Masked Mini

Being among the lucky ones (USA) I haven't posted here or in the haul thread. Feels wrong. Like bragging about getting armloads of candy when alot of You can only look through the shop window. That said I had put an order in within a day or two of this thread going up. I got worried because i definetly got charged the money but received no receipt or shipping email from TLC. A tracking email went out ~2 days before the parts showed up. Shipping time was sub 1 week which is super fast for BnP. I hope that is a result of the new process TLC put in place and not just because they limited access to 3 lucky chosen countries. The shopping cart for that order was still the same old buggy mess. I placed a second order 2 days ago. Three times I accidentally killed the window or kicked myself out to the front page of lego.com and it saved my bag and selections each time! Over the course of ~2 hours I had no issues with losing my bag. Finding parts is still a bit painful as there is still no modern browse by category only search for set/element/design ID. But atleast the Bag now doesn't empty itself randomly. I will keep a close eye on shipping times. I did see alot of stuff as out of stock but I don't shop BnP very often so I can't make a judgement call regarding reduced available inventory. I did see a few licensed things still available so what was there before does not appear to have been purged. (Note I buy from Bricks and Pieces and not Pick a Brick side.) I really hope TLC gets this rolled out to everyone quickly, it's already been longer than I would have expected.

Hey Jon, glad I was of help to you! These trays are what I use. Seems they are a bit pricier than I remembered but not too bad. https://www.amazon.com/Rockler-37081-Easy-Sorter-Funnel/dp/B001DSY5P4 You could always use muffin pans for sorting 12 or 24 types of small things into. But those are a bit trickier to empty one cup at a time. There is a good bit of conversation in the lego-sphere about sorting and dividing bricks. I try to divide and sub-divide by how I build and look for bricks. If I associate one type of brick with another then I'm okay with mixing them or keeping them close together as I'll find them quickly when building. And that is what it's all about right? Finding your bricks when you need them. So I guess what I'm saying is for categories and sub-divisions go with what fits your personal style.

As far as I know, yes. I had two sets worth of parts crammed in there, wasn't sneaking a few extras. He just didn't care at all. As evidenced seconds after he rang it up as one set of three when he blew up my pab cup sending hundreds of tiles flying everywhere. The Lego stores use the clamshell container.

I had great success at LEGOLAND Discovery center BAM. Scored 19 shields in a fairly hurried haul. Bonus the cashier didn't care about piece count in the bag so that made up for the higher cost (13-14$).

A day late and poor lighting. While looking over Ymir carefully yesterday, I noticed that I missed building in the center dip to the waterline. Then it hit me that I needed to work my widening a bit more carefully. I also realized that once again I was cramming cannons waaaay too close to one another (3 stud pitch). So the whole gunstripe I was going to take pictures of got torn out again. So here we go again, not quite a down to the hulls rebuild this time. Now a 4 stud pitch, with a reasonable attempt at curving both fore to aft and rail to keel. I found it tremendously difficult to replicate the fore-aft curvature of Ymir at the stern. But I'm sure that will come with practice. Future 6 center Frigate for scale. Davitts(?) to hang a rowboat later. All in all, lots of progress from the first attempts I posted. Going forward I will incorporate the forgotten rigging blocks in the rail where they are currently placeholding. I need to find my stash of black hinges! I did find the PAB cup full of short brackets I thought I had a couple days ago for the half plate offsets! My organization and sorting is still very much a WIP in it's own right. Also I will need to order more 2x2 slopes and 3x white 1x10 for this hull and another 4 for her sister hull. Mast placement and sail plan will be copied from Ymir to the best of my ability. I hope I have enough round 2x2 bricks. Are those masts stiffened with axles or just held in place through the rigging tension? I believe my Stern might be a brick taller than Ymir so I'm considering a short covered poop deck. As far as the Bow is concerned I'm not sure how to proceed but as it is it's only roughed in and I'm not hard set on anything. Might try some chasers or corronades (?), she is supposed to run down smugglers after all.

Thanks bud, I found a fistful. Black, red blue and white, I still need to bricklink some but it cut down on the amount I need to order. Offtopic regarding my brick sourcing.

