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icm

Eurobricks Dukes
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Everything posted by icm

  1. icm
    Nice fun swooshy ship, with particularly fine lines for the canopy and nose transition. The engines and cockpit are nicely detailed but not so detailed that they distract from the overall shape. The satellite launchers are a nice touch, but the landing gear is extremely spindly, especially for an ice planet. Overall, this ship reminds me of a Colonial Viper. Was that intentional?
  2. icm
    When I was a kid browsing Brickset, I always interpreted the bits and bobs on Classic Space ships as headlights, sensors, and antennas, which is why they were left ambiguous. Still, the only essential difference between a headlight or active sensor and a ray gun is the power you put through it and the way you focus the beam, so maybe they were both. Sneaky Classic Spacers! It's worth noting that the few abortive attempts at Classic Space storytelling that Lego tried back in the day used these things unambiguously as ray guns. But that's neither here nor there. I agree that there's plenty of ways to do non conflict based Space sets that aren't in City or Creator Expert, but for now I'm pretty happy to be getting this year's lineup. Then let me tell you about the Overwatch spaceships ... sub in extra astronauts from the City people pack and presto, you have one of the best sci fi spaceships Lego has ever built.
  3. icm
    I feel like most sailing ships on Ideas are too large, or rely too much on obsolete hull parts, to have much of a chance at production if they made it to review, but this is a nice little brick-built ship that I can see fitting the Ideas mandate quite well. Supported!
  4. icm
    Wow, what a fantastic set! I didn't expect it to have any representation of the interior structure, but it's even got the tanks in the descent module! Plus all sorts of fun building techniques, a cabin that fits both minifigures, and the first new Moonscape for minifigures since 1979. It would have been nice if the landing legs could be folded inboard and if there was room for a rover in the base, but those features are more MOC-level than set-level. I don't usually get multiple copies of sets, but I may make an exception for this one.
  5. icm
    Just putting a plug in here for the Thunderbirds set on Ideas. It's a fantastic set for a TV show that's a big part of childhood for many people both young and old. The project is at 9845 supports and has about 70 days left, so it needs two per day to make it to review. If you haven't supported it yet, please take a look and give it your vote! I would have given my right arm for a functional Thunderbird 2 built out of Lego when I was a kid ....
  6. icm
    Since the first teaser is out for the lunar lander, I guess we can expect the set to be revealed and released in about two weeks. I'm glad to hear it has an interior - the 2003 Discovery space shuttle and lunar lander both lacked an interior, and it was frankly quite amazing how much the interior of the D2C space shuttle in 2010 improved playability compared to the 2003 model, when otherwise it was nearly identical except for a slightly smaller size.
  7. icm
    Thanks for posting these pictures. It's fun to see the sets "out of the box in the wild" for the first time. Not being much of a Potter-head myself, I don't plan on buying any of them, but I think they're pretty darn good sets for the subject material - especially all those detailed, scene-appropriate minifigures!
  8. icm
    It's true that the set is well below world class MOC quality, but it's not half bad either. At the rate I build MOCs, I can't afford not to buy it. By the time I'd get around to buying the parts for the MOC, this set would be sitting at $400 on the aftermarket just like its predecessor, and then I'd be sorry!
  9. icm
    The really impressive thing from this first image is the use of the large barrel bottom for the rocket engine, as in the Saturn V. The main problem in every minifig-scale Apollo LM build I've seen until now is the use of the standard 4x4x2 cone for the descent motor: it's far too small, and when simply pasted on the bottom of an otherwise boxy descent module it gives entirely the wrong impression. The real descent motor was very large, since it was optimized for vacuum operation, and only a small portion of the bell protruded beneath the rest of the descent module; the combustion chamber was located surprisingly close to the top of the structure. I doubt the designers of this set have embedded an entire descent engine inside the structure of the descent module, but it's nice to see that they're paying attention to the correct size of the rocket motor. The use of pearl gold is also a huge improvement over the tan of the 2003 model - I wish they'd used pearl silver for the ascent module too, but that might have involved too many recolors. I can't quite puzzle out from that picture whether or not this model has an interior and a working front hatch, but I would be surprised if it didn't. That four-wide hatch opening must be meant for minifigure interaction; a more faithful scale model (like the various fan builds on Flickr and Mecabricks) would build that area about three studs wide.
