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Lyichir

Eurobricks Grand Dukes
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Everything posted by Lyichir

  1. Lyichir
    Today I got a bunch of sets on my wishlist including the Space Base and Rocket Launchpad set, which I just finished building! Very satisfying build. A little thing that I certainly appreciated was that the stickers for the 2x4x5 cylinders (used in each corner of the interior of the main base) had big margins that extended beyond the small rectangular decorations, making them much easier to line up with the edges of the part (always appreciated, especially for stickers that need to be applied to a non-flat surface). I hadn't noticed before now that the "orange squad captain" has a titanium metallic left arm—it's ambiguous but I like to imagine that it's meant to indicate that arm is a mechanical prosthetic, maybe to replace a limb that was lost or damaged in hazardous construction/mining work. I wish the flat top minifig wig (25379) came in dark grey to match his beard since I feel like that'd be a good fitting hairpiece for his head print. I also just checked and am pleased that the smaller interstellar spaceship fits reasonably well on the launchpad from this set (even though it doesn't "lock on" as securely since it lacks the 8-wide removable module and the pyramid slopes from the intended spacecraft that slot nicely into the classic "space seat" part used on the launchpad). EDIT: Actually just realized a simple solution to that last issue is to simply add some bricks (I used 1x2 inverted slopes) on the exposed backs of the "space seat" parts so that both spacecraft slot between them.
  2. Lyichir
    It's... not a baby toy? The actual level of building skill for your average set is comparable to other Lego themes (and as with other themes, the bigger sets tend to be more complex and interesting). I'm sorry you wanted it to be something it's not, but that's not the sets' fault, nor does it mean the people who do enjoy it are lesser builders.
  3. Lyichir
    The thing about common set concepts like dragons or mechs or cars is that every one is likely to be some kid's first. Since Ninjago sets usually retire within two or so years, redoing popular set concepts helps to ensure that new fans can get to experience that sort of set for the first time. It's the same reason Batmobiles or X-Wings or Hulkbusters keep being made in other themes. It's really only long-term fans who get tired of that sort of subject matter, and the kid audience makes up a much bigger part of Ninjago's audience (and Lego's audience overall). Personally while I'm a fan of villain builds, I don't necessarily long for the days of a full year of the same faction. Back in the day by the time the second wave of Serpentine sets came out I'd already pretty much had my fill of the relatively similar Serpentine vehicle builds. In general I'd rather have one or two really good villain sets per faction than so many that they start to blend together. While we haven't gotten much from this wave's new faction yet, I feel like last year's Imperium villains did a pretty good job with several mid-size builds and many small side builds—enough to establish their feel and aesthetic without wearing out their welcome. I feel like these current villains might get close enough to that point if they have some decent builds in the March wave of sets.
  4. Lyichir
    Yeah. But terms like 1HY and 2HY tend to be helpful when describing the two main "waves" of releases for a typical theme, since using terms like summer and winter wave can lead to confusion between northern and southern hemisphere users, where the seasons are reversed.
  5. Lyichir
    Personally, I'd rather not have a droid minifigure since I really love the quirky little brick-built robots in this space wave! So far there are three different blue ones, two yellow-orange ones, but only one green one, so since the green astronauts are scientists a lab set would be the perfect opportunity to fix that disparity.
  6. Lyichir
    I had not heard this but if true I expect it's simply because Lego prints so many more torsos and has more equipment overall to do so—meaning that there's much less restriction on how many can be produced and how quickly they can do so. Those sorts of logistical challenges play a bigger role in the relative prices of parts than many people realize.
  7. Lyichir
    Nice! Six wheels definitely helps it feel more "spacey". I still think I might try modding it to use those hard plastic wheels, though (and those might be slightly too big to fit in a row of six like this).
  8. Lyichir
    Someone here might've already noticed it, but when browsing the new City sets I noticed that the new police buggy polybag has a wanted poster that not only doesn't match any of the others, but features a number from a potentially unrevealed set (60416). Possibly either something that got cancelled or is due to be revealed/released later?