Found a whopping 3 of the loooong slopes and even just laying them on top of the current mess they looks VERY promising. Let me re-build tonight and I'll post some pictures tomorrow. If this comes out I'll place a bricklink order or two and get what I need to build out both of the hulls to this point in the proper colours. Edit: I've done the rebuild (port side only) and I like it enough to have started working the bow and mocking out the gundeck stripe. Lighting is terrible in my Lego room when it comes to pictures so I'll need to wait for natural light. My dearest wife has offered to go Lego shopping with me tomorrow. After IKEA. Hopefully I will get lucky and find enough white slopes.

Good advice! Thank you!

I'm on mobile alot and a ton of pictures can suck up data real quick. I'm on unlimited but others may not be. I can unspoiler them.

I've needed to practice making stone walls for future projects. This is my first shareable attempt at a non-boring smooth grey wall. There are a few techniques I'm prepping for that I have not yet integrated. Such as plates with lips, round studs and bricks, simulating bricks with offset stacks of plates, headlight bricks forward and backwards and bricks with uncovered studs. As far as the cobble stones go, they are alright I guess but I really need to acquire some round tiles in darker greys as well. For larger sections I've been hoarding 2x2 and 2x4 tiles to simulate flagstones. Merlons are very simple but I think they are effective and sized just right at roughly chin height. In the future I might refine this to close the horizontal gap, my first thought on that would however raise the wooden bar to chest height and I quite like it where it is. The 5 stud spacing is partially dictated by my use of the 6 stud long bar but it will allow me to add a 4 stud wide gangplank later on. This is after all a Quay/ sea wall and will see my ships in dock. I anticipate using the forward facing studs on the merlon to attach wooden bumpers to protect the ships hull. The sewer was a brainchild after constuction and required me to tear the build apart from the bottom twice. At first it was in flush, looked okay but the way I snotted the arches together meant the assembly was half a plate short. During reassembly the bottom half pushed into the build and came loose but it gave me the flash of ingenuity to rebuild it at the angle you see it now. The grate is no longer securely held in place and is actually wedged in place by the water splash. I may try to rebuild this sewer once of twice more as the wall extends and see if I can't secure the grate from within the shadow box behind it. As it is it provides a neat play feature for pirates/escapees a la Shawshank Redemption. Waves need work. First attempt here as well. Next time I will build up the waves in blue brick first and then top with clear studs. Also I just noticed a clear F.lego snuck into the mix. *sigh*

Thanks everyone for your time and advice! Thank You Bregir for the welcome. Now, I don't have (or can't find) any of the looong slopes in any color at the moment) but I will give that a shot as soon as I lay my mitts on some. In the meantime what I can do is restrict myself to using the 2x1 slopes that raise a plate in height, same as the 2x2's I used vertically. I will likely have to lose the top row on 2x2's and revert back to using tiles lenghtwise. That should allow me to keep the width increase shallower and stretched over a longer stud lenght. But that also solves the issue i was facing with the top half needing to be black but the bottom half white. Not to mention it will allow me to dip the line of black in the center. The half plate offset looks really promising! I think i have a ton of those from PaB too. No, I misremembered. I should have enough to build out one hull, but I will definetly stock up at PaB next opportunity. So I should mention that I'm a sprinter, not a continous builder. I'll work in big bursts and then not build for weeks at a time while I percolate ideas or catch up on non-ABS life. I cranked out a little Quay wall vignette last night I'll post today. Blue Coats are ... Corries? Oleon!

The AF could also stand for Adult Fan. As in Classic Space Adult Fan theme. UCS scale core magnetizer here we gooooo! 6k parts, 199 magnets, 799$ and comes with a Classic M-Tron trucker cap in one size fits nobody and a bumper sticker "positive or negative - all magnets are awesome!"

