ZORK64

I think my major gripe with his shield will be the awkward way how he holds it, but since I don't want to sacrifice a proper hand, it would be attached to his lower arm, and that would require Kopaka to break away from the established building in a few ways I think. Also, it's just that his spear doesn't look as impressive, I think. After looking at his hield again, I just realized that its actual design makes the gaps seem smaller as opposed to a symmetrical build. I also agree on the fact that the piece itself is both used within Tahu and Kopaka - I always like it when parts get repurposed, especially if that means we get specific parts in more colours! (too bad that Onua's shovels don't come in both black and silver though)

I wouldn't really give him longer limbs, I just would beef his lower arms up a bit. They look very sleek to the rest of his body design. His legs, actually, start to grow on me and look fine now. I just would've put some more armour on his lower arms to give them the same beefy feel as seen in this artwork.

Thanks for all those links! Now, I guess I'll share my thoughts on these guys with you just like I always used to do with new waves... As already stated in the respective reviews, I really like Kopaka, Tahu and Onua. Lewa looks fine, except for his weird-looking mask. It also possibly alienates me because I fail to see on what mask it is supposed to be based on. None of Lewa's old masks looked like this, as far as I can remember. Gali is cool. While her mask also seems more original, it fits her theme quite well, as it looks like some sea monster. Pohatu is my favourite of those three. His mask looks awesome, and his weapons are Jetarangs! Among the Protectors I like the Protector of Wind and Earth the most, with Ice being a close second and Water 3rd. Fire and Stone look okayish. The Spider creature itself looks like a decent parts pack. Especially for its head which is apparently a chest plate - that allows quite some interesting MOCing ideas.

While I'm not the biggest fan of gold, I like Tahu's colour scheme, and design-wise I think he's the best of the three Toa (though I'd be tempted to try Kopaka's shoulder design on him, I think it would look nicer than his current shoulders). Anyway, thanks for the review!

Design-wise, Onua is the least favourite of mine, as he's just so bulky, yet has puny arms and legs. I also agree with you on the weapons, the claws look cooler than the hammer. His mask is alright, but I also prefer the original design here. I like his colours though. They look pretty sweet.

Great review! Kopaka was actually my first Bionicle Set, and even though Stormer surpassed him in terms of popularity for me (mostly because I like Stormer's helmet design more than Kopaka's monocle thing), I'm still happy to see this fellow back. I agree on the rather odd design of the shield. I'd prefer if the two blades would've been the actual weapon while he would also have some other sort of shield, though that would've mean he wouldn't have a weapon while using the blades as skis (and we would lose the nod to the Ice Slizer).

Quick question: Is there some sort of link where I can actually get pictures from all sets? Because so far I've only seen the finished models off the 3 Toa... ...which look pretty sweet so far.

When I began to think about the scale, I realized that the only way to give this fellow a convincing head was by using a Minifig head/helmet, so the mini-scaled Heroes sure came just around the bestest time. Long time before I began to work on Warhawk, I was thinking about going non-purist and pick a fitting Kre-O head to give him the head he has in the Fall of Cybertron video game (it's Soundwave's, just so you know), but I had no idea how to get specific Kre-O parts and I didn't want to get a whole set of non-LEGO just for one specific piece. Also, I'm pretty sure the closest options I'd could get (Optimus Prime and Soundwave - I actually have a Kreon of the former) are a bit wider than the Hero helmetes, meaning it wouldn't have worked anyway due to space issues. Not kidding here, it took me almost an entire night to create the cover for his head. I tried various other ways (moving panels from the side, flipping the head much deeper in...) which all turned out to be totally terrible in practice until I got the brilliant idea of giving him this panel thing that is connected by a ball joint. The locking in of the arms on the legs was one of the later additions while I was updating Warhawk, but it was extremely necessary because otherwise half of the vehicle rear just kept flipping apart. Your critic is certainly justified here, as Transformers names are indeed very often connected to their alt mode (except for a few noticeable exceptions and very iconic folks). Back then when I created the character in Fall of Cybertron, I was rather spontaneous/uncreative with choosing a fitting name so I picked the first thing that came to my mind, and that was Warhawk, and since I liked the ring of it, it kinda stuck to him. The fact that I was actually kinda oblivious to the actual meaning of the term (I'm German, and most Transformer names - thankfuly - don't get translated, it wasn't until Beast Wars that I figured out that the character names have an actual meaning, and even to this day I tend to miss that on vehicle characters as I'm not a genius about this stuff in general) doesn't help either. I could try to justify this with his Hover Slam ability (one of the two chooseable specials of the Destroyer class - it allows you to hover upward in the air, hover there and then slam a mighty punch into the ground, hurting opponents nearby), but I'll admit its kind of a stretch.

Thanks for the feedback. And I'm just as surprised to learn the same. How goes that German saying? "Die Welt ist ein Dorf", right?

I got finally around to complete and take pictures of my first MOC using the new smaller Balljoints - and it's a Transformer! Warhawk is fairly poseable, can transform into a Cybertronian Truck, comes with removable arm cannons and is pretty much inscale with official Transformers toys. It took me something like a weekend to build him, and yet another day for some fine tuning. While he does have some issues, I'm ultimately happy with how he turned out. For more pics and infos, check out my MOCpages entry for him.

