Grover

For those of you who are interested in building and need the TL;DR version of the many various threads and stories for Varlyrio, I thought I'd write a quick summary. Varlyrio has a ranked house system of rule and prestige. Currently, this is the house rank, with players: 1. Amancio (@RogueAngel) (family is described in a post in the linked thread) 2. De Fiori (@Garmadon) 3. Baiamonte (unclaimed), Chiaro (unclaimed), Khaor (@narbilu) 4. Cioto (unclaimed), Conzaga (@Basiliscus), di Carlo (@ZlatanXVIGustaf) 5. D'Gatto (@mccoyed), Di Cioto (@W Navarre) 6. Waythe (@Judge of the Wastelands) Family professions: Amancio - shipmasters Baiamonte - soldiery Chiaro - merchants Cioto - ? Conzaga - winemakers D'Gatto - artists and antiquarians De Fiori - swordmakers Di Carlo - merchants Di Cioto - ? Khaor - cloth and leather merchants, tailors Waythe - judge and mercenary History: Not a lot of intrigue has transpired so far, but, aside from a few individual family happenings (mostly related to challenges with a few freebuilds here and there), the most intrigue has been: Conspiracy between the de Fiori, di Carlo, and Conzaga families to depose the Rego, Supano Amancio Clandestine meeting of the de Fiori family with the Rego That brings us up to date as far as I am aware. This does not include the Rego's meeting with the other guild heads and the Queen, which precipitated the challenge (since it's not really intrigue within the guild). Feel free to correct or add events if I have missed something. Hopefully this helps those that don't want to read through all the various threads so far and can spur some new ideas.

I don't buy cars that don't fit into my city. 8 wide I would buy only if it were a huge construction vehicle like a dump truck that isn't really supposed to fit on a road.

The direct upload to Eurobricks is for your avatar only, which is why the space is so small. You should be able to re-load another picture for your avatar to get rid of the other. All the other pics should be hosted on an external site, like the one you have. If you put the image BB code brackets around your link, they will show up in-line, like the example below: https://www.bbcode.org/examples/?id=10 As for closing the loop, just continue the 1x2 and 1x1 round stud on the loop, and it will finish itself. An example is done with bricks instead of plates (but same idea) is below:

Good to see you again! Lovely ruins. You hit a great balance between looking dilapidated and putting so much texture in that it's hard to identify the building--it's perfect. I like the overgrown grass around, too. Great job, and will hope to see you here more often!

Do you have a picture? I'm having a hard time visualizing what you're describing.

Indeed, as @Kai NRG says, if you're interested in building with a story behind it, please come join us in the guilds! It's a fun community and great place for feedback and getting experience building. One of the major problems with octagonal building on the plates is how to face each side. Without reorienting studs, you're left with the old corner castle pieces or stacking pieces like this: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=6107#T=S&O={"iconly":0} Those pieces are not only expensive and kind of ugly when stacked, but they don't allow for decoration or windows like if you had a normal stack of bricks. Most people use the hinges, or hinge plates locked together to form an octagonal (or larger) base to provide some round features. Derfel Cadern posted a great guide to building a medieval village here: Down toward the bottom of the first page, he shows how to interlock the hinge plates to make a round tower. You can use the same idea with longer connections to make an octagonal tower if you want. This EB member has a slightly larger than octagonal tower, but you can see the effect of the larger hinge plates.

Yeah, that color of cheese slope was at the BAP wall at the Lego stores a couple of years ago, so they were easy to pick up in bulk. They look great here!

The Guilds of Historica forums are usually for the builds in the guilds themselves, so unless this is a work in progress, it's probably better in the Historic Themes forums, especially since they have more traffic than us right now. As for an octagonal tower, the hinges are pretty useful for that, unless you have a ton of wedge pieces or those semi-macaroni corners (I forgot what they are actually called).

Those light sabre bars are ridiculous. Well done! Love the old feel of the portal and you knocked it out of the park on lighting. The whole scene feels very organic. Great job!

You're welcome! I love the GoH for just this reason: people here provide great feedback. Most of us who have started here have come a long way thanks to the critiques and suggestions of others. If you don't put your builds out there, you don't improve, and the members here are pretty nice. I'd say you're doing well. Keep up the building! I set myself a goal of using one new technique (either for building or photography) each time I build something, in order to improve. I think things are kind of dead around here right now, with people working on the challenge and the virus causing problems. It's usually a little more busy. Maybe we will all start posting free builds like crazy once we are stuck at home for a few more weeks!

