Captain Zuloo

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of ‘Behind the Helm’, the new interview series from Classic-Pirates.com. I’m Connor Hicks, aka Captain Zuloo, and over the past few weeks I have been on the lookout for some of the most interesting personalities in the LEGO Pirate community in the hope that we can dig up their pirate-y stories. C-P: Today, we have a Eurobricks Root Admin with us. Not only was he largely responsible for setting up the ever-popular Eurobricks Reviewer’s Academy, but he also has a large amount to do with the upkeep of Classic-Pirates.com and the Pirate forum. Of course, I’m talking about Tom Jacobs, known as Bonaparte in the online community. Welcome to the show Tom! Bonaparte: Thanks Connor, I’m happy to be on the show C-P: Let’s start with your interest in LEGO. Could you tell us a little about how you got into the LEGO hobby and what you like about it? Bonaparte: Ok, well first of all, I’m a big fan of history. I wanted to study history, but in the end I didn’t, but history has always been a bit my hobby and there’s a big link between what I do with LEGO and my passion for history. So whenever I see or hear something on the topic of historic fact, I try to bring it to life by building it or doing something around it with LEGO bricks. And that’s been really the red line between me, my passion for history and LEGO bricks. I’ve been looking for which time period I would focus on. Eventually I ended up with the Napoleonic era, so everything I’ve been building is situated around the 1800’s, the Napoleonic era. So from now all my MOCs, be it an army, a ship or building, has to fit into that time period else I’ll have too many things that don’t remotely fit together. C-P: Ok, so do you remember what your first LEGO set was? Bonaparte: When I was very young I started with space. So I got some of those Classic Space sets and started my LEGO hobby with them. Galaxy Explorer, the big blue space ship, was probably one of the first LEGO sets I got from my parents. C-P: Ah, the classic Galaxy Explorer. It’s interesting to see the set number of this set, because it’s 497. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a 3-digit set number! So would you call space your favorite theme, or would you say you have a different one? Bonaparte: Well, when I was a kid, I started with space. But when I started school in Belgium, the way the history classes go, you learn things from the start of the timeline, so prehistoric times etc, then continue along the timeline to the present day. So whatever we were learning in school at the time was usually what would turn up in my MOCs. For instance, when we were learning about ancient Egypt, I was building pyramids and Egyptian temples and when we were learning about the Middle Ages, I was building castles and such. So what I was learning about in school very much dictated what I would build from LEGO bricks in my youth (before my dark-ages). I never actually built a pyramid, as I saw MOCs of pyramids around Johnny Thunder’s time and I thought they were fairly plain, un-challenging builds. Yeah, pyramids are boring, but I think the thing is, when you are young, you have so much imagination. So when you build your MOC and it looks really average, you can still use your imagination to make it something grand, something special. And I must say, I miss having that incredible imagination I had when I was a child. C-P: Well, you seem to have eluded my question again . So would you say the Egypt/adventure concept is your favourite theme? Bonaparte: No. I eventually ended up with Pirates because the sets/parts from it are most useful for that 1800’s Napoleonic era that I was aiming for. So Pirates were really my favourite theme. C-P: It’s interesting, the pirate’s theme used shakos, but apparently shakos weren’t introduced until after the golden age of piracy. Bonaparte: Correct. The shakos weren’t actually introduced until around 1806 when they became widely spread amongst many nationalities. Actually, now that you’re talking about shakos, when I was a kid, I saw the pirate sets in the LEGO catalogs a few months before they were available in the stores. Somewhere in 1988 I think. And I immediately fell in love with this new revolutionary minifig – epaulets, a shako, great torsos. Some even had facial hair! As a kid I stared making decals and putting them on my minifigs months before the actual pirate sets came out. So all my minifigs had these hand crafted decals exactly like the advertised ones, and I fell in love with this new theme just from seeing the pictures in the catalog. C-P: Ok, so what do you think about the new Pirates theme? Bonaparte: New Pirate theme eh? Well, I have only bought one set so far, and that’s the Soldier’s Fort. I think that’s a good set, and it gives a good outlook on the rest of the new Pirates theme, but mainly I like this new line because of all the parts and minifigs. The parts are very good for building MOCs. And I’ve decided a little while ago that I would focus much less on collecting sets and huge armies of minifigs and focus more on building MOCs. So I’m very happy that with the release of the new Pirates, parts become available on Bricklink for much more acceptable prices. C-P: Yes, the Soldier’s Fort was a good set, with a mother lode of accessories. If you’re looking for a set in the new Pirates line for accessories, the Soldier’s Fort is the set to get. Bonaparte: True. But I find it amusing that they call it a fortress. It’s really not a fortress. If you compare it to the older fortress, Eldorado if I’m not mistaking…That’s a fortress! It has walls all around, it has a tower – nobody will dispute that that’s a fortress! But what do we have now? It’s like a docking place for…rowboats! But I’m hoping that as the fort is modular, there will be a next part coming out to enlarge it. I’m still a bit skeptical, but I hope that’s the direction that The LEGO Group go by creating add-ons for the fortress. C-P: Do you think we'll see a second wave of sets in 2010? Bonaparte: I think it depends on how well they sell, although they seem to be doing alright. I really hope for a second wave we may get the modular fortress extension that I mentioned earlier, and also, a lot of people have been talking about an imperial ship. Sadly though, I really doubt that we’ll get the huge imperial ship that we have all been wanting. I think we may get an imperial ship of smaller size to Brickbeard’s Bounty because the main market of LEGO is kids. And when a parent walks into a shop and sees a ship on the shelves, they aren’t going to