Grover

Nope, I only go for the PAB walls.

Depends on what you want to call LA. LA proper? No. Greater LA, area, sure. It's all pretty close and driveable. I have personally hit 5 Lego stores from Irvine to Thousand Oaks to San Bernadino in one evening before.

I have been to one. They're both really excellent and really bad, depending on what you're looking for. Typically, the minifigures are really expensive and not worth it (sometimes $30+ for a mini). However, if you have a really good knowledge of set prices, you can get lucky and get sealed vintage sets for below market price (e.g., I picked up a Skeletons Battle Pack, unopened for less than $30 USD). Of course, there are also total ripoffs, such as incomplete used sets for hundreds of dollars, or various original HP MISB sets for $500+. The real steal is the bulk Lego table, where they have loose pieces you buy by volume. You can get a 3 gallon (12L) ziploc bag for $60 USD, all pieces of your choosing. If you're after small pieces, this works well. They typically sift out all the minis and rare/valuable pieces (dragons, etc.), but not always, and if you know what you're looking for you can get some pretty good deals. For my castle work, it was great to get to fill a bag with greys, greens, and browns, all of my choosing for that price. Sure, they're used, but it's a heck of a lot better than BL on price! Unfortunately, they are far away and I can't easily drive there, but for anyone who lives near one, they're good if you know what the deals are. And there is one in LA or at least the greater LA area.

Man, that's expensive! I'm waiting for the white ones to come in.

After a lost package I've started taking the @Megbricks approach and ordering several smaller orders. I'll consolidate them once they're all here and take a pic. I got in an order with three elements today from August 17, so they're moving faster now, at least for small orders.

I received my case and the distribution was almost as you reported, but I had 6 Myrtles and only 2 James. For anyone who keeps track, no Ron, Harry or Hermoines were in the left column, and all three of the Ginnys and Kinglseys were. Most of the Ron and Hermoines were in the right hand column. Very odd.

lol, Mortal Wombat! Hilarious! Very nice build! You have a great use of the dark tan and olive colors, and the makeshift fence for the fight ring looks great. I especially like the mini with the coonskin cap holding up gold coins. You have a real knack for posing minis so you show exactly what they are doing without even having to describe it! I'm kind of surprised how much the niffler looks like a wombat, but they're not very far off. Great job with the new animal!

1. It looks like you've posted a summary, so I'll take a good look at it and see if I have any questions, since others may have similar questions as well. I'd be happy to write up something if people want. 2. It is my opinion that this should happen sooner rather than later due to the position of the family and their active role in destroying other families. It made sense that, for instance, the Baiamonte family wasn't fleshed out since they weren't active in the intrigue, but the di Carlos are now quite active. 3. I think you misunderstand. It was the story posts, not individual builds that were frontpaged. I would also disagree that any of the builds blew the others out of the water. I think that the builds were all quite close in quality, and that none of them were heads and shoulders above the others. In any case, it would be nice if something were to get frontpaged that the guild leaders contacted the admins and had them remove it until the contest is over.

If my calculations are right (someone please check this): From the last challenge: Mitgardia: 64 gold Avalonia: 61 gold Kaliphlin: 37 gold Varlyrio: 56 gold Overall gold standings: Avalonia: 779 gold Mitgardia: 621 gold Varlyrio: 465 gold Kaliphlin: 402 gold

