pop up when the user logs in.

@XBrickmonster To achieve a curve, just use hinges or Mixel joints to attach together spans of flat plates. The curve on the right appears to be made up of about 4 sections of plates each about 4-6 studs wide that are jointed together. Complex angles such as this are an advanced technique, but they are not too hard to achieve if you just play around with hinges, Mixel joints, and SNOT bricks. In most cases, the hinged connections or SNOT bricks are hidden on the inside so as not to affect the outside appearance. The above roof shows just how much texturing can be achieved by layering simple plates, wedges, round plates, and tiles to imitate thatching.

That is alright, I would not say I am handsome either. Besides, the focus in that vault picture is not your face but something else much more beautiful! You do not need to be handsome with a 6285 MISB in your hands!

I wonder if we will still see 70 or more votes in this round? That would be nice if all the scarecrow voters show up! @Itaria No Shintaku Thanks for all you have done putting this game together! It was a brave move to do this knowing that some members would be disappointed as their favorites dropped out of the game. It is nice to see the face behind all this work! That is quite a picture from the LEGO vault!

There are many different techniques for medieval roofs other than simple slope bricks (but the slope method is still tried and true though simple). Some simple ones: 1. Use plates stacked at different intervals to look like layered thatching. 2. Use tiles on intervals to look like shakes or slate 3. Use 1x2 tiles but only stick down one end completely so the other end sticks up and is not fully engaged on the studs. This represents shakes very well (and is not shown accurately in the image due to LDD). (I cannot seem to find the origination of this or an image, but @Siercon and Coral were the original designers of this technique, I believe) Some more complex techniques are achieved using minifigure hands or droid arms to represent thatching. Black flippers have been used for an interesting shake/slate appearance. Take a look at @Kai NRG's recent blog post (link on Flickr page) for more ideas: Look around in the Historic Forum and the Guilds of Historica Subforum here on Eurobricks for many more ideas. Also, just try some of your own ideas and be creative! That is what the LEGO ideal is about.

I must say that when I very first saw and supported the Ship in a Bottle set, my thought was that this is exactly what I view LEGO Ideas to be about! It makes a nice display piece that appeals to adults and children. I still would probably rather build my own than just buy one someone else designed, but I do think this design is quite nice.

It will probably be a "cheat" ship-in-a-bottle, since the neck of the bottle is closed off quite a bit by the stud connections. As it is build, there does not appear to be any way that the ship would even fit through the empty space left in the neck of the bottle. It would be nice, though, if LEGO can redesign the bottle neck and ship to allow for the resemblance to a real ship-in-a-bottle techniques.

@Tyndale No matter what route you take, I consider it unlikely that you can build large, detailed MOCs without investing heavily in a LEGO collection. Putting that aside, though, small MOCs can be just as nice sometimes as large MOCs and do not require as many pieces. Build within your limitations and build what you enjoy. Do not spend too much time comparing your level of building to others, unless to draw inspiration. For your questions: 1. I recommend BrickLink for buying pieces or sets. Some pieces are cheap, some are expensive. Try to limit your purchases to as few stores as possible for the parts you need to lower shipping costs. It will still not be cheap to buy all the pieces you want, but it can be managed. You may find yourself spending more than you thought, though, as orders can really add up fast... You might also consider eBay for bulk lots, but this may not end up cheaper as you will likely have to buy many parts you will not use unless you build in all themes along with the parts for your preferred theme. ...And, of course, never rule out buying sets from TLG (The LEGO Group) and outlet stores, especially when on sale. For some parts, this is still the cheapest method. 2. Start an account on an image hosting site (I use and recommend Flickr which offers 1 Terabyte of free storage). You will want to deeplink images to Eurobricks posts so they show as images rather than links. This is best achieved from Flickr using BBCode. See this tutorial for uploading images from Flickr: You will add the BBCode as part of the text in your new topic here on EB (Eurobricks) and it will convert to showing an image. If you want to see the image rather than the text, you can use the "preview" button at the top of your EB post (magnifying glass over paper). For topics, this is a toggle switch (like a light switch) that switches between showing rich text and the posted view. If you have more in-depth questions, I might be able to answer them later when I have more time or you have more specific questions. Other EB members will hopefully offer their insights and experiences as well.

Ranks are awarded based on the number of posts here on Eurobricks. Start posting meaningful posts to increase your post count, but do not post low-value or worthless posts to just increase post count. See this post for more information: You may also want to check out the Site Guidelines and Frequently Asked Questions as a new member.

I still think the best option would be to include both elf and scarecrow in the final round against the faun... Though I am glad to see the scarecrow win as I voted for him, I agree that this round was a bit ridiculous and unfair. As such, I think the elf should move forward as well, though I do not believe he should supplant the scarecrow. Vote stuffing is a bit of a stretch when both figures had essentially the same number of votes from valid accounts. It is a bit disappointing to see that the last round went in such a way as to make some voters drop out of the game. Hopefully it is not just from seeing a favored minifigure drop out of the game, as many voters may have quit long ago if they would only vote while their favorites were in the game (reference all space fans...). In the end, I do not truly care what the results are since this is just a simple game. I am fine with the elf being declared the winner from his earlier leads if that is what should happen.

Only the text will show until you submit the post. It will then display an image. If you want to preview the final post, use the preview button in the formatting bar atop the post (magnifying glass over paper). This is true for posting a single post, topic, or signature. Anything posted to Eurobricks that is preceded by a "url" in square brackets and followed by a "/url" in square brackets will show the image from the link in between. Any text that is within the left and right square brackets will not show in posts.