NiceMarmot

Interesting ideas. I think I agree with you for the most part. You're right about the contests. I agree that there's probably only a dozen builders in GoH who have a realistic chance of winning the major challenges. I wouldn't place myself in that category, but in the second tier. I probably have the bricks, but just don't have the time and I'm not quite innovative enough. Here are some ideas: More mini-challenges are probably a good way to address problems people have with brick inventory and/or time. Improve recognition (somehow), especially of second and third place winners. Perhaps a Hall of Fame page on the wiki would help, with all the major and minor contest winners. Detailed scoring of (at least some) builds, across several criteria (design, parts usage, photography, story, etc). At least then you could compare your builds over time and see if you improved. But that's a lot of work for the guildleaders or others to rate and score all the entries. I did it when I rated challenge 3 entries, and it probably took two hours to go through all entries and rate and score them. #2 is probably the hardest to address. I think a lot of the pieces are in place to help contribute to a persistent world. The wiki helps a lot too, at least for me. I have two suggestions to improve this area, plus I like yours: Encourage everyone to develop a detailed story for their sigfig (backstory, present-day, or both), and build scenes from it. I think this is potentially a big motivator. I've got a whole long story line for my Water Crystal search sketched out, with about a dozen or more builds planned. Who knows when I'll have the time to do it all, but the idea of eventually being able to do it is definitely helping keep me around. Have a thread (or several) devoted to in-character chat / discussion / role-play. This will help build a sense of community, help people get to know each other, and provide a reason to come to EB and check out the latest discussion. [i'm building an MOC right now that will play host to this for Kaliphlin] Encourage / allow LDD (at least in free builds and some mini-challenges) Regarding improving building skills, I agree that these people are the least likely to leave, unless they don't see themselves improving. More and varied challenges, especially focused mini-challenges, would help here. Building 'workshops' or 'seminars', where the great builders of our age share their knowledge and techniques, in an interactive program that also gets the 'students' building and following along, not just reading a thread. For instance, I think Derfel Cadarn's tutorial on medieval village building is awesome in scope, detail, and technique. But I'd also like to see someone expand that into something like a four week program with progressively larger and more complex builds every week. And where the 'students' build and post every week, and everyone gives C&C. Build up repositories of building technique knowledge, such as tutorials and lists of examples. The wiki is probably a great place to do this. And there are already some great threads on specific areas, especially in the Historic Themes forum. Perhaps during some boring conference call at work this week, I will start to accumulate links and put them on the wiki.

Great job! Very experimental and creative. Some of the landscaping works better than the rest for me, but kudos for trying a bunch of stuff. The tower, however, is spot on; you really nailed it!

Yes, I figured they were liquid inspiration!

Great job, guildleaders! I think GoH got started in early November, so we've still got about six or seven weeks probably until our anniversary. Plenty of time to hit 700 topics, especially with another challenge coming up.

I think this one could be good! I like the combination of an old, mystic location and a new, temporary refugee camp. Should make for some interesting, creative combinations. The minimum build size is interesting, as it will force people to put a bit of effort in. I think 32x32 is probably small enough that no one should really have a problem meeting it.

Thanks, MK! Great photos. I've added them to the wiki page, and added a few more that I found too, including some really great ones from Yemen. So much inspiration, so little time to build.

