ZORK64

Thanks. I got always the feeling that my pictures are not as good as those of some other reviewers on this site. Perhaps I should try a different background for future sets (especially red ones, red looks always weird on my cam). I got to admit that the different colours of her transparent parts also doesn't bother me too much. In fact, I like the darker red of the shield since it reminds me of the trans-red parts of the older LEGO space ships. The brownish red on her torso bothered me far more. That's also my main problem with her colour scheme. I think Breez would look a lot nicer if she would had more white bones instead of red ones, while the exterior details could have been red. When I revamped my Breez (here's the link) I wanted to make her shorter as well, but the shell armour hindered the poseability of her ankle joints, so I kept the length of her legs. I would almost dare to say that they look even more individual then some waves from Bionicle. Various waves after the Bohrok looked very standardized even if said characters weren't swarm creatures like the Bohrok or the Visorak. The Toa Nuva and the Toa Inika were a good example. Luckily, it didn't happen too often since waves like the Glatorian were fairly individual (aside from the standardized Inika build, but the new Hero Factory Sets aren't better in this department).

Oh great, now I'm thinking about HF cosplays. I was pondering about making Optimus Prime, perhaps I'll tackle Stormer or Bulk someday. XD The inscale model of Capricorn has to waith, though. I've just started to MOC again after a break, and I'm currently busy revamping the heroes into custom designs (which are partly inspired by Transformers).

You might want add a link to your old art thread in the first post for those who might missed the last additions to it. Anyway, your new stuff is also fantastic. Even though I'd make the heroes a bit sleeker around the hips they look pretty cool, and I like the Mega Man-ish feet the got. Toxic Reapa however tops them in my opinion. His foul, poisonous face gives him a really mean and rotten vibe, which fits great to the character. I'm looking forward to your future drawings. ^^

I already liked the MOCs in your first post, but these others look also really awesome. I like your take on Rocka a lot, especially the design of his lower arms is neat.