Alrighty. As promised in my now defunct wip thread. I scrapped attempt 1 and 2 based on CGH method, took onboard prior suggestions to add a third center and swapped blue for black tops. Also caught up on this thread from page 1, took a bit but hot dog that was good reading. The end goal is to have a pair of fast, sleek ships for my Blue Coats to use as Interceptors and smuggler suppression. So You can imagine my eyes lighting up when I saw Legostone's build and Wellesley's Ymir based on the same technique. I got to thinking at work about ways to minimize the blockiness of the technique and to improve the tumblehome/sheer. Please pardon the rainbow action, I don't have enough white slopes. It's supposed to be 3 plates of white with the 4th in black. Please let me know what you think.

Pirate power rock raiders. Rock raiders vehicles with cannons and bores, good guy miners vs rock monsters vs bad guy raiders. Stone/crystal peglegs galore. Maybe set in space for good measure so we can have spaceships with sails. Or Paradiso meets Bionicle. Less fighting over masks and more skincare and beach time. In a pastel Palette with lots of cmf flamingos. With constraction mechas. On the beach. Playing volleyball. This is good lacquer. *Sniff*

I've not washed overboard Mates. Seas been a bit rough and as a consequence I've been rather busy. That said, I've had lots of time to think on all the good advice and to catch up on the almost 40 pages of the shipwrights thread in BotBs. Both hulls have been broken down to bare bones again. I will rebuild with 3 centers each and with the Legostone method. Both LS' (unnamed?) ship and Wellesley's HMS Ymir capture what I was dreaming of for these hulls. Fast, narrow, sleek, interceptors. That said I think I have a way to reduce some of the blockiness of the technique. You'll get to critique it before too long. In the shipwright thread. When I made this thread I was unaware of that thread's existence, it could REALLY use a pin or sticky.

All this pizza talk is fine and all but Stromboli / Calzone are better. Has anyone figured out any kind of pattern for when and what hits the BAM towers from the CMF line? Someone a bit higher commented about picking up the faces from BAM and there are a few I want but don't care for the figures themselves. How about past patterns regarding availability and pricing on bricklink for CMF heads? Though that is such a volatile field with tons of local variables.

This is a superb effort! It really looks like any Bavarian or Southern inner city. My only issue is that it doesn't exactly stand out as BAVARIA. We like to take any opportunity to fly the Bavarian flag, the white and blue diamonds pops up everywhere, even as decoration. If you can get ahold of the Bavarian Man and Woman of the CMF line it would help a fair amount to drive the location home. The Woman would make an excellent waitress for your Biergarten. And of course the Dachshund coming in CMF 19 would be a great fit as well. Overall I am super proud that you picked my old home for a build and you did an amazing job portraying it! I can't get over the attention to detail you packed into this. Your watchtower gate is beautifully executed and I WILL steal some your technique for my own purposes. And OH MAN that round towerlet addition on the leftmost house in the front row??!!! Dude! YES! HAH! Just saw the shrine in the wall next to the tower stairs. I can think of several like it in Nuremburg alone right off the top of my head.

Great minds think alike!

Interesting thought but I think you might be overthinking it. Consider "Fox in the hen house". Foxes eat or "steal" chickens. Since it's a Fox costume you wouldn't eat the chicken raw but steal it in a sack. I thought it looked like a Space Invader keychain myself but your take fits so much better with the rest of the call backs.

Agreed. These heads might be quite useful to the cyberpunk moccers amongst us. In fact I'm seeing uses for several of the faces, the rugby player would make a lovely tired sentry. I'm actually really happy to see her hair/helmet piece. Very nice that lego keeps making more pieces like that. I have parts coming for a Dread Pirate Roberta and realized I really, really want a black tricorne hat with long dark red hair.

I want a giant slice of latticed cherry and/or apple pie! Peach cobbler! Damnit now I'm hungry and I left my breakfast and lunch at home.

Robot chick's shirt spells out LEGO in binary!

Monkey King legs look useful for pepping up some of the old dark red leather scale torsos. Pizza guy's legs would work well for a Jester in (dark?) red and green.

Then you are just going to love the gamer guy fig... his jacket is printed with a pattern made from Blacktron I, M-tron and Futuron logos.

Dude! I'm not even into lego cars but these are awesome! Das ist ein Kaefer! also can we play punchbug here??