  9. Lyichir
    I may be alone here but I personally think the digi-fig sets are generally very good, and that minifig-based sets might have trouble meeting those high standards. Don't get me wrong, if there were minifigures of Mario characters I think they could be fun to have from a collector's standpoint, but the sheer playability the digi-figs have, combined with the physical playability that the increased scale allows for, is genuinely impressive—moreso than any of my attempts to build "minifig-scale" diorama-type builds over the years resulted in. One of my frustrations at those early attempts was that a typical "Mario level" built out of Lego generally felt boring and abstract without the physicality the games included. At best you could maybe make a dollhouse-type build of some of the rare iconic locations like Peach's Castle, but everything else tended to feel flat and uninspiring. When the actual sets were first revealed and made physical play the primary factor in the designs (instead of a secondary feature I struggled to integrate into a typical minifig-scale playset), it felt like the solution to the problem I'd been struggling to solve independently for all those years. I think for Lego and Nintendo, the feeling was similar. Their goal with Mario sets was probably not being able to have Lego Mario interact with Star Wars or Super Heroes characters, so compatibility with other minifig-based themes wasn't really a priority. Instead they focused on what made Mario as a franchise feel distinct and unique and how that could be translated into Lego play, and I think they did really well with that. The fact that they took a different approach with Animal Crossing doesn't surprise me or strike me as inconsistent with that sort of approach in my opinion. Animal Crossing is a game you interact with very differently from Mario games, and much better suits the sort of diorama/dollhouse play that works well with traditional minifigures. It's a game that's much more about physical decoration and slice-of-life interactions than Mario's emphasis on physicality and movement. I do agree that now that Animal Crossing sets exist with minifigures (and possibly a Zelda set in the future), the compatibility between related sets makes a stronger case for Mario minifigs. But I also think that Mario minifigs would work better as something like a minifigures series or isolated sets like an expert-level Peach's Castle build than they would as the entirety of the theme. Frankly, the course-builder system still feels better suited to capturing the overall breadth of the Mario franchise than minifigure-based sets would, and I don't really want that to go away.
  10. Lyichir
    Yesterday I bought and built the Modular Space Station set! Very fun build, albeit slightly repetitive for the four enclosed modules (which are mostly built the same). Building it did make me appreciate its design even more. It's quite hefty once it's all put together, but the center span across the ring is sturdy and shaped perfectly to lift the whole thing by one-handed (with the gold cross bars being thin enough not to obstruct your fingers). I think it'd also be well-suited to hanging it by a string or fishing line, if you wanted to have it displayed that way.
  11. Lyichir
    Red would be a good color and complement the others well (then we'd have red/blue/green/yellow-orange, not too far from some of the classic Lego colors). I wonder what role would be best for red, though? I asked one of the designers (Aaron Newman, who designed the Interstellar Spaceship and the Modular Space Station) on Instagram and he confirmed to me that yellow are construction, blue are explorers, and green are scientists. Maybe red could be medical or something along those lines?
  12. Lyichir
    I don't know about leaks, but we'll probably get a full list in February-ish when toy fair season gets up and running (even though Lego doesn't generally show off as much as they used to, I think they do still at least release set lists for retailers).
  13. Lyichir
    Oh, don't get me wrong, I would LOVE for that to happen—the continuation of this version of space would be pretty much my ideal scenario in the near term. I was just saying that if it doesn't, that doesn't mean it's 100% the end of the line for this version of space. I've been trying my hand at MOCing but haven't gotten very far... it's hard to come up with designs as clever and effective as these ones, and I'm pretty rusty at MOCing all things considered. But I did come up with an idea for a bigger alien! I like to imagine this one isn't that much less friendly than the littler ones, but maybe still a little dangerous on account of its size. It's guarding an impact crater that revealed a massive crystal deposit (using one of the 6x6 crystal plates from last year's Disney Princess theme).
  14. Lyichir
    Realistically, since the prison island has a relatively flat back you could potentially buy two copies and reverse one of them, placing them back to back to double it in size and enclose the yard, cells, and caves/basement more realistically. Obviously if you were to do so you would probably want to make further modifications to reduce repetition/redundancy, but that would work as a good starting point.
