NiceMarmot

OMG! Absolutely amazing! There's a lot of great stuff on EB, but sometimes you see MOCs, like these, that just blow you away. Note to self: buy a lot more tan bricks. A helluva lot more...

I'm at approximately step 11. Good to know where I'm headed. For reference, have about 17,500 pieces, as close as I can tell. Sorted exclusively by type. Never sorted by color, but I can see sorting by color and size working, perhaps better than by type.

Very cool! Great details and a very cool look. I'm going to have to get some of those trans-blue curved panels; they look great. Plus you've given me some good ideas about what to do with all those trans-orange cheese slices I used to fill out a PAB cup a while back...

Very cool idea. I might have to steal it and do something like this. I am (slowly) building two castle armies, as well as a bunch of Vikings, but I don't think I can build more than one castle right now, so I'd need a lair/base/camp for the opposing army. This would fit the bill very nicely.

Would TLG really do another theme with JR? Seems like they would do a new adventurers theme with all different characters, so that customers would want to buy the sets to get the new minifigs. And I really like the idea of a SE-Asia / Indian jungle theme. Polar would be cool too, but doesn't seem to offer as many opportunities.

Wow, great MOC! I also think the black background looks better for this one than the white. And I like the soft, faint reflection below. Good idea ditching the sign; I'll have to do that on mine. Have you thought about using a tooth piece for the lower, forward pointing part of the steering vane, with a 1x2 tile attached over it (on the outside), pointing up? When I take a really close look at the photos on Wookieepedia, it appears that there are two separate pieces per side (so four total steering vanes).

Looks like a really fun party. I'll be heading over soon after work! Just hope I don't get whacked with a fish.

Bought four 3843 Ramses Pyramid games on sale at Walmart for $10 each. Got them for castle/adventure MOC parts - lots of tan and dark tan bricks, black thin tiles, and one tan baseplate each! Those baseplates alone are going for $8-10 each on BrickLink. Pirate Code game was also on sale for $10, but I've already got two of those (that's the set to buy if you want gems -- 72 of them).

Well, IMHO, any LEGO sets at full retail are too expensive, but that's just because I'm cheap Very interesting to see the licensed set markup in Europe is so much more than in the US. I knew Europeans paid more in general, but didn't realize the licensed set markup was so much higher. Clearly part of the price is to pay Disney the licensing fee. TLG may have had to pay different licensing fees for different parts of the world; that wouldn't be too unusual, although I doubt it really accounts for all of the difference. My guess is that retail competition is keener in the US, and that's holding down the prices. TLG is not a charity; they must model the overall expected profit at multiple price points and choose the best scenario for themselves. I suspect that the average retailer's markup in the US is lower than that in Europe, thus they can set a lower MSRP. Been a while since I lived in Europe, but back in the late 90s it was clear that retailing competition was much lower than in the US, and sales and discounts far fewer and more controlled by the government. So TLG may actually be getting the same revenue from the retailers (or wholesalers) in Europe and US, but the difference is in the markup.

Wow! 8000? What are you going to do with all those? Build a Hell MOC?

Sweet! Was the build a fig station right next to the PAB wall? Or were they actually in the PAB wall? And nice haul in general, especially the palisades and corner bricks. Envious of you being able to walk there over lunch. And, unbornchikken: I hadn't thought of the gas costs. I'm about 13-15 miles from two stores, and get about 21 mpg, so that's close to 1.5 gallons per trip, or about $6.45 in gas alone, not to mention wear and tear on the car. So $6.45 pays for a fair amount of shipping, and if the BL seller is out-of-state, you'll save about $1.00 per cup in tax. But then again, the gas cost is fixed no matter how much you buy (unless you're filling up more than one car!). And if you happen to be in the area anyway, like I often am, it's a sunk cost.

