NiceMarmot

BTW, wanted to make sure you all saw the very Nocturnian-like Monster Fighters cemetery MOC that ISC posted on the Action Themes forum; it's very cool.

Those look really useful. I don't think I've ever seen them before. I will have to keep an eye out for them. They look pricey on BL, although maybe not given how big they are. Seems like the kind of thing you might run into at yard sales too. I usually use a bunch of randomly colored 2x8s and 2x10s in a grid, with plates over them. Sometimes I'll use baseplates, but you're right about their limitations. A few years ago I scored a bunch (>6) Ramses Pyramid games on super clearance, so I have must have 8 or more tan 32x32 baseplates, which helps. To be honest, the base of my MOCs is often a complete afterthought and I don't put as much into them as I should. I've been trying to ramp up my game in that area a bit, since so many people on this forum do really cool, good-looking bases. Of course, my latest MOC just uses 4 tan 32x32 baseplates, so perhaps I'm not making much progress

OK, here's the haul from my son's birthday party: Ninjago Warrior Bike, Batman figure 4526, City Patrol Car, Ninjago Jay's Storm Fighter, LOTR Shelob Attacks, Ninjago Kai's Blade Cycle, City Police Helicopter, City Brickmaster book, Chima Crawley's Claw Ripper, Chima Waterfall Speedorz, and Chima Target Practice Speedorz. That's not too bad. We already have the Blade Cycle and Shelob Attacks, but both sets have pretty good parts, and we could always use more giant spiders. My son has wanted the Storm Fighter for a while, so he's psyched for that. Glad to get the Chima sets, as we don't have any of them yet and they look fairly cool and have great figs. Of course, I won't be able to use any of these parts in MOCs until my son gets tired of them, probably in three or four months. As for the Super Bowl, what a wild game! The 49ers almost pulled it out, but that's what happens when your defence doesn't show up for the first half of the game. I grew up outside of Baltimore (before the Ravens were there) so I'm a bit of Ravens fan too, so I'm not totally unhappy -- it was a win for me either way. And while I'm blabbing about random, non-GoH stuff, let me vent about BrickLink sellers with restrictive lot limits (not PBD -- they're fine). If you're going to have a lot limit like $1 per lot, and half your store consists of items with only one or two quantity of a $0.10 piece, how do you ever expect to sell through those last few units of each item? Unless a customer really loads up on other items and goes way over $1/lot, they're never going to buy those items with small quantities, because then they'll hit the lot limit. This especially applies to pieces that customers are unlikely to buy in large quantities, parts that no one really needs 100 or 20 of. EoRant Was hoping to photograph and post my MOC today, but it's very gloomy and drizzly today. Will try to see if I can get enough light inside to photograph it, but might have to wait until the weather improves.

That's got to be the cleanest and most organized farm I've ever seen! BTW, thanks for naming that road. I'll get that onto the map when I do an update (whenever that is).

Nice to meet you! You're off to a really good start. Welcome to GoH! Yes, but at least we can go outside in the sunlight. Anything helps, even small little builds/vignettes, as long as they are well-done (which I think this one is -- nice base!). And if you don't have time / parts for builds, you can always trash-talk on the forums! That's a time-honored Nocturnian tradition that has fallen off a bit since Angeli got banned.

BTW -- Brickforge has their turbans on sale: Lots of different colors. Only $0.10 to $0.25 each. Great deal for Kaliphlin! Although getting to the $10 minimum order at these prices is a bit hard.

BTW -- my son's birthday party is Sunday. It's a LEGO themed party -- there's a bunch of guys around here that will put on LEGO parties for kids and bring in a ton of bricks and do building activities with the kids and so on. I think he will get a few LEGO sets from his classmates and friends. Here's hoping he gets some cool Chima or new Ninjago sets! In any case, it will be a fun day, and even better when the 49ers win the Super Bowl later on in the day!

Awesome! Really like the look of this one! Good work especially on the trees, the rockwork, the fences and gates. The roof on that mausoleum just inside the gate is great (the one with the modified tiles/grill). I like how the buildings are all quite different. I think this probably makes you our resident mausoleum building expert, for whatever that's worth! Love the flying bats too!

Nice job. Good little vignette, and good photography! Are you sure they never lose a battle? It might be more interesting if they get walloped every now and then

I posted the script here. It's pretty basic; it just adds two links for each item in a store -- one for the catalog entry and one for the price-guide for that item. Sorry, I probably won't be able to provide much tech support for this one, so you all are mostly on your own. It works in Firefox + Greasemonkey. Make sure it applies to pages that match http://www.bricklink.com/storeDetail.asp*. It might be adaptable to work in Google Chrome; I haven't looked into that yet. I've been meaning to expand it a bit, but haven't gotten around to it. I'd like to put another link / hotspot in, where if you hover over it, it pulls in the price-guide page via ajax, parses out a few numbers (perhaps quantity avg past sale price, quantity avg current price), and displays them in a little javascript popover div. Someday...

Thanks. That's what I thought. I'm trying to decide whether to post my upcoming 64x64+ troop departure moc as part of the challenge or as a free build. It's part of the challenge story, but not essential to it, so I'll probably post it as a free build and then reference it in the challenge story (but not include any photos there).

Thanks. That's what I thought. I'm trying to decide whether to post my upcoming 64x64+ troop departure moc as part of the challenge or as a free build. It's part of the challenge story, but not essential to it, so I'll probably post it as a free build and then reference it in the challenge story (but not include any photos there).

