Gryphon Ink

UCS Minas Tirith with Oliphaunts and Winged Nazgul FTW!!

I agree with you about everything except for LOTR replacing Harry Potter. In my opinion, LOTR is too close a match to the general Castle theme for TLG to be producing concurrent LOTR and Kingdoms sets. They would compete with each other over shelf space and cannibalize their sales. So, while I'm not convinced yet that LOTR is coming, I'm fairly sure that if it does come, it will replace Kingdoms. I would have strongly mixed feelings about this if it happens. On the one hand, it's the Lord of the Rings (!!!), one of the most awesome fantasy properties ever, and will give us all the classic fantasy races. On the other hand, Kingdoms is a great theme that just got better and seems to have potential to be even better with another couple of waves. LOTR will be more expensive, will have fleshies, and probably won't exactly fit with previous Castle themes in the same way that POTC doesn't blend very well with classic Pirates.

I'm always happy to see more tank models! I agree that the M-1 is way overused. It's also, in my opinion, one of the uglier tanks out there. I've always liked the looks of the German Leopard, and several of the later Soviet/Russian tanks are incredibly mean-looking (T-80 and T-90 especially). But this will always be my favorite tank in all the world: This is a Merkava Mk. IIc temporarily equipped with a minerolling system. I drove one of these, a long time ago. It's not the most current tank with the hottest armor, but to me it pretty much represents the apex of "I am going to ANNIHILATE you" tank design. Very fast, very agile tank with a really interesting turret for modeling. One of these days I might take a stab at it myself.

This is looking great, Juliandrus! Since you asked for comments, I will leave a few. These are not the comments of an expert Lego MOCer, since I'm totally not one, but the perspective of a former tank driver. Depending on how realistic you want the tank to look, you may not care about these things. I mean, shiny black is not the most realistic color for a tank, but it definitely looks awesome! The main gun looks a little bit too short and is lacking the bore evacuator which is a prominent feature on all modern MBTs that I know of. The bore evacuator is a bulge in the barrel, about one third of the way along the barrel. It's an important feature because without it, the crew will eventually choke to death on gases produced every time the gun fires a shell. The bore evacuator makes those gases go forward with the shell instead of back into the turret when the breech is opened. To be honest, I'm not sure what Lego piece would fit in there to make a bore evacuator and not bulge TOO much, but without something there it doesn't look like a true tank gun. The weapon the tank commander looks like he is firing, which I assume is a coaxial gun, should be much smaller than the main gun. Typically coaxial weapons are 50 cals or 7.62 machine guns. They are tiny compared to the main gun. The other machine guns in the loader and commander positions would be 7.62s as well. You would probably need something about the thickness of an antenna piece to make them roughly to scale with the main gun. I'd like to see smoke launchers on the turret, but not all MBTs have them and I'm not sure how you could implement them without a major rebuild of the turret. But as a tank guy, I know I love to have some smoke on demand. Binocular pieces would make good smoke launchers - I'm just not sure how you would mount them. All in all, it's a great-looking model. It's a real evolution from the first version, which I also liked.

This is exactly why I made it a point to not say "never".

I do play with my Legos. I'm not talking about lying on the floor making ZAP! BANG! AAAAARGH!! noises while hurling my minifigs at each other, but I play. Whenever I buy a new set, I keep it on the dining table for as long as I can - usually until my wife banishes it - and while I'm surfing online or writing, I will roll it around, spin its working parts, pose the minifigs and open the doors. When I come home from work, or before I go to bed, I will spend a few minutes moving some of the minifigs around on the structures I have built, so that one day they are all standing in formation, while the next day they are laying siege to one of the buildings, and a day later they will all be sitting around a campfire drinking the finest ale in the land, never realizing that a giant Anglerfish is quietly lurking in the shadows behind them. And sometimes I will lie on the couch or a bed and swoosh things. I refuse to make any swooshing noises, though. Because that would be silly, obviously. It's relaxing to do this stuff. As a writer, I find that whenever I'm swooshing a Space Police ship or seeing how many Dragon Knights can fit into a treehouse waiting for the king's carriage to roll by, I'm also thinking about stories. They usually have nothing to do with the Legos I'm playing with. I think I'm playing on autopilot. I also play with my kids, very differently of course. Then it's pretty much all ZAP! BANG! AAAAARGH! Would you care for a cup of tea, Milady? BOOM! SWOOOSH! We have defeated you for all time! You will never rise from the ashes of your humiliation! KA-BOOOOOM!!

