howitzer

I'm sure absolutely everyone with even vaguest familiarity of Lego knows about the rebuildability, but of course B-models give ideas and showcase the possibilities in a way that's hard to do otherwise. But I think this relates to the discontinuation of printed instructions for B-models, rather than discontinuation of B-models themselves. The extra hassle of acquiring the digital instructions and then reading those must have reduced B-model building by a significant amount. Of course the B-models were usually hinted at the A-model instructions (or in the box) but still, I'm sure TLG has run the numbers on downloaded B-model instructions compared to sold sets and drawn conclusions. Of course TLG wants people to buy as much as possible, but the beauty of Lego (as business model) is that while the possibilities are vast and you can do a lot of things even with small amount, you'll end up wanting more. I believe it would be counterproductive for TLG to nudge people to not dismantle and rebuild, because that would lessen their desire to get more to build with - most of the parts end up stored in bins with only a little bit on display at any given time. Having the sets built takes up a lot of space and most people run out of display space much sooner than they run our of storage space.

I'm a bit worried about the scale, as this thing is going to be very large. Hopefully I have enough parts and it won't become too unwieldy to handle as the build progresses. I already did some modifications to the sled in order to make it a bit smaller. Next up is fitting the tracks.

With the recent discontinuation of official B-models there has been a lot of complaints and some people seem to be even considering stopping buying Technic, but personally I don't really know how to feel about the issue. While I appreciate the B-models as a concept, most of the time I have found myself not building them and when I did, the results usually weren't particularly interesting. Some people obviously find the B-models very worthwhile, but I wonder if it's just a loud minority, or is it a sentiment shared by many people here.

As the contest was announced I felt I had tons of ideas but no time to build anything. Still, I had an inspiration about snowmobiles, which are severely under-represented in Technic, and as I had no idea how such a vehicle would actually be built I had to do some research on their inner workings. I found out that the suspension and transmission designs for snowmobiles can be fascinatingly complex and right there in the core of what it means to build Technic. So despite my severe lack of time, I will attempt to build such a vehicle, not based on any particular brand but as a generic representation of what a snowmobile should be and do. One thing apparently most modern snowmobiles have is a continuously variable transmission, which is really hard to replicate in Technic (at least in a manner that can actually transmit some power instead of being just a conceptual demonstration), so I'm not yet sure what to do about that, but meanwhile I started out with the rear sled and its suspension. A few hours of trial and error I ended up with something that seems to do what I wanted it to, as shown here in the photos:

With those slick tyres I wonder where's the offroad in this set...

While I'm really happy that they released this kind of thing and I'm going to buy it, I can't help but to agree with you in there that it has shortcomings. I don't mind the two-hemisphere earth and sun, those are completely fine (as opposed to brick-built spheres, which tend to be just ugly) but when I heard about the upcoming release of an orrery, I really hoped there would be proper covering in the stand and arm, as there was in the Ideas submission, which was gorgeous. There also doesn't seem to be obvious motorization option, which really should be included in a set like this. On the other hand, it's nice to see what all those gears actually do, like was in the olden days when vehicles had open frames, so it's not all bad I guess. All of those shortcomings can of course be fixed on our own, but still my expectations were higher than this.

The Kawasaki bike looks nice but apparently is functionally much like the Ducati, which is pretty boring. The McLaren car appears to have the same problem - nothing new functionally, even if it is a pullback with steering. I love the space sets and the orrery, all of them must be day 1 purchases for me. The packaging design of the space sets make me feel like there's more coming, as they all have the same space logo with brushed steel background. Could of course still be a one-off but one can hope.

It's important to note that it's pure speculation and not based on any real information, as is mentioned on the video along with many other possible reasons for leaving out the official motorization option.

Hmm, now that the thread was bumped I actually took a better look at your gallery, and it seems that there's a huge number of duplicates in there. In the current list it's quite hard to determine which designs are actually different and which are just repeated ones.

Quite a bit of bend in your boom. Also, funny how small the "huge sets" 42082 and 42055 in the background seem in comparison.

1:8 RC car would be exceedingly boring if made of current Lego. The scale matters here in feeling how fast it is and also affects a lot on turning radius etc. which makes smaller RC vehicles more fun to play with. at 1:8 scale the car would be just empty shell with motors and battery box, something that could be fitted in much smaller space if we think of the current motors. Significantly more powerful motors to drive the large scale cars faster on the other hand would require much stronger power transmission and suspension parts, and step well into the territory of dedicated RC vehicles and I don't think that's feasible or even desirable for Lego. Now the Jeeps and other offroad vehicles would be nice, there's indeed much too little of those as opposed to race cars and such. Of course I'm not very interested in cars at all and I'd like to see more of other kinds of machinery.