Not my primary source, but definitely a good source. Since you never know what they're going to have, you can't count on it. So if I'm doing a build, I'll buy off BL mostly, since it's a sure thing. Otherwise I'd go to the LEGO store and they don't have anything that helps my build, so no PAB purchase. So my PAB purchases tend to be opportunistic -- I'm in that mall anyway, drop by the store, and cool, 1x8 blue tiles in the PAB wall, I need those for water MOCs! Sometimes there's not enough interesting stuff to make filling up a cup worthwhile. I don't want to fill up half the cup with junk I'm never going to use, or with stuff that I can get cheaper on BL. And some of the stuff (e.g. wheels) takes up too much room in the cup to make it worthwhile. However, they usually always have 2x4s, 1x4s, and 1x2s in a few decent colors (such as tan, LBG, DBG, white, reddish-brown, black, etc), so you can always load up on them. You can get about 168 2x4s into the bigger cups if you pack them right (search the site, there are some threads with pics on how to do it). That's about $0.09 per piece, and you usually can't buy them off BL in quantity for less than $0.12-0.15, and you don't have to pay shipping. Plus you can usually jam another 100 or so small tiles or something around the edges, bringing the price per piece lower. So I will use PAB for some of the common bricks when I need to bulk up on them. They always seem to have foliage too, like 2x2 flowers or plant stems or the bamboo leaves, so you can load up on those too. I'm lucky enough to live near two stores, so I can drop by once a month or so and check it out. The real problem for me is that I usually have the kids with me, and then it's hard to get out of the store without buying stuff for them too.

Very jealous of all those tan tiles and the reddish brown log bricks! Took a look at the Hillsdale/San Mateo PAB wall when I was there on May (the) 4th, but didn't see anything I was interested in, except light bley 2x4s. But didn't have the time it would take to assemble those correctly to get 168 or so in the cup to make it worth while. Did notice that they had about 4 bins full of Hero Factory parts. Guess they're moving towards an assemble-your-own-hero model. Bummer they had to take up a bunch of the PAB bins for that though. Has anyone been to the Santa Clara store recently? Anything good there?

If price is of no concern, then just pick what style you want and order away on BrickLink and/or buy battlepacks. Otherwise... Dr. Steve's approach is the closest to mine; I think he's got good advice. I'm slowly building up a castle army, probably have about 50-60 or so now, and I've also built up two 15+ person pirate crews. My approach is multi-pronged: I have a few styles that I want to collect, but I'm not super-picky. If a few guys have dark grey legs instead of light grey, or a slightly different torso, no big deal. I keep an eye out for the minifigs I want on BL. Buying whole minifigs on BL is usually a bit expensive I find (>$3 each often), but sometimes you can find good deals. I buy parts on BL. For some reason, I can usually put together a whole minifig from BL parts cheaper than I can buy them whole. The helmet and shield are the things that drive the cost up. Usually you can get torso assembly, leg assembly, and head for under $2 total, sometimes significantly less. You just need to be a bit flexible about what you want -- if you're dead set on a rare head or rare printed legs, you're going to pay for them. But plain grey legs and average scowling heads are fairly cheap; usually around $0.30 for legs and $0.20 for heads. You can find castle torso assemblies for around $0.75-1.25, and helmets for $0.35. So that's maybe $1.85 so far. Swords and spears are pretty cheap. So you could be all in for around $2, sometimes less. If the army storming the castle is barbarians, you might not even need helmets for them. Collectible minifigs. Yes it's a pain to search through the bags, and they're $3 each. But usually the army-related ones are fairly easy to detect by feel. The S4 viking's shield, helmet, and axe blade are fairly easy to feel. I also happen to live within 30 mins drive of two LEGO stores, so this is a fairly viable option for me. If you go when the store is not busy, usually the staff will help you search. Battle-Packs and other sets on sale. I picked up 5 Prison Carriage Rescues for $5 each on clearance at Walmart a few weeks ago. I cleaned them out. If I had been smart I would have driven to a few more Walmarts and cleaned them out too. Each of those netted me a horse and three knights. So that's either $1.25 each or $1.67 each depending on whether you count the horse. That's my strategy. I just came out of my dark ages last November, and since then I've been able to build up to 50-60 castle figs, plus 30+ pirate guys plus probably a dozen pirate women, without spending a fortune on each one. (Overall, it's not cheap though) So I'd say you should be able to fairly easily accumulate 60-100 minifigs per year. Pretty soon, you're talking about a real army!

I hear ya! I'd love to pick up some Alamuts at 50% off. That'd be around $0.05 per piece, and there's lots of fine castle building pieces in that set. Plus it would go well with all the Pharoah's Quest sets that I haven't gotten around to buying yet . Fight for the Dagger is quite nice too. I bought one, then I bought three more on sale after Christmas. I've got them set up together as a complete rectangular arcaded marketplace; it's kinda cool. I should post some pics sometime...

