Gryphon Ink

Yay for Star Trek MOCs!! May the one true Science Fiction franchise reign supreme over these boards! Resistance is futile! Nicely done. It's a shame there aren't more gray or really pale flesh minifigs to make a variety of borg drones. If you don't mind the skin color being off, I would suggest the Space Villain Series 3 CMF and possibly a few of the Assassins from POP (there is Zolm with the weird silvery eyes, from the Quest Against Time set, and one guy wearing a strange eyepatch in the Desert Attack set).

Well, the details of Shaak Ti's death are all on the various Star Wars wikis, so it's not that much of a secret. While I don't get into the EU very much, I'm happy they made her original death scene non-canonical, because having her die on the Invisible Hand was just weak. I have a lot of love for Shaak Ti (partly due to her being played by an Israeli actress in the movies, and partly due to her striking appearance), so I'm very glad her role was enlarged from the two measly scenes she got in the movies. She's also a really beautiful minifig, and clearly my favorite in this poll, even though I'm not going to buy the set she comes in.

Thank you for this review. I was excited about this set when I first heard about it, but after this review I'm thinking it's really not worth buying at the full price. There are a lot of things about it that just keep it from greatness. My biggest complaint would be, only two generic faces? WTH? If I'm going to buy a $60 pack of minifigs I would expect to have at least one or two faces with a little more character. Then there is the fact that most of the torsos are also pretty common ones. All of the Kingdoms torsos are already in multiple Kingdoms sets. The entire jester is just the impulse Jester set with a female face. A generic female face, as opposed to the impulse jester's cute and expressive face. Why couldn't they have done a jester with alternate colors, and a few medieval characters with different color schemes? (And the Dragon Knights fan in me is cynically noting that once again TLG favors the Lions!) The accessories don't seem great, either. Lego has a red and white toadstool cap, for crying out loud. It's in Hagrid's Hut, and it looks awesome. Why did they put an ugly plain red dome on this toadstool? I guess that using generic faces and accessories as much as possible is part of the "Educational" package. Maybe it's to encourage imagination or show that you can improvise. But it makes the set much less appealing to me.

I'm still not seeing the river.

Boys, boys, boys... Let us prepare to buckle our swashes and pick some nits. Jack Sparrow ("Captain") uses a hanger in almost all of his adventures. This is basically a long, light cutlass. No real reason Lego should use anything but a standard cutlass to represent this weapon. Will Turner uses a cutlass for most of the movies, as do most of the background pirates. This is historically the most common weapon for pirate crews and most fighting men at sea. Will does fight with a rapier in his last duel, though, and possibly also in the smithy scene where he first fights Jack. The sword Will made for Norrington, which shows up in all three movies and is passed on to Will late in the third movie, is a small sword, which was the final combat evolution of the rapier. This was reasonable as a ceremonial weapon for a gentleman officer. And of course, Davy Jones uses a claymore, which is a hideously unsuitable weapon for a seaman, but terribly Scottish and well suited to Jones' personality. *** Back on topic, I'm thinking this line is not some kind of revolution, but basically Classic Pirates with fleshies. The Isla de la Muerta set looks a lot like a 2011 version of Loot Island. The ships will be no more or less accurate than other Lego Pirates ships, and use mostly the same parts. The only difference that I can see is if there is a POTC Kraken, it ain't gonna be a dinky little rubber octopus.

Nice review, but I didn't like this set much. The doorway is just not enough to be a real set, so it's more like a battle pack. The figs are good, though. Dobby is cute, and my kids love the sock tile inside the book. Lucius looks cool, except his hair doesn't want to stay on. I guess it's good as an entry-level HP set, but there are much nicer sets at this price in just about every other theme.

That's the big cup, $16. I got one big one. And no, they don't weigh them. Whatever you can fit in the cup is legit. They put a top on it at the cash register, and I guess the top has to fit. It doesn't take quite as many pieces as it looks like, because there is a hollow for a super-sized stud on the bottom (the top has a stud, so they stack). The guy I spoke to at the store was expecting Series 3 on January 1, but I don't think he was sure about it. Good hunting to you!

I don't mean to deface an icon, and it's certainly possible to enjoy things that don't make any sense, but the fact is that AT-ATs don't make any sense even in the context of Star Wars, much less in real-world military logic. Why would you build a terror machine or warship that walks on elongated, giraffelike legs that make it easy to knock over, when you have so many better means of locomotion? SW has repulsor technologies, seen in every movie since ANH, that would do the job better and give the craft a better combat profile. In the real world, we have wheeled and tracked vehicles that are far less vulnerable. The AT-AT is basically the SW version of a tank, and you don't build tanks as tall as possible. You build them squat, so you get a wide base for stability and a less visible profile. Even in the SW universe, the PT version of the AT-AT - whatever you call that long vehicle with six legs - is a far more realistic combat vehicle. I get that it's SW canon, but there's no realistic way AT-ATs could ever be thought invincible. They have clear and obvious weaknesses, as shown by the fact that a whole group of them suffers major losses in the Battle of Hoth - beaten by towing cables and a guy with a lightsaber and a grenade! Eventually they do accomplish part of the mission, destroying the rebel's generators, but not without heavy losses and not before almost all of the key Rebel personnel are evacuated. That's pretty much complete failure in real military terms. The real version of Darth Vader wouldn't kill Admiral Piett (or whoever it was that bungled the invasion) - he'd be ordering a complete redesign of the AT-AT, rethinking Imperial military doctrine from the ground up, and sending that whole division of ground troops for six months of intensive training.

