SilvaShado

So I've been trying to find a way to build the 2010 Happy Holidays board game that was only given to certain LEGO employees & business partners. I've been looking for scans of the instructions, but haven't found any. Has anyone else? I did find this site that has the instructions on how to play, but not how to build the game pieces or dice. LEGO wikia has some photos that could help in building the reindeer, but I still don't know how to build the dice. And Bricklink has the inventory, which is mostly purchasable except for a few pieces, which I could find substitutions for. There are currently 2 sellers of the game in sealed condition, but I am not paying $200 for it. I know it seems weird to try to so hard to recreate something like this, even if it isn't completely accurate. I'm just a big fan of the new board games and have them all, even the ones only released in Europe, except for this one. Sometimes I just wish I had never heard about it then I could be happy in my ignorant bliss...

Here's a display that my husband and I just made for our the LEGO store showcase. We get to put it in the store in January as another of our club's member gets to go in December. This was a free build. I had in mind to make a crystal castle. My husband made the mountain top as making natural landscaping is definitely more his forte. I'm too symmetrical in my building as you'll see. Once that was done, I started with the outer walls. I wanted a kind of mystical feel to it so I made the walls look like they encased blue magical energies. Things shifted a bit as I built the interior building. It came out oriental for some reason. I think I had Ninjago on the brain. Moving forward with that theme, I created a mini Ice Dragon which is inspired by the mini fire dragon build using pieces from the Ice Dragon set. Having bought an extra Ninjago board game, I used the microfigures from it. That left us with a lot of extra white space around the mountain. We tried various rock formations, but nothing looked right. So since this was intended to be a display, my husband edged it in blue tile and he came up with the idea of doing some writing. Since it had an oriental flair, we looked up various Kanji to see what we could write out of 1X1 round plates. We settled on Beautiful Dragon. And that's how we named the display. Please let us know what you think. I took some pictures with flash and without flash. Below are some of the pictures. Here's the full gallery of all the images.

Thanks for the confirmation! Really appreciate it.

Sorry, I should have included that. It's supposed to read Beautiful Dragon. Thanks for the feedback! All of the Dragon Kanji fonts we looked at had a curved bottom. Reminds me of a trail, but I will look it up again. Thanks for responding. It seems to be right as other have responded similarly. I'm guessing dragon isn't a very common word whereas beautiful is. I'm glad to know we got that one right for sure. :-)

My husband and I have made a display model for our club's LEGO Showcase in our local LEGO store. Before we put it in, we want to make sure we wrote the Kanji correctly. Here are two pictures, one taken with flash and one taken without flash. Can someone please confirm if it reads correctly? If anyone is interested, here's pictures of the whole display.

The Small Train Holiday event at the California Railroad Museum is back this year. A two day event on Friday the 25th and Saturday the 26th. It features a variety of model railroaders including a LEGO layout by Sacramento Brick Builders (SacBB). Our layout features pirates vs ninjas, the old west and the north pole. For more info, check out SacBB's Facebook page.

Fantastic! I love the Heroica games and was so very hoping that they'd make more. As it is, I'm planning on making my own areas, like converting the Ninjago board game into a Heroica expansion. Thanks for the heads up!

We've enjoyed the games so far. It is more fun with more people. And the more of the sets you have, the more fun and longer the game is. If you just have one of the games, it can go by pretty fast. Also, it's got such an open rule set that you can create your own rules and add on new areas. I bought an extra Ninjago board game and I'm planning on modifying it for Heroica. I'm going to create an ability for each of the ninjas and damage levels for the skeletons. Then I'm going to modify the board to fit in with the Heroica boards. At some point, I'm hoping to get some of the microfigures from the Champion game because it has some female microfigures that would be fun to add to Heroica. Oh and we have almost all of the LEGO board games. Heroica is my favorite with the Harry Potter one a close second. Hope that helps in making your decision.

