Grover

Thanks! I wish I had more time to put in more details. Yeah, I wonder where I got that idea? :-D I had originally thought to make the ground uneven so that it would have variation in the pale heights, and then to move some back or forward a half a stud with jumpers, but it all ran out of time. Oh well. Really glad you liked the chicken! It was a last minute throw together that I found very amusing. I agree, there was a lot to be desired in the build, especially with the ground. It's pretty much just out of time for me. Hopefully next time. Glad you liked the minis, though! I was at least happy with how they turned out. I'm also feeling like my photography is getting better, so it was at least a little decent practice there.

Indeed, @Aurore, welcome! It's always great to see new faces (so to speak) around here. Looking forward to seeing your builds!

Category A - Rumors Category B - Palisade

7b. Palisade As the summer began and more people began to settle in Prenmôr, the peasantry became a little more anxious about their safety. Rumors abounded of lizard people taking human form, drow looking to invade again, the Mitgardian civil war reigniting, and to top it all off, there were rumors of the nearby Enchanted Forest harboring an evil elven sorceress who had been twisted by magic into a grotesque beast. A town wall was planned for around the community, but it would be a few years before all the stone could be quarried, cut, and finally built into a permanent stone structure. In the meantime, a temporary palisade was built, made of logs sunk into the earth with the skyward ends sharpened into points, held together with boards and tied near the top with rope. Unlike a wooden fortress, this temporary wall lacked wall walks and other features of a permanent structure. Simply meant as a deterrent to any potential attacks while the stone walls were being built, the palisade had a rudimentary wooden gate and was shored up with supports from the rear. While the foundation of the castle rested mostly on solid bedrock and overlooked steep embankments, the town wall was different. It was to be built surrounding the adjacent farmland with a foundation on the flat earth there. Thus, the laborers dug a ditch in front of the wall foundation where the palisade now rested, carrying out dirt and rock to be piled behind the palisade. This ditch would remain once the stone walls were in place, forming a dry moat around the town to add to the layered defenses.

7a. Rumors Lady Gwenllian was surveying the progress on the town’s palisade when she heard a commotion from one of the nearby farms. Quickly heading over to see what was the matter, she found a farmer obviously terrified. “What’s going on?” she asked the farmer. “M’lady!” the farmer said, and quickly bowed. “It’s the chickens! Please, come see!” Lady Gwenllian followed the farmer over to a small grassy area where his chickens and a few pigs were milling about. A man with a black beard, dressed all in green, carrying strange odds and ends strapped to his belt, stood watching the chickens. The man, however, was not the strangest part of the scene: in fact, the man was watching one enormous chicken amongst the others. His head turned to watch Lady Gwenllian and the farmer approach. “M’lady, this huge chicken came over to my flock today! I’ve never seen anything like it! It has to be some sort of demon chicken!” Lady Gwenllian looked over the chicken, which stood some five feet tall. Besides being a monstrosity, it appeared to behave like a normal chicken, pecking at the ground for bugs and plants like the others. The man with the green hat spoke. “This is no demon, my good man,” he began. “M’lady,” he said, tipping his hat to Lady Gwenllian. “It is in fact what magic users refer to as a dire animal, one that is enlarged unnaturally by a magical malady of some sort.” Lady Gwenllian looked at him. “And are you the wizard responsible for this bizarre creature?” she asked bluntly. He shook his head. “No, m’lady, I am not. I am here, in fact, because I am trying to track down the source of this beast. It is not the only dire animal I have encountered in this region, and I would like to know the source. There is word of an evil sorceress in the Enchanted Forest who, once a pure and good elf, has been twisted by powerful magic into a ruthless, power hungry monster. If this is true, these realms could be in peril.” Lady Gwenllian considered him, then the chicken. “What is your name, good wizard?” she asked him. “I am Razin, the traveling wizard, at your service, m’lady.” “It so happens that my household is in need of a wizard, Razin. How would you like to become Razin, the grand mage of Prenmôr? I have a very keen interest in solving this mystery and finding out if there is any truth to this rumor of an evil sorceress in the forest.” Razin bowed. “I would be honored, m’lady.” “Good, then it’s settled. I will have your belongings brought up to the temporary housing for my personal household.” She gestured to the wattle and daub houses on the high rock outcropping above. “Now what about this chicken?” she asked. Razin shrugged. “Other than being extremely large, it is just a chicken.” Lady Gwenllian looked at the farmer. “Get a spear. We are having chicken for dinner tonight.”

