Weil

My bad, thought I'd heard otherwise. Actually looks like it is likely they'll be a 5th film in 2013 too which makes classic lego pirates future quite a bit more uncertain.

... or just used a ruler and put it square with the edge of the frame?

Nope, City/town is Lego's biggest global seller though Star Wars is also a highly successful theme and consistently one of the best sellers. I think it's more of a question of 'when' than 'if' classic pirates will return. The 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film wasn't a big success and the future of the franchise in general looks uncertain, while at the release of the film a PotC Lego theme definitely looked like a money spinner I think it's already clear it will be short lived since as far as I'm aware it already hasn't done as well as hoped and I would think its safe to say with the decline of the franchise sales can only go down from here. Comparisons to Star Wars are pretty limited since the overall size of the PotC merchandise market is a speck compared to the size of the Star Wars merchandise market. The Indiana Jones Lego line has a much better comparison with the PotC line and look what's happened there - they discontinued the license and bought out a new unlicensed theme along same lines in the form of Pharaoh’s Quest. Lego have quite openly said that a few years back they were getting it all wrong in trying to move away from their core product resulting in them selling off their theme parks and licensing out all the video games. They're now moving back to focusing on lego bricks and their core themes - City, Castle, Space and Pirates. The classic pirate line made way for an opportunity they had with the PotC line but with the PotC line now on its way out (Probably either finishing with the pearl or perhaps with 1 more wave afterward) then I think its quite realistic to hope for the return of classic pirates in say 2013. This is of course all speculative - I have no idea what lego will do really but these are my reasoned thoughts.

Thanks guys, especially for blogging it! Really pleased I managed to achieve that. Looking forward to seeing it on the blog soon! Thinking of changing my avatar to the guy guarding the top of the stairs (shown here). Hearing any more comments or feedback would be great.

I'm sure you could get it off with water and a cloth if you persevered but there are also cleverer ways. If you go over the permanent marker with a normal dry-wipe non-permanent pen then you'll be able to remove both the permanent and non-permanent in a single wipe. (Because of a solvent in the non-permanent pen) Alternatively some alcohol wipes would do the job fine. If you really want to be swish about it then if you can get a bottle of propan-2-ol (isopropanol) and put a little bit of that on a cloth, that will get the ink of without affecting the lego. Don't use acetone (main component of nail-varnish remover) that's too strong of an organic compound eater - that will take the pen off but I'm pretty sure would also do a great job of corroding the lego!

Looks good. You can also easily get the sharpie off which is a major plus over paint. Personally I wouldn't paint or sharpie any of my lego though.

The 'best' theme on an impartial basis is unquestionably city lego. There's a countless amount of very nice sets of all sizes, the theme is set out very well and all the sub themes fit together seamlessly. That said when it comes to my favourite themes city lego is not really that high up, as a child I would have always picked to play with pirates,knights, cowboys etc over 'regular people' because I found them so much more fun. On exactly the same basis the chance to build pirate ships and castles was so much more appealing than building say a tower block. My feelings are still the same today. As you can probably now guess my favourite theme is Lego Pirates (including the old pirate, imperial guard and islander waves as well as the 2009-10 releases but not including PoTC). Hope to see these return in the next few years after the PoTC fad (but using some of the great new pieces!) This is followed quite closely by Castle (including the great new Kingdoms but not Knights Kingdom) which I would say is probably the second 'best' theme as well as my second favourite. The Western Theme is my third favourite. I think the Space themes are great and are probably the third 'best' theme, but they never interested me more than a passing fancy for some reason. So to sum up: 'Best' Themes: 1. City 2. Castle 3. Space Favourite Themes: 1. Pirate 2. Castle 3. Western

Love this MOC. Great amount of detail and lots of nice extras, the buildings look great and I like that you put in those bank robbers. Nice design for the accordion and the over sized sheriff badge on the building! Even without the moving parts this would be great but with it its just fantastic!

First let me say I pretty much look at all the PotC sets from the perspective of a classic pirates fan who just wants to obtain some of the new pieces and turn all the minifigures heads and hands to yellow... That said the one piece I really like about this set is the red coat officer's torso! I also like the white rimmed tricorne hats. They never show up in photos well as it looks just like light reflecting off them but you can see it in the poster and look great in real life. I got the officer minifigure from bricklink and was pleasantly surprised with his hat! Looking at pictures of the set before I thought it was just a normal black tricorne. I think you've overall done a good job with the review. Personally there's not enough about this set to make me want to buy it.

