Horation

I like the colour choices, and the background colours are better than most digital builds. But I think making it seem more restaurant-like would fit better, as this looks like a cave, so we'd expect a wine tasting session, maybe just replacing the barrel with a stool piece (if you know what I am referring to, it was using as a landing gear in classic space spaceships) would fit better. Alternatively, if you want to go all the way, adding some taps on the barrels would be more logical... Overall, a small wall that does all that it shall need to capture the moment.

Fair enough, I will however suggest adding a couple of coconuts (there's a printed head piece for them) under one of the trees for some easy and not too moc-like details. I also think a sword in the hand of the conquistador's squeleton would make it seem like a more fearsome place ; even a weapon can't save you

I actually quite like the yellow wall ; it is reminiscent of old-school builds. Overall, a logical story which fits the details ; some fish lying around, some food, etc... But I see two flaws : it is supposed to be old, but it still looks too clean, add more vines, and discolourations or holes in the walls to make it credible, and that door leading straight into the sea is illogical, either make it look like there is more land beyond it or remove it to make space for a bit more detail. Overall, the same high level of detail I've gotten used to from you.

A good use of perspective. The build is colourful, and all the parts serve the story (the boat, the handshake, etc...). @Math Wizard makes a fair point, the white represents the "foam" near the coast, I believe. But it looks weird, remove it and consider throwing a few trans white studs near the coast instead. I also don't like the purple bits in the clouds, if this is meant to be a sunset or sunrise, I'd rather see some orange or dark beige to better reflect that colouration. And you are a maestro at micro builds from the looks of it ; that is THE best rendition of the trading boat I've seen to date, and the flying birds add a lot of charm.

Great story, good build, awesome technique. The poem and background are excellent, and this is an awesome display piece, but I would have liked to see a bit less white on the ship ; it looks like a white build on a white paper. Maybe a few stripes here and there could spice things up? But that statue-like display absolutely makes it a top contender, it adds originality AND creates a further sense of isolation for our poor Steve.

Fair enough, but I do have to ask, are those 1 by 2 tiles battle damage or small boats? If they are the first, why not add a small flag (there's this one mini imperial trading outpost which does it quite well using an armour piece). If they are the latter, why not add some battle damage? (Silencing one of the guns, for instance).

This is a really good build, literally everything is chosen carefully : I was going to criticise the use of square and round headlight holes as inconsistent, but no, that's intentional and is meant to represent the large, squarish (rectangular) holes through which the figures can walk. Also, the stickers are brilliant (will you share them?) and add some well needed charm. However, I must critique something : the cannons barrels should be dark grey, like the real build. But this is otherwise entirely perfect, and is my current favourite build!

Excellent micro-build, I appreciate the originality and it really captures the barracuda's looks. But, a few small things do bother me : the cannons should shoot out smoke (using a white ice cream piece), and, for the same reasons, the water splashes should be white, since that's what they'd look like. Alternatively, maybe try to make the background of a different colour? Since this is a digital build, it looks very clean, so a natural colour background (like light beige, or some light grey) would really make it seem "dirtier" (more natural). I do like the display stand, and the small details give it life which larger builds would struggle to pull off. Good job!

As always from your end, a solid build with a lot of charm, this picture in particular is excellent and creates some sense of old-timey-ness to me. I like the details in this small space and the story is well told by the build alone. One thing I'd have done differently is to take the door closer to the middle ( and maybe add a chair or two) to make it seem like it was a proper sitting meeting of gentlemen. The door could be set outwards (as in opening towards the outside and not the inside like here) if the table ends up blocking it or touching, and I think Redbeard would take his parrot with him, but other than that, an original idea executed almost perfectly.

A nice choice of characters ; the father has similar facial hair to Steve and the mother has a matching outfit with the face. I like the natural settings and the story, though simple, is useful. There's a lot of studs on the boat, though, maybe adding a little more cargo could cover it up? Also, maybe consider more yellow or gold on that boat to better contrast the red of the main body. This is because a "real world" picture has much tamer colours and you want your bright build to stand out a bit more (so less black and grey, more yellow and the likes-this is where nougat cargo boxes and the likes could be useful). Other than that, an excellent boat design, I have little to critique as a result.