Is that $3.50 US? I bought a few in TRU two days ago, and they were $2.99.

I think this is a great point. Another thing to think about is that town halls are very rarely (never in my own experience, but I know better than to say "never" on the Internet) built as part of a row of joined buildings. Every town hall I've ever seen had a border separating it from the buildings next door. For every modular they've produced so far, it made sense for the structure to be a modular. Town Hall doesn't fit in that scheme. I'm not saying they wouldn't do it, but it wouldn't really fit in my opinion.

I just bought this as my first Technic set since I remembered you'd said this, and it looked miles more interesting than the $20 off-roader. And you were right, it is a great "Intro to Technic" set. I can see how someone who's built a lot of Technic wouldn't be too thrilled with it, since almost every function is directly controlled by knobs without intervening gear systems. But between the A and B models, it showed me enough of what Technic has to offer, and I'd really like to get one of the $59 sets now. I like how both models offer different things. The crane looks more finished and sleek, making it a great display model, while the tow truck actually has much more interesting mechanisms and assembly process. I don't usually see this much value in alternate builds in Lego - the Creator theme gives you two alternates, but they never seem to be as good as the main build, and don't really give you much of a different building experience. I think my biggest disappointment with the set is the way you extend the boom. That's really clunky. But for $25 I guess you aren't going to get everything, are you? Anyway, great review. You really covered the set's features well, and I love those comparison shots.

Why not just add more snow to this one? It does look a little odd compared to the all-white roofs of the other ones, but then again its roof is more sharply angled, so you could legitimately claim that the snow didn't stick to it as well as the flatter buildings. Add a little white on top of the windows and flatter areas, maybe a couple more tiles on the roof, and I think it would look fine. The streetlamp does look very odd, though. It would be nice if they'd used a uniform design for all of them. This one is really weird. I really want this set, but I've got to get the Bakery before it goes off the market. I'm not so in love with the Toy Store, but the other two are really beautiful sets. I hope this "theme" goes on for a long time.

My TRU finally had some Series 5 CMFs in stock. I spent some time feeling up packets and ended up with a Dwarf (the one I was most hoping for), a Gladiator, Eskimo (Inuit?) Fisherman, and Lizard Suit Man. Those are all the ones I most wanted from this series, so I'm ecstatic. Great figures for fantasy scenarios, and now I don't feel like I HAVE to go buy some old Fantasy Castle set just so I can have at least one Dwarf. Of course, I do still need some trolls...

Nice review, covering all the pros and cons pretty well. The set was a disappointment to me, though. The carriage design is nice but not great. The first thing my kid said when she saw it complete was, "why are there holes in the roof?" I would have liked to have turning front wheels like the POTC carriages. The tree are pretty bad, too, but you can combine them to make one better one. I just parted them out immediately to use the foliage in my modded Prison Tower. The minifigs are very blah. One great-looking king and three super-generic soldiers. Why can't we get some new Dragon faces? The horses are nice, though, and there are some good parts here. I finally got a spiderweb! But overall, I still find this the worst set in the whole Kingdoms theme.

Not enough women. One woman per theme might be more than enough for TLG's main target audience, but not nearly enough for me, or for my daughters. Especially when the token female only comes in one of the more expensive sets.

