Mylenium

...but then again, there's more to this than how it's presented on the store shelves. The IP holders want their piece of the pie and I'm pretty sure when Lucasfilm/ Disney are breathing down your neck, it's not even much fun to design a Star Wars set. also one mustn't forget how much money LEGO have sunk into licensed themes where the movies totally bombed or were mediocre at best. "Angry Birds" or "Lone Ranger", anyone? In the end this is pretty hit and miss and out of five licensed IPs only one may turn out as a hit, while the rest only cost you money. I'm pretty sure that if LEGO invested that money in their own IP we'd have at least better sets on that front... Mylenium

I'm pretty sure everyone who buys LEGO is aware that you couldn't possibly re-create e.g. the Battle of New York in its full glory without ending up with a 6000 pieces set that nobody can afford. Simplifications are always part of the game and do not only apply to licensed themes. In the end even Ninjago City is just a trimmed down representation of what it looks like in the movie as are many Ninjago Sets based on the TV series. As far as I'm concerned, the actual complexity and "realism" of a set isn't what makes or breaks this. Once you think about it, many production designs aren't that great, anyway, and just look boring. Some stuff indeed just works on-screen when it's drowned out by explosions and obfuscated with tons of CG motion blur. ;-) And there's of course the other side: Some designs never translate(d) well to LEGO since specific parts don't/ didn't exist. Things like the 1x1 bracket have only been introduced last year, so in a way due to their reluctance to introduce new parts to emulate all those bits and bobs and ways get them attached to your models LEGO may have shot themselves in their foot for a long time. I'm pretty sure many models could have looked a ton better in the past had those parts been available, in turn making them more attractive. So as far as I'm concerned, there are also hard technical reasons why some stuff may not be attractive and re-capture that feeling of a movie or whatever. Regardless, I still think the biggest issue with many licensed sets is that they are not "crafted with love". Either they are rushed to the market to meet release dates, not allowing designers to make them as good as possible or they are hopelessly micromanaged by the IP holders. That combined with LEGOs odd pricing policies surely often is to the detriment of licensed sets (along with a ton of other factors that could be discussed endlessly)... Mylenium

Agree. Way too often you feel that licensed sets were either thrown together quickly at the eleventh hour to make it in time with the release of a specific moviue/ series/ game or whatever and the actual buildable parts appear rather unsophisticated. You could of course argue that they are targeted at kids and inexperienced people to begin with, so they are simplified intentionally, but that seems a somewhat lame excuse, considering that LEGO isn't rocket science overall. Mylenium

Agreed. Beyond that generic consensus the finer points can of course be discussed endlessly. Mylenium

Lovely stuff! Mylenium

I would love this set to be available in Germany/ Europe. How LEGO even thinks this would need to be region-specific totally eludes me, given how generic those sets, are after all. It's not that by now we haven't heard of Asian/ Chinese traditional festivities, Dragon Boat races and so on... Mylenium

Looks lovely! Mylenium

If you research the matter, you will find that the follow-up "brick" systems were made of hard rubber, resins and early non-thermal plastic types like Bakelite. The relevant technical parameters can easily be researched. I don't think it was as much fun, though, given the huge amount of schrinkage and tendency to break of many of those materials. Beyond that all such systems are merely friction/ adhesion based. One can't preclude that popping on a hollow brick on top of another might create some sort of low pressure inside, but it's never going to be enough to hold the brick on its own and since it's not airtight, the pressure will even out eventually, anyway. Mylenium

Looks lovely! Mylenium

Definitely only 1x bricks. Even if you were to use 2x bricks a lot, you'd still need quite a bunch of 1x bricks to fill in gaps if you have introduced irregularities in your walls with protrusions, holes and similar stuff. The irony of course is that 2x walls are actually more representative of load-bearing walls on large, multi-storeyed buildings, but I'd still only use them if there was a specific reason like e.g. a technique to add windows with insets where you would need to cover up and compensate that extra offset on the inside, anyway. In any case, 2x bricks are making less and less sense these days, not just for buildings, so I'd only invest in small numbers of them. You may occasionally need e.g. a 2x6 brick to stabilize some larger gap and of course you'd use 2x4 and 2x2 bricks to fill large hollows, but where the actual visual details are concerned, on many models 2x bricks are barely of any relevance anymore. Mylenium

Amazing creature rendering! Mylenium

Ah, thanks for clarifying @vitreolum. I'm totally not into that stuff and just came across your post from the featured page. Good to know where it belongs! ;-) Mylenium