  10. icm
    I've definitely seen better fan builds of the Apollo LM, but I'm not going to quibble about that. Definitely a day one buy.
  11. icm
    Definitely voting for the International Space Station. I was so disappointed when that was rejected upon review!
  12. icm
    If the rumor of a lunar lander is true, that's a day one buy! I missed the lunar lander from the Discovery line when I was a kid and now it sells for more than seven times RRP on eBay.
  13. icm
    Looking this build now, I think it offers a lot more play value than the set that was actually released, but the official set is a much more interesting building experience and a much more impressive piece of Lego engineering. Since I mostly buy sets for play rather than for display or as parts packs, I honestly can't tell which one I would rather buy (this erstwhile Ideas submission or the official set) in some imaginary world where they were both available.
  14. icm
    Thanks for a spectacular review of a spectacular set. It's almost perfect for a one-off D2C; I just wish it included Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve too.
  15. icm
    No need to apologize for reviving this topic - those buildings look great! The roof dome and glass arch techniques are particularly impressive.
  16. icm
    ^^ I've been back to that gallery quite a bit, actually, and I've seen all three of those. I like Alec Hole's model a lot, and I think Ben Smith's model is really creative. Alec's model does a great job of scaling up the classic shape with relatively restrained greebling and smooth modern parts, while Ben's takes all the usual elements of a Galaxy Explorer and applies them to a model that isn't simply a scaled-up version of the 1979 set. I can't say I'm a big fan of GBailey's build. He plays a little with the wing shape to try to make his model different from all the others, but it ends up looking like something squashed it flat as a pancake without showing much creativity in the design of the blue fuselage box or the engines. I'm hardly one to preach about creativity, though, seeing how my go-to activity in Studio is copying builds that I've seen online - see, for instance, the last thing I posted to Flickr, a modified Galaxy Explorer posted to Ideas in 2014:
  17. icm
    This. I know that "mature" is often used to mean "sex, violence, and gore rated R/M/TV-MA," and I understand that the intent of this thread is to suggest possible licenses with such ratings. But in a wider sense, there's more to maturity than the ability to watch graphic sex and violence onscreen without feeling the urge to commit copycat crimes. In many ways, the sort of "mature" themes I'd like to see more of are covered very well already - the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Creator Expert automobile series, Saturn V, Bugatti Chiron, and upcoming Liebherr excavator are prime examples of the kind of adult-oriented collectors sets with emphasis on aesthetic accuracy and mechanical complexity that really appeal to me. I'd like to see Creator Expert expanded to take on all sorts of engineering feats, particularly in aviation and space technology, and more of the creatively bonkers ideas like the Ship in a Bottle that inspire exclamations of you made WHAT out of Lego? The playable piano currently in Ideas review is another great example of this. So if we define "mature" as "stuff that will probably bore a preteen kid" instead of "stuff that you don't want to let your preteen kid see," I'd like to see more real-world items, more clever translation into Lego of things that seem to be impossible with Lego as we know it (ship in a bottle, flyable airplane), and perhaps some adaptations of public-domain classic literature that often gets adapted for children's works by other companies. Maybe, along the lines of the James Bond Aston Martin DB5, we could get something like the Joad jalopy from The Grapes of Wrath. (I know that's not public domain yet.) However, I recognize that the more "real" a subject gets, the less likely it may be to appeal to a global market lest we get into arguments about favoring a certain country or economic bloc more than another one. Pop culture licenses are a much safer bet, since at least in theory they don't get mixed up with politics and nationalism nearly as much.
  18. icm
    This wave of sets is not so much set ON Mars as it is meant to inspire kids to treat their homes, yards, etc, as Mars. The only set actually ON Mars is the Mars Research Shuttle. The space station orbits Earth, the Moon, or Mars, as you please. The Space Research Rocket Control Center has the launch site and launch control center for a heavy lift rocket that may contain a Mars-bound payload. The Rocket Transport also has a launch control center, plus a clean room/maintenance bay for a little rover that the rocket in the set will DELIVER to Mars.