I know, I know... I'm really late with this review, but since I took the pictures back then, I still wanted to write a review, so here we go. Breez ventures to the bee planet to capture the insectoid criminal Thornraxx. Armed with a new powerful launcher, jet boots, an energy shield, battle blades and a new powerful suit, she's more than ready to accomplish her mission. Set name: BREEZ Set Number: 6227 Price: 12.99 Euro Pieces: 55 Year of release: Late 2011/Early 2012 Size: Deluxe set Unlike the previous waves of Hero Factory (and Bionicle), the sizeclasses of the sets were slightly altered. Breez could be considered a medium-sized set (if you want to call Black Phantom a large set), but being a Transformers Nerd, I'll call her a "Deluxe" set. The bag Gone are the days of black plastic canisters, the new sets come now in plastic bags. Those bags are a lot sturdier than I'd expected, which is a good thing. The front of the bag shows Breez flying through the inner of a giant bee nest, looking for the evil Thornraxx, who's apparently sneaking on the heroine with his buds from behind. But with her beam cannon charged and her energy shield ready, she'll put up a fight for sure. The bright background also creates a nice contrast to Breez's colours and the silver of the bag. If you turn the bag around, you'll find a picture of Breez which focuses on her new powerful equipment, alongside with a 1:1 size comparison of her head and an advertisement for that game you can play online. The lower half of the bag contains - surprise, surprise - the choking hazard warning in many, many languages other legal text. What would be a review of mine without a size comparison? As you can see, the larger bags of the 2012 wave are even larger than the canisters of the Glatorians from 2009, which were among the tallest canisters of Bionicle. Opening the bag While the torso piece comes separate, the other parts were packed into two transparent bags. I must say, the increased amount of plastic bags is arguably a downside of the new packaging. The instruction booklet, which is... ...pretty much standard. So let's move on to the pieces! The parts Breez contains a total of 57 parts, though according to the parts list at the end of the instructions, the set contains only 55 pieces. You'll probably already had noticed that she comes mostly with lime and some red parts. She also got a few white pieces for some reason. The new core is quite small and features two instead of one rod connections, which omits another piece of armour to attach it securely - it may looks less impressive that way, but gives you far more freedom for the sake of MOCing. (and no, the picture above is not the same as in my Surge review!) The new shield piece is pretty awesome and probably one of the best reasons to get Breez in the first place. It connects via technic pins (or whatever those cross-shaped things are called, I'm sorry for mixing up the proper part names). The new swords are also pretty neat, although I wish they had a few more points for connection, similiar to the older swords of Bionicle. Breez got the new launcher in bright red, which makes her launcher a bit more exclusive. The design itself is glorious as in gunmetal. The new torso armour features a pattern similiar to that of Breez's energy shield, although the red isn't exactly the same as that of the shield or the other bright red parts. Oh well. This is the new shoulder armour, also known as "Bubble armour". A very nice piece, and I really hope it will be featured in more colours in the future (I'd like to see it especially in orange). In case you want to see the cuff pieces, jump over to my review of Surge. Building the set Unlike other sets, Breez' build starts in a lying position, probably because of the foot joints. But once she got feet, she's flipped upward like her brethren. I'd like to mention that I accidently attached the armour on her upper left leg wrong, it's supposed to face forward, not sideways like the other one (I didn't noticed that mistake until just right now when I started to write that review). After that, she gets her armour, her tools, eventually the head, helmet and hero core, and then, we have... The finished set Breez is well equipped and looks quite impressive, thanks to her bulky shoulders. Due to her sleek hips and feet, combined with the round shoulder pads, she sure looks a lot like a certain female bounty hunter (which is also the reason why I want the bubble armour in orange). Despite the bulky shoulders, Breez maintains a somewhat feminine look thanks to the feet and helmet of her first incarnation. Her ankles are also far more poseable this time, thanks to the absence of the leg armour of the HF1 sets (those things were a quite bizarre part anyway). Being a Deluxe set, Breez got her back covered in the literal sense with yet another HF1 foot. I'd like to mention that the design of the lower section of the new torso armour bears some resemblance to the pattern of the HF1-feet, which really helps to give Breez a consistent design all around. The small rockets molded into the feet also support the concept of Breez' specialization for aerial combat in this version. Or to make it short: Breez' design is amazing. Well... almost. While Breez looks certainly cool and is also fun to pose, I'm personally not too fond off the colour scheme. Lime green, bright red and white clash a bit too much for my taste, even on a Deluxe-sized set. The worst offender would be the red parts, because there are even various shades of red on Breez. The solid parts (the sword, the launcher, the small rockets at her ankles and her upper legs) are bright red, while the red on her torso armour is a bit darker. On top of that, her head is trans-orange while the shield is trans-dark red. It's not a big issue, but it annoyed me a bit. In addition to this, I think her left arm is a bit overloaded (with both the dualsword and the shield) in comparison with her right arm. But being LEGO, that can be easily fixed, right? Since I hadn't one of the new villains around back then, I tried the handcuffs on one of my older MOCs. They work quite well there too, so don't worry - the Hero Factory will catch and cuff all kinds of bad guys! Final thoughts Breez is basically Samus Aran. Only in lime green. And with a neat energy shield. Do I have to say more? Put aside the questionable choice of colours for Breez (and of course the fact that lime is one of the most used colours in the Hero Factory line) and she's with no doubt a great set, both in terms of design and parts she comes packed with. Besides, someone has to take care of the hordes of Thornraxx sets we all have already bought, right? As long as you're not totally allergic to lime green, you should go for Breez. Even though her arsenal doesn't include a morph ball.

I agree on hands. And feet. And why not, EXO Force Robot arms as well.

Pretty good, though her legs seem a bit too thick (I guess you could solve this by removing the shell armour). I'm now tempted to build her inscale to the heroes, even if that means I'd have to make her a custom dress, hair and face (which means I would make her a dress out of fabric, while the hair and face parts would be most likely paper and attached to a Glatorian head). But there are already other projects which have priority.

Just by the way, the Ultrabuild Superheroes (both DC and Marvel) hit German shelves this week. At least at Müller, which are quite famous for putting LEGO sets prior to the official release date (which is stated for may). I might pick Iron Man or Batman up.

These guys are fantastic! EARL and ALAN are probably my favourites, but the other two are also great.

Thanks for the pictures Aanchir! I'm looking forward to get Stringer and Stormer. Due to Lord of the Rings I have to cut back on HF though (otherwise I'd get XT4 and perhaps Bulk as well).

