Zeya

I just assumed it would be 4 series per year, since they released CMF3 and CMF4 three months apart.

With 4 CMF releases a year, that's 3 months apart for releases. My shipment for series 4 from TRU was shipped on March 21st. So Series 5 should be hitting the streets around the end of June (here in the US). Too soon! (Not soon enough! )

Thanks. I re-voted.

I'm the one vote for "landscape" at the moment. But I wouldn't be heartbroken to see any other theme. I guess my second vote would be for a pirate town. I also want to point out that I didn't want to vote for any of the terms in the second part of the poll. It wouldn't let me vote without choosing at least one of them, so I chose "more parts", because that's always good, lol.

Fair enough; I was just theorizing. It's strange that they would include other elements not in the two sets.

Cool, thanks for this review and the wonderful LDD file! As for the missing bricks you had to use from your collection... If you're like me then you stashed away the extra parts when you built your boxed sets. Maybe for the Port Royal build, they made use of the extras that you squirreled away.

Besides the Black Pearl set coming in November, does anyone know when a new wave of sets might come? Would it be in winter (January), or next summer (June), or even later? And do you think they would come out with another 8 sets in a wave, or would they have fewer sets? I know nobody knows for sure, but I'm wondering how it typically works with a successful licensed theme (like maybe Harry Potter that have had more than one wave of sets).

That is weird about the holes. I've never seen that. I have all but two of the sets. About the posters, to me they all seemed to be different sizes depending on the set/box size so they don't need to be folded more than twice (I assume).

Sure, that head is from one of the two winter village sets from 2009 or 2010. They are exclusive sets (only from Lego directly... well occasionally at TRU also maybe.) http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=10216-1 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=10199-1 The jester hat is from one of those too, from a jack in the box that you make. I highly recommend the winter sets. They are a really fun build and have a lot of unique parts.

There's another factor to that, too. The economy was also doing well a few years ago, and now it's in the toilet. Certain luxury items will take a hit on the secondary (used) market. And Lego is a luxury, especially when you're talking about older sets commanding a generally higher price per element.

Wow, I'm honored! Thank you!

About the Barnes & Noble cancellations... they responded back to me letting me know my gift card was refunded in full and what was the groupon is now basically a gift card with $20 on it (the full value of the Groupon, not $10 like it would otherwise be). Based on this and hearing about the same thing happening with Pharaoh's Quest, I won't be doing a B&N preorder ever again. It was barely worth it anyway because B&N charges tax here anyway. It's probably worth it for international customers when they do get them in stock (they probably will b/c they have SW and HP stuff) because you can get US prices and even with shipping it's apparently still savings for them.

What happened the other times. Did it involve Lego products?

I sent them a message asking the same thing, basically: - Can I get gift card credit for the groupon I applied, since it is now outside of its time frame? - I spent a $100 gift card on this order - does that gift card get credited back? And this sucks. The only reason I got that gift card (with my credit card points system) and the groupon was specifically for this purchase. I don't like having my money tied up in gift cards and groupons for only one store.

I peruse local Craigslist (classifieds, used sales) posts every day, looking for Lego. Some people will refer to anything that snaps together using the Lego name. They could be giant bricks, wooden blocks, etc and they still call them Lego.

*snip* (Sorry.)

This is pretty cool. I like the use of the light brick to cast some dramatic lighting. I had a similar idea of displaying printed tiles as artwork in a museum setting. I didn't yet think of putting helmets on display like you did! I bet you could also extend this and have some kingdom knights in battle or animals, just like you might see at an anthropology museum. You could have little MOCs inside a bigger MOC. I think you may have inspired me!

I think most people pointed out that this program is fantastic for kids. But what people are going to do on this forum is pick it apart and criticize it from an AFOL's (adult's) perspective. This forum is geared towards adults, almost entirely adults collecting for themselves. Sometimes people will mention their children, but most often it's just people buying for themselves. So you see, people aren't really raining on the parade for kids. There just aren't any kids on this site. Kids don't really come into the equation. It's basically all about us, the adults! It just kind of goes unspoken that Lego's core demographic are children and that we are a special interest group. Actually, that gets mentioned all the time, lol.

I thought this polybag was only available through video game preorders. And the game hasn't been released yet. I just looked it up and the EU release date is the 13th. How did you obtain this?