I think you've done a good job with the hull and it looks nice at the side, I would try to make the cabin look a bit more connected to the hull from the back though and take out pieces to make it curve up sharply from the red to the windows, or just curve it round from the sides to make it thinner. It looks a bit too flat and wide for that hull to me but I'm no expert. I'm also a little confused, you call this your first ship but then list the RMS Titanic and the HMS Surprise as part of your portfolio?

Can you not just upload the photos to some free service like photobucket or brickshelf and then use image tags to place them in your post so they appear exactly the same as if you attached them? ie [img=http://www.picturelinkexample.jpg]

I've got the Black Seas Barracuda (but quite dramatically modified now), Renegade Runner and Caribbean Clipper from when I was a kid. I've now recently purchased the Imperial Flagship (10210) Would love to have the old red coat imperial flagship and the Skulls Eye Schooner.

Like everyone else, even with the bigger pictures I'm still confused as to what you've done... That's probably to the building styles credit in that the end result is subtle.

Thank you both for your kind words! I did work hard on it to try and get it close to the standard of some of the great looking models I've seen here. Obviously there's still room for a lot of improvement but I'm pleased that I finished it and am happy with the result. I got most of the pieces from the Medieval Market Village set that I bought mainly for the pieces to make this but luckily had quite a lot of pieces already from when I was a child, plus I managed to get a few of the newer figures second hand. I was worried initially that it would look a bit strange that all my old gray bricks were a different shade of gray to the new ones but by mixing them all up I think it actually makes it more realistic. Now that I've made a predominately 'piratey' MOC my next plan is to make a predominantly Imperial Guard MOC and I've started collecting some bits and pieces for it including figures. I have a few ideas but don't know what I'll go with yet!

[pid][/pid]193A Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to being re-enchanted by Lego and this is my first MOC both to be made public and built while I've been an adult. I have been browsing around here for a little while though and completed this model a couple of weeks back but just got round to doing all the photos. This is a little backstory to my MOC: Without any more delay here are some pictures: As you can see it has a fully built exterior and interior. I've built it with accessibility/playability in mind and it is easy to get at the interior via the removable sections. For many more pictures and enlarged copies of the individual pictures seen above then you can visit my newly created brickshelf folder at the link below. MORE PICTURES: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=481852 Since this is the first topic I've created I hope I've used appropriate formatting. Thanks for looking!

Hey, given the amount of parts compared to the size of the model and that this is your first real moc I think you've done a nice job. You've definitely managed to put some character into the place and the baseplate does work well for this (wasn't even aware that baseplate existed!) I like the placing of the crocodile, is that the sewers?

I like your little moc a lot! I think I would have built a different stand for the globe though.

By far the best built hull of a lego ship that I've seen...

I believe in the vast majority of cases the blue coated leader was referred to as Governor Broadside (notably so in the lego books like THIS one) and the red coated leader was referred to as Admiral Woodhouse. This comic seems to be the strange exception and was potentially a screw up? Edit: I've now seen what I said is consistent with the LEGO Pirates Wikipedia article... for what that's worth.

I actually think TLC did quite a good job with the set, I think it looks pretty true to the films and it looks particularly good in the second picture here. While I do approve of the Davy Jones mini-figure design I do agree that the mini-figure choice isn't ideal. Having Barbossa, Pintel and Ragetti would have been far better in my eyes than Davy Jones, Bootstrap and the hammerhead person as at least these characters do all spend a decent amount of time on the black pearl throughout the films and still allow for decent role-play. I am however very much a classic pirates fan rather than a PotC fan and for that reason won't be getting the set. The mini-figures are of little use to me and the ship itself doesn't interest me enough for the high price tag. The only PotC set I've bought is the Captain's Cabin as I liked some of the pieces in this set (the globe, the bottles, the shoulder strap etc) and wasn't too expensive. Apart from that I've just bricklinked the Red Coat Officer to get his torso and white rimmed hat. I'm not overly opposed to the set and think it achieves what it set out to do, it's not for me though. Personally I'm just looking forward to the PotC line finishing and some new unlicensed (and therefore better value) pirate sets being released instead - hopefully including some of the nice new bits and pieces from the PotC line.

Richard Whiter “Jack flounders aboard the ship of the pirate zombie village people...” – 1 point. Thought this was really funny both for flounder pun and for pointing out the use of the torso's of the lego zombies like aviator and cowboy and connecting that to The Village People dressed up as cowboy etc. Merlijn Wissink “Jack says: "Guys! Let's barbecue!” – 1 point. Daniel Ludwig “Jack: "something smells good!" – 1 point.