care much about what ship they buy (pirate or imperial), they'll just care about the budget they're planning to spend. So if there are two equal sized (read: equal cost) ships on the shelves, a ship is a ship for a parent and they’ll just grab any. I mean, what's the value for LEGO in making a big imperial ship of the same price of the Brickbeard's Bounty? C-P: Sadly, I think you’re right. But I do look forward to a new imperial ship. So do you actually have a favourite 2009 Pirate set? I would assume Soldier’s Fort, because that’s the one you mentioned you had, but do you prefer any others? Bonaparte: I actually also have the impulse set Soldier’s Arsenal. When it came out, I immediately bought 13 of them to make a little army that I’ll use for British marines. I already have a large collection of the old Imperial Guards which are also red, so I worked out the best way to combine the two is to buy enough of the new soldiers to serve as marines on my British fleet. So probably my favourite set from this 2009 Pirates line would be the soldier impulse set because I'm such a minifig freak and that set is great for minifig collectors. C-P: Which MOC are you currently working on? Bonaparte: For the past 6 months I have been working on a British two-deck ship-of-the-line. I’ve been building her for half a year and I’ve probably used over 150 meters of rope to rig her. So I just put on the sails on now, and I hope to release the HMS Prince of Wales on Classic-Pirates.com soon. C-P: What’s your favourite Classic Pirate set? Bonaparte: Hmm…That’s a tough one. I would probably have to say the Eldorado Fortress is my favorite classic set. It was one of the first sets I bought after my dark ages off of eBay and I was really pleased to get it, but the Black Seas Barracuda was also a brilliant one. C-P: Fair enough. How long have you been an admin at Eurobricks? Bonaparte: Good question. A year and a half maybe? Something like that – my memory is terrible with things like this. I became a Root Admin at a time when we decided we were getting so much traffic we needed to get a new server for our forum. Previously the site was hosted on a server that we were allowed to use for free, but at the end of 2007, we realized that we were getting so many users and so much traffic and it was getting too hard to keep it up and running, so we decided it was time to start renting our own server. We had been working for months to prepare the migration because we had to move the entire database and forum software to the new server and when we did that we also decided that we were going to upgrade the software as it was old and we wanted to update to the newest version of our forum software. If I remember correctly, it was a Sunday morning in April 2008 when we started moving everything to the new server, and by Sunday evening, we were alive and kicking again. Although it did take a few months to make it more stable and to smooth out all the kinks. It also took a few server upgrades as we were getting more and more users and the server couldn’t handle the traffic, but it seems we are ok now as only recently we received for the first time over 1,000 simultaneous users on Eurobricks. That’s one of the things I love about Eurobricks – it never sleeps. When I come home from a party at 4 in the morning, there will always be someone online, someone to talk with about my favorite hobby. C-P: Indeed. It’s a great place to discuss our great hobby with many people all over the world. What's your role in maintaining the great site? What do you do at Eurobricks? Bonaparte: I spend most time maintaining the server. In the admin team, everyone has a bit his role, and a big part of mine is maintaining the server. I also maintain the relationship with our provider. So when the server is encountering troubles, I’m the one that will contact the provider and find out what’s going on. Our server is located in a server room in Germany, so my job is the boring server work. And if I have nothing to do, it means that there’s nothing wrong, and that’s a good thing. C-P: And what about Classic-Pirates.com? What do you do there? Bonaparte: Today we have a fine team behind Classic-Pirates.com so my role is limited. But as Pirates is my favorite theme, that’s the forum I’m most active on. In the past, I actually did more in the Pirates forum. I was previously a pirates moderator (must have been somewhere in 2006-2007) along with Mr Tiber, and that was actually my first staff position on Eurobricks. During that time, as well as moderating the forum, my main activity was indexing MOCs and I was the first person to make a thumbnail index. Previously all indexed MOCs were text links, but now most of them have thumbnail image links to the MOC galleries or forum threads. C-P: What are your thoughts on the Classic-Pirates crew? Bonaparte: I think we have quite a good crew. It’s quite the oiled machine. They have a rather large list of tasks, like ensuring that there is always news added to the blog daily, creating graphics, preparing contests and executing them. And Zorro and his two masters Erdbeereis and yourself are doing a mighty fine job coordinating everything now that Mister Phes has less time for Classic-Pirates due to his real life activities. C-P: Thank you! What do you think about the future of Eurobricks and Classic-Pirates.com? Bonaparte: I think the future of Eurobricks is just to keep things up and running, not only now but several years from now. Continuity is very important to me! But you know, improving here or there, we might add another specialized forum, something around a specific topic. But other than that, I think our member base is growing, and I predict that it’ll keep growing as people discover what a wonderful community Eurobricks is. And if we can maintain the maturity levels that I believe we have now, as we’re still an adult based forum, we’ll be strong well into the future. C-P: And finally, as it seems to be becoming tradition, where did you acquire your display name? Bonaparte: Well, I originally joined Eurobricks to show my French minifig army, so Bonaparte was the first thing that came to mind. I originally spelled it without capitalization, but Mister Phes was kind enough to change the lower case ‘b’ into an upper case ‘B’. C-P: Ok, well thank you for joining me Tom. I have found your story very interesting, and I’m sure all our readers have too. So thank you very much for your time, and keep on building! And thank you too everyone, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of ‘Behind the Helm’. I look forward to seeing you next time!