Ninjago Brickmaster - Fight the Power of the Snakes from Dorling Kindersley (DK) Name: Fight the Power of the Snakes Set Number: 520522 (?) Pieces: 156 Minifigures: 2 Price: $29.99 US from DK ($19.79 from Amazon, $19.54 from Walmart, $14.99 at Costco); 13.29 GBP (UK) Ages: 6+ Themes: Ninjago, Brickmaster Year of Release: 2012 Links: Dorling Kindersley; BrickLink I'm usually so cheap that I don't buy sets until they're heavily on sale, at which point they've already been reviewed twenty times or so on EB. So I had given up all hope of ever doing a review, until I stumbled across this new Brickmaster book set at Costco the other day. I admit, I don't have a lot of experience with Ninjago; I'm more of a Castle guy. But we received Kai's Blade Cycle as a present, and my son likes it a lot. So in the store, my son went nuts for this set, and it didn't look too bad, so we bought it. It was a weak moment. I was trying to get away from the toys and get to the real reason to shop at Costco: buying wine. Those of you with five year old children will understand. Anyway, intense googling determined that there is no EB review for this set yet -- so here's my chance! Let's read what the marketing department at DK has to say. I'm sure they can be trusted to give an honest, even-handed opinion. Well, an exciting adventure storybook might be overselling it a wee bit. This is no Treasure Island. And unfortunately, Lord Garmadon is nowhere to be seen in this set; neither is any army. The Front: (All pictures click through to larger versions on Flickr) Alright, it's a Brickmaster. For those of you who haven't encountered these items, they're a hardbound book (sort of), with a built in box inside the front cover that holds the LEGO pieces. The book contains a few pages describing the sets and giving background, and then the rest of the book is the instructions. My experience with Brickmasters had so far been limited to seeing them forlorn in the clearance bins at discount stores like TJ Maxx, and thinking, "That's still not discounted enough!" But several friends with small children had raved about them: easy to travel with, can keep the pieces with the instructions, have multiple builds, they're quickly discounted, etc. Anyway, the front is OK. It sort of shows what you can build, although certainly not all the builds included inside. It's not totally clear what a 'Brickmaster' is, but that's easily solved by opening the book (only the pieces section is sealed). Here you can see the two minifigures included: Cole and Lasha. Plus you can see the pieces through the window in the front, although not in this photo. You didn't think that when we got home my son would let me have two minutes to take a photo before he ripped the thing open and emptied all the pieces out, did you? The Back: Here you get a pretty good overview of what's inside. It shows the four builds, which each have several things to build, so it's more like nine total possible items. We get a blurb. And we're encouraged to "Read the story, Build the model set, Play the adventure", as if any kid needed to be told what to do. But I guess that's there so Mom and Dad know that it's not just a set or book. Plus their kid actually gets to play with the sets after they build them! Imagine! Revolutionary idea! What will those people at DK think of next? Well, I thought the back is a bit blah. What is that background anyway? And there's certainly room for bigger pictures of the sets. But who cares about the back anyway? I know, you really want to get to... The Spine: Why do we include all these useless pictures? Because we care. No, actually, it's to build suspense before we get to the build and the parts. The spine isn't bad; I think it would look quite good on our bookshelves in the library in the east wing, perhaps sandwiched in between the Dostoyevskys and the Tale of Genji. But where are the snakes? We're fighting the power of the snakes, and they forget to put a snake on the spine? The Sticker Sheet Oops, there is no sticker sheet! Yay! The Inside Here's what you see when you open it up. The pieces are stored on the left, behind the parts list, in a reasonably sturdy built-in box. If you buy one of these at retail, make sure this part is sealed; the first one I saw at Costco had a broken seal. And look at the right -- more than 45 pages of stuff! Actually, most of it is instructions, but you do get about ten pages of background and introduction. This looks reasonably nice; I think they did a good job with this. I especially like the snake skin background. Read the Story! First we get a page introducing Cole and Lasha. Looks OK. Who you gonna pick in this fight? A snake guy with a missing eye? Or the highly trained ninja with armor and two swords? I'm thinking they should have included another snakey to make it a fair fight. Next there are two pages telling us why Cole isn't going to turn Lasha into diced snake on toast in about three seconds. And then we get two pages telling us all about the ninjas. I didn't know that Cole's dad wanted him to be a singer. Funny, my daughter's voice coach is an opera singer named Cole... Although really, Zane should be the singer, because then he could do one of those Disney-on-Ice shows. Well, I'll skip the rest of the book up to the instructions. There are two pages labeled the Serpentines which describes the various Serpentine tribes. Then there are two pages on ninja training regimens. It's all very nice, and pretty well done, but tell me honestly, what kid is going to read this stuff first? Naw, they're going to empty all the pieces out on the floor and then go straight to the instructions. So why not just put them first? The Instructions and Builds Each of the four builds is described in turn. I only have pictures of the second scene built (my son won't let me tear it down to build the others yet). So we'll just have to look at the pictures in the book, as well as DK's marketing pictures. The first scene is the Raid on the Snake Temple. Raid on the Snake Temple First up there is a photo of the models included in this build, and a quick description of what's going on and why we should care. This actually looks pretty good. Then the instructions for that build start. They