A great choice of torso for Steve! For photography, as @Math Wizard already pointed out, the pictures are not always perfectly centered, which is undeniably going to damage immersion into the story. Also, the rocks are a little too clean and round to my taste, maybe add a few headlight pieces with vines or leafy bits to spice it up? Finally, the storytelling is well done (show don't tell is respected), and I appreciate the fact you didn't go for the cliched "pirate running away from a bunch of natives like in Indiana Jones" trope.

Hallo, Wie geht es dir! I am Horation, I participated in a previous contest, and was among the frontrunners in the creative critiques... until I dropped out for personal reasons. I have in the past been quite adversarial in my communications, so I forced myself to stop, hopefully I will be better this time around. Good luck to all.

Well, it's either 100 $ for 1 figure and around 1 000 parts now OR 100 for just the figure in 5 years when the set has long since retired...

I agree they are greedy (like cartoonishly so) but this is a really bad example, in this case they are merely protecting their IP. But yeah, if you think buying a figure on bricklink for 20$ is expensive, GeeDubs makes it a personal pleasure to sell individual heroes for 45$+... To get back on topic, These sets aren't only nostalgia bait, so expecting full nostalgia for them is silly. And they aren't even your favourite faction! If you get sick of people disagreeing with your expectations... Well don't read them.

I can feel the anger to quote myself, from that post you were quoting "If you don't like it=don't buy it", I don't understand how YOU could possibly understand that to mean "buy the set to save the company" @Breakspear, a new print usually means 1 slot, except if the part has a double sided print (ex : new torso) or is also a recolour/a new mould (ex : every star wars alien head).

"Agree with me that this is bad or you are a paid shill/lawyer !" "small company X can do something at a small scale but a high cost, if they can do it, why are you a paid shill/lawyer defending company Z?" Infinity-it isn't going to happen Too many flaws = don't buy it! (vote with your wallet)

The budgets are set by physical restraints (for the most part) as the factory can't hold an endless amount of prints, or an endless amount of part colours, or an endless streak of animal moulds, so when you said "Lego could have figured out a way" you were either saying A) they had to make the storage area bigger (expensive) or B) they had to use the limited storage space and basically remove some other parts from themes you cared less about, which sorry to tell you sounds really entitled ("MY themes are more important than these other ones", I don't think that is what you mean, but that is how it sounds, no unwarranted or unwanted personal attacks intended. Sorry if you interpreted what I said as a personal attack. (sidenote : when is a personal attack wanted? asking because it seems redundant to say it is an attack and unwanted...) What I was frustrated about was the fact you said they should "just accept a lower profit margin" just to accommodate YOUR personal preferences, when it is obvious that accepting lower profit margins is unacceptable for ANY business. But I now see you meant to say that lowering the individual margins would increase sales, which makes much more sense, but I still feel this is wrong, since (as I've explained in this very thread before) selling more copies means higher costs, so it is actually better to sell few copies at a high profit than many copies at a low profit (ex: it is better make 100 times 60$ than 120 times 50$, since it'll take fewer employee-hours to prepare 100 orders, use less packaging, less storage space, fewer customer service complaints, etc...) I can feel the anger about that shield Congratulations! You have just discovered the concept of marginal cost on your own! (after I already told you that said cost was likely at most 20% of the set's price) It being very greedy implies that including an additional Shield was an easy task : to make a printed shield you need to add a slot in storage for that part, as I have explained one BAZILION TIMES : the reason certain parts are printed and others are stickers is because they can't store every single part in its printed form, so either find me a part they shouldn't have printed in this set or in another set from another theme, the 5 euros is irrelevant here, it would cost a lot of money to make their storage building bigger, so not just 5 euros per set.

