arresta

Thanks to everybody for some really interesting ideas. At the moment I'm plugging away, putting the parts list into Rebrickable for the Power Functions books by Isogawa -- I'm learning so much about modern Technic just by working through the pictorial part list, trying to identify the right part numbers! I'll come back to the great ideas up-thread in a day or two, but first let me see how the bits needed for the Isogawa books would price out, and what kits might complement them. The Technic system has got so extended now, that I do think there's something to be said for these books, that give a really thorough grounding in how the bricks can be put together (as well as some great little creations). Am I just being too much of a mother hen here, or has Technic got to the point now where one really does need to build up some understanding before one can start modding, rather than just letting the chap bash some kits together and find his own way?

Hi, first-time poster here. I was wondering, what kits and bits would forum-members buy to get a good basis of elements to inspire a young builder to take them apart, and build and re-build them into lots of different things? (And without spending the earth -- ideally I would hope to see change from, say, £100). The young builder in question is my nephew, who enjoys building from instructions in system, but is also quite a confident free-builder from the 70s/80s classic lego that was mine and my brother's, now all in a big box at his grandparents'. He's already got the 42029 customised pick-up, which I gave him for Christmas this year, a few weeks before his 8th birthday -- and I have never seen such love at first sight! It really knocked his expectations off the scale, and he and the unopened box were completely inseparable over the next couple of days, while he was waiting to get it home and start the build -- he would carry it from room to room, hugging it like a teddy bear, taking it wherever he went. I know not everybody loves the 42029, but it really does tick the boxes when you're eight -- very big, very red, pretty robust, and satisfyingly mechanically complicated. "Best present ever", according to my nephew, who is also immensely proud of the fact that he built it entirely himself, even more so it says age:10-16 on the box. The 42029 I am pretty sure isn't going to be going into the parts bin any time very soon. So: what would be forum members' ideal set of bricks that would encourage someone my nephew's age to start building and rebuilding, or at least slicing and dicing and rearranging the main assemblies? Compare, for example, in System, the sheer multitude of different designs that Nathanael Kuipers and others have managed to build (and publish) from Creator kit 5867 -- quite a small kit, but a very good choice of elements. If forum members were to be given the brief to specify a mid-range universal kit for 2016 Technic to be similarly flexible, what would you put in it? As a first stab at answering my own question, one thought that I had could be to start with 42023 Construction crew (review thread) -- three small models, showing a variety of different mechanisms and steering approaches, with some immediate playability, but not so exciting as to prevent them being taken apart to build something else. The two Power functions ideas books by Yoshihito Isogawa (vol 1, vol 2) also look quite interesting -- though I still need to work out how to get the list of parts onto Rebrickable, to see what would need to be added to make them. But it's a shame that there don't seem to be many pre-existing published MOCs yet based on 42023 to encourage a young builder to take the initial models apart and do other cool things with the bits -- in particular, a notable lack of B-models from TLG themselves, that one might have expected, mixing and merging the initial models into two or three new models. So I'm wondering whether 42023 is too limited a start; or whether there are some other key parts that could be added to 42023 (a 42023 expansion pack?), that would suddenly make much more flexibility possible. (Or will young hands find ways to make things out of 42023 regardless?) When I was starting out, with the first wave of kits like 850 and 852, the functionality of Technic was quite limited (at least compared to now!), but one could immediately start building things with it, with a satisfying complexity, because of its close affinity with System. The shift to studless + panels is a huge step forward, in many many ways. Perhaps it's just my lack of familiarity with studless, that makes me worry. But is it a reasonably easy (and engaging) transition for young builders to free-building in Technic? Or are TLG missing a trick, by not offering a universal set, or an expansion kit for something like 42023, complete with a big set of suggestions to make some really cool things?