howitzer

All of them, obviously.

Went to the local hypermarket on the other day in other business but decided to check out the Lego shelf in case they had any good discounts. And they did: all Ninjago and Technic 25% off. Too bad I'm not interested at all in Ninjago and every Technic set they had on shelf was either Kawasaki Ninja (not interesting) or a car set (also not interesting). So I guess I saved a bunch of money. My Bricklink order of loose bricks arrived on the other hand, so I can get on with my entry for a (non-Technic) contest held by my local LUG, which is nice.

No, there hasn't been one and it indeed has been suggested before. I'd make an effort to participate if there was an animal contest but I'm not sure how popular it would be... often when there's a contest themed outside of typical Technic builds, they tend not to be hugely popular while themes that include stuff you could buy in an official set (vehicles, construction equipment) get a lot of attention.

The alternate model contest of 2026 models could be fun with everyone picking a single set and making an alternative of that. It would be a good way to showcase the possibilities of Lego even with the limitations of currently produced parts palette. The one additional limit I'd impose would be: the model has to be decidedly different from the original, so car alternatives of car sets. Not that I see myself participating this time, I don't there's any sets worth of buying this year (unless something hugely impressive comes later but that's a slim chance) and my building time is mostly directed elsewhere anyway at the moment...

Ah, that might be true. I thought one of the turntables would have 64 teeth and seeing those worm gears mesh with them it should work. But alas, the turntable has 60 teeth so it's different size than the new gear. So yeah, it still seems the only gear to mesh with it in whole number spacing is the 16T gear.

I believe the other worm gear, 27938, will also mesh with the 64T gear with whole stud spacing. I also don't think the half-stud offset is a huge problem when meshing with 8, 24 and 40T gears, though this obviously depends on what you're building.

True, I'd rather say "worst year so far". There's always room for more disappointment.

If you take a bit of time to read the comments about this year's lineup you'll see that it's definitely not just you.

In your second to last line you surely meant something other than 42043 which is MB Arocs, right? Anyway, I like pneumatics but other than that I pretty much agree. Technic of today seems to be Speed Champions but with larger scale, uglier designs and steering, but that's it. The Unimog is sort of interesting but I don't like the colour scheme so I probably won't buy it. And beside that there's nothing remotely interesting.

2023 had the Liebherr crane which wasn't without flaws, but at least it was properly Technic. Same for the Moon rover of 2024, which I think is off-putting to some due to it's theme though it's a very good set with novel and interesting functionality. I'd take any one of these any day over a full year's range of cars.

No, you're not.

Numerous stores in Bricklink have those with prices starting around 0,60€/piece so that seems like an obvious way forward.

Still works here.

No problems here.

Yes, pinhole would work, even though pinhole sits very small amount (1/20th of a brick) higher than the studhole on the side of the headlight brick so in theory it wouldn't be exactly on grid either, but such a small difference is insignificant. These flaws scream of a rush job with much of the quality control skipped.