Nice looking town there. How are you powering 10194 there?

Hehehe, I was wondering why on earth there was a dude in your army with a camera as big as his body - then I realised that it's me. Nice army man, might have to blog it.

Brilliant work! The only thing that could possibly improve this is the rails. Real ones or better ones, not just tiles ay? Else this is one of the greatest city MOC I've seen. Tops!

Soon...

Mine manages curves fine, although I have never run it faster than my Metroliner because it's a steam train. So I can't tell you about high speed corners, but at the speed I run her, it's fine. But I'm pretty ticked that when I reverse at a more-than-slow speed, the pistons red jamned.

Ice cream and Zorro, frontpage for the 26th. Do you think maybe the rigging is cut up LEGO net? Great find Bonaparte!

Well, many people believe that 10194 is based on the Flying Scotsman which was built in 1923.

I can't speak for the PF, although I wouldn't imagine that would take too long to install. It took me about 3 hours to build the Emerald night, most of that time spent on the loco, and I recall reading that Holodoc and his son spent 2 hours building it with Holodoc on the loco, his son on the rest. So I would estimate 2 hours for the loco, 1 hour for the tender and passenger car.

Looking good so far, but do you have a script yet? And may I suggest that you make use of the Eurobricks Brickfilm Tutorial Index (however incomplete), as following all the steps already in place will make the difference between an average brickfilm and a stunning brickfilm.

Your Classic-Pirates.com frontpage entry? Mate, no need to ask - when we see a MOC that's frontpage worthy, which this certainly is, we'll put it onto the frontpage. So watch the news in the next couple of days eh?

Thank you everyone for your great responses. I appreciate you positive feedback. Yes Holodoc, please do write up a review of K10194. We all know mine will be better, but I'd like to see yours anyway. But really, I do want to see a review of the PF gear so I know if I should spend extra on lights etc. And yes, it may be the most expensive train, but is it not also the nicest and most detailed?

Sweet. Thanks heaps for that. Can I also request that the camera is in my sigfig's left hand? So do you have my sigfig?

Yes, the light cable has two lights, and you were correct - one goes in the front of the boiler. The other one goes in the actual lamp on top of the boiler. You can the light is sticking out a little behind the lamp in the below instruction scan. Also, there is no special opening for the tender - it's open anyway. You can see all the PF equipment including the lights here: In regards to a real image of the top of the tender, no such luck. It's dark as anything and pouring down with rain here.