I'm drawing a blank myself, but then again, is there any advantage to having the original X-Wing's wings separate to an X configuration in combat situations? Or for it even having wings, since they are completely non-aerodynamic and have no flight control surfaces? Or for having droids pilot droid ships and control droid weapons? And don't even get me started on the impracticality of AT-ATs. It's Star Wars. It's completely full of ships that do nonsensical things for the sole purpose of looking cool. This is why I enjoy Star Wars, but don't classify it as science fiction. Yes, I know this is heresy to most SW fans, but you'll get the same answer from just about anybody who reads a lot of real science fiction. Regarding the Jedi Shuttle itself, I dig the rotating wings even though it' nonsense - but if the wings are going to be vertical most of the time, I think the "bottom" of the wing should look a lot better than it does in this model.

I like the Hillside House, like most of the Creator houses. Does anybody have an estimate of how many pieces this set might be?

Solid review. I've never seen this set, either. I'm mostly not too impressed with the older Harry Potter sets, but I actually like this one, especially the staircase which I've never seen before. Lots of really nice accessories, too. And Lupin's minifig is a great match for the actor.

I love Lego, but my biggest hobby is knitting and crochet, which I do just about everywhere including on the city bus. Now, there are not that many people left in the world who knit, and maybe one in fifty of them are men. The most frequent comment I hear from Muggles (i.e., non-knitters) who see me knitting on the city bus is "gee, I never saw a man doing that." Even when I go into a knitting shop to buy supplies, people often assume I'm running an errand for my wife. And once I've convinced them I'm actually a knitter, they mostly assume I'm gay, because, well, a lot of male knitters are. I'm also a writer. People tend to love talking to writers, so they always ask what I write, thinking it will be something important about man's inhumanity and the dichotomy of good and evil. You should see the looks on some people's faces when I tell them it's mostly ratwomen and lobster monsters and gay swordsmen battling Lovecraftian demons, and that the nicest thing anyone's ever said about one of my stories in a review was "guaranteed to make your skin crawl." People who find out I build Lego are rarely surprised, and I could give a rat's behind if some clerk at TRU thinks it's childish.

I don't think there's a time limit on the clearance since they have to get rid of those sets, but I'm not sure the sets will last until Jan 1! Didn't spot any chassis parts, but they might have been there. The store I went to is the Rockefeller Center one, and it was completely crazy. Pick-a-brick was $16 for a big cup and $8 for a small cup. I don't have the cups in front of me, but I'd guess the big cup is about a liter.

My first trip to a Lego store! I missed so much good stuff on that crazy clearance sale, and they didn't have any collectible minifigs yet, but I got 7571 - Fight for the Dagger and 7572 - Quest Against Time at half price. Also one PAB tub. The Offspring got a PAB tub and a trio of build-your-own minifigs. PAB is a really awesome way to get big numbers of bricks and useful parts, but really random. I got several doors and didn't realise until I was leaving that there hadn't been any door frames. They had a lot of good bricks in the right color scheme for expanding my dragon knights' Prison Tower, though.

I think it's overpriced, too, and the only minifig I like here is Shaak Ti. I hate the CW faces, and to this day I'm not really sure I understand why there had to be a "Lego Clone Wars" style of face. I doubt anyone would have objected if the CW sets had featured "regular face" minifigs, which are extremely cartoonish to start with but don't look like they were drawn by five-year-olds.

Agreed, no bickering, although I also agree that the Internet will probably implode if we ever totally stop bickering altogether. Personally, I'm just hoping the Lego stores do have some of the cool sets left, because I will be hitting the New York store on Wednesday! But honestly I'll be happy if they have anything that I can't find at Target. Yes, it is my first time at a Lego store, why do you ask?

Target have put all the POP on clearance as well. Unfortunately, not much of it is left on the shelves. Plenty of Desert Attacks left to build up an Assassin army with, though.

Right you are, but I could imagine a scenario where UNIFIL forms the backbone of the human relief effort and the earliest stages of the resistance, and the ADF is built around the UNIFIL structure, so they keep the blue. Of course, American politicians would fight this with every fiber of their being, but since the first thing the aliens did was bomb the bejeezus out of the US military-industrial infrastructure, nobody cares what POTUS says anymore.

Nice review. I think this is a beautiful dragon straight out of the box, and a good base for modded dragons and other mythical beasties. The jester-skeleton gives me a bit of an Insane Clown Posse vibe - I'm not so sure about him. And seriously, how is he supposed to fight off an ice dragon? Does he juggle shuriken until the dragon is overcome with laughter?

It's a post mill, like this one: The whole structure rotates to face the wind. It looks funny, but it's historically accurate.

Ahem. These guys (UNIFIL soldiers, for those who don't recognise it) regularly put themselves in harm's way wearing not only baby blue berets, but also baby blue body armor. They go to the worst trouble spots in the world, places where the US military doesn't deign to go and where nobody wants them, and they do their best to keep peace. Having seen them in the field, I have no problem with my Lego resistance fighters wearing baby blue.

Good question, moc2. I've been wondering about this, too, having just started buying Lego again. I think the MMV is a must-have for any AFOL interested in medieval or fantasy building (really hoping to get one when we go to the Lego store this week!) I also think the Prince of Persia sets offer a lot of value for money as far as architectural pieces - especially the Quest Against Time set that's currently on sale on Amazon, with over 500 pieces including tons of dark bley slopes and cheese wedges and a light-up brick for $25.

We also know about Alien Conquest coming out in the summer and new "City Space" sets that should be out in January.

It actually took them longer than I expected to take the pics down. There were pictures of Lego's entire 2011 line in there. I expect it's only a matter of time before we have new spy reports, though.

That would be totally awesome if every single decent set wasn't already sold out. A lot of it was actually sold out before the sale started. There is another thread about this, too.