Hi All, Haven't been on in a while. Been sick then got busy. But my husband and I have been working hard on our part of our club's layout for a local train event. While others in our club are building the north pole and the old west, we've been working on a pirate section. To make it train related, we made a Sea Serpent Train. Then on the shoreline, to spice things up, we have pirates vs ninjas. Pirates of the Caribbean vs Ninjago. Most of it is the LEGO-made designs, but the PoTC Mill has been redesigned to move (here's the movie link). Please let us know what you think. Here's the link to the folder, in case you want to read my commentary on each picture.

Calling all female LEGO fans! Oh, and men, you can come along too. I want to write a blog on The Brick Blogger about what women like the most about LEGO. Take a look at why we do what we do with the hobby of LEGO. So women, please post below what draws you to LEGO, what do you enjoy the most and do you agree or disagree with my perspective. From my perspective of both my own reasons for playing with LEGO and what I’ve seen of other women, LEGO has two main draws for women. One is the social aspect and two is the story-telling potential. First, the social. I really enjoy interacting with others around and with LEGO. I think this is a big draw for many other women, too. LEGO is a medium, an activity, in which we gather, discuss, and do. Social groups are a big part in many women’s lives. It probably has something to do with how we’re wired, but all I know is that the women in my local club aren’t as much focused on building with LEGO as discussing and sharing. I kind of see the LEGO club much like a book club or knitting club. A common activity is the key to bringing women together, but after a while, it’s not necessarily the purpose. It’s still an integral part, but it’s not the sole focus. Second, the story-telling. When it does get to women building with LEGO, I’ve often seen and experienced myself that the focus of building is on the who and the why. Men tend to focus more on the how and the where of a creation. These are generalizations and dangerous ground to tread, but remember I am speaking from my experiences and would love to know what others think. I pull a lot of this from my own building, my husband’s building and what I see of my local club. Men young and old brag of building this or that and how accurate or realistic it is. Women young and old talk more of the characters and the story behind what they’ve built. This goes back to LEGO trying to capture the young female audience by creating a separate line that focuses on role-playing. Whether or not they get the product right, the theory behind it seems sound. Women feel fulfilled with creating stories with their LEGO building. Now that I’ve presented those two points of view, I want to know what other women think. Are the above true for you? What else do you get out of LEGO? What do you focus on? Men, feel free to jump in with your experiences and observations as well. It’ll help balance out the perspective if I know whether or not I got it right about the differences between men and women. Please let me know in your post whether you are okay with me quoting you in my blog. You can say yes or no, but if you do not address it, I will assume you don’t want to be quoted. Also, I doubt I’m the first person to try to tackle this topic. If anyone knows of any blogs/articles about this, please post a link so I can read them. Thanks so much for the help! ~Sarah~ p.s. I hope this is the right place to post this. If not, I'm sure a moderator will move it and I apologize for the inconvenience.

I would definitely love a minifigure-scale version of Heroica. I really think that there is a place, even if it is a small place, for the fantasy theme to exist side-by-side with the more realistic/historical castle theme. Honestly, I like both, but since I get plenty of the latter, I want more of the former. Honestly, a deal between Wizards & LEGO would sell like hotcakes as long as it was marketed to D&D players as well as LEGO fans. I already know a lot of D&D players who are also LEGO fans that use minifigures instead of the metal figurines or paper tokens in their D&D campaigns. I've considered it for my D&D group, but I just don't want them messing with my LEGO. lol!

The problem with that is you're only talking minifigures. Most fans of the fantasy castle want sets, at least I do, and I doubt LEGO is going to make sets based on the collectible minifigures. And the adventure-type series that LEGO makes inevitably have modern elements like vehicles with the fantasy elements, Pharoah's Quest and Ninjago. So there doesn't seem to be a better place to do fantasy than in the Castle theme. Straight realistic castles are cool, but can get repetitive after a while. For me, I've always want a Lord of the Rings or Dunegons & Dragons like theme with lots of fantasy creatures and fantastical locations. But I know everyone has their own opinion and wants. I kind of feel sorry for LEGO who has to try to appease all of us.