are fairly clear, and usually only involve one to four pieces per step, which fits the suggested age range of the set. My son found the instructions clear and easy to follow, even though he is, horrors!, below the minimum age! By the way, I like the hissing snakes on the background here. The Snake Temple is actually fairly well done -- the part with the snake staff rotates around, showing just a blank wall to hide the staff. The large snake head on top folds up and out, and of course has a snake-headed flick fire missile. Cole's motorcycle is small but reasonably well designed too. Here's another picture below from DK's website. Second Scene: Serpentine Trap Here, the large snake head covers up a small cavity that can be used to hold important stuff that you want to keep away from ninjas. It's really not that cool. Cole is driving his Samurai Speeder, which is actually a bit better than this photo suggests. I managed to get a picture of this one, and DK also has a marketing picture of the trap. Third Scene: Battle in the Skies We haven't built this one, so we'll have to rely on the pictures in the book. Cole's Ninjacopter looks cool, but I fail to see how it resembles anything 'copter'-like. If those two big gold blades are the rotors, Cole's going to be cole-slaw if they rotate. And doesn't Lasha's Venom Fighter sort of remind you of the little alien scooter in 7049 Alien Striker? To me, these models look OK but not great. Fourth Scene: Snake Pit Peril Once again, Cole has a fairly nice little motorcycle. He sure likes his toys. The snake pit looks a bit uninspired, but hey, it's the fourth build! Here's a picture of the motorcycle from DK's website: Would you let your daughter date that guy? The Minifigures Lasha is pretty well designed; he has great torso and leg printing. The bags on his cheststrap hold extra snake venom. Handle with care; you don't want to get that stuff in your eyes. His face is well-done too, although it's hard to see the extra set of eyes on these snakes. Love the tongue and fangs. The cowl over the head looks good too. Cole looks pretty good too, although his printing isn't as interesting as Lasha's. But the printed armor is good, the shoulder armor is nicely done, and the headwrap with the silver emblem looks nice. From the rear, both minifigures have some obscured torso printing. Lasha's cowl has a nice shape, although I wish they had printed some snakeskin patterns on the back. Cole's shoulder armor has a holder on his back for two katanas. I like the way you can see the golden lion (?) on his torso when the katanas are removed. It's a nice touch to position that so that it lines up with the katana holder properly. Without the cowl, katana holder, and headgear, you can see the backs more easily. Lasha's is just mediocre. At least they remembered to continue the strap from the front. Cole's back is outstanding. But what is that emblem? The Parts Here are some of the more interesting parts in this set (at least to me). I can always use more long golden blades and swords and stuff. Two of the new, smaller brackets are welcome. The seven dark tan brick-bricks are a nice addition to my collection. The lime and dark green snake tail plate is rare, only appearing recently in Fangpyre Mech and Snake Battle. The dark green part is rigid ABS, the lime part is flexible and can be easily bent and snaps back to position. Hopefully the bond between the two parts is solid and won't come apart with play. And the various curved bricks are always usable. I really like the snakes. I know they're not that rare (actually the trans-purple one is, being only available in the 850445 Card Shrine). But they're so cute! I mean vicious, totally vicious. I think this is a very well-designed piece, and I'm glad to get a few more! Conclusion Well, should all run out and load up on Brickmasters? Depends on what you want I suppose. I'm pretty happy with this set -- so much so that I bought another one today from Costco for ourselves, and a few more to give to my son's friends as birthday presents. It's certainly a good set for kids: Ninjago appears to still be all the rage, the four builds keep them busy for a while, it's interesting but not too hard, and there's a bit of fun stuff in the book. Plus it travels well -- the hardback cover of the book is pretty solid, and the built in box makes it very convenient to pack up the parts and bring on trips. For AFOLs, you get two good minifigures (although there are cheaper ways to get them probably), and a pretty good selection of parts. I don't think too many AFOLs are going to be overwhelmed by the builds, although the first build is fairly nice, and who doesn't like building nice little motorcycles? The Ratings Value: 8/10 - Depends on how much you paid, I suppose. At $29.99 from DK, it's a 6, maybe. At $20 from Amazon, it's a 7, as the price-per-piece ratio is $0.128. But if you can pick it up for $15, which seems to be fairly easy, you're looking at just under ten cents per piece, which isn't bad at all in a small set. Especially when you consider that you're getting instructions for four builds, a nice hard-bound box, plus some extra content in the book. At $15, it's probably a 9. Design: 8 - A few of the builds are nicely designed, but some of them really look like filler. Hey, but you try designing four complete models from the same small set of parts. It couldn't have been an easy job. None of them are complex, but then again, that's not this set's target audience. Playability: 8 - Flick-fire missiles, a hidden space or two, zoomable motorcycles, snakes that fold out. Not bad for a small set like this, but nothing that really stands out. That said, my five year old seems well occupied with it. Parts: 8 - A few rare pieces, and a good assortment of somewhat uncommon pieces. Very few pieces that won't be usable for other MOCs. Minifigures: 9 - At last! We broke the string of 8s! I think these are good minifigures. TLG has really upped their game in this department in the past few years, and these are no exception. Overall: 8 - If the price is right, and you like the parts and/or minifigs, go for it! Thanks for reading! Wow, this reviewing stuff is hard work, and takes forever. I'm going back to building!