Very cool! I like how you kept everything in the area but broke it up into multiple sections. The story is great, too, incorporating some history of the rise of the drow. The mini posing is great, colors are well done, and the all Lego background looks awesome. Very well done! I look forward to reading more of the story!

Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing! This gives me a lot of great ideas, and some of that tubing is available on bricks and pieces right now (that stuff is hard to find and expensive on BrickLink), so I think I'm going to get some and try my hand at working it into a roof. It looks really good and fairly stable.

Lol, the Tipsy Owl tavern! What a great name, and the stone owl drinking out of the chalice! Very nice build. I really like the infusion of humor and the story supporting the build. The real show stopper for me is the mirror--it's spectacular! I love the reptilian reflection! The caverns with the sand green interspersed looks very good, and the upside down seaweed (or whatever that part is) looks great, too. I'm a fan of the old roof slopes, and I like the red roof. These pictures seem a bit dark to me--maybe a bit more light on the build could help, although they are in focus and well done. I was thinking about using some of those snake-folks from the Ninjago line for an antagonist at some point, so this has given me some ideas. The idea of shapeshifting reptiles, especially with Tom's head popping into lizard form, is great. Well done!

Really fantastic build you have here. The flora look spectacular--you have quite an eye for it. The lavender petals on the stalk flower is great, and the whole plant is well done. The inclusion of this lavender on the rest of the stalks makes the field look like a less mature plant and works. The round mill tower is very nice, and the alternating 1x2 / 1x1 round really looks good with the brown and the palisade 1x2s alternating are great. My favorite part of the build is the roof. I've been experimenting trying to get a wedge roof to look that good for a while and haven't figured out how to do it. Do you mind sharing your technique? Is it clips on a bent piece of flex tubing? I think it could be more widely applied to a lot of builds and really looks sharp. Great job, and thanks for sharing!

First, I will stress that this is all speculation on my part since I don't know what the dye used back then was, nor do I know what the flame retardants were. That being said, there are a lot of possibilities: • The sunlight is uneven. Maybe shadows, the sunlight moving around in the sky, higher UV than usual, etc. Use of a UV lamp would alleviate this problem or at least eliminate it as an issue. • The unevenness almost looks like a pattern to me. Either there was something covering it partially, or for part of the time, while it was undergoing reaction (and this would include air bubbles), or perhaps there was a coating of adhesive or something on the bricks that masked that portion • Lego could have changed the dye and/or the flame retardant over the years. • These bricks may have been treated previously, or been subjected to unknown temperatures or conditions. If you're using the same brand of chemicals, it may be worth figuring out if the manufacturer has changed anything (doubtful). If you use a plastic tub to clean in, UV light may be degrading that plastic and leaching out plasticizer or flame retardant from that container that mixes with the slurry you have up top and creates weird mottling or masking. To me, the low res pic looks like the sun hit it unevenly. That's a hard thing to change in solution, but you may be making thin films of the material between the bricks and the glass. The light grey and white are probably the easiest to see it on. I'm not sure that I have a lot of suggestions, other than using a glass tub, using a UV source, and making sure there's no overlap there. It's not an easy thing to figure out, but that's what I would try first. Good luck!

Gorgeous! There's a ton of great things going on here. First, I must compliment you on the all-Lego shots. I get more and more into those every time I see them. They're so intimate and make the shots so personal. I love seeing the street from the mini's perspective. You did a phenomenal job with the curved wall. The texture is awesome, and then adding the bits of green leaf with flowers is perfection. I appreciate, too, how the buildings have fully detailed facades despite not being able to see them fully until the extra shots (thanks for those, by the way!). Mini posing and expressions are great, and the story is awesome. I love the use of the superhero headpiece on the demon, and the lighting on the demon shot is great. This whole thing is top notch, from beginning to end. I don't know that could suggest much; perhaps in the first shot, the cobblestone sticks out as a bit too regular on a grid, but you did a great job breaking it up with color and piece variation. Outstanding work!

