NiceMarmot

Or perhaps "Travis' Corner Cafe"?

Well, being a millionaire in Palo Alto doesn't get you much. I live here, walking distance from SAP actually, where this guy worked. Around here, a run-down 3-bedroom 1950s ranch house will cost you about $1.6 million. A 4-bedroom is typically over $2 million. After paying his mortgage, he probably didn't have any money left over for LEGO! Although if he's been at SAP since 1988, he's probably done OK for himself. BTW, that Target store that he stole from in Mountain View has the absolute worst selection of LEGO I've ever seen. If you're going to steal LEGO, at least go somewhere that has a decent selection! From the article in our local paper: "Among the items found in Langenbach's home were: 46 boxes of special edition Magma Monster LEGO sets, 16 Sunblock LEGOs and 75 packages of LEGO Mini Figures. Wylie said it isn't yet known if the items were purchased using fraudulent barcodes or at legitimate prices." 46 boxes of Magma Monster? Seriously? With all the new Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel and DC sets, he steals Magma Monster?

Thanks for the nice little review! This was available at Target stores in the US last year. I don't know if it was also available at Walmart, but I never saw it there. It was on a rack in the checkout line. I think it was $3.99 originally, but went on clearance (in the fall, or after Christmas 2011; I can't remember). I drove around to three Target stores and scooped up about 20 of them for $0.49 each. Talk about a great deal! That may have been my best LEGO find ever!

Thanks for the review! I had heard somewhere (can't remember where now) that the fancy printing is done in China because that's the only place TLG has the newer printing equipment that can do it. But they are planning on purchasing more of that machinery and installing it in other plants. Anyway, we bought this today, and my five year old son loves it! He picked it out (his first choice was the Batcave actually, but I didn't want to drop that much $$). It doesn't have a ton of play features, but he's having a good time lining up the Uruk-Hai and nailing them with the catapult and the ballista. Then he rides them down with Eomer, hacking and slashing. The ballista is pretty nice; it fires well (although not with a true ballista action) and looks good. The wall section is probably just OK. I mean, it's a section of wall; how much could TLG really do with it? It looks fairly good; the sand-green bricks and the masonry bricks break up the wall fairly well. I think the crenellations are one brick too short to be really protective, but this way you can see the minifigs better I suppose. I would have preferred a thicker wall, but that would have raised the price. Placing a 1x2x2 panel sideways to create a small, narrow arrow slit is a nice technique (although I prefer SNOTting cheese slopes for this effect). I think TLG is going to sell a ton of these to the AFOL community. The Uruk-Hai minifigs are really great, and Eomer and the Rohirrim have great printing too. Six minifigs would be worth $15-$18 in a battlepack alone. Then you're getting about 225 more pieces for the remaining $15, which isn't bad at all. Some of those bricks are fairly ordinary (LBG 1x2 bricks, which are always useful), but there's a fair amount of sand-green and the new brick-bricks, some dark-green cheese slopes, a horse, plus five new 1x2-1x2 brackets. I'm guessing that plenty of people will buy one or two of these and keep all the pieces, and then buy a bunch more, keep the minifigs, and sell the remaining parts on BrickLink. I can't wait to see someone post a MOD of like 20 of these sets and a Helms Deep or two, with the walls greatly extended and 80 Uruk-Hai assaulting the fortress. Did I mention how awesome the minfigs are in this set?

Not at all. I'm sure you've been attending to extremely important guild business in the middle of the desert somewhere! Perhaps you've been hanging out in Lost Vegga?

I think you should re-read my post. What I was trying to say was: People are reacting to the style and tone of your original post more than the content; the tone is OK with me because I am used to it and know to filter it out; but you might want to soften the tone a bit before someone else with real powers gets offended by it and takes action. I'm not trying to get you banned; on the contrary, I'm cautioning you so you don't get banned. If you don't want to take the advice, that's fine, I'm just some random Kaliphlin sand-rat...

