NiceMarmot

Yes, near Petraea the Black Oil is quite close to the surface! Thanks. It might be a bit advanced technology for Historica, but I saw a few of those old-style Technic axle and pin connectors in my collection, and the idea popped into my head. We have quite a few of those donkeyhead pumpjacks here in California, and my son loves seeing them when we drive south, so he was into this build and helped me figure out part of it. Not bad for a five year old. BTW, those technic connectors are from my pre-dark ages, probably from 1978's 954 Helicopter! Those antique parts are still as good as the day they were made (although most of the bushings from that set have cracked).

That looks great! Really fabulous work. Love the antique look and the border. I'm too lazy right now to try to decipher the border, but maybe will take a crack at it tomorrow (unless someone just wants to post it). It must have taken forever to hand draw all those shoreline waves!

December 16th - Kaliphlin Oil Rig advent.calendar.16.pumpjack A Kaliphlin pumpjack oil well. A captive magical imp inside the motorhouse turns the drive shaft which moves the 'donkeyhead' up and down, pumping precious Black Oil from the desert sands. Sorry for posting this one so late; life got in the way today. I'll try to post the 17th's later, but probably won't get it done until midday on the 17th US Pacific time. Hopefully then I should be back on schedule for the rest of the week.

December 15th - Kaliphlin Lighthouse GoH Advent Calendar - Dec 15 - Lighthouse Built by Kai NRG. I was thinking of doing a lighthouse but couldn't get the right look. Kai has beat me to it with an innovative style.

December 14th - Larger Kaliphlin Mill GoH Advent Calendar - Dec 14 - Large Mill A larger mill on the eastern Siccus coast, north of Peregrinus. I built this one first, and then decided to try to minimize the piece count, and so built the smaller mill displayed on Dec 7th.

No replies to yesterday's post. I suppose people are getting a bit tired of the Advent Calendar. Well, only ten more days after this one! Sorry for posting this one a bit late; work has reared its ugly head. December 13th - Kaliphlin Temple advent.calendar.13.temple The temple of Amon-Jazreth, the god of shiny stones found on the beach, on the outskirts of Barqa.

I agree; I think it's tied with Riddles for the Ring for weakest set in the Hobbit theme. Primarily, that's because I think the tree design is just plain ugly. It's too big and bulky, and doesn't have nearly enough foliage. I like the wargs, and two different colors doesn't bother me. The Hunter Orcs are great. But Yazneg looks terrible; he doesn't even look like an orc. The dwarves are OK, although I don't like the lines on their faces; the lines are too bold (I had the same problem with the Clone Wars faces). At $50 for 400 pieces, it's got a $0.125 price-per-piece ratio, which puts it up in Star Wars territory; that's the worst ratio of all the Hobbit sets. With five minifigs and two wargs, a high price is somewhat justified, but even if we adjust the price down $2 for each minifig (and warg) it has the second worst ratio in the theme (after Goblin King Battle). Lame design + expensive + some meh minifigs = I'll purchase on clearance only

Welcome. And can I just say, those are some of the best sigfig photos I've seen in a long time -- exceptionally clear, well-lit, unobtrusive background, etc. Wow. What camera are you using?

I'm not that informed. I'm just pretending to be. Actually my first cousin lives in Wellington, and one of my childhood friends lived in Auckland until last summer, so I hear quite a bit about NZ from them (although not really about LEGO). Is everything all hobbit-ed out there right now? My cousin said there was a huge Gollum in the airport there the other day.

Maybe you all should join the Christchurch LUG. It doesn't say that all the participating members have to do two exhibitions per year -- just that the LUG has to do two public exhibitions per year. That way you and a few other Wellingtonians (?) could put on an exhibit (say at a local school or something), and the Christchurch folks already do one. There you go - your qualifying two exhibitions. You don't necessarily even have to ever meet up with the other members of the LUG.

Or you could start your own LUG! Aren't you and someone else (Zach) in Wellington?

