Shadows

WAIT! I heard something! I think someone is behind this wall! Let's try to find them and ask for torches!

Updated. Still looking for everything listed and anything weird you might want to offer, so feel free to write.

Don't forget ladies, your local Licensed Review Index needs those sets, so get snapping!

The burps are worth the $6 each, but I could never justify the $25 sticker price. I'd have to make my own, even though I dislike that kind of thing. I believe there's also a rare length of wire in there, but someone else can figure that out. I don't expect to ever have this set, I just can't afford Euro exclusives as much as I'd love to. It's like attending events, I'm just not in a position to do it.

He's repeating Roman Mafia...

Ugh, this day has slippinged by and there is still nothing solid. Finger pointing is not proof, gentlemen, especially from unsubstantiated sources. Still, as much as I hate it, I will make the vote anyway. It may be the last day I can convince myself to blindly vote like this, it makes me very much the uncomfortableness. Vote: Pvt. Reutal / Dragonator

Wow! When you made the original post for this and I requested a separate topic, I just figured you'd copy and paste it over, I never expected that you would take the time to expand it into an even better guide. This has now been added to the Tutorial Index where it belongs. Thanks!

What a ridiculously negative topic. Everyone expressed their desire for a return of Pirates, and when they get it, it isn't good enough, it isn't long enough, it's this and that. Seriously, I went into my dark ages as the original line started and these sets are fairly standard Pirate fare, a little silly, clearly not based on anything real, but a wealth of good parts. If you don't like them, build something better, but acting like little kids about it will not get you a return of Pirates or anything but scorn from me. You don't really want that, trust me. Stop being whining little babies or you'll end up where all bad babies go, the annual EB Cookout.

We have no confirmation of that either, or any way to know what it would mean if we did! Madness, people, madness! It's like playing the dueling banjos investigators and someone is going to end up with the sore behind.

Or you could use the defense you already set up when you were still in hiding and say, "oh no, I must be paranoid, please don't kill me, it'll only cost us another honoured..." I'm still processing all of this information spinning around. I'm not pleased with the lack of ability to confirm anything anywhere well enough to vote safely. If others feel more secure, I don't know how.

So it wasn't our little drummer boy. He's about the only one I haven't suspected thus far, so he's probably a 13yr old mob boss. Now Flag Bearer Nathan Redman on the other hand, I find it a little odd that he's so quiet, like Pvt. Rames, too quiet to gauge an opinion on.

To add on... I am less likely to believe an unidentified source and then even the identified ones provide conflicting bits like this: Yesterday it was yellow or gold as I recall. Today it's yellow or red. Wouldn't faint red be pink? Er. Gold. Now it's gold. I'm not saying you're wrong or even lying, but you can see where it isn't overly convincing. Then add that your theory relies trusting that everyone else is accurately giving their actions and it's like making the shooting in the darkness. Please step into my tent and have a seat by the fireplace.

Heat of the moment, not a problem. Fair enough, I didn't really mean to do that, so I will also apologize. To be clear to everyone, it isn't that we don't take the problems seriously, even if I do think they have been mostly resolved in newly produced products. I do agree that things made previously may still be appearing on the market with issues. It isn't that you can't discuss it by any means. I'm sure that without public input, things probably wouldn't be improving as much as they are, it's just that we don't want it dragging every topic in the same direction. I worry that using the same complaints (and the misdirected ones like the neck print change) only tells TLG that we're not paying attention or can't be satisfied (or, as I poorly said previously, a bunch of morons ). To accommodate the need for discussion of this type, we're looking for a way to consolidate all of it so it's in a more constructive form and not spread out everywhere. I will confess to becoming more and more annoyed with it because of how many topics it happens in where it isn't warranted (ie, a topic where it's asked and answered and no difference is shown, but it keeps being repeated anyway) and may have reacted a bit harshly. Maybe. Currently, I would suggest addressing such things here.

I'm not for ignoring any credible information. I almost wish we had a little less because right now, we're so flooded by the craps and bad smells that we need to dig more latrines. If everything we've been told is true, we're all deserters. Only a fool would create a game ... of life ... in which everyone is on the same side. So now, to address that point... what information should we believe and what should we not? Someone please inform me so that I may vote correctly.

Please go topic to topic and start adding it up. I am referring to a forum-wide situation, not just here. The issue was covered here after the first question was answered, but did it stop there? No, of course not. It's like a flood of whining voices trying to overpower the truth by sheer volume, and you think I 'spent more text' on it? Then do that in a topic devoted to that. This topic wasn't started to provide yet another place to duplicate all of that discussion. Have all the other previous shifts been worth talking about? Do you even know all of the previous changes? Maybe you could point me to those topics, or better yet, to 100 topics cluttered up with that being interjected constantly. $1.99 collectibles, like packs of trading cards or Happy Meal toys. They use those exact same methods and price points as those items. Gotta catch 'em all, right? I'm pretty sure you can see the difference in this and a $100 figurine, for example, right? It's so nice when someone gets it. I know that a lot of you do because I hear the comments, but it's good to see it publicly stated sometimes as well.

