NiceMarmot

Wow! That's just awesome! Really good story; very funny. I get the feeling they bickered all the way home. Your temple is epic; it turned out really nicely. And that's a great job on the guardian creature.

Very well done! So many great things to point out: the no-parking mosaic, the great flower petals and leaves, the rock and waterfall landscaping, the round base... I'm a big fan of that technique you used for the leaves and petals; I think it looks really nice. There are some elements in my challenge entry using a similar technique... If you win, you're going to make us all look like total fools for the long quests we've been on all over Historica, while you just settle down for a nice nap in downtown Petraea!

Not sure if any other guildmembers are in Northern California, but thought I'd alert you all anyway, as these pieces might be in PAB cup bins in other stores as well. I went to the Santa Clara LEGO store on Friday, and loaded up on these awesome, very Kaliphlin-esque swordleaf pieces: They're about $0.50 each on BrickLink in quantity; I was able to pack about 80 into a large PAB cup, and still have lots of room left over for other stuff. The other stuff included trans-puple 1x1 cones, trans-medium-blue 2x2 round bricks, 1x4x3 window frames and panes, and 1x4x6 doors and frames. Cool stuff, but the swordleaves was what really got me excited. Perfect for Kaliphlin MOCs! I heard that the San Mateo/Hillsdale store has them too, so I might have to visit to see what else they have, and get some more swordleaves. I've probably got about 100 now, and I'm worried that may not be enough for some future epic MOC... BTW, Abū Alī, I love that mosaic! I haven't read the thread yet; I'll go read it now.

Very nicely done (and good chairs too)! Looks like the Drow missed a real opportunity there to take out most of the Avalonian leadership at one time!

Trade ya some for LBG and DBG 1x1 rounds! Seriously, we've had a lot of trans blue and trans light blue 1x1 rounds in the PAB walls in California this year. I didn't see any last time I went (Friday!) but I'll keep an eye out for some if you want and fill up a cup for ya. Not sure what the shipping cost is to UK, but it's got to be less than buying a ton of them on BrickLink.

Really nice work here! Classic Avalonian design! I especially like the window treatments and the rake of the roof. The curved pieces halfway down the rake are a bit different, but don't bother me too much. I agree that some landscaping would be nice, but that can be added later, perhaps when you develop a nice scene or vignette that takes place at the barracks. I agree with MikeyB that the chimney inside the house is a bit unusual. I think in medieval times it was more likely to put the body of the chimney outside the walls, so that a chimney fire would have less chance of burning down the whole house, but I could wrong.

Well, it would be kinda cool... Now I know what to get when I win the lottery. $6000 worth of minifigs! Plus 16 baseplates to hold them -- that's another $100 or so. Plus hiring someone else to position them all. Plus a stop motion video team to create full battle scenes...

Nice story and MOCs. I also really like the guy climbing out of the hole. Good job with the landscaping and those mushrooms. If you have some smaller green, brown, and tan plates (1x2, 1x3, 1x4, 2x2), you might want to put them on the ground/grass to give it more texture. You might want to put some returns in after your story paragraphs and after the image links -- the story and photos kinda all run together when displaying on my computer, and it makes it hard to read.

Yes, I agree with Abu Ali. When writing the history or story of an event, put whatever number you think is appropriate for the story and somewhat realistic given the size of the guild, town, province, whatever is doing the fighting. When creating an MOC, I think a minifig is a single person. I don't think anyone will be creating MOCs with thousands of minifigs in them anyway.

Mikel Kalores -- that's a fantastic guardian. I think I'll have to up my game a bit... Anyway, here's a WIP photo of my entry. Not much so far, but at least I'm finally building. I've also got a bit of the main guardian done, as well as some of the doorway that the steps lead up to. The big white thing is a pillar of ice and snow with the crystal inside it. Not totally happy with it, it's fairly simple, but at least it's something. Not sure how to make it more realistic and cooler without spending tons of time on it. Pretty happy with the floor and steps, although wish I had some color consistency on the steps. Still have to: finish the guardian, finish the doorway, extend the floor under the pillar, build at least some of the surrounding walls, greeble the walls somehow so they're not flat and boring, put a frame around it, etc. I'll be away this weekend, so no LEGO, but will hopefully have enough time to finish it by Saturday. The story is sketched out in full and mostly written. Any feedback, improvement ideas, etc?