There are only a handful of images, so I'll just post them all here. Eye candy first, and commentary at the end! APiratesLifeForWe_1 by ZeyaV, on Flickr APiratesLifeForWe_2 by ZeyaV, on Flickr APiratesLifeForWe_3 by ZeyaV, on Flickr APiratesLifeForWe_4 by ZeyaV, on Flickr APiratesLifeForWe_5 by ZeyaV, on Flickr APiratesLifeForWe_6 by ZeyaV, on Flickr Last night I sat down and got working on my first MOC ever (well, as an adult that is). I only just started buying Lego in August, so my collection is pretty small. Even on just this small 16x16 plate, I found myself running short on bricks! I didn't spend a whole lot of time on this, but I felt good about the final result. I even made a Flickr account and posted my photos on there, and I added 3 photos to the LEGO Flickr group feed. I made the mistake of having the house structure aligned on an odd number of studs. Now I understand why most bricks have an even number of studs in length. I actually just started making the house, not sure what I was going to do. I left a headlight brick on the side and put a hinge plate at the front. And then I got the idea to add some flags to decorate, and then it turned into a Pirate thing! I have this idea in my head of making a series of vignettes (bignettes?) of what our lego soldiers/warriors do in their free time. You know, to give a bit of humanism to them. They are people after all! I already made a LDD MOC of a knight on vacation. But here we have Captain Brickbeard and his love interest (female pirate). Note that they are holding hands (hand and hook really). And their son is hiding around the corner; he seems to have found a nice diamond. I added him and the parrot back there to make it less boring on that side. I hope to do more MOC'ing in the future. I have some bigger ideas, but I think I might stick to 8x8 or 16x16 sizes to hone my skills a bit before tackling something larger. Thanks for looking!

(or Avatar).

I have some baldrics from the POTC sets I've gotten. I don't think they will really work together. There's enough slack that you can probably stretch the baldric around the quiver, but it won't look quite right, if you know what I mean.

Mega Brands makes more than just brick-based (Lego clone) toys. My girlfriend likes Thomas the Train, so I started buying her a little train periodically, partly because I would feel guilty buying myself Lego and not having something for her. The Mega Bloks company makes these Thomas trains, too. Here's a link: http://www.megabloks.com/Shop/MEGA_Bloks/ Hmm, looks like they have a license with Marvel. Which is strange because TLG puts out Disney sets (POTC, POP, Cars, Pooh) and Disney just acquired Marvel! Maybe that license agreement will run out and Lego will have Marvel stuff again. More on topic, I never had any MegaBloks as a kid. I remember there was K-Nex, which I'm pretty sure is still around. There was also "Tinker Toys" which were made out of wood, kind of like K-Nex but much larger. And when I was old enough, I got an Erector Set, which was a bunch of beams and metal parts and tiny bolts and screws. Good times.

I bought a copy of the 2009 Pirates theme set Soldiers' Fort after it was discontinued. I came out of my dark age a little late, and really wanted to get all of the 2009 pirates sets. I couldn't find anyone selling used copies of that particular set. I paid probably 1.5 times its MSRP. I dug around the internet to various vendors, and they all pretty much had the same price. I was actually trying to find a used (but complete) copy of the set, to save money, because I intended to open and build it, which is exactly what I did. But I couldn't find any used sets, or rather there would be about one per week on eBay, but it would always get bid up to the level of a fresh MISB copy, making it not worth it to bother bidding on it. All in all, I would say it was barely worth it in this case. The extra $30 or so that I paid left a sour taste in my mouth; it made me wonder why I bothered. But for some reason I seem to feel the need to be a completionist and collect all the theme's sets, and I figured I had better buy it sooner than later or risk buying the set at 3x the cost or more, or facing a real hassle trying to find a seller at all. I have to say this is probably the last time I do anything like this (buying a retired set). One set that I've had my eye on is that Holiday Train (10173). I was in my dark age there too, and I love the winter (Christmas but they don't call it that) line of sets. This was sort of the first one, and I guess it sold like gangbusters. You can't even find one to buy on BL anymore. Every once in a while someone comes out of the woodwork with a boxed copy or two and sells them at exorbitant prices, no problem. (EDIT: Okay looks like there are about 12 sellers with that set right now, so maybe I"m exaggerating.) It's always very interesting to me. If I had extra money or storage space, I might try my hand at stockpiling and re-selling like that, just for kicks.