I would love an Amazon culture, but I agree with everyone who's said it would never happen. Perhaps rightly so, since Amazons belong to the ancient realm and not the Middle Ages. My one true desire would be an Elf kingdom, but again, for a variety of reasons it's not a very likely option. In third place I'd like to see some kind of Middle Eastern faction. This would make good sense historically, but I think TLG would shy away from creating a subtheme that would probably have to look radically different from the existing Kingdom factions - different weaponry, different architecture, etc. and might not seem to the young'uns like it really belonged. So, once again, not happening. So, what subtheme would work with the current factions, be different enough but not too different, not make anybody scream "OH NOES, IT'S WOMEN!" and not veer too far into fantasy? Why, Barbarians, of course! A nice faction full of ruff'n'tuff burly men and an occasional buxom wench, all wearing woad face paint, living in crude huts and fighting with enormous swords, axes and bucklers whilst eating raw meat and riding bareback. It wouldn't be very realistic, but it would fit the Hollywood version of history okay.

Plugging those leaks...

Got the camper for my daughter. And for me, my first Technic set: 8067 Mini Mobile Crane. It's pretty awesome, very different from System building, very satisfying seeing how everything comes together. I wish I could afford one of the bigger Technic sets, but I can't even afford to get all the System sets I've got my eye on.

I don't mean to argue. Every Bat-fan has his own interpretation of what Batman really stands for and what is important about him, and I think that's really one of Batman's great strengths as a comic book character. He's far more multidimensional than characters like Superman, and he's full of contradictions. That's why every director, as well as every comic writer, likes to put his own spin on the character (that wild experimentation that you were talking about, which has also produced dozens of Elseworlds comics and some mighty fine non-canon graphic novels). Also, Batman evolves much more than most superheroes. That dark, violent and possibly racist version of Batman was certainly a legitimate vision for a pulpy character in the late 1930s, a character who was influenced by dozens of totally racist and misogynist detective characters. At least Bob Kane thought it was legitimate, and if we're arguing about auteurs tampering with established facets of an established character I definitely think the creator's vision should count for something. You can't just say "oh, we shouldn't mess with the established character traits" without considering that the established character traits are already a violation of the original vision. Of course, and I'm happy that he did. If he'd remained a violent, gun-toting, Jap-hating thug I very much doubt that I would like him at all. I LIKE the core rules that have been established during those seventy years. I like the idea that he doesn't kill. I like Robin, who was also an editor-mandated addition to the canon. Batman, to me, is not Batman without Robin, any more than the Three Musketeers can exist without Dartagnan. His strict rules and his human side which Robin represents are key to his appeal. If he didn't have these things, he'd basically be the Punisher - and in my opinion, the Punisher is a terrible comic book hero. Something that's important to remember about Batman's cardinal rule - in comic books, the "I never kill" philosophy was also the rule for all comic book villains, established way back when in the Comic Code. Look back through your Golden and Silver Age Batman collection, or any superbook collection for that matter, and tell me how many people you can find that were actually killed onscreen by villains. There's darn few, and when it happened to a major character it was a paradigm-breaking event. Gwen Stacy killed by the Goblin? Holy crap, that was a moment that shook the Spider-Man fandom to its core. Robin killed, or even Batgirl crippled, those were genre-defining moments, not things that happened routinely. These guys were supposed to live forever, like soap opera characters. Batman never killed - and neither did most other members of the DC Universe. You could have an alien invasion that spanned the globe, the gates of Hell might spew hordes of demons - and NOBODY died. And then a funny thing happened later on in Batman's career - a lot of people started to notice that for a guy who claims to believe in the law, Batman sure does like to break the laws. And he's truly a terrifying figure who's THIS close to being a psychotic villain just like the guys he puts away in Arkham. Sure, he doesn't kill - but he's certainly not afraid to put a serious hurt on criminals. He breaks their bones, he beats them to a pulp, he terrorizes them, he hauls them in without due process, and he definitely violates some Constitutional rights and other laws in his crusade against crime. Breaking and entering? He's done it a thousand times. Planting evidence? Yep, done that too. Searching a house without a warrant? That doesn't even count as a crime to Batman. Spying on people? Conducting illegal surveillance operations, phone taps, hacking people's computers? ALL THE TIME. He's basically a one-man Gestapo, who thinks he can do anything he wants to as long as he thinks you're guilty of something, and the only thing that keeps him even remotely trustworthy is that one cardinal rule which he so often comes close to breaking. So then we got Frank Miller's take on Batman, which was indisputably one of the most influential books in comic book history, wherein it's pointed out that Batman just might be totally insane. Seriously, he rebuilds the Batmobile as a freaking tank, and uses its machine guns to wipe out hundreds of gangbangers. There's even a panel where he's talking to Robin's ghost, and says "rubber bullets. Honest." And you just KNOW that he's lying. Not to mention that even if they are rubber bullets, rubber bullets can and have killed people. Then we got Arkham Asylum, the graphic novel, which took that even further and was wildly experimental. Another awesome graphic novel which shouldn't be missed by any Bat-fan, even if it isn't canon. And now we have Christopher Nolan's version, another slightly different take, but a take that's actually very close to the established Batman. A guy who conducts illegal cellphone taps, who engages in violent interrogations, a guy who struggles with his dark, vengeful side, and was taunted to the breaking point by the fact that the criminals DO kill people and get rich doing it. And, again, this was a response to new developments in the real world and in pop culture. Because the world that Nolan's Batman lives in is not the world that Adam West's Batman lived in. It's grim and gritty and dark out there these days. We have serial killers who have fan clubs now. We see twelve-year-olds torturing eight-year-olds and mothers drowning their kids. We have date rape and Stranger Danger and we don't let our kids out of our sight. We're not so innocent anymore, and you can't attract an adult movie audience with the same old cartoon bad-guys we saw in the Sixties and Seventies. The bad guys had to change, and Batman had to change with them. You're probably right. But here's the thing (unfortunately impossible to debate without a spoiler): And to you, good sir. I hope I'm not offending by debating these things with you. I appreciate that every fan sees Batman a little differently, and I can assure you I'm not a rabid Nolan fan who thinks he can do no wrong. He did do wrong in my opinion, and neither BB nor TDK are perfect works. I'm just as big a fan of Burton's radically different Batman movies. Still excited to see TDKR when it comes out, though.