I never said it couldn't be you, I said there are only two of you and I had reason to suspect your ally. Given that the last person to make such an accusation ended up dead, I didn't feel overly secure going public with it. You knew that it was meant to be dealt with privately, and you claim to be able to do that, yet you run here instead. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it doesn't seem very trustworthy to me. None of that changes anything, though. I stand by the information without hesitation: One of the Provosts is a traitor. What it does change is my suspicion of which one. One of you is a traitor, that's for sure. No, a sneaky deserter would make a public announcement to attempt to save himself. Or a stupid honoured. I'm not sure which you are now, but I'm less than pleased.

Guess I wait and see what Pvt. Yellman has to say then, since he has 'private' knowledge. I know I went with the bandwagon yesterday but since then other odd little bits of information have popped up to confuse issues and I'm not sure where to go. That's just the problem, I don't know that he has one. If I did, it would be a lot easier to vote again.

Which investigator? The one who hid behind Pvt. Yellman? You said that he's probably paranoid, why would you support him now? But again, you suspected that the 'investigator' who accused them is paranoid, and you didn't vote for either yesterday, so clearly you didn't want to be associated with such a vote, making it seem you're being less than honest with us here. Then there is the matter of the sword, which, according to the voice in the sky, was still the murder weapon after all (I asked for clarification on the discussion topic post and was told that he never meant to indicate that it was a knife, just that he would have used one if he could find one) and they are limited to officers. What else can we suspect?

Have you even wanted to see a lot of old LEGO commercials? Well, you're in luck! While wandering around BL, I saw a link to just that, all available for viewing right here. In French. Well, you knew there had to be a catch, right? But hey, they still look great and you'll understand some of it anyway. As great as this is, I'd much prefer to download all of them directly, but going file by file is something I'm too lazy to do. If anyone else does it and wants to zip them all up and post them somewhere...

Quality up. Understand it's necessary. Disappointed. Yeah, one of these things doesn't match up well, but whatever, anyone can dislike anything for any or no reason at all. That's the problem, they aren't voicing actual concerns anymore, they're repeating a phrase they've heard and applying it to something they aren't even seeing first hand. You say that you're happy with the quality of the parts lately, but you're still disappointed. So be disappointed, don't buy the figure or the set or whatever, but it's not the point of the topic and whether or not you agree, it's our responsibility to keep things from going off topic. Does that make me look like a Nazi? Let's see, Eurobricks isn't a country. The forum isn't a public utility but a private service provided through the generousity of it's owner. The privileges enjoyed by the members come with a responsibility that the staff is asked to oversee. While no one has to agree with my view, there comes a point when the same comments are being repeated in every possible topic and sometimes in places that aren't even related to the point of taking away from the intended conversation and that is when we step in to bring things back on track. Read back a few posts and you'll see that I'm not alone in recognising this problem.

Like a few have said, firm but gentle, that's the way to do it. Never had a problem and I've restored a few hundred minifigs to their original configurations this way (I don't tend to go the other way much). On the legs, I mostly just switch them around if I need a weird colour combination or to replace a damaged part with an undamaged one. If I get a minifig lot on eBay, I'm bound to find the occasional tooth-marked leg, but instead of tossing the whole thing, I just remove the bad part and replace it with a spare if I have one. If I don't, I put the good parts in a bin and in the future, I'll have spares for such use. I've never had a problem with them being loose afterwards (unless they were loose to begin with) and I've done a lot of switching.

For all we know, the fact that Pvt. Perot was blocked and there was no killing by the deserters could be related...

Oh yeah... Well, I did ask to do that once, but the voice snarkily reminded me that I haven't got a torch.

Print errors and variations go way back before the so-called "China" problem and are a general quality control issue that can occur with any figure coming from any of the factories. If I spent a few hours digging around, I could post a dozen print problems going back to at least 1980, ranging from entire prints misaligned to missing or misaligned individual colours (one of the uglier problems). A few are fairly well known including the wrong facing Black Falcons, inverted silver/black Imperial Soldiers and those green/dark green pirates from the latest releases. All set figures, all made somewhere else. Heck, somewhere I have a very dark red overalls torso, much darker than it's supposed to be, and it's obvious it was double printed somehow. I'm rather fond of it, actually. The point is that eventually, all of the people who don't intend to buy them because they think they're poor quality need to just not buy them, the same as all the people who don't like Technic or Star Wars or anything else should simply not buy them. Muddying up every topic with angst and whining serves no purpose, especially if the problem turns out to have been corrected. Mind you, I'm not talking about magnets because even I'll admit that there are still some odd things coming out there, but I do believe that is a product of seeing parts made before things were corrected and will improve in time. Pointing out something that is visually wrong there makes sense, pointing out that nothing here looks wrong, but it's missing a useless neck mark so "it's Chinese crap!" doesn't. I think people spend a lot of time spinning their wheels over a $2 purchase. Just buy a damn figure when they're available and then decide and save a lot of grief. We're not talking about a $500 set. It doesn't make you a moron to do that, but wasting a lot of time poo-pooing every possible topic would, don't you think? At some point we're all going to have to face the fact that LEGO is intended to be a toy first and foremost, not a $100 collectible where we can expect an amazing level of quality. As it is, we get a great product for a reasonable price (usually) and more often than not, all I see are complaints about it. That doesn't make the community look overly reasonable to TLG and honestly, I'd ignore some of the whining and crying if I was in their position, yet they sincerely seem to be trying to listen and improve things and I personally respect that. Part of respecting that is not tainting every conversation with speculation and rumour.