Good thinking! I ran downstairs and tried it out. That 1x2x2 panel does work. The top part rests right on the stud, but it does not appear to be stressed or elevated at all. Of course, the real solution is for TLG to get off their butts and make a Travis brick with only two studs that are next to each on a corner!

Great windows! That's just brilliant! Nice little vignette.

Yes, congrats! It's very nice. I really like the black falcon emblem. These tag things are a bit mysterious; they seem to come and go at the whims of the moderators I suppose. I guess this one is given for his excellent GoH MOCs, but why Black Falcon as opposed to Lion, Dragon, etc.? And I have no idea how I got the Lion shield on mine, but it's been there for a while (and I'm certainly not complaining about it!). I used to have an artist's palette on mine in the fall and winter, probably because of my mapmaking, but it disappeared about a month ago. Maybe someone was trying to tell me to start making more maps! Robuko, what's yours for?

Well, there's certainly no prohibition on depicting a famous battle scene of the past! That ought to satisfy the bloodthirsty MOCers out there in the short term at least, until the High King can arrange a proper war.

Constellation Encyclopedia - because I knew about sets 10021 (and 398) USS Constellation, from growing up outside of Baltimore where the real ship is now. I probably did sound like a know-it-all. Big Cam looks like the obvious culprit on my visitors list.

No, I didn't. I think when it came out in '78, I was all into Space, and could have cared less about this kind of set!

Really nice work! Glad to see your 1x2 plate technique combined with some classic medieval building styles. This almost looks more like a half-ruined Avalonian building than something in Nocturnus. Really nice roof technique on the stable. And nice rake on the black roofs; so simple, yet looks so good! Perhaps you could add a closeup of that? Not sure how this is "cheating" since it's not for a contest or competition (except maybe the free-builds). As long as Taz calls out what he's done, I'm fine with it. Some people will dislike it and think it cheapens the build, others will go buy the custom piece, and most will just shrug. And as long as the free-build competition didn't exclude custom / non-TLG parts, I think it's OK. Even if it did exclude them, so what? Taz has still made a great MOC, and I'm sure he won't care if it's not considered in the free-build competition. But then again, we're all just reacting to the tone of Beery's original post. If he had said "Great MOC, but too bad in my opinion that you used custom parts, because I'd prefer to see LEGO parts. Realize that you (Taz) and others may not have the same concerns, but I'm a purist. Maybe we could see more pics of the MOC in addition to the minifigs, to balance it out?", then no one would have cared. But I don't think that's Beery's style. And that's OK with me (within reason), because I know that, and filter out the tone when reading his posts. But others are more rankled by it, and I'd hate to see the mod-gods come down on him because of it. In any case, I would like some more pictures of the entire build or large sections of it, in addition to the vignettes focused on the figs. EDIT: Oooh! 500th post! I'm now a Knight! Will have to go check out what new superpowers this grants me!

Thanks for the great review. I think I will definitely pick one or two up, especially if they go on sale for just a little bit. You have a top view of the completed set; perhaps you could add a photo of the completed set from the front? We can sort of see it in the box cover, but there's a lot of other stuff going on in that pic. And if you could link in a picture of Helms Deep from the movie right below it (or side to side) for comparison, that would be totally awesome. (Am I asking too much? ) The cost of the plastic and manufacturing is actually very low, about 10-15% of the retail price. So it's a factor, definitely. I think that brick building those panels was probably more of an issue for packaging and shipping. The box is apparently pretty full already, so brick building those would make it fuller (or bigger), and more weight == higher shipping costs. Plus more pieces either means a higher price (which they probably wanted to avoid) if you keep the price per brick constant, or a lower price per brick (if you keep the total price constant). They probably wanted to avoid making the price per brick too low, since TLG seems to like to keep it in a fairly tight band.

It's a re-release of set 398, which was released in 1978, as party of the Hobby line. The Constellation was a 1797 frigate for the US Navy. I think it was one of the first official US Navy warships and had quite a distinguished career. It was scrapped in the 1850s and a new Constellation was built. That ship is still afloat in Baltimore harbor, and is now a museum. When I was a kid in the area, we took several field trips down to see it; it's pretty cool. One of my friends worked on a major rebuild/remodel of it in the 1990s; it's still in pretty good shape.