  15. Lyichir
    If it helps (for this or other questions), most of the new sets now have inventories available to view on Brickset where you can see what parts they include individually.
  16. Lyichir
    Also, there's little doubt that City will return to space at some point (much as it has many times over), so the only real question is how much the next iteration of it has in common with this current one. On the one hand, most iterations of City space have varied up things like logos and color schemes. But on the other hand, this wave feels like such a step forward that it's a little hard to picture the next wave of City space sets being significantly LESS ambitious, and if these ones are particularly successful I could definitely see them maintaining things like the classic space logo and color-coded squads, if nothing else. Maybe the next iteration of this could be like the Futuron to this wave's Classic Space—an evolution of the groundwork this theme laid rather than a complete reinvention. Only time will tell, I suppose.
  17. Lyichir
    I haven't really had that problem. And black at least always has white outlines (especially helpful for telling it apart from other dark colors like dark brown or earth blue).
  18. Lyichir
    You're definitely assuming at least one "corporate constraints" that isn't there. Colorful canopies/windscreens are still fairly widespread in other themes, including the Dreamzzz Space Car from this year, the Dreamzzz Space Bus from last year, and the Galaxy Explorer and a Monkie Kid spaceship just two years ago. There are plenty of benefits of trans black being used here, including it being basically the newest transparent color, it being a relatively realistic take on the kind of solar shielding actual spacecraft windows could need, and it not favoring any particular color of astronaut in a theme with multiple colors of uniform. So I don't see any reason to assume that it had to have been any sort of "runner-up" choice on the part of the designers.
  19. Lyichir
    It's a little thing but I LOVE that Jones the Space Cat is watching fish videos... and the fish is ALSO an astronaut with a space helmet.
  20. Lyichir
    Yeah, I think the Ford Mustang Dark Horse uses the same one without a sticker even. But then, the Command Rover in the City Space theme also uses that same windscreen already. I'm more hoping for parts like that 4-wide windscreen on the other BMW or the other 6-wide windscreen on the Audi to show up unprinted somewhere. Side note, having gotten it for the first time, I REALLY like the new trans black. It definitely feels more authentic to the kind of tints I saw when my little bro was working with a window tinting and vinyl wrap business—darker and less "smoky" than the old trans brown was.
  21. Lyichir
    I'm not really a huge Speed Champions fan (the sets are great, just not for me). But my recent fixation on the new City space subtheme has me hoping that some of the yet-to-be-revealed Speed Champions sets for this year might include more windscreen varieties in the new trans black color, to add to my options for MOCs. Ideally unprinted ones (since some of the already-revealed Speed Champions sets do feature new windscreens in that color, but with vehicle-specific printing that makes them less than ideal for MOCs).
  22. Lyichir
    By "newer" I meant newer than the standard legs, long legs, or shortest (non-bending) legs. Mid-length legs are one of the newest varieties so there's been less development or variations on them since they were introduced than there has been for the classic legs.
  23. Lyichir
    I think they're high school. The mid-length legs seem to mostly be used for "tweens" so I don't think it's too much of an issue that the teenage Dreamzzz kids use normal legs (although mid-length legs could've potentially been cool). One other reason they probably went for the longer legs is that I don't think Lego currently can do as much with the mid-length legs, given that they're newer and less widely used. For example, they don't yet have dual-molded mid-length legs like they do for the longer ones, a feature that's used for both Mateo and Izzie.
  24. Lyichir
    I think even with parts lists and such, color variations help to tell which parts are which. Just as an example, bricks with side studs look like regular bricks from one side—if a section includes both, varying the color can make a huge difference in being able to tell which ones go where. Recently built the Orient Express set with my dad and the use of brighter colors like azures for some of the plates or SNOT bricks on the internal parts of the locomotive was hugely helpful for being able to tell what was being added and where it needed to go in a complex, densely constructed part of the build. That went double for my dad, whose eyes are older than mine and needed longer to identify which parts he needed to dig out and where they needed to be added relative to what had already been built.
  25. Lyichir
    Yup! Amusingly, my sister pointed out to me that it looks like it might be a species in the genus Idea.
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