Wow, over-saturated and over-stimulating! Really like the detailing on the castle, esp what you did with the arched doorway.

Was googling around today for inspiration on a few builds I'm considering, looking for good examples of vernacular (i.e. everyday, non-monumental) Islamic architecture. Didn't find much, but it occurred to me to put what I did find into a page on the wiki so that everyone could benefit too. (I put in a few interesting examples non-vernacular architecture too.) Take a look, and feel free to add to it also. BTW, I think I've found some inspiration for the mountain city of Qarkyr. Check out these photos of Constantine, Algeria.

I'll post another one next week that is more land based. This one is sea-based. 1 x Hammerhead Shark (5 pts) 1 x Pelican (3 pts) 1 x Turtle (3 pts - it better be a big sea turtle for 3 points!) 1 x Seagull (1 pt) 1 x Starfish (1 pt) 1 x Lobster (1 pt)

12,000? Holy Megabloks! Jeez, I thought I had a reasonably good sized LEGO collection, but that blows it away. I just checked -- I have 170 white 1x2s, and 1902 total 1x2s. I'm guessing you must have really loaded up at the PAB wall or done some major LUGBulk orders... BTW, what (if anything) does everyone use for tracking your inventory? I put my sets into brickset.com, and then export them to basebrick.com, where I also upload my BrickLink orders and PAB cup hauls. So I have a full set and parts inventory on BaseBrick. It's a bit anal, but I find it very handy when I go to the PAB wall and I'm wondering if I really need a part they have there. Plus BaseBrick will tell you what pieces you're missing from an LDD design. And then I can export to Rebrickable, and it will tell me what sets I can build.

Well, I think some of them will be back. Some people do have a tendency to drift in and out. I was absent for most of July and early August, and haven't had a chance to build anything really since Challenge 3. But yes, I wonder what people are up to. More importantly, is there anything we could change about GoH so that more people stick around? Looking at the Kaliphlin first post, I see 45 names listed there as guildmembers. I'm guessing that only about 14 are still posting: NiceMarmot , DaMaximus, SI-mocs, Gabe, SkaForHire, Erynlasgalen, robuko, Mikel Kalores, Kayne, Axis600, Kai NRG, Medic!!!, Sebeus I, gedren_y. Although some of those 45 never really got further than posting their sigfig. I suppose 14 isn't bad, and maybe some are lurking and not posting. Some Most people are not as chatty as you, DaMaximus! I think most of us are in the northern hemisphere, and were a bit distracted by the good weather over the past few months. Perhaps some of them will drift back in. But would more have stuck around if we'd had more mini-challenges? Fewer? More community-building like the university? Would an in-character chat topic have helped? (I still think we should do one of these, maybe by guild, plus one in a tavern in Cedrica.) Or maybe some more non-building challenges? More tutorials by our master builders? Who knows; they're all decent ideas, but we'd have to hear from some of those who have been away for a while.

I really like the round tower; I don't think I've seen that technique before -- it gives the wall a really nice texture. Great work all around.

OK, here's my first draft of the overall Historica map! Historica Map You might want to click through and check it out on Flickr. It's pretty big -- about 2000x1600 px. By the scale used on my Kaliphlin maps, the continent is 730 miles north-south and 850 miles east west. Total land area is about 300,000 square miles (777 sq km). That's bigger than Texas or France; about the size of Turkey. I've got to do a better job of integrating the Mitgardia map and making it look like the rest of the map. Mitgardia so far was the easiest to integrate -- I just put it in and slightly adjusted the size and that's it. For Avalonia and Nocturnus, I pretty much had to retrace their maps.