The Age of Mitgardia index thread is a free-floating thread (not stickied), so you have to go searching for it. It's linked on the first post of the Mitgardia thread. Post a link to this there and state what it's for. As for the build, welcome! It's great to see your first MOC post here! I like the realistic color usage you have,a nd the plates leading into the water. The gold fire helmet is unique but interesting as well. I also appreciate your use of the white background, which helps keep the scene clear. As you build more and take more pictures, you'll learn tricks along the way to help out. For instance, when photographing, more light usually helps, more than you would think, actually, but a flash usually creates problems. I like how you have kept the angle of the camera low so that it's at approximately eye level with the figures--it helps draw the viewer in. It would be nice to see a few different angles, as I would like to see the plates with the plants you have built up, and when there's action, it's nice to see closeups, such as of the two combatants. Getting those in focus can be a challenge depending on your camera. As for the ocean, if you have a lot of trans-colored tiles, you can mix those with some trans clear tiles or plates near the shore to give a surf. The plates look good, and if you want to have more 'rounded' appearance, you can use angled plates to help smooth blocky edges. The rock nearest the camera is pretty flat and boxy, so you can add some slopes, a few plates of off color, rounded, or even missing, or perhaps a small limb element to help disguise the edges from the eye, unless of course, it's meant to be the edge of a dock, in which case I would say to use brown if it's wood, or put some decoration along the edges to define it specifically so the viewer knows it's a stone dock edge. I'm curious to see your character's introduction! Keep building, and thank you for sharing your first MOC here!

I think it's in reddish brown but the lighting washes it out. Medium nougat would be a cool color for the bow though!

Yup, it's the same one.

Ah, OK, I was looking through official releases. Thanks!

What's the new Captain Marvel mould? I haven't seen it I don't think.

I'd assume that they'll assign him to make whatever is profitable, but at least we know we have a castle fan as a designer now!

Congrats! I'm hoping this shows TLG that there is an appetite for castle out there. I'd love seeing a more civilian line of castle stuff, and I'd even be OK with it being a little more cheery and colorful than the traditional muted colors. Heck, a town celebration could be quite spectacular!

Oh, I see. I had no idea they were licensed! I just thought some of the connections were cool and ordered them.

The top hats are available on B&P when it gets back up and running in the case that you miss out on the BAM station. I'm excited about the dogs, chickens, and longbows.

I'm not going to be all that sad if they change this unless they go for a really ugly, bright color scheme. I'd prefer some dark blues and some of the stone greys. If they change the roof to bright yellow and the walls to orange or something, I'd be upset. I have a feeling they won't do that, however. I was a little bummed about the pirate set due to the lack of ships hulls and darker colors, but I wanted that set more for a parts pack than anything else, and the blacksmith shop I'm hoping for a good medieval building. If it turns out more like the MMV or the Diagon Alley set from years ago, I'd be happy. The one thing I'm hoping they keep is the number of animals. Medieval towns always had tons of fowl, sheep, goats, etc. running around. I'm thinking we'll at least get a chicken since they are all over the place right now in sets and they're slated for the next batch of pieces released to the BAM kiosk. I don't think it will happen, but I really, really want a goat. Maybe more likely and yet still improbable is that we'll get a cow.

What are they from anyway? I got the bag numbers off some blog post of mocs I found. Are they licensed or something?

I just ordered them. I was probably one of the last orders before they shut down, though. I ordered and then within the hour I read on EB that they had closed due to the virus, so who knows what was going on with the system when I ordered. Mini accessory No 10 / 6266155 / 40598 / $1.63 USD Mini accessory No 11 / 6266977 / 50018 / $1.50 USD

There's some discussion on the pirate Ideas set that they weren't given a large enough budget to include more animals like monkeys. Hopefully that's not the case here and we can get more than just the standard animals we already have, like some recolors of standard animals, a remake of a cow, or, particularly, a goat(!). In any case, I am excited about this, just hoping we get some cool animals out of it.

As @Henjin_Quilones said, we do have some builders who build largely if not exclusively in LDD. I always appreciate a good render, since I don't have the skills to do them. Usually high quality POV-Ray style renders look the best. I understand about the parts collection. It limits what contests you can enter and does hinder you on many builds. It took me 3 years of intentionally building up my parts collection through brute force to get to the point where I can build what I want the way I want. Hang in there, you will get to where you want eventually!

There's really only two teams? There have to be more, right? Other teams that are still looking for members? Post here to pick up more members!