Originally, in the 80s and 90s, you could order a bricks or plates assortment pack: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=10009-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0} I used to order tons like this. You would only get one color. Then they started making certain bricks within there (not all of them) available in bulk packs of like 100 or something. I bought a lot of the 1x2 bricks like that, but they didn't release the odd numbered bricks, so that sucked. Then they allowed you to buy boxes of the larger bricks in bulk at the Lego stores. They quit doing that, although it wasn't as good a deal as packing your own bricks anyway. Now we're left with pick a brick or getting lucky that it's on a wall. You really want to kick yourself? I was lucky enough to be around and recognize this for what it was at the time... awesome. For a limited time, they sold the cypress trees in bulk. I ordered several packs, everything I could afford at the time. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=10113-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0} As for bricks I have too many of... none. Seriously, who has too many bricks, even if they're weird? I find a use for them. If I hit a Lego store and the pick a brick wall has something interesting, my minimum of one type of brick is one large cup. If it's a good one, I may get 3 cups of one element (that's about a gallon ziploc bag full). I find that I use a ton of them in MOCs and since I rarely get to Lego stores and am not in a LUG, I have to get bricks where I can. Most bricks I have if I need a couple, but it's when I make a MOC that need a thousand or more, so I don't mess around. :-)

That was hilarious!

Nice job! I really like the fact that you've made the build tied into your story. Castle walls are awesome, but communities like yours and mine that are just being built up, there really aren't any old, cool-looking stone walls yet. Deep Garden even more so because of the heavy farming area. You did something that I don't see a lot of, that is namely a palisade wall. (I'm working on one for the challenge, too, though I don't know if I'll finish it in time!) The ditch, along with the spikes look really good--accurate to some Roman-style fortifications I've seen before. The metal spike through the cones is genius! I've never seen that before and can't believe I hadn't thought of it. It really makes the spikes look finished, as the bare cones don't so much (I don't know if I have enough spikes to do a wall with them, but now I'll have to look!). The tree really looks sharp, some sort of hardwood that's not terribly old, but has been around for a while. I like the tower, too--it looks like something peasants would throw together with the materials on hand and best knowledge that they have, and not something engineered by a master tactician, adding to the flavor of the scene. The only two suggestions I might have would be: 1. Perhaps remove some of the taller vegetation on the roadside (such as the bamboo), as I've rarely seen a busy construction site that doesn't have all the foliage near it trampled down and 2. cut back on the number of things going on on the scene. It does add a sense of 'busy' to the scene that helps the story, but I've found (through experience in trying to fit too much in) that less can be more on these scenes, because there's so much going on it can clutter the scene. I'm not sure you've reached that point here, but focusing on just a couple workers, or gathering more workers in a single area might help. I love the two guys hauling the log and the inclusion of some of the more anachronistic pieces (the miner's helmet and the 'keep out' sign) are hilarious! Great job, and I hope to keep reading about Deep Garden!

Makes sense! I think that it's interesting to ask questions like that sometimes because it can spark new ideas! Well done!

Seems like a lot of work. Maybe it'd be good for explaining how you sort to others, especially if you wanted to teach someone how to sort your collection, but all of that I have in my head before I begin sorting, so taking the time to organize it in a visual fashion would not be a good use of my time were it just me sorting. However, everyone has their own styles of organizing things, and if this works for you, awesome!

This question comes out of ignorance of how the city is set up, but where does the elevator lead? Inside the city our outside? I ask because if ground forces can't come up the hillside, then the only way is through the elevator, and if that leads inside the town walls... why are there town walls? They seem to be mostly for ground forces. It would seem that an aerial attack would logically be able to sail over the walls (the ballista notwithstanding). Or is the mountain so high that flying forces can't clear the walls? I have these weird logicistical questions sometimes...

What a wonderful build! The size is huge, too! There's so many good things to notice: the awesome plate/jumper plate brick structure that you used to give texture to the wall without making it too busy, the arrow loops, the fantastic color choices.... I will try to choose only a few of my favorite things, as the whole build is fantastic from top to bottom. First, I will say that the scaffolding is spectacular. Trying to get a good looking scaffolding is really tricky, and you did a great job with it. Superb! The tree, as Kai mentioned, is awesome, as is the ballista. One of the more subtle features that I love is the height of the wall. Some of the old Lego sets and some MOCs I see (not as much on GoH, but other places) have these wimpy 5 stud tall walls. I mean, really? That's supposed to repel an invader? No, you nailed it: real walls would be tall to pose an actual challenge for invaders. Yours also have overhang to as to drop rocks (or some highly flammable liquid) onto attackers. I also really like your use of the red leaves for ivy, and the small amounts of oddly colored bricks that you add for texture--just enough to break it up, not enough to make the build look crazy. Then the whole thing sits on that awesome rockwork base... very cool! Glad you're building for Avalonia, as that's some steep competition!