A bit too busy for my taste, but overall nice! Mylenium

Lovely vignette and good use of colors! Mylenium

But who is she? Any relation to a comic, movie or series I should be aware of? Mylenium

Have you actually tried to work with different snap settings or manually dialled in values? Mylenium

Technically I don't see much of an issue with that. As I told you in many threads already, here in Europe there's a good chance it would "just sell", regardless of whether there's a lot of marketing buzz or not for castle-ish/ medieval stuff. LEGO would just need to give it some time to really flourish and not pull sets from shelves after a year like they so often do these days. And it better be not like Nexo Knights... Still, it's a fair point at least in terms of what people can actually afford to buy and possibly also how many diverse sets LEGO can produce and handle within their distribution system. The rest will depend on the success of the movie and/ or, in case it doesn't go that well, whether the TLM 2 sets can generate enough interest on their own merits. Mylenium

Sure, but isn't that the problem to begin with? Everyone is just relying on the dated LDraw stuff and there seem to be no efforts being made to actually come up with something new... Mylenium

Yeah, non-descript and confusing like 90% of Bricklink's weird parts classification. Calling it a "bracket" is probably wrong to begin with, though, and a "jumper bracket" technically it is not, anyway. It doesn't "jump" studs, as the elements on the vertical section basically still appear aligned with the horizontal studs similar to bricks with sideway studs. Mylenium

Could be seen either way. Doesn't do you much good if you have tons of own branded series if you can't feed the machine, in a manner of speaking. That has always been kind of the problem with LEGO's own stuff, hasn't it? They all got stale and repetitive after a while and/ or lacked a power by number of sets. In the case of Elves it also hasn't helped that the sets were massively overpriced and relegated to the "girly" shelf. There's a certain inevitability in those series failing and getting pulped as long as LEGO make the same mistakes over and over again and aren't commited as would be necessary... Mylenium

Lovely! Mylenium

Seems you have a rather one-sided view here. At least for Technic and Friends arguably the 2019 sets look a lot better/ more useful than what we got this year. Similarly I can find a few sets that are just great in other series like Creator. Sure, it's by necessity raisin-picking, but you can't expect each and every set to be outstanding. With regards to the LEGO Movie 2 I'd take this with a grain of salt, anyway. It appears to me that everyone is expecting the second movie to be as awesome as the first one, when that's simply impossible. The odds are stacked to high against it. The novelty of the LEGO movies by now inevitably has worn off and you can't re-create the surprise and wonder of the first one that basically came out of the blue. Nostalgia also seems to figure in here as frankly I can't see much of a difference between the sets. Back then I couldn't care less for LEGO, but now that I'm involved, looking at reviews and images of those older sets still doesn't particularly tingle me, which I like to take as a sign that when viewed somewhat objectively and from a distance, those sets aren't any better or worse than some of the stuff we have now. Beyond that, the "vintage" factor is mostly irrelevant to me. What do I care whether a set will be considered a "classic" in a few years? I live in the here and now and enjoy doodling around and building LEGO, not collecting it. In the end even thinking about such stuff seems pointless. Who knows what new sets will be out in a few years and what parts they will contain? There will always be stuff that invalidates and surpasses what came before just as there will always be legacy sets that may seem superior. In the end it's all specific to individual perception, themes and subjects you deal with and so on, but ultimatly it will probably always balance itself one way or the other. What you consider a not so great set now could easily become next year's big hit, so I'd be wary with generalized observations. Let's wait until we get actually hold the sets in our hands and then there will still be enough opportunity to judge and complain... Mylenium

Disappointing! The wheel wells being printed makes them totally irrelevant and useless for MOCs. I also don't get why they aren't using consistently black parts on the chassis after having introduced the black 5 x 7 liftarm frame last year. Surely it wouldn't have been much to ask to use those instead of the light bluish grey ones! Anyway, thanks for the review! I can now strike this set from my wishlist and focus on other purchases. Mylenium

Looks lovely. The only thing that seems to be missing is a big ground level door as it would often be found on greenhouses/ aboretums/ orangeries to move stuff in and out. Mylenium

Personally I don't want to get distracted during building and always skip over those pages.It's also kinda two different mindsets, anyway. I remember this from my days when I was heavy into aircraft scale modeling - reading articles on development history vs. pouring of the color schematics and scale drawings was always separate. One day I would delve into the "cool" stuff and obsess about rivets in the drawings, but it could take months before actually reading the associated article/ book pages and in the meantime I often even had built the model already... Mylenium