For $19.99, I think this set is a bargain! And I never, ever buy sets at full price. 227 pieces and 3 minifigures? There are some decent parts in there too. When this hits Amazon, I'm all over it.

I didn't intend it to look like the sock monkey, but it does look like it to me too! The ice bridge actually isn't getting bigger as the pics go along (until the pic where it's finished). But that's a great idea, and I will do that when I reshoot some of these photos. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with him, even if he isn't as scary as some of the other guardians out there (lisqr, jareth, rogueang). He's just a big, dumb, happy sand golem! And I will call him George Glad you liked the story. I feel like I put almost as much time into the story as I did into the build. Still not finished with either; will make some improvements to both after the voting is done. Regarding the magical items, the back-story is that they consult a wise old river spirit, who tells them they must truly understand water, its phases, and its uses to be able to defeat the guardian and retrieve the crystal. He sends them all over Siccus to various places to learn about water, and to retrieve these water-related magical artifacts. When I cut and pasted the story in, I didn't do such a great job on explaining the back-story. The Cup of Opherphlough disgorges tons of water and allows the user to control it somewhat, the IceBlade produces ice, the Bellows produces steam, etc. Thanks! Coming from the master of storytelling himself, I appreciate the compliment about the story. I agree on the highlights too. I'm going to revise the walls and the central ice column after the voting. Any suggestions?

Yeah, I wouldn't have voted for myself either. I'd give myself a few points for a hopefully decent story, and an OK guardian. But clearly my building and design wasn't at the high level of Cara, Taz, and some of the others. I think Cara has this one in the bag. I'm just amazed at all the high quality builds. I think that at least a dozen or so are totally top-notch. Determining who to vote for was so tough, once I got down to the top fifteen, I couldn't figure out whom to cut. I had to create a spreadsheet and rate them all on a bunch of criteria.

I'm spreading the wealth around: 11) Cara = 1 pt 31) Rogueang = 1 pt 33) Tazmaniac = 1 pt 19) Angeli = 1 pt 4) Erynlasgalen = 1 pt This was very hard voting. Honorable Mentions to Gabe, lisqr, Jareth, Ecclesiastes, Basilicus, ZC, and a bunch of others.

Great storytelling as always! So funny. And great builds too. I agree we need a whole fleet of piscithopters.

Brilliant idea making the island the guardian! Nice builds all around. Definitely like the forced perspective, great little sailboat! The island and the cavern are fantastic too. Your last lighting test looks really neat too. Great work, gabe. I know you didn't have a lot of time for this one, but I think you did very well.

Not sure I have much to add to this conversation, except that this is just beautiful! Great work all around.

Similar story here. My 5 year old son and I had a four-hour-each-way car trip last weekend, and my car's CD player is broken. We play a lot of audio books in the car for him on trips. Well no CD player == no audio book, but he wanted a story anyway. So I started to tell him my challenge 3 story. He loved it so much and demanded more (ugh, the trip wasn't even half over yet), that I started creating the story from scratch from the time Gex finds out about the challenge/quest and forms the team, slowly starting to go through a series of adventures which will eventually lead up to my challenge entry. Now every time we get in the car, he wants me to continue the story. At this rate, I'll have a full book or two by the time we're done... At least I've got subject material for another eight or so MOCs so far!

I'll make it easy for you -- just give all five points to me! BTW, it will be interesting to see if anyone is gutsy enough to vote for themselves!

Wow! That's totally amazing. So Nocturnus! I am trying not to over-comment and bump all the challenge threads, but I just had to throw in my thought about how cool this MOC is. All the lava floor and waterfall is great, but the pillar and the lava worm are amazing. BTW, what are those black technic/bionicle parts that you used to make the worm and the top of the pillar? I think you just cost me a bundle on BrickLink there... I also really like all the different doorways leading to the pit -- very creative. I wish the story was a bit more detailed, but the builds more than make up for it!