Tugarin

In America we call those 'switchbacks' or 'switchback roads'. I really am excited to see the progress on this MOC. I cannot wait to see the village layout.

Are you sure? That problem doesn't exist in my world as I'm surrounded by women and girls most of the time. What I heard was more along the lines of "If you don't buy the set with those cute goats your life is going to miserable!" LEGO City has some of the same issues with the constant production of Police and Fire Stations. Given a choice I'd imagine girls would rather play with the Green Grocer or The Pet Shop. If LEGO really wants to connect with young girls and women they need to continue with these civilian sets and expand them into a full range. My female friends and their daughters don't want pink, they want minifigures and playsets set in the normal theme with which they can role-play. I see the girls having more fun with the MMV and MVR (which surprisingly isn't being raided when the girls are playing) than any other Castle/Kingdoms set I own.

It is a well executed design. I am glad to see someone has started building many of Primus' designs. I would like to mention that Primus of Brick Commander aka Burkhard Schloemer works for The LEGO Group as a Digital Model Designer. At least I can say with certainty that he worked for TLG in 2008. I presume he's still employed there as of this date but I want to CMA in case he's left the company. He was working pretty heavily on the LEGO Universe MMORPG and I'm not sure what he's doing now. Edit: If you're interested in what the original battlemech looked like you can find a picture from the tech readout here: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Mad-6d_Marauder_ii.png

Somehow I missed this sale. My friend told me about it and when I went to my local Target the same day and the set wasn't on sale. I'm still trying to figure out if the sale was only for certain regions. I did however take advantage of the TRU sale this week. I had recently sold a huge lot of my old SW LEGO sets I had collecting dust and decided the proceeds had spent enough time burning a hole in my pocket. I picked up: 7189 Mill Village Raid x2 7188 King's Carriage Ambush x2 (I felt this set was a little pricey but with the sale it brought it down to an acceptable price point for me) 7949 Prison Carriage Rescue x2 6918 Blacksmith Attack x2

I just picked up two of these sets (having taken advantage of the current TRU sale in spades) and I must say that this is by far my favorite Kingdoms set to date. The MMV is amazing (and technically not a Kingdoms set either) but as it is aimed at adults it lacks many of the fun play features and storyline associated with a normal LEGO set. Concerning the lack of detail there is enough in the barn when compared to your typical medieval grange. A trapdoor in the hayloft and a working winch (almost wrote wench... the MMV has one of those) make for great play features adding to the role-play-ability of the set. The new farm animals are what prompted me to wait for a sale to pick up multiple sets. I am seriously considering at least one more set as the animals are that much of a bonus to an otherwise well made set. If you're unhappy with the basic design of the mill or the barn the set provides enough variety of parts and a good color selection to build a commoner's farmhouse as an alternate build. I believe expecting LEGO sets, especially system sets, to be full of realistic detail is ignoring the purpose of LEGO and the design philosophy that drives TLG. Compared to your average LEGO City set we've been blessed to get full structures and not just facades in the last few years. I hope that TLG is seeing a significant number of these sets being purchased and is receiving positive feedback concerning the civilian Kingdoms sets. The more of these type of sets produced the longer I will keep collecting this theme.

That is an incredibly impressive army of silent killers. I'm almost tempted to pick up some Ninjago sets. Slightly off-topic but that just cracks me up. I'd never met another DragonForce fan until about a year ago. One day while in the middle of a WoW raid my cell phone rang while my mic was open. One of the raid leaders stopped everything and said 'Do you have a DragonForce ringtone?'. I apologized for the interruption and answered in the affirmative. He was like 'But... you're old!' (I'm 38). I about died laughing. Seems LEGO isn't the only age-inappropriate interest I maintain.

I wish I would have come out of my dark age a few years earlier and not missed the Fantasy sub-theme of Castle. It would have been nice to have been able to form large blocks of troll and dwarf troops at anything close to retail price. I've managed to pick up a few of the sets I had missed at just around retail off of BrickLink and eBay luckily but there are a few older sets I am going to need to wait on for now while I concentrate on picking up extra copies of the MMV which should be disappearing from the store shelves soon enough.

This brings up two questions: Why are baseplates normally not as thick as typical plates? What other baseplates have the same 'abnormality' as this particular raised baseplate?

In my experience it has never been an issue with shipping but the well hidden lot fees many sellers add to the invoice. It only hit me the first two times I used BrickLink as I quickly became aware of what to look for in the splash and store terms pages. A number of sellers will fill up their splash pages with a huge amount of terms and hidden in those terms are fees that turn an order for a few pieces that would have been pocket change into an order that is a major financial obligation. I understand the reasoning for such fees (many sellers don't want to bother with 20+ lots) but I've found that it's best to look around at who doesn't charge those fees and use their shops as the prices don't vary by much and those lot and handling fees add up quickly. It's also important to watch for sellers that charge the customer Paypal fees. As someone who does a lot of business with eBay I understand that Paypal eats a chunk of your profit but I find it in rather poor taste that some sellers attempt to pass that burden back onto the consumer and don't eat the cost as the price of doing business.

I'm currently living in Ravenna, which is just east of Akron. It's really the lack of decent sized playsets that has dissuaded me. I prefer buildings and locations to vehicles and starships. At the moment the only decent sized Star Wars location set is the Death Star. I actually have the first Millennium Falcon LEGO produced. It's one of the older sets I had that I haven't reassembled. As soon as I do it's off to eBay with it. I figure with the money I can get for it I can buy one or two of the 2007-2009 Castle sets I've been eying.

Last week I stopped at the new LEGO Store at the Beachwood Mall in Beachwood, Ohio. The staff there was quite friendly but seemed rather surprised to meet an AFOL. In addition to a few new sets I picked up a large PAB cup. I managed to stuff the following items into the cup: 98 1x4 Lt. Bley bricks 17 1x4 Brown bricks 16 2x4 Brown bricks 16 2x4 Dk. Bley bricks 16 2x3 Dk. Bley bricks 18 1x3 Tan bricks 8 4x6 Tan plates 6 2x8 Tan plates 18 1x1 Transparent Yellow round plates 111 1x2 Transparent plates 28 Flower Stems 56 Red Flower Petals I could have done a slight bit better but it was the very first time I packed a PAB cup and I didn't have a great technique down yet. I did use some of the ideas I read about in this thread though and shared them with the staff at the store. I am looking forward to my next trip to Beachwood.

I have been lurking here at Eurobricks for a few weeks and decided this evening that I should register and introduce myself. I'm a 38 year old male with a rather diverse background. I first played with LEGO when I was a young boy but was separated from my collection and soon found other hobbies (reading, writing, and playing role-playing games). When I went back to college in my late twenties Star Wars LEGO sets had just started hitting the shelves. I bought a few sets and displayed them around my dorm room (and got teased a lot by my roommates for my effort). After I moved off campus my LEGO sets went into storage and I entered my second dark age. A few months ago I found myself with a lot of spare time and dug out my old sets. I put many of the old sets together and bought a few of the new Star Wars sets. I found I really liked tinkering around with LEGO again but I wasn't happy that many of the Star Wars sets I would have liked to have purchased were prohibitively expensive due to being out of production. There were also few playsets available; Starships and vehicles being the primary focus of the line. So recently I've been selling off my Star Wars sets and buying as many Castle and Kingdoms sets as I can manage. My primary interest now is collecting Castle and Kingdoms sets and displaying them around my home. I look forward to building up my collection of bricks so that I can start designing and building MOCs, but for now I spend my free time searching the internet for well executed designs that inspire me to collect more LEGO. As a part of my new hobby I hope to become a contributing member of the Eurobricks community.