Looks very good, I'd like to see more pictures of it (like the back, and the head you used for it). I agree with Aanchir on the colours. I think gunmetal or black would work better for her thighs since these colours are featured on her arms as well.

I don't see much of a problem with returning villains. I mean, many famous kid's shows feature a standard ensemble of bad guys, like Transformers or Batman. Of course, that shouldn't mean that I want to see the same baddies every year, but I wouldn't mind a new Von Nebula set if it looks good.

Because of his guitar gun. It gives him the rockstar glare, which is - as we all know - totally sexy. Btw, his weapon reminds me of Samus' Anihilator Beam in Metroid Prime 2 - Echoes.

I agree on the dilemma of Iron Man's head joint. It's just Big Chill all over again. While I'm not a fan of Ben 10, the set looks neat, and I actually like BC's head, but the head joint is really awkward.

I might be wrong here, but I think Nex got a black hand on his right arm.

Due to a clearance sale of the older HF sets in one toy store here I bought various 2011 sets, one of them is Witch Doctor. According to the action figure review index (which hadn't been updated, though), there's still a review for him needed. So I'll write one once I have time for this (in other words, this post is only a heads-up for a review).

As far as I can tell, I'll definitely get Stormer XL (simply because he's white but most likely not as expensive as Witch Doctor - also, blue swords are WIN) and Stringer (because of various cool-looking pieces). XT4 and Voltix look like good part packs, though I'm not too interested into Voltix. My only real complaint about Nex would be his helmet. The 2.0 helmet doesn't look as good in one solid colour as Evo's does. Bulk looks fine, but I'm not totally sure if I'll get him. Currently, I'm still unsure on Core Hunter/Drainer/whatever. I guess I need a review to judge him properly.

After reading about the discontinuation of the HRT I just ordered a hero to get a few parts I can't get with Pick-a-Brick any longer. But I'm not to sad about that. The removal of 2.0 pieces from PaB bothered me way more though I can understand why TLG did that - it just would had been nice if they had informed us from that change in time to make some final orders like with Design by Me or HRT now.

It's not the picture, but the quote of Evo which makes that picture fun. Though the "Sir, I am disappoint" is also funny. But we shouldn't overuse either of them. Use Memes wisely! Off-topic: Does anybody else remember the "ROCKA IS A SHE" joke from last year?

I don't get why everybody is annoyed by the bley bones on XT4, I like them (but I'm also the guy who's always happy to see bone pieces in different colours, so yeah...). In addition, Nex grew to me as well. At first I didn't like his colours much, but after seeing the set in plastic, it looks quite nice. Bulk looks also good, but I don't like the combination of silver and gunmetal. His head/shoulders stick too much out in comparison with the rest of his body. I can't say much about Core Hunter, simply because I can't see much of him on the pics and the videos. Oh, and on a less related matter: I think the latter applies to Thornraxx as well. And on a even less related matter: This should totally become a meme.

What a fantastic revamp! I agree with Aanchir, the lower legs look very great, but the rest does as well. You did a great job transporting XPlode's design to the 2.0 building system. I'd suggest to remove the 2.0 feet from his back and attach the spike plate via the ball joint were usually the head goes though.

Given the "each hero goes on a different mission" theme of the current wave, I'd like to see a wave with stuff like this: - Jet-powered hero fights eagle-like monster - Samurai hero fights Ninja villain - Ranger hero hunts with traps and such dinosaur monster - Medieval knight hero faces either a fantastic creature like a dragon or a dark knight (or a dark wizard) - A hero with pieces to build a Samus MOC put against a villain with pieces to build an Airman MOC Okay, the last one doesn't make sense, but I buy sets for their parts, so yeah...

The removal of various 2.0 armour parts bugs me as well. I wanted to get the white torso armour, but now I'm too late for that. Oh, I also need to get Stormer 3.0 helmets somewhere else. Looks like I do have to buy them in bulks. And I just realized that I won't get the 2.0 shields anymore either. ... *start searching for a meme to express my anger about this realization* EDIT: Found one. Also realized that even the white feet were removed.

Sadly it isn't open to the public. Otherwise I'd go to it every friggin' year since I actually live in Nuremberg.

Your combiner looks amazing! I'd love to see a few more pics of it. Off-topic: Do I spot a Revoltech there in the background?