I really, really hope there will be more cars for 10194 Emerald Night. My guess otherwise would be a detailed deisle and some more EN cars, then that's it for the AFOL trains. I hope too, that one of the 8 channels of the PF controller could be used for maybe some signals, and more likely, a level crossing with opening gates. Noe that WOULD be cool. Nice thread TheBrickster, now I'm really getting into a train mood! I just wish LEGO would release the PF kit in Aussie soon.

I would assume it's too late, but if it's not, I would really like to be involved in this. An image depicting all the details of my sigfig above the waist can be seen below. Add two yellow hands, a 1x1 balck 'lense' on the end of the camera and white pants, and you have Captain Zuloo! Thanks for doing this, it's a great community idea. Well done!

Ouch! I got 50% evil. Oh well, I suppose that's better than VBBN's score, and that's all that matters.

I won't ask for a sigfig picture, I'll just mention that a camera offers good possibilities... Very well done mate, I wish I could draw LEGO like that. Good job.

I love this one: This is a really good concept, and I'm seriously considering purchasing the entire lot in hardcover. Well done! 10/10!

INDEXED Set Number: Emerald Night Set Name: 10194 Year: 2009 Pieces: 1085 Minifigs: 3 Price: Australia - $149.99 Austria/Belgium - EUR 89.99 Denmark - DKK 899.00 United States - $99.99 Resources: Brickshelf Gallery (When moderated) Peeron Brickset LEGO S@H eBay Ok folks, this is my first review, so be nice. Feedback on the review is greatly appreciated as well as feedback on the set. Set 10194, originally thought to be a fake, has since proven to be so real that LEGO shipped it to me on the 15th of April and I recieved it on the 21st. I set to work building it immediately, and now I'm pleased to present to you all my 10194 Emerald Night review. 10194 Emerald Night - Box Front of the box Back of the box 10194 Emerald Night - Locomotive A nice angle shot of the front of the loco You can see here that the Emerald Night makes use of the new train buffer. I was originally not sure about the new buffers, I didn't really like them. But Since actually having them, they are much stronger and pull the train a heap better, and for uses like that on the Santa Fe loco, bricklink as well as most of our collections have enough of the older buffer magnets to keep us going. A photo of the back You can just see as part of the roof of the cab, there is a tan plate - actually, 10 1 x 2 tan tile modified w/ single stud pieces. This is a great set if you are looking for parts like that and the cheese in rare colours. And a close up of the cab The furnace just slides into the cab as illustrated below which is a clever function. It means that the train can be quickly and easily modified to contain a motor or to not contain one. I also like how the furnace has a flame piece inside it. Train Pistons And the complex gear system that drives them This is a great system of gears, and really fun to build and operate. I think it's really nice that this set has the ability to actually be driven from its driving wheels. It's a nice touch to an already stunning locomotive. A side profile My thoughts on the loco I really like the design of the loco. It is certainly designed with no studs in mind. The use of those flexy tube things (not entirely sure what they're called) look great between the top section and the side sections of the green pprinted slopes. I love the way it has been designed to fit all the PF gear in with minimal destruction of the loco. Just the overall feel of the engine too, it has a majestic sort of air to it - like it's ready to steam off around the countryside. It's just so grand. It has beautiful lines and is certainly the best part of the set. It was a challenging build with all the cogs etc, and I really enjoyed construction. I would probably pay the $150 just for the loco without the passenger car and the tender. Although I'm not about to give them up - take a look why: 10194 Emerald Night - Tender The front of the tender The back And the side My thoughts on the tender This is also very nice, a heap of cheese, and nice dark green brick. This is designed to house the new Power Functions battery box, and is a perfect fit for that particular part. However there has been complaining about it looking ugly and being too obvious. But I don't think it would be too hard to add a 4x8 plate then add more smaller plates to look like coal to stick on top of the battery box? The only thing that disappointed me with the tender is that the rest of the train is so incredibly detailed, yet LEGO stooped to using a ladder piece for the ladder rather than a different, new and innovative ladder design. But then, I'm probably being a little picky. Now some pictures with the loco and the tender together 10194 Emerald Night - Passenger Car Angle from one end From the side with the doors open They actually open up really easily which suprised me. In my opinion the doors of this car look brilliant and all the people complaining that the doors aren't good enough, see the set in the flesh