DaMaximus, how come I'm not surprised that your story has your character ending up as Emperor and Mpya Stedor as the capital? My story (currently) has a somewhat bittersweet ending. Things work out OK re Revolword, but from there things are unsettled. ("Hard to see, the future is" ) The story is probably fairly standard in its overall sweep, but a bit unusual and interesting in the details. BTW, I went on BrickLink last night to order a few of those SW Bespin planet domes, and got a bit carried away. Ending up buying $178 worth of stuff (it was a good night for Plastic Bricks Direct, one of my favorite stores). BrickLink is so addictive! 2xBTW, if anyone's interested, I have a Greasemonkey script that puts a catalog and price guide link next to every item in stores in BrickLink, so you can easily click through and see the price guide for an item. Let me know if you want it.

I've finally (in the last few days) put together a story, but I haven't figured out the builds for it. I tried doing it the other way around -- coming up with cool build designs and then creating a story to fit. But I just couldn't get motivated to figure out designs with coming up with the story first. Of course, now I'm facing with taking a good story (IMHO) and trying to figure out if there are any really cool builds that fit it.

Wow, so it was Eccles who stuck the dagger in your back! Sorry to see you go, but I understand. Time is precious, and there's definitely not enough of it. Will you still participate in GoH at all?

Good point. Forgot about that limitation. Bummer. What's the point of the size limit anyway? Especially with three builds -- we should have a size limit on two builds, and leave one build unlimited. Maybe I'll also do a version that fits... Good idea. I'll try that out and see how it looks.

Z -- the size limit is 48x48, but does that apply to just the three scored builds, or all builds in the story? I'm guessing just the three scored builds (hopefully), but I don't want to get disqualified if one of my story, non-scoring builds is too big. Thx.

Yes, unless I use it for one of my Challenge 6 builds. Not sure yet about that; will have to see if I am able to come up with another three good builds.

Oops, I forgot about the size limitation. Guess I won't be using my big off-to-war MOC for this one. Perhaps I'll try to create a smaller scene of just a few people leaving their families or something before joining the big troop. Anyways, here's another iteration of the big departure MOC. Once again taken with a cell phone camera; apologies, but my wife has the real camera and is on a business trip until tonight. mmuk.west.gate.wip2 I've positioned the troops; I don't think I can fit any more of them. I was hoping to fit more camels from the baggage train, but don't think I have room for that either. I like the extra baseplate; it gave me a lot more room for landscaping and stuff. You probably can't see them very well in this lousy photo, but there's a nice little shack back to the right for the workers, and a few stonemasons out working. There's a fallen palm tree, a few people watching the troops leave, some stray dogs, etc. I added a crane up on the gatehouse roof; still have to rig up the line for it. Instead of scaffolding, I rigged up a platform suspended from the roof on the left, with a worker repairing the gatehouse wall from it. BTW, I tried to design this to fairly accurate in sizing. The gatehouse storeys are each 8 bricks high, which corresponds to about 10 feet. The wall between the gatehouse and smaller tower is 14 bricks to the parapet walk (17.5 feet), and the battlements (if they were all complete) add five more feet, for a total of 22.5 feet high, which is normal for medieval town walls. However, I did not try to make the wall thickness accurate -- they're only two feet thick, as opposed to 6 to 12 feet thick in real life. My to-do list for this is currently: 1) rig up the crane, 2) find a blue flag, and 3) add a few more spectators. Any other suggestions? Feedback?

Nice little MOC. And great photo-editing btw, really like the background and the headline. Did you put the smears in a separate layer from the text, or convert the text to an image layer and then smear it?

The scaffolding is a great idea; thanks. I've been thinking of workers huts too. An earth elemental did the damage, so no scorch marks necessary.

Wow! This is fantastic. So many excellent details. I absolutely love the completely chaotic greebling you've done. It's perfect for the Dark Isle. Lots of great techniques and ideas here. And I really like the color variations in the walls of the upper storey of Cobblecrook Cottage! Plus the bizarre window frames. Really looking forward to the rest of this story! The only part that I'm not totally sold on yet is the style of trees. It's not sitting right with me for some reason -- maybe the trunks are too smooth? I'll have to build some myself and play with it a bit, and maybe I'll get used to them.

I'm looking for an Avalonian to volunteer some of his troops for an MOC I'm doing. They will be pursuing a band of Hand of Corruption scum deep into Kaliphlin territory. They'll be dressed as green dragon knights like this: so that's why I think they're Avalonian (let me know if I'm wrong about that). Your sigfig could be leading them if you want, and if I can build it, but it might be easier to designate one of your commanders to lead them and I'll use an appropriate Avalonian-looking commander from my collection. That way your sigfig can still run the show back in Greater Greensward or wherever. Just tell me the commander's name, your sigfig's name, the name of your territory, and any special name you have for this particular military unit. I promise to take care of your soldiers -- they'll do well and win glory, although a few of them might not make it back Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the feedback, Kai. I'm not totally liking the green 1x1 rounds either, so I'll probably yank those. I might also try to reduce the amount of dark-brown/reddish-brown on the road too; I think it's too much of a contrast with the lighter colors. I think I have another tan baseplate lying around somewhere, so I might add that in and see how it looks. I've probably got enough tan plates to do the landscaping for it. Maybe I can put a couple of wooden shacks or tents for the stonemasons there. It will also give me more room to put a larger procession of troops if I want to.

PM me if you have trouble and I'll try to help you out.