Excellent build! I like the use of the out of focus background. It looks really good. The wall is outstanding, and the grass stalks are awesome. I didn't even notice the light trans blue the first look, and yet it makes the grass seem very full. Really well done. I didn't know that Lego made a sickle. Is that a new piece? It's great for farming!

You’d have to ask your guild leader (soccerkid6), but I think others have posted freebuilds well after their initial public showing (most notably for the colossal castle contests), so I don’t see why not. Even if not for points, I think your builds and stories deserve their own threads.

Awesome! There are so many great things going on here. The use of the various browns for roof tiles, the excellent job of laying snow on the trees, walls, and ground, the textured but not overly textured walls... I could go on and on. The whole build is really magnificent, and the interior pictures are great as well. Your photography is outstanding, which is something I have to work very hard at. The story is very compelling and I clicked on your Flickr account and read all of the preludes. Is there a reason you didn't post those as mitgardian freebuilds? I think you should. I'm really enjoying reading the story. Welcome to GoH!

Awesome story and build! I love the texture on the roof and the great shapes you got out of the tents. I wish I had thought of that for military tents years ago. I really like that you're furthering the Nocturnus story despite the area being unplayable for the moment. Really clever use of the lightning bolts and trans yellow for the magic, too. It looks great. Very well done!

Generally, they don't carry CMF or licensed parts. However, some pieces do go through sometimes for whatever reason. Most of the wizard of oz are available right now (although I really only wanted the scarecrow torso). A lot of the steamboat willy parts are on there too. The three leaf plant is only available via the giraffe and Neville, both CMFs, as far as I know, but you can buy them. I'd love to get it in black as in the new CMF line, but I doubt they will offer it in that. The green will probably find its way into sets eventually. Many of those torsos are from the Flinstones, which are licensed, too. Hair, faces, etc. are available if you want them. The blonde hair is unique to aquaman in that color too as far as I can tell. If any of the items are out of stock, place your online order, then call a rep and they will add it. You just wait until all the parts are in to ship, so it takes a little longer. The dragon sword hilt and the 1x1 double LBG tiles I got that way this time. And yeah, free shipping on orders over $35, but that does not apply to B&P. However, if you order PAB or a set, it does apply and the total just has to be more than $35, so if you're only getting B&P, it's worth getting 1 brick from PAB or whatever you want.

Not sure where else this should go, but I wanted to share pics of some of the pieces I bought recently off B&P. It's been helpful for me to see the pics that others post of their B&P hauls on the Licensed forums to help me find bricks that I didn't know existed or that I could buy essentially in bulk in the colors I desired, so I wanted to post here in the hopes it would help others. Since I'm not lucky enough to be in proximity to any LUGs or even Lego stores, I find that I'd rather spend a little more per brick and buy exactly what I want rather than buying an entire set, especially since there aren't any castle sets out there anymore. Thus, I get pieces that I find useful for the medieval setting without a lot of extra. You can obviously see the bent toward Avalonian colors here. The scarecrow torso from the latest mini lineup is available and I think works well for a lot of peasants, and that spiderman clay torso base is awesome for an earth elemental. You can even buy hands alone (sorry, no fleshie hands available yet HQ, although there are 4 fleshie heads available including Legolas). Some of the shirtless male torsos as well. I also picked up a few random things that I enjoyed like the pig from the chinese sets (if you want these, you can just about part out a set on B&P), the union jack torso, and some other assorted stuff (like the white lamp posts for modulars that are outlandishly expensive on Bricklink right now and cheap from TLG). The dragon sword hilts are awesome for decorations as are the quastes. Some of the printed parts are expensive, so I avoid buying quantities of those, but the basic parts are pretty cheap overall. Make sure to add even just a single brick from the Pick and Brick portion of the website and you'll get free shipping (this makes no logistical sense but whatever).

I usually don't post pictures of stuff I bought, but this thread has helped me discover a lot of elements that I never knew were available before, so I wanted to post some of the pieces that I bought recently so perhaps others could benefit as well. As a primarily castle builder, there's not a lot out there for me, so I tend to just buy pieces off B&P instead of sets anymore. There were a few amusing non-medieval pieces too good to pass up, though, like that union jack torso (I don't even know what set it's from) or the raspberry hairpiece. There were some items that showed as out of stock (like the gold dragon sword hilt), but by calling right after placing the order, they were able to manually add those pieces. The box was trashed by DHL, but all the pieces were there in good condition, so no complaints. First, the minifigures and animals. And all the other random parts. Thanks to all of you here who post pictures of your pieces and help me to find pieces that I never knew existed!