I'm not totally sure of what the context of this question is, so it's hard to answer. Why are you putting the number of soldiers in the wiki? Just when making up a history or something? Remember that Historica is actually quite small. I think we determined that, based on our existing maps, all of Historica is about the size of Texas or France. Given that population density was a lot lower in medieval times, and there were no standing armies, having several thousand soliders per guild might not be totally inaccurate. Wikipedia states that the 14th century peak for France was about 17 million, and that after the Black Death it was 1/3 less, or about 11 million. And France would have had a greater population than Historica, as it's climate and geography is pretty much universally benign, whereas density would be lower in Kaliphlin, Mitgardia, and Nocturnus due to inhospitable conditions in much of those areas. Another data point: the English had about 6000-9000 men at Agincourt; the French had 12,000-25,000. I'm not sure the number of minifigs we have relates at all to the number of men-at-arms that the Guild can muster. For one, my minifigs (about 200) only represent a portion of the warriors I can call up Some of us, particularly those whose characters are traders or have other non-warrior backstories, probably can't muster many at all. And who says that the current set of guild members represent the total guild? There are probably hundreds of other prominent guild members out there for each guild. They just haven't come forward yet

Welcome! Looking forward to some musically themed MOCs from you, perhaps? Looks like you photo is no longer active on PhotoBucket however.

Cara, thanks so much for posting this! I live between those two stores, and went in early April to both and they had pretty much the same old stuff. Will definitely have to make a trip to these stores to load up on palm fronds and others!

Fun! I rescued a bunch of my old sets from my parents' basement a few weeks ago when I was visiting them. Included some of the original Space sets like 483 Alpha-1 Rocket Base and 487 Space Cruiser. Plus some early Town stuff I haven't identified, and a few Technic sets, like 960 Technic Motor, and 954 Sky Copter (I think). Unfortunately I didn't find any instructions. After cleaning them, I was amazed at how most of the pieces are in fine condition. Most of the old wheels (3482) were cracked, and a bunch of small gears (3647) were broken, but other than that, most of it was in great shape.

Welcome back! Glad you might be able to produce something for challenge 3. Looks like Gabe might be able to also. I hear you about AT&T - we have them and they're (usually) a total pain. I've found if you can get past the automated phone systems, the first & second tier people in India or wherever, and get to the US-based staff who have been around for a while, it's a totally different company. Those older, more experienced CSRs and technicians really know their stuff and are very helpful. It's just they keep them away from the customers by insulating them behind thousands of clueless idiots. I know a lot of people who have gone with Sonic.net instead and been very happy. I will hopefully be putting bricks together later tonight for the first time for challenge 3! Nothing like waiting until the last moment...

You, sir, have some serious skills. TLG should not only make this theme, they should also hire you as a minifig designer!

Wow, that guardian is just amazing. Love it all - the sword on the back, the shield, the greebling, etc. Really nice job.

I think you should make it a book, and make the MOCs the illustrations. Seriously.

Really great, as always! I was just thinking the other day: "Sirens of Titan is about due for another episode of Return of the Mage. Wonder when he'll post it?"