Congrats to all the winners! There were some really great builds here. Thank you to all the judges. I know the job is difficult and sometimes thankless, so thank you to everyone for taking your time to judge all the entries. As a general comment, it is my opinion that the guilds have some of the top builders anywhere on the forums, so there are no 'crappy' builders here from what I can see. I think we should all keep our heads held high. There is a high standard here because of our skilled builders, but I would label everyone here as very high quality. I, for one, would he happy to collaborate with any of our members, and learned a lot from my collaboration this time around! I do have a couple of questions for the guild leaders at large: 1. Are the couple of paragraphs in @Garmadon's post above the codification of the canon for this story? It was my understanding that the winning entry would be canon and then as much of the non-winning entries as possible would become canon insofar as they did not conflict with the winning entry's story. I would be interested to see the collected story someplace, and a summary of the story posted in the Varlyrian Intrigue thread so the stories can be kept track of. 2. Can we get the di Carlo family fleshed out? They're now the ruling family of Varlyrio and they still don't have a family thread posted. 3. Is it possible to ask the admins not to front page the entries until judging is done? I felt that Category B was anti climactic since the winning entries had been front paged, in the order in which they won, well before the contest had been judged, something I have not seen before. Whether or not this had anything to do with the judging, it certainly made it appear that the judging was a foregone conclusion, which was somewhat disheartening.

Very nice work! The ingot floors look great, and you have managed to get a textured wall that doesn't look too busy. The plant growing out of the barrel looks good, and its barren nature lends to the desert feel. As @Kai NRG pointed out, the bookshelf at the top of the wall is unusual. I know it fills space, but it seems impractical to me and I can't see a use for it. Why is the one brick beneath it dark grey? Are those brown stick construction pieces of furniture supposed to be benches? I like the end table made from the wands and the glass on top of it. The doors are very nice, too. Glad to see some builds still coming out for the guilds during this lull in activity. Keep up the good work!

On the other hand, a large portion of new mold cost is the design of the mold, trying to make sure the sprue and runners flow properly, getting the gates to work right, and making sure the mold fills without any voids. That presumably was taken care of with the original goat mold, and they should still have the CAD-type files for its construction (or whatever proprietary software they use). A remake of the old mold, assuming the original is not in condition to be run in production mode, may be significantly cheaper than creating a new one from scratch and could keep the budget down.

I usually MOC, so most of my minis are for building. I tend to part them out and sort the parts. Some I keep together if they're useful (like the knight from series 20). I wouldn't pay for collectible minis like the Comic Con ones because they're not in my genre. However, if there's a torso that I really want for a medieval build, I may pay for it (see the founders from the Hogwarts Micro set for instance). That's usually because I'd not be willing to pay even more money for the set they are in, although sometimes that is worthwhile because the pieces that they come with are very useful. So I certainly understand paying for minis that you need to complete a MOC (i.e., paying for a Comic Con superhero you wanted to build with), but I am not interested in collecting for the sake of collecting. With the CMFs, I tend to buy the figures I will use for builds and ignore the others. I don't have a complete collection of CMFs and am not interested in having one. As for the monofigs, I can see the use in greys, black, white, and gold (and maybe some of the tans/browns) as statues or clothing mannequins in department stores, but I have no interest in getting them in weird colors that have no building use.

Very nice build! I like the slightly larger plan with open plaza space. It gives a sense of the surrounding area to the building. The juxtaposition of the olive with the dark red and orange is a little dramatic, but I think the aqua accents at the top are spot on with the white domes and teal/gold tops. Does the hotel have an interior? I would love to see it!

Excellent! The use of the Disney carriage wheel as decoration is great, as is the use of the trans light blue as embedded glass. You have a great eye for decorative detail, leaving some deep embossing and ornamentation without being cluttered or overbearing. I like how you shaped the golden gate by covering the edge of the rounded gate with the sloping pieces. I will say, I laugh when I see the mini from the side, as I think "Hey, Dumbledore is visiting Kali!" lol

