Pate-keetongu

The Historic themes forum seems to be under heavy discussion about elves, orcs and wizards, so it is time to bring on some dwarf action! Bofur, cousin of Bifur and brother of Bombur is the dwarf with a cool hat, positive attitude and warm heart. Acted by Jimmy Nesbitt, Bofur is one of the most important dwarves in the first Hobbit film. This guy was on a WIP stage for quite a long. It bears resemble to Bifur, as they have rather similar costumes. The bits I'm most proud of are the wristbands and the face. They were rather tricky but came out well. Here's also a group shot of family B: More on Flickr and Cyclopic Bricks.

They don't look bad (and in the Finnish culture that is a rather big praise). Radagast looks quite good and the elf army will surely sell well. I doubt I'll buy any of these, as I'm more in the dwarf business as you have probably noticed. I love the look of the new orc shoulder armour, and Beorn's hair/beard looks quite hip too.

Excellent combo with the Pohatu Phantoka's mask and the brain slug. Works very well!

Great review! This set looks worth of getting, though I doubt whether I'll ever see it on a store in Finland. Those letter pieces would be useful in MOCing.

I have to disagree with this. I make lot of (purist) minifigs which involves a lot of arm and hand removals, but I have only broken a few pieces which seem to be special, weaker colored plastic; Sand green arms had that problem, there was a topic about the issue on EB somewhere. But the "irregular minifigures" have the thing other way round: I haven't used for example the battle droid or Ninjago skeleton arms very much, but I have a lot of those with broken clips. And when it comes to minifigures on Hero Factory, I see it as good thing. It is always good to have more minifigure parts, both regular and irregular. They might also make the theme a bit fresher. I buy the sets for parts only, and a think that the Breakout wave has been the strongest so far. My dearest wish is to have sets with "Double ball cups" (Fortunately there is one on Ninjago dragon mecha, so the piece wasn't killed after Breakout Stormer) and 1x3 liftarms with ball cups (luckily got a few on the contest prizes). Those pieces are really hard to buy in large quantities for decent prices on Bricklink; probably I have to order a hundred or something from LUGBULK. I see many people posting constantly about when the pictures come available. I am somewhat happy with the fact that TLG has succeeded in keeping the confidental pictures secret. Is always cooler to have a clean view of a finisher product (though seeing prototype pics afterwards is interesting too). The pictures come when they come.

Received my prizes yesterday. Big thanks to contest organizers and all contestants! Neat part packs they are.

Woah, that robot seriff from the second trailer/spot looks totally cool. I mean, molded mustache piece. Now how awesome is that? No I just wish he would come in the collactable series or in a rather cheap set.

Cyborg ninjas, mecha dragons and chainsaw axes! I really think that this year's Ninjago sets appeal to boys who like this "T-Rex drives the Batmobile and explodes" sort of thing. I don't think I'm buying any of the sets, but might pick a few figure parts from Bricklink later.

Excellent MOC! The color scheme is nice, somewhat serene and harmonic.. or something. And the SNOT text is really top notch.

Hey, dear Eurobrickers! Does anybody know how is this series available in the Czech Republic? These figs aren't available in Finland, but I'm making a trip to Prague in few weeks, and I'm planning to grab a few there. So, are the boxes set in the shop so that the minifigs can be identified by feeling, or are they behind the counter etc.? Also, are they sold in regular shop's toy sections or do I have to look for any special stores? I got to grab a few bobbies, my steampunk city needs mustaches of that magnitude...

Here's my newest MOC, a sculpture of masked vigilante The Comedian from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen graphic novel. The build was rather challenging, especially the shoulders, head and arms, but rather fun and refreshing too (as LEGO hobby should be!). I'm especially happy with the legs and the torso. More on Cyclopic Bricks and Flickr. Enjoy!

That's sweet and sleek. The monochromacy looks rather good, espacially on the big flat areas, but some very small yellow details could look neat as well. The double cockpit is cool, nice to see those windshields used on a Blacktron MOC, they want to be used like that!

I've noticed this forum suffers from a sort of lack of purist minifigs... So here's some on my steampunk style. They differ from nearly-ordinary Victorian era people to cyclopic oddness. Enjoy! There is also a small backstory for each fig on my blog.

Nice MOC! It always cool to see animal mechas, I have ideas for some myself too. I think the torso os the best part here, as it has some great shapes. The use of cape is nice, and the controls have some cool steampunkish oddity. I thinks the bird would look a bit more lively if there were more angle on the legs as they look a bit stiff now. If you used some stronger joints you could put it to running pose and make the MOC even better.

Quite odd release without any existing pirate theme, but I like the use of Monster Fighters heads. They work very well on these ragged pirates.

Sweet! The heads are great, nice diversity there. The blue one is my favourite. Takadox head with those claws as eyes is cool and I dig the bomb.

A neat beefy build. Proportions are good, and I especially like those lower legs; Stars feet work very well as armour. The cheast part is nice too. I'd probably tweak thw arms a bit, as the light bley parts on the lower arms look a bit off. Basic HF bone would be simple alternative, but that doesn't especially mean bad. I'd also add a bit muscle to the upper arms. TECHNIC panels are fantasic pieces, but I'm not sure do they work there.

Yippee, second place! Now I'm really happy I took part in this contest. Congratulations to all winners and participants, it has been great to see action figure building to rise its head on AFOL community.

I have to clear up a few things here. All the stuff Tolkien wrote about the White Council's attack to Dol Guldur were just a few mentions here and there: In the end of The Hobbit, the Appendixes (Book of the years) and Book of Unfinished tales (Quest of Erebor text and the passage about the White Council, which took part around 100 years before The Hobbit). All the books tell about the Dol Guldur passage is that Saruman refused to attack at first but later (when Gandalf left the dwarves on the edge of Mirkwood) changed his mind so he could safely search the One Ring from Anduin. The Council did expel The Necromancer from Dol Guldur, but didn't destroy the fortress. While I have no real information about the end of DOS, I believe Smaug will attack Esgaroth to destroy it and is killed by Bard. When it comes to set list, I'm not dead set it's real, but it really seems quite a dissapointing - Way too much elves and less dwarves, as in the DOS trailer. But we have to see the film beofre we can judge the importance of Dol Guldur to consumers and market.

1 point to Koboldon: Very set-like design fits to HF universe, strange triobilite plate as the face is a real NPU and the before form is cute. 2 points to Marcus Fisher: Very original concept and love the way how same pieces are used on before and after form.

Thanks for the review! It's nice to see that more and more of collectable minifigs get back and arm printings. They add a lot to their designs, especially to Barbarian which seemed rather boring. The distribution is not that bad. Six bobbies help me to gather a Steam Guard more easily, but two Bavarian ladies is a bit nasty.

He's not fat, just big-boned! Bombur, a brother of Bofur and cousin of Bifur, is the newest addition to my Hobbit Dwarves project. It was very different from the other dwarves, and I used Lowell-sphere like technique to achieve the round shape. The rather bright color scheme was also fun to work with. More backstory on Cyclopic Bricks and photos on Flickr. Thanks for watching!

Already commented on Flickr but this is seriously sweet. Other parts are full of NPU goodness, but that head is just perfect.

1 point to Marshall Boyle for excellent posing and colours. 1 point to Quazara Angelata for neat use of pieces not avalable in particular colors. 1 point to Prometheus for original and beefy build.