My answer: Yes, but. When 9 of 12 top projects are license-related (as they were right before the Rifter qualified), it's pretty clear that Cuusoo is dominated by license fandom. But that may not be a problem in TLG's perspective, and it's probably fixable. Primarily by separating licensed and non-licensed projects, and setting clear guidelines about what's acceptable. I think TLG has several goals for Cuusoo: Identify great MOCs that could be made into successful projects Gather feedback from AFOLs on what kinds of models they like, as well as some market research data from them Experiment with producing models that require minimal marketing, as they have a built-in fanbase Find potential new licenses, especially ones that are not mainstream movie-based, or not huge in popular culture Cuusoo still does a pretty good job with the first two goals, although those are in danger if AFOLs get bored with it and leave because it's swamped by fanboys. It does a pretty good job with the last item too. I'm sure that SotD, Minecraft, and EVE Online weren't at the top of TLG Marketing Dept's list of potential licenses before Cuusoo. So it probably helps them to know that there is a reasonably sizable rabid fanbase for those properties. Whether that translates into a product is a different story -- the license has to be negotiated, a theme planned (one set or multiple?), etc. But if the license cost is reasonable, and negotiations with the licensor don't take too much time and put too much strain on TLG's Licensing dept, I don't see why some of these models won't be produced. From my analysis of TLG's finances, actual production, packaging, and distribution costs are fairly low. R&D is low also; not sure if this includes developing sets. Looks like a lot of the cost is in marketing. So if TLG can produce a Cuusoo model and put minimal money into marketing it, they can still turn a decent profit at much lower sales volumes. I think that's what they're experimenting with here -- can we sell enough of these to make a profit with minimal marketing? As a private company, they may not be so concerned about margin and EPS and such. An extra dollar (or DKK) in profit is an extra dollar, regardless of whether the margin on that extra sale wasn't as good as the margin on SW or HP, as long as it doesn't tie up too much working capital. Regarding marketing Cuusoo projects, all you people who voted for Minecraft can expect to get a bunch of emails from TLG pushing you to buy it. EDIT -- By the way, Modular Western Town is adding about 150-200 supporters per day, so it's definitely not stagnant. At that rate, it will hit 10,000 in about 2-3 weeks!

Good story. Glad to see a Labyrinth MOC too, especially since it's a major feature of Historica! And really nice archways!

J4ke / Yakob! Great to hear from you! It has been a while. Glad to hear that you were busy on something LEGO-related; should I search for some recent MOCs from you in the SciFi forum? Welcome back to Kaliphlin! Great ostrich cavalry! My first reaction was: "Why is Bender from Futurama riding an ostrich?" Anturio -- there are lots of good examples of cliffs and rocks in the Historica MOCs already; just browse around. One MOC that stands out in my mind with good cliffs is Hinckley's castle for ComicCon.

Heard on the news today that Nintendo just reported their first operating loss ever. Apparently the iPad is killing the DS in the casual gaming market. So they might be a little more willing to listen to an interesting licensing proposal from TLG...

From the survey, it seems like they're really interested in somehow better leveraging AFOL communities and social media. I wonder if they're thinking about improving their message-boards and/or setting up some sort of LEGO-related social network. Personally, I find the forums at messageboards.lego.com to be really lame, but I haven't really browsed around much. Or perhaps they're just trying to figure out how to better leverage the existing communities (EB, FBTB, Flickr, MOCpages, etc). Or some community relations person is trying to justify their job and budget by demonstrating how much we all influence others to buy LEGO.

You might be onto something there; the Friends thing might have made TLG a bit more controversy-shy than normal. I think their stated reason is accurate, although it might not have been the whole story. It's probably a combination of concerns about the theme, lack of follow-on models (why pay for a license for only one set?), SotD folks wanting too much $$ for a license, the size of the set, etc. If they went forward with it, they'd probably only sell it in LEGO stores, S@H, and maybe Amazon; certainly not in TRU/Walmart/Target. So add in some concerns about how to effectively sell it. I'm not surprised by the decision, and certainly not upset with it. I hope that Yatkuu (or someone) creates an LDD version of it and publicizes the instructions so we can all bricklink it. I do see big problem with CUUSOO however, in that the overwhelming majority of the projects with heavy support are based on licenses. Of course, licensed products have a built-in fanbase and channels to get the word out easily, so it's a lot easier to pile up supporters for them. I don't think TLG really wanted to use CUUSOO to get a bunch of recommendations for new licenses. They could have just conducted some surveys to do that, and not risk ticking off 10,000 supporters per rejected project. I wouldn't be surprised to see them split CUUSOO projects into two groups (licensed and non-licensed), and raise the bar for licensed projects to something like 20,000. Especially if My Little Pony hits 10,000.