Actually Batman began his comic book career using guns constantly and killing on a regular basis. He killed throughout his first year in Detective Comics, World's Finest, and the first issue of the Batman solo book. "Batman NEVER, EVER kills" wasn't in Bob Kane's original vision for the character. It was invented by an editor. Also, he's done the "I refuse to save you" routine with Ra's al Ghul before. The thing about Ra's is he is constantly being resurrected in the Lazarus Pit, so not saving him doesn't really do much. And once when he was killed by somebody else, Bats had his body cremated so the Lazarus Pit couldn't save him. It works out to basically killing him.

I can't think of any sites that fulfill all of your expectations. What I would suggest is that you look for a site that features fan-fiction from a series (of books, movies, TV show or what-have-you) that you like, and start from there. If you start out writing within that fandom, it's good practice for writing in your own setting, and you will pick up readers from that fandom who may follow you in your own stuff. And writing within a given fandom, with preexisting characters and canon, can allow you to focus on honing your writing skills without having to invent everything yourself. The fan-fic communities tend to be very supportive of fellow members and may be more forgiving of "newbie" techniques than most of the more professional fiction sites, and most of them do have sections for "non-fandom" fiction. If you can't find a good website, do your writing at home and show it to everyone you know. I actually recommend this to anyone who's interested in writing at all. It takes a lot of practice before you're really "ready for prime time". Think of writing like MOCing. As a beginner in the Lego world, I know that my own MOCs are fun for me to make, and they might impress my kids, but there is no way I'd start out by submitting them to Eurobricks because, well, seriously, LOOK at the stuff that's up here! My stuff would just get ignored and fall off the Active Content pages as soon as one of the serious MOCers posted a new castle. Keeping all this in mind, I can give you one address: www.everything2.com. This is a site that I got a lot of practice on, but it doesn't quite meet all your criteria. It's a small community, it's open to all ages but doesn't have a lot of Young Adult stuff, and it's not always tolerant of bad grammar or novice writing. The people there are used to a certain level of writing. But it is a good community where you can post literally any kind of writing you want, communicate with other people who like writing, and sometimes get good comments on your stories. Just be prepared - it's a tough crowd. And the Web design was literally groundbreaking back in the day, but has not evolved much in the last ten years, so the interface looks terrible.