Great builds! I love the Varlyrian street! The old guy with an open shirt and beard is great! I like the feel of your build, which gives me the feeling of the seedier side of town in Illyrian, something we don't see all the time. Very nice use of the gold accents and the white snakes for smoke from the chimneys. You did a good job choosing colors, too. I like the closeups showing the chase, and the uneven boards on the fence at the end are great! Your use of the grate to show the entrance to the sewer is well done. I love the sewer shot when they climb down. It really captures the disgusting muck down there and I can almost smell it! The brown pouring out of the pipe near Conrad is both disgusting and appropriate. The use of the dark green for the main flow is really good, too, especially with the brown sticks caught on the metal grating. The snot tile work on this small build and the larger one below it look very polished along the edge of the build and help give a glassy, liquid feel to it. The main sewer build has your signature humor in it, and a ton of great detail! I love the little rat up in the alcove at the top and the cow skull over the entrance. Your use of the old Jabba figure is awesome! I would have never thought to use it in the manner in which you did, and I always thought that the older, unprinted SW pieces were less interesting and useful, but you have proven me wrong! I love the idea of a snail growing to monstrous sizes in the sewer. We have tales like that here in the US, of New York City rats the size of dogs and alligators living in the sewers! You do a great job of making those urban legends reality with your build. I love all the trans neon green oozing from pipes and windows into the muck. The giant snail on his bed of gold is also perfect! The cookpot looks really good with the smoke, but one of my favorite parts is the sewer line on that side where you have built the browns into the greens to make it look like a pool of muck that is in the process of mixing into the larger mess. Very well done! And, as always, it's great to see Bob getting some work, even if it's not the easiest or cleanest! lol He's got a lot on his hands this time!

Thanks for collecting these all in one place! It's great to see your band of outlaws!

Muhahahahaha! That's like thanking a drug dealer for introducing you to crack! You'll be in the poor house with the rest of us soon, addicted! @Evergreen, you can call into the replacement part service (missing bricks) and they will send you the right ones for free. They've been having a lot of problems lately due to the demand. One of my orders from May I had to call back 5 times to get right, and even then I've still got a few wrong pieces, but I gave up after 5 tries. My smaller orders are fine, so I suggest ordering more smaller orders rather than fewer larger ones.

I love the idea of a guide dog. Wouldn't it be cool if a blind Lego CMF came with one of those new Braille Lego bricks?

You generally have to rely on the manufacturer's information or the recycle number stamped into the plastic to see what the polymers are unless you have access to spectroscopic or other analytical equipment. I'm not sure what the time scale is on damage to ABS, but collectable figurines stored over decades in the wrong plastics can be damaged. A lot will depend on ambient temps, UV exposure, what types of plastics you're using, and the length of time it is exposed, as well as how good a seal there is. A quick guide is on the materials for vacuum use Wikipedia page. Regardless of whether Wikipedia advocates its use, if it says 'high outgassing', I avoid it. PVC is probably the most notorious for destroying plastics and is listed as high outgassing as well as PMMA. If you want a quantitative list, you'd have to look at outgassing of polymers under high vacuum in scientific journals. Usually these materials outgas mers (the single unit of the unpolymerized material) that can act as solvents, but it can also be due to the plasticizers too. Personally, I use PP ziploc bags to store bulk bricks that I have let outgas naturally until I can't smell anything, PS trays, Sterlite PE and PP bins that I let outgas, and the new AkroMils drawers. Usually the drawers, as long as they're not made out of high outgassing polymers, are OK because they are not sealed. However, for my long-term collectables, such as my CMFs, I use glass jars with metal lids that do not have plastisol or another high outgassing polymer gasket or seal. They can be tricky to find, although Ball sells some mini 4 oz. jars labeled 'not for food storage' that fit the minis just fine. Hope this helps!

True, but I was thinking if the antlers were removable they could double as whitetailed deer of either gender.

It's also a pity the antlers aren't separate pieces, or you could have does and bucks from the same mold.

Once it hits the mail service, then you need to start worrying about it. The mail service here is at the point of breaking, so I'm placing more smaller orders in the case another one gets lost in the mail.

There's quite a bit of leeway with what counts for various categories, so you may be able to look through your previous builds and find some that help complete each category!

Thank you for your detailed reply! I think that I have had a lot of problems with older torsos, so that may be my problem. I'm working on a solution but haven't found anything satisfactory yet. I'll post it if I do. Your design process sounds great. I think I'll have to dump all of my parts out on a table and mix and match for my next batch of figures. I usually have them in a drawer and can't really see everything at once, so feel limited in my design space. I don't think I'll ever have your sense of color, but this should help! Thanks for letting us in on the process!