There are quite a few discussions on similar topics (here or here). From the consumer's perspective, price-per-piece is a bit misleading, as small sets with a higher ratio of minifigs/piece will have lower overall price-per-piece than larger sets with lower minifigs/piece ratio. This is because TLG tends to price smaller sets more expensively (on a price-per-piece basis), probably because they can get away with it because people buy them for the minifigs and also because packaging and distribution costs don't increase linearly with the number of pieces. For example, a $13 set with two minifigs usually has a much higher price per piece than a $100 set with eight minfigs. So I find a more useful comparison to be price-per-piece after taking into account the minifigs -- subtract a fixed amount from the price for each minifig (e.g. $2) and subtract a fixed number of pieces for each minifig (e.g. four), and then divide the adjusted price by the adjusted number of pieces. That should allow better comparison of large and small sets. Why does this matter? Well, if a theme had lots of small sets and few large sets, it would tend to have a higher raw overall price per piece ratio. So then you don't know whether the additional cost is due to licensing, or due to the variation in piece-count distribution. I haven't run the adjusted ratios on the themes listed above, but it would be interesting to see if it changed the results. I think that TLG does price sets higher that have larger pieces (like the Dino sets), although this may be due to mold costs too. It's hard to know how much new molds add to the cost, since we only have estimates for the price of molds (around $20,000 unless it's going to be used for a very high-volume part), and the average sales volume of a new set (around 300,000 is the best estimate I've seen). Those estimates would bump a set's price up by about six cents for each new mold, less if the mold is used on multiple sets or for more than one piece per set. The Dino sets might also be priced higher because the larger pieces result in larger packaging and therefore higher distribution costs. Overall, licensing and royalty is only 4% of the retail price of an average set. Considering that some of that goes to royalties paid to KIRKBI (the family holding company), theme licensing fees probably don't really account for much of the difference in price. I'm guessing that licensing, molds, packaging, distribution, etc all factor into a set's price, but at the end of the day, TLG prices the sets based on what they think they can sell it for.

"who were unable to apprehend him" -- Sounds like some Mitgardian nobles need to upgrade their private security personnel. Perhaps they should hire some Nocturnians for the job?

TRU also has Venomari Shrine for $4.50 (MSRP $6.99). It's a Ninjago set, but it has six dark-tan brick-bricks (masonry bricks), two 2x1x3 dark tan slopes, four 1x1 tan bricks with technic hole, two of the newer snake pieces, and variety of other useful pieces. I'm definitely tempted to pick up a few of these.

December 12th - Dwarven House Golem GoH Advent Calendar - Dec 12th - Dwarven House Golem Dwarven mages of old built and magically animated these small golems out of clay to serve as butlers and valets in their households. Some can still be found in the households of the old Mitgardian nobility, patiently running the household and serving their masters. Can you tell which movie our family watched over the weekend ?

I usually watch the forums on www.toysnbricks.com for news about on-sale LEGO. They're usually pretty good, and cover TRU, Walmart, LEGO store, Target, Amazon, etc, plus a lot of other stores. They also have forums for Canadian and European sales. (Unfortunately, I just checked them and their site is down right now )

Nice job. I checked out those pony parts on BrickLink -- never knew they existed. The cheapest new one on BrickLink right now is $17.49! And used ones aren't much better. Hope you were able to buy them (or their sets) a lot cheaper than that.

Nice build! And I really like the pipe -- will have to steal borrow that idea. I bought the winter and autumn leaves from Alt Bricks a month ago, and I'm really happy with them. They're well made, and really look good. The only caveat is that they are made of hard ABS and don't bend like LEGO leaves, so you have to be careful when detaching them from other bricks, as they have a tendency to bend or break if too much force is applied. If they bend, they will have a white crease mark where the bend occurred. But for $0.20 per leaf they can't be beat -- that's cheaper than the green leaves usually are on BrickLink.

Well, don't worry, there might be some LEGO wedding presents coming your way... Just let us know your address and when the big date is. By the way, what courses do you teach? I think there will be some sales after Xmas. LOTR is an obvious candidate, and we're starting to see some scattered LOTR sales -- I picked up Helm's Deep at 40% off on yoyo.com a month ago or so, and Uruk-Hai Army is getting close to a good price. My guess is that some retailers won't have room for both LOTR and Hobbit on their shelves, and will look to move LOTR more quickly. I'm hoping that Monster Fighters goes on sale too -- I'd love a Vampyre Castle and/or Haunted House, but don't want to pay anything close to full price for them.

Oh yeah, this works. Very nice job. Great colors, great outside details, nice roof, etc. Someday I'll have to do a Valyrio build. Really like the bench inside too -- nice idea with the two 1x2 plates modified with bars.

December 11th - Kaliphlin Castle GoH Advent Calendar - Dec 11th - Castle Another guest build from Kai NRG! I'm guessing it's a Kaliphlin castle because of the colors, right Kai?

This is quite nice, and I'm a bit jealous, because I've been meaning to do some round towers for ages (at least since the Watchtower challenge!), and haven't gotten around to it yet. And a really nice job with the waves (with kudos to Gabe too); I know how hard it is to get those to look right.

Brick bricks would be a great choice. Or maybe light-bluish-grey or tan 1x1 bricks with stud on the side? Can't have too many of those. I'm sure the Avalonians would choose light-bluish grey 1x1 round plates

December 10th - Mitgardian Winter Scene advent.calendar.10.mitgardian.cottage Another Mitgardian cottage in winter (I guess this is a classic scene, since we now have two builds of this type).

December 9th - Avalonian Farm advent.calendar.9.farm