It's very strange, we are in Connecticut, and I didn't feel a thing, but my wife, who was maybe ten miles from me at the time, said she felt quite a tremble. All of the high-rise buildings downtown were evacuated, although of course nothing happened. I've lived places where we had stronger quakes almost every year, but you just don't expect earthquakes in Connecticut. Kind of like the tornado that hit in Massachussetts a few months ago - how weird must that have felt? But I was hearing on NPR that the East Coast used to have quite a few earthquakes in the 19th Century, so maybe we've just been lucky until now...

I think I started the Cavemen and Dinos hatred, so I will explain my feelings. It isn't only that it's unrealistic, because really, most of the Lego themes are unrealistic and we still collect them and play create with them. The problem is that cavemen and dinos is unrealistic in a cheesy throwback sort of way that's strongly reminiscent of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon or a really bad science fiction movie. A lot of people did used to think that cavemen and dinosaurs really lived concurrently, and they wrote terrible stories about cavemen hunting dinosaurs and used that idea for lots of corny comics. It's one of the first gags in Mel Brooks' History of the World, and even when that movie came out it was already a fairly tired old gag. We know better now, and to see a theme that went back to that silly misconception would be kind of like seeing Star Wars with Little Green Men from Mars in a tin foil flying saucer that glowed in the dark. You could go places with a theme that used some of those tropes intelligently. Using smart references to those cheesy old sci-fi ideas could give you a theme like, I don't know, let's call it ALIEN CONQUEST! (A theme that I love, BTW). But I think it would be pretty hard to pull off something like that with cavemen and dinos and not have it end up corny as hell. I think chances are it would be annoying and ruin people's suspension of disbelief. One day, someone out there is going to create an amazing story involving a Cro-Magnon tribe exploring an isolated valley and discovering a breeding population of ticked-off dinosaurs. It will be a great story full of subtle humanizing touches for the cavemen and remarkable speculations on dinosaur behavior, all of which link up to give the audience great insights from an alternate point of view on modern human life. It will win a Hugo Award and maybe a Teen Choice nomination. But I doubt that Lego will be the medium for that story.

Wow. Great review and a great set. No, not just a great set - this looks like one of the greatest sets I've seen. A lot of times it seems like AFOLs who talk about TLG's good old days are waxing nostalgic for merely decent sets that happened to be released when they were just getting enthusiastic about Lego. That is definitely not the case with this baby. You've got beautiful design, some cool play features, an excellent range of minifigs, a great baseplate and a gorgeous dragon statue. And it's expensive but not ridiculously expensive. I love it all!

I've totally given up on trying to keep my apples and cherries, too. The kids find them way too cute.

Thanks for revisiting this set. I still think Hyperspeed Pursuit has the best vehicle design in SP3, but this one is definitely a worthy contender. You gotta love the way the designers threw themselves into the task of designing spaceships based on cars from exploitation cinema, with all the little details like the "Brick Mamba" license plate. I think that "trunk ornament" is based on an old-school "boomerang" antenna like you used to see on Earthbound limos. I still see this set on shelves at TRU, so I guess for some reason it wasn't a huge seller.

8092, Luke's Landspeeder, ended a Dark Age that began around the time Luke originally drove that thing on the movie screen. When I last built Lego sets, the minifig hadn't been invented, and nobody dreamed that one day adults would be a significant market segment for Lego. 8092 was an awesome set, but there weren't really any other Star Wars sets that I wanted and could afford at that time. So I bought the Atlantis Seabed Scavenger. Didn't like it, still not sure why I thought it would be cool. Almost gave up the whole business as silly kid stuff. Then I got Kingdoms Outpost Attack, and it hit me that I could make that thing so cool if I had just a FEW more pieces, so I started buying more and more Lego. Still haven't done that Outpost Attack expansion, though.