My thoughts exactly. It has Kingdoms in the name so I think it will be a reflection of the Kingdoms theme. So unless new factions come out next year and this set is going to mirror that, I expect it'll be Lion Knights versus Dragon Knights. Unless all four factions are included, which would be more historically accurate as tournaments would draw knights from many factions to compete for prizes and honor. It'd be really cool if this is the case because it'd be great to have multiple factions in one set.

I was hoping for some more medieval life sets and this works. I still wanted something non-violent like a manor or a farm or other shops besides a blacksmith, but jousting is good. I hope it's a good sized set, but not too large. If they do a large arena setting, I can imagine it would get quite expensive. But it'd be cool to see risers, venders, maybe a special seating booths for the nobles. Lots of armor would be cool and I hope they do squires for the knights. If they make it as historically accurate as the MMV then we'll be in good shape here. But if it's for a younger age range, it'll probably be minimal.

That would be awesome! LEGO would never do it, never make that many female figures in one set, but it would be so very cool!

I'm a big fan of fantasy-oriented Castle sets so I'm already a little biased against Kingdoms, especially since I missed out on most of the Fantasy Era sets since I was in my dark ages at the time. I wish they had continued that and done elves and centaurs and more fantasy creatures. Hopefully they will someday. However, having said that, I do like Kingdoms for all the new elements it introduces and for the civilian sets they made, even though those civilian sets still have attack features. I love the new bucket, the reissuing of the pitchfork and the new printed animals. I also love the peasant minifigures and the dragon knights, but the lion knights are blah to me. I do hope they do new factions next year. I'm kinda hoping it's forest-men, but I'm also worried that they'll mess it up. I didn't like the collectible minifigure version, but I'm hoping they'll do a new forestwoman. I still wish they'd do female knights/warriors, but I know this is a boys market so I'll take what I can get.

We bought 60 through TRU online, but had many missing since we were trying to put a complete set together for us and two others. When we went to the store, they had a limit of 5 per person. Guess we'll have to wait for the LEGO store to get them in, though they usually have a limit too, but it's usually 16.

Congrats to all! Just a question on filling out the form. It won't let me choose a subject and there's no place to write that it's for this contest. Should I fill it out anyway and you'll match me up?

Yes, a big congrats to the winner. This was my first LDD contest and was quite challenging and very fun!

That's good to know. It really is a simple solution to the problem.

My thoughts exactly! I so want Disney Princesses in regular minifigure scale. You know, if LEGO wanted to be really successful with girls in the older age range, they couldn't go wrong with Disney Princesses. I know I'd pick them up, especially if they did different sets based on different points of the movies.

Aw, dang, I missed seeing the pictures. Been a busy week and just didn't have time to keep up online. I can only hope that the figures are somewhat compatible with normal minifigure scales. It's hard to tell from everyone's response. Guess I'll wait for new pictures to be posted.

They've done it with a few sets, so I know they can do it. So they just need to do it all the time, or at least for the bigger sets. The smaller sets don't usually have the same problems.

I consider any bending, creasing or warping as damage. I mean, if it's just a corner, I don't mind. But when the booklet is creased in half or at multiple points, I have an issue with that. This didn't use to happen when they packaged the insides of the box better. I mean, all they have to do is bag and board the instructions, stickers and other delicate items like cloth sails and there wouldn't be any problems.

We've always had good experiences with LEGO's customer service. I always complain when the instruction booklets or sticker sheets are damaged, which is quite often with the larger sets. And they send me replacements right away. Recently, my husband had a problem with using an e-gift card. When it got all figured out, he got a follow-up call and the rep wanted to apologize for the problem and gave us the free gift of the month, even though we didn't spend enough. Actually, after a long conversation, she gave us both July's and August's gifts - 2 of each. My husband wrote a blog about it, if anyone wants to read the whole story.