Couple of days ago when I checked it in my local store, they had 13 in stock, now there's three... So I guess I should either get it now or forget about it.

Oh no, my local Lego retailer has this in discount with the price of 436€. There is a temptation here...

I guess some weird angle connection could be possible with that but not with the normal 5L liftarm, but feels pretty niche. Not sure if 24T gear would be able to clear it but it's possible. Anyway, the copyright thing sounds like a reasonable explanation for the shape.

What's the added value of the part in the middle as opposed to 11478?

I want that pin with axlehole so badly...

I was looking forward to the Liebherr boom parts, with an idea to make my own version of a large scale crawler crane. Getting those parts in equal amounts to that of the set (20 each) would cost about 150€, which isn't too bad I guess, but for better scaling I would need 2-3 times the amount of parts so I'd be looking at some 300-400€ in just the boom parts. Not really sure it's worth it. I wonder if it would be easier to just use 1x16 Technic bricks, though those aren't exactly free either and I'm not sure how easy it is to build a sufficiently strong frame with those...

Welcome to Eurobricks, nice mod! This forum isn't the place to host your photos, you should use another service like Imgur or Flickr to do that, and link the photos in your posts.

That's actually one thing I really liked in Sariel's reviews: all text and video, no spoken aloud content. This made them viewable even without sound and easy to rewind/stop the video if you missed something. Too bad if the algorithm is tuned against that kind of content (though I still get plenty of recommendations for non-spoken Lego videos like those of Brick Experiment Channel and Brick Technology). I must admit though that I really like kbalage's voice and presentation style, and I tend to agree with his remarks, so in the end I prefer his reviews. But my first and foremost preference is pictorial reviews (without video) like those that Jim and others have done here at Eurobricks, and those of New Elementary and Brickset - even when videos do have some undeniable advantages like showing how mechanisms move.

It's not the first time a B-model explores subject where A-models haven't dared to venture, but as a B-model it's still pretty bad. The entire lower portion of the build is identical to the A-model so there's nothing of interest there, and while the upper part is something new in terms of subject, I don't think it's that great in execution, especially comparing to the many things fans have built as alternate models. Anyway, let's not hijack this thread to discussion about B-models but rather let's appreciate the beauty of this creation by @Timorzelorzworz! While the original set is far beyond what I'm willing to spend on a Lego set, having this one as an official B-model would definitely add a lot of value. On the other hand, if you are going to get the set, throwing additional 16,90€ to the instructions in Rebrickable would surely be worth it - it's hard to think of any other alternate model instructions with more value than this one.

I can only speculate for the reasons for removing B-models but all I can think of is the B-model of 42082 Rough Terrain Crane, which must have been one of the shittiest of all time. Despite the high part count of the main set and all the opportunities those afforded, it was obvious that it was developed as a rush job without any real considerations of what a B-model should be and a sign that TLG is going to kill the B-models for good. Well made alternates like the one presented in this topic are great and significantly add the value of the sets, while those such as the 42082 B-model I can entirely live without.

While I often found myself disagreeing with Sariel, he has been a really prominent reviewer and I hope that this is not a sign of a larger trend where TLG will discontinue official relations with reviewers who actually give proper critique of the sets (as opposed to those who just praise everything, no matter how bad it is). That would be very bad for us fans looking for honest information about new sets and in in the long run bad for TLG also. I almost never buy any sets without looking at reviews first, and not getting honest reviews would mean at least less first day purchases if not less overall purchases for myself.

Walking vehicles exist in real life, for example this tree harvester: https://blog.machinefinder.com/3255/john-deere-walking-harvester Not that they're common, but I see no reason why walkers should be excluded from this contest. I'll be watching this entry with interest, walkers are really hard to do well especially when no third party parts are allowed!

That looks like a really great part, there's a severe shortage of parts for half stud offsets which this would help a lot. It also looks like it could fill the place of O+O-crossblock in some places, which would be great.

This is what I too fear is happening. The competition is really rough, and while TLG's quality is still best in the market, the difference is nowhere near what it was a decade ago, the parts from competing brands are getting good enough that you mostly can't tell the difference. Meanwhile TLG is having their own quality issues (colour consistency is often mentioned but there are other things too) and this coupled with their pricing is driving many customers away. The brand is still really strong though, so there still could be time to fix their current problems and change the corporate culture so that it allows them to keep ahead of the competitors. I hope they are able to do this change.