  19. icm
    It would be nice if it were enclosed, but then they wouldn't be able to fit it in with the price point they had to meet. I'm happy they included it, even if it is more a vignette than a building.
  20. icm
    I've said it before and I'll say it again, just for the sake of keeping the conversation going: while I agree with your comments on the timing of in-house Space subthemes of the past twenty years, I really don't think the choice to set the 2001 and 2007 subthemes on Mars has anything to do with Star Wars. Two big-budget movies were set on Mars in 2001, Red Planet and Mission to Mars. Lego cashed in on that by setting its own Space theme on Mars, with a spaceship (7315 Solar Explorer) that bears more than a passing resemblance to the spaceship in Mission to Mars, while the spacesuits look like those in Red Planet. Besides, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was launched in 2001 and arrived at Mars later in 2001, and there was a lot of chatter in the air about real-world space exploration and progress or lack of progress therein because it was the year of the great classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. If Lego was to do an in-house Space theme that year, Mars was the natural place to go, whether or not Star Wars had anything to say about it. In 2007 they were still re-launching old themes after the crisis, and Space was the last to get re-launched. So they went with a Mars theme because it was familiar and easy to brand on the shelves, plus there's a long history of pulpy sci-fi about fighting Martians. This year, we get a very diverse assortment of non-Star Wars spaceships visiting all sorts of strange new worlds, with imaginative designs, fun play features, bold colors, and new colors of windscreens, but their association with a film released in cinemas blinds all of us grumpy old AFOLs to the fact that this is the in-house Space theme we've been waiting for since 2013. And it only took an eighteen-month gap in Star Wars films for Lego to sneak it in there ....
  21. icm
    Here's the updated info on the Facebook event:
  22. icm
    I think that describes Alpha Team, Agents, and Ultra Agents pretty well. An out-and-out super hero theme without the secret agent set dressing would obviously compete with licensed super hero themes far more directly than Space competes with Star Wars, so Lego would have to wait until the MCU and DCEU conclude or be exceedingly creative to create interesting, compelling superhero characters that don't just seem like no name clones of Superman etc. I can imagine a lot of kids and teens being disappointed that Lego wasn't making sets with Superman and Batman anymore, just some lame-o nobodies. Pixar can get away with creating an entire cast of superheroes because they're a major studio and they were originally making a superhero parody anyway. I don't think Lego has that clout, but it's possible that they could make it work with media backing similar to that of Ninjago. (Johnny Thunder is fondly remembered as an in house Indiana Jones character, but he came before the Indiana Jones license, not after.)
  23. icm
    Hi, @KrasiniArithmetic! Thanks for posting another creation here! This is definitely a nice new take on the X-wing. I'm not sure what it is about the proportions, and of course I can't say anything about the internal structure without having seen it, but for whatever reason it has a much more solid, heftier look than most X-wing builds - like the proportions and angles may be the same, but this one looks like it could take a lot more punishment. Does that make sense? I'm not quite sure what I'm saying here, but I do know that I mean to say that your X-wing looks good, really good. I haven't seen that solution for the gun tips before; the nose cone is sturdy and uniquely detailed compared to many others, and the landing gear looks much sturdier than in most Inthert-derived or Jerac-derived builds. The picture of the X-wing next to 75181 UCS Y-wing is also nice, it really gives a sense of scale. If your X-wing is faithful minifig scale, and the Y-wing is properly scaled next to the X-wing, then that must mean that the Y-wing is faithful minifig scale too. Huh - I always thought it was a little too big. I agree with you that v2 looks pretty pudgy though. Would you mind posting pictures of the gearbox of v1?
  24. icm
    Specifically, this: Between this https://brickset.com/sets/7900-1/Heavy-Loader and this https://brickset.com/sets/60229-1/Rocket-Transport you have all the major elements of the scene. Now if only we could get a little submarine with a passing resemblance to Thunderbird 4 ....
  25. icm
    There's plenty of room for no-canopy flyers in a lunar exploration theme under the City umbrella, or even in a low Earth-orbit theme of that style. There are quite a few Apollo-era concepts for no-canopy lunar flyers, after all.
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