(Last night actually) 3x 5982 Space Police Smash n Grab, an Atlantis Neptune Carrier, a Hero Factory Meltdown and a HF Thunder, all at 50% off on Target.com, plus 10% with a AAA discount. Thought about getting some more PoP sets at 30% off and a Fallingwater at 30% off, but they went off discount while I was hesitating over it. I'm guessing it won't be long before PoP goes on final clearance all over, and then I can pick up lots of tan bricks cheap!

NiceMarmot: A line spoken by Jeff Bridges from the (great) movie "The Big Lebowski"

Didn't really plan on getting anything, but took my 4 yro son to the San Mateo store anyway just so he could see the new sets and the Death Star they have on display. Then I noticed the large quantities of Series 4 minifigures they had there. I haven't gotten around to getting any of these yet. It being a slow day at the store, the clerks helped me feel up the bags to get what we wanted (100% success rate btw). So 10 minifigures and a few SW magnets later (good kids' friends' birthday presents), we've hit the $75 threshold and gotten our ARF trooper, poster, ice tray, etc. Amazing how you can walk into the LEGO store not planning on buying anything and drop $80 in no time... BTW, looks like San Mateo had plenty of ARF troopers, as well as Tantive IV and the other SW on sale items. Guess they're probably back to full price now.

The big sale on PoP was back in January I think, or fairly soon after Christmas. I bought one Battle of Alamut, three Quest for Time, and four Fight for the Daggers at 50% off. Actually I don't think the Alamut one was 50% off, more like 40%. Ostrich race and the battle pack were on sale also. I haven't seen any PoP sets in the stores for a while. BTW, my local Walmart (NorCal) did have a bunch of games on sale this weekend, including Pirate Code for $10, and Magma Monster for $8. They also had Magikus and Monster 4 on sale, don't remember the price.

I agree it's too pricey. Brickset says 125 pieces, so the US price of $20 looks like way too much, especially since Isla de la Muerta has 152 for the same price. Seems like the design is just OK, and playability is fairly low. The real draw is the minifigs. Great look, double sided printing, really nicely done. I'd suggest that no one buy this set, so that it goes on clearance, and we can all then pick it up for $10.

BTW, Brickset says that it has 279 pieces. It's $29.99 here in the US, unless you're at TRU, in which case it's $32.99. Another set that I wasn't interested in from the initial pictures, but now I'm rethinking. Looks like a good design, decent playability, and lots of great parts. I'm not overwhelmed with the cannibal minifigs though. If it goes on sale, I'll probably pick one up, but not sure about it at full price. So if I bought four of them, could I enlarge the cage into a Mad Max Thunderdome style cage? Hmmm...

I was not interested in this at all after seeing the initial pictures. But now I'm thinking about it -- good minifigs, some great parts, not a compelling design though. If it ever goes on sale (like for $8 at Target) I'll probably grab one, but probably won't ever build it, just use it for the parts. The minifigs would probably cost $2.50-3.00 on Bricklink, so after taking them out of the equation the price per part for the remaining pieces is around $0.05 which is not bad at all. On sale it's even more compelling.

Looks like a decent set. Nice review too. I'm thinking: + minifigs + two horses, always useful for castle or pirate MOCs + definitely some fairly nice and useful parts + tavern looks OK, not great, could use some improvement - carriage is not very appealing, seems like a weak effort by TLG on this, but can probably modify to spruce it up a bit - a bit pricey but not horrible; price per part ratio somewhat mitigated by 5 good minifigs and two horses The tavern is pretty useful for building a town. Even if you don't like the design of the tavern, the parts are useful for your own MOC buildings. If it goes on sale eventually, I'm going to pick up two.

Bought five 7949 Prison Carriage Rescues at Walmart today on sale for $5 each. Excluding the other pieces, that's 20 knights and horses for $1.25 each. Nice addition to the castle armies. Didn't look like there was a sale going on or anything, just these five boxes sitting on the shelf with no shelf price tag under them, so I scanned them and they came up $5. Everything else appeared to be regular price. Now I just need the Star Wars Snowtrooper battle packs to go on sale...

Amazing. 20) Nurse, Surfer & Space Villain Entry -- 2 points 21) Skater Boy, Skier & Snowboarder Entry -- 1 point