before making that judgement. I think they look great. With the roof off looking onto the comfortable passenger quarters Tables pulled out of the car I do really like the interior. It's nice and simple, but it's really good to see the drawers in a set again. The only thing I could improve about the interior is possibly having light brown seats and dark brown table tops. Looking down the car This view would be so much cooler with more carriages - but we'll see, because if LEGO does release more, I plan to buy them. Bogie Another thing I think is note worthy is this neat little ladder providing access from the ground to the inside of the car. Iliked this little detail as it means I have an excuse not to build a platform at every stop on my layout. My thoughts on the passenger car This is very nice - the entire design. The colour scheme of the reddish and dark browns, tan and grey roof is excellent, and the use of 1x1 plates in a diamond shape is something rarely seen in official sets. Also a nice touch. This is a brilliant car that beats the megablocks out of any other cars LEGO has produced, but I still think it looks silly next to such a splendid locomotive. Well maybe not silly, but the Emerald Night kind of makes any car look bad. If I could change anything about the car, I would make it 8-wide as the loco is 8 wide, and it's a wasted opportunity to have an AFOL (8-wide and detailed) car. 10194 Emerald Night - Full train Here's a couple of shots of the full train: 10194 Emerald Night - The other bits Cab interior This one is very tricky. The nice coal oven/door thing (with a flame inside) easily lifts out and can be replaced by a motor as illustrated above. And finally... The Minifigures These figs are maybe a little plain. I love the guy with the suitcases - his grin and orange hair are great. But the woman could have maybe a dress or other pattern on the front of her torso. Also, the driver, his face is brilliant but I'm a little dissapointed he isn't wearing overalls. It could be just me, but I think that all LEGO steam train drivers look better in overalls. Price: 10/10 - Brilliantly priced, 1085 parts for $150 AUD is nothing. Build: 10/10 - Fantastic construction. Quite challenging too in comparison to most LEGO sets. But then again, it is a 14+ set, something we don't see too much of. There are a heap of great bits of SNOT, and the way all the cogs that turn the driving wheels were concealed inside the boiler whilst leaving room for the PF gear is just magnificent. I really enjoyed building the Emerald Night. Parts: 10/10 - Brilliant array of dark green and tan, also a lot of brown. Although not too many great MOCing parts. But I'm not too concerned about that as it's such an awesome set, I won't be destroying it anyway. Summary: 10/10 - This was a brilliant build, and it's such an amazing result. The style of the 1900's steam era is beautifully captured. It's a very cheap set for what it is. Even though it includes no track or power, there is 1085 parts for the price of $149.00 AUD. Maybe not brilliant MOCing parts, but that doesn't bother me as it's such an awesome set that I have no intention of destroying it anyway. It is a real shame that there's not more than 1 passenger car as this train should be pulling no less than 3. But I would have paid $150 AUD for just the loco and tender so I suppose the car is just an added bonus. A big thing about this set is that it's a first for LEGO trains - the first train with large train wheels. This is great becase it allows LEGO purists that don't want to use Big Ben Bricks to build steam trains. This is a brilliant set, a challenging build, and I would strongly recommend it to every LEGO fan.

The reason you're seeing a last active time earlier than your PM time is that 'Last Active' refers to last log in not last log out.

It will run with two 9v motors in the tender, but that involves lengthening the tender and I'm not going to risk burning out my two 9v motors since they are no longer available without paying $60 AUD...

With the exception of the BNSF, you could just use a PF train motor and battery box + ir reciever etc. inside the trains. Although the holiday train would be a little trickier. I would imagine with a little bit more lenght on the tender could house a rechargable battery box with a train motor underneath.

Very nice review WhiteFang. I haven't actually bought this set - I thought it was priced well for its contents, but I didn't want to pay for that stupid wall that I can build in 2 seconds with the bricks I already own. Although now that you mention it, those ferns do have quite an appeal when they are thrown in with the cannon and the soldier. So maybe it might be worth my hard earned gold? Although I wouldn't want to aquire a huge ammount of those pirate torsos. 2 - 3 is quite enough. So maybe I'll wait and see what I can get out of the next wave of pirate sets. But thank you for the review anyway. Cheers, Zuloo

Just to make it clear to anyone who didn't already know, SlyOwl has too much LEGO! Nice use of minifig parts in this Sly. A nice addition to your already huge collection of MOCs.