"How am I going to stop some big mean Makuta from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: Use a gun. And if that don't work: Use more gun." You know, for a thread talking about projectile weapons, , folks.Anyway, I agree on the Squid Launcher being the worst launchers, as it practically never worked. At all. For favourites, I'm kinda torn. I like most launchers that utilized the Zamor Spheres (except for the one the Piraka used, as it was impractical in various ways), but I'm also a big fan of the Nynrah Ghost Blasters (though the design itself is kinda bleh). And being an old nostalgic geek, I also fondly remember the various launchers which utilize the Slizer discs (even though I sadly missed a few of those out).

My first Bionicle set was the very first Kopaka, and my last one... uh, I believe it was one of the little guys that were released in the same wave as the Piraka. I bought this guy in a small town store in mid-2010 though.

Heh, I was kinda absent from Eurobricks due to moving (and having a larger focus on a certain videogame that is about to get released next week), but it's kinda ironic that you discuss Transformers just when I return. I also have to pick up two Bulks now I'm afraid, as I wanted to get one anyway because I'm planning on using Mixel joints and the Minifig Hero Heads for making custom LEGO Transformers, but if Bulktron seems convincing enough, I may have to keep one intact just for the heck of it (even though I would also need two Surge's then, as the one I already own will keep his red eyes).

I'd like to inform you all that the sets arrived in German LEGO stores something like a week ago. I haven't picked up any of them yet, but I'm sure I'll get Fangar coming saturday. I was pondering about Laval too, but they also had the old Laval on sale now, and his brown mane looked more appealing to me than the trans-orange of the new version. And I'm kicking myself right now for not buying already a second Cragger. He got very unique and cool colors, after all.

I can second the love for Flurr. I bought him like the other Mixels of his tribe for a MOCing project, but once I've built him, I just realized how heartwarmingly adorable he looks with his big, goofy eyes.

The rule of cool rules the need to make sense out in this case, if yo ask me. I pulled the hand/head thing quite often back then with the Slizers, since some of their heads looked generic enough to be used as arm cannons (City and Energy come to mind, and of course, Flare, who just looks like some sort of flamethrower). My last attempt at this concept wasn't nearly as awesome though, so it's about time to get this right. Making him a Transformer makes this even more complex for me though, since I never owned the BW Megatron toy. But oh well, odds are likely I'll get Scorn from the movieverse toyline, who seems to transform in a somewhat similiar fashion. But even if I know how to take care of stuff like the back and the belly of the T-Rex body, making a stable torso that still allows all these parts to move around will be an ordeal for sure.

Don't worry, I was joking there. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted a link to a memetic TF2 video and would have probably acted far more... butthurt instead (get it?). I mostly want these two little dudes for the minifigs, but they also both offer great parts for MOCing. In fact, I plan on revamp my Von Nebula (who was already heavily inspired by Beast Wars Megatron) by making him red and giving him an actual beast head for his right arm, probably also trying to come up with a custom torso to make this sucker actually transforming.

Thanks for pointing that out, now I see it too. ... Uhm... ANYWAY, I'm still really psyched for Tunneler and Crystal Beast. Both look pretty great, and I'm looking forward to get Surge and Bulk, as their heads will be also very useful for my Transformers MOCs. I'm kinda unsure about the remaining sets. Maybe I'll pick up Breez, but perhaps I'll settle for Flyer Beast instead.

It was around June when the CHI Ultrabuilds showed up, at least according to the German LEGO catalogue of July-December 2013. Could be possible I got them a bit earlier though, I don't remember that, to be frank (I'm also right now too lazy to search for my reviews of Eris and Cragger). (on that note, I feel kinda honoured that people still remember my reviews - I really need to start writing reviews again) I got used to finding the sets on shelves first, partially because I don't pay that much attention to S@H, partially because I got the impression S@H is always a bit late with constraction sets in Germany. While I've been kinda oblivious to LEGO Chima recently, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the red flashy bags of the Good Guys, but as far as I know, they still have the Ultrabuilds from past year on the shelves in my LEGO store (and every where else, for that matter). Just like with Hero Factory, as soon I'll see something new around her, I'll let you know.

Here in Germany, I'm pretty sure most folks refer to clone brands as Legos as well, but they're not that common. Toys'R'Us and Müller have a handful of Megabloks sets (but not much, and it varies - the Halo ones are pretty much TRU exclusive), and I sometime stumble across Best-Lock bricks (actually bought to big boxes for a rather cheap price out of curiosity), but other than those, LEGO is still the most common brick-building toy. On that note, I also already came across various fake transformers which aren't from Hasbro (and thus, not even called Transformers) but still are named "Transformers" on their pricetags.

Yeah axes, I like axes! But still, Cragger is probably the one I care the least about. Probably because I really miss the crocodile theme here, which I absolutely loved about his first version. And while he still comes with great parts and a nice colour scheme (I like how the red is patterned across him), I don't like how much the gold clashes with his dark green IMHO.

While I don't like vultures in general, Vardy seems to be a pretty great parts pack. The wings alone make him interesting for me.

I think Sir Fangar is my favourite set of this bunch. His overall build and design is pretty neat and really gives off this evil vibe. Also, being mostly white and trans-blue sure helps here too (I'm pretty sure I already established by now what my favourite colors are for constraction sets - the 2nd Brain Attack wave was the best wave ever IMHO for this reason ).

Fluminox looks pretty sweet. Too bad his weapon is such a mess, but he's still a great parts pack for me. I agree with you on the wing pieces. The parts themselves look wonderful, but the wings here look kinda gappy and skeletal, even though it's not as bad as with Eris back then.

I'm not sure what I should think of Mungus. The mammoth theme itself is really nice, but still, there's something about him lacking for me to really like or care for him. Even though his hammer is pretty cool.