I agree. The good weather here is killing my building. All summer I've barely built anything. Although, last night I did help my son build a Ninjago Brickmaster set that we picked up at Costco the other day. Now that the days are getting shorter, he and I are not playing outside quite so late, and LEGO is becoming an option again.

No, I don't think there is one. The closest thing to that is the first picture in this post, shown below, but it's way out of date. I've been meaning to take my latest Kaliphlin map and expand it to cover all of Historica, but haven't gotten around to it. If I get stuck in some long, boring conference calls this week, I'll do it. I'm currently in the middle of updating the detailed Kaliphlin maps, so I'm in mapmaking mode anyway.

Got you covered! I remembered your claim on that island from an earlier post... Never was sure whether the Mad Monks still live there or whether they relocated somewhere. I'll let Rasputin figure that one out. Thanks! They are a good thing to work on when I'm away from the LEGO collection!

I don't think anyone has claimed that yet. I'll put it on the map for you. You're a fairly prolific builder, so I expect there will be a good Adskhan MOC coming soon! Here's a revision of the overall map btw. Not much has changed, just a few more labels, and I'm trying to find a more readable font for the town names. Map of Kaliphlin

Here are two of the updated detailed maps. I've got the rest done, just need to change some fonts and upload them. Then I'll update the wiki links and whatever else to link up to these on Flickr. Map of Southeast Siccus Badlands Map of Northeast Siccus Badlands Feedback welcomed of course, and if you want to get a site labeled or something, let me know.

I had a long, boring conference call yesterday, so I put the phone on speaker, and did some major work on the wiki, mostly related to links to uncreated pages, and filling out stubs for all the geographical locations. Started to put links to some MOCs in there too. I've got another long call tomorrow, likely to be equally as boring, and I was thinking about firing up GIMP and bringing the Kaliphlin maps up to date. I'll dig up DaMaximus' revisions from a while back (hopefully I can find them...) and apply those. If anyone can think of any geographic locations that you've named, or would like to have on the maps, please let me know. That will save me a lot of time digging through threads to see where someone introduced themselves and named their town. I've got Cobalt Vale and Starbowl on the list to add. And Kai NRG -- I see where you want to locate, but don't think you gave your town a name. New folks -- there are a couple of unnamed towns/cities in good locations on the detailed maps on the wiki, if anyone would like to grab one. You all do know about the wiki right? Now if I could just bring the LEGO collection into the office, I could be building while on these conference calls...

Ah, yes, Heartlake Tower! I stayed there for a while in my younger, wilder, and more single days. Back then it was also known as Castle Anthrax. I remember particularly enjoying the company of an Amazonian there by the name of Zoot; just Zoot. I told her I was known as Sir Gex the Dallying. If only damn Lord Flagg hadn't come along and 'rescued' me so early, going on and on about some great peril and a chalice or whatnot... Really love the heart-shape and CAT-apult. Very nicely done!

I think tan or dark tan with red looks better than the bleys with red. Then the light bley looks better than the dark bley. Medium-blue with red isn't bad, but might be a bit too wild and colorful. I think dark red and tan or dark-tan looks even better. But then your MOCs would probably look too much like Kaliphlin. Care to switch guilds?

Maybe a magical flush toilet or two, but only in the College of Wizardry. Unfortunately, they are ancient, and the magic in them has not been well maintained or recently tuned, so use them at your own peril!

My guess would be a range from Islamic Golden Age (starting in the 8th century I think) through Medieval and Renaissance. It would totally make sense that parts of the university were built at different times and in different styles. But probably not much before then (except maybe some re-purposed ancient ruins) and none after.

Well, we can certainly have more than one room of a particular type. Such as multiple libraries, because, of course, the university is made up of a bunch of different colleges, and each should probably have its own dorms, libraries, refectory, etc. Oops, I misread your question! I'd suggest if you create multiple rooms in the same building, or ones that are closely related to each other, put them in the same thread. Otherwise in separate threads. And we ought to have one master University thread for general uni building discussion. The first post in it should be an index with, for each individual university MOC thread, a name/description, name of builder, link to the specific thread, and one reasonably sized photo. Perhaps the second post in it can be a list of build ideas, and we'll cross them off as people complete them (although that part might be best done on the wiki so everyone can edit it).