Interesting data, the average rating is 7,4 (with a median of 7), and while we have no rating on brickset, it was 55%-20% for those who wanted to buy against those who don't and 48%-28% here, suggesting it has a less receptive audience on these more niche boards.

How many times do I have to explain this people, the budget doesn't work the way y'all think it does, so let me explain again : How you think it works : each set has a $ budget, say 500 000$, a new mold is 100 000$, a new print 40 000$, etc... How it ACTUALLY works (source : Lego employee interviews and my own experience in production) : each department gets a parts budget, say 10 recolours/prints, 5 new molds, etc... So when you say "set X had a bigger budget", what you SHOULD be saying is "set X was made with more parts available in the budget". Same thing goes with prints, so when people say something like this : It frustrates me a fair bit because it would not only "slightly decrease the profit margin", it would instead go OVER the budget for the department, so it would cost a lot more to accommodate than just the cost of the prints or just the material cost of the animals (very low, in this case). (Also, congrats for your suggestion, if businesses followed your "just accept a lower profit margin to make ME happy" advice, let's just say there would be fewer successful businesses out there...

This set has 6 new figures, vs 4/5 new torso designs in LKC (and they really cheaped out on majisto so...), and inflation's a b*tch ( in Canada : 7% in 2022, 4% in 2023, so around 11%), when you account for it, prices have hardly jumped, 500$ CAD becomes 555$ CAD, and a set which would've sold for 300$ in 2022 would now be 330$, clearly they cut corners to bring it down by 10-11%, so they removed the cow and the likes, sorry, at least it's not as bad as the amount bacon has increased by in my area in the last year...

So they should've added more prints, animals, figs, etc... ? How would this have made it more affordable? Wouldn't this merely increase the costs? This set is already 300 CAD, so any increase would bring it dangerously close to the 500 CAD Lion Knights Castle. @jodawill So you would rather get yet another Cow or horse colour (mind you, animals we've had for years) over a goat, an animal we haven't seen in years? I don't feel the same way at all, but if you have a thing against goats, I guess that's alright...

Lego generally uses a system of "slots" for parts, for instance a new 2x4 brick colour would use 1 slot, while a new minifigure torso print would require 1 new slot for the new print and 1 new slot for the new torso assembly with the new print, so 2 slots. When making sets, designers are given a limited number of slots (or else the factory would become overcrowded). So for instance the designer might've been told that they have 15 slots for the set, and when he accounted for the new torsos and shield prints, he likely didn't have enough slots for new prints, so I doubt it would have just been a slight decrease on the profit margin

The short answer is indeed nostalgia, but to me it is also the simplicity of old-timey stuff, nowadays everything is fancy and detailed and shiny, but old stuff (cars, toys, etc...) had a cool aesthetic to it. But to be honest, I spent a lot of time as a kid looking at blogs and other posts on old sets, so I'm partly nostalgic, too. Even though I never owned those sets...

Curent fan designs are much better because A) no part limits B) they can focus entirely on display (ex: so many tower builds use techniques which make the interior impossible to use) C) they have access to every part Lego ever made, even if it is no longer in production and D) they are AFOLs focusing on making a build fitting with AFOL specifications, and not with that of a general public, which is something we need to keep in mind, That said, the build is OK, but I must admit it isn't great. Absolutely my opinion, I understand the frustration but I just don't get frustrated. This please, Lego please do this.

It should be possible too, but you are assuming those are similar ranges ; Harry Potter is aimed at kids, who don't usually have enough money for a 300$ set [citation needed]. In addition, those kids will feel compelled to come back for more at a later date (say, Christmas and their birthday) if the sets can all be put together, an AFOL who disliked one of the buildings won't. And having a bunch of hogwarts sets at various prices is likely to target more customers, while AFOL sets already are aiming for big money clients. I can feel the anger about Lego's pricing I think you overestimate how much profit Lego has on each set and how high the costs actually are. Almost everyone thinks of the marginal cost (the cost of making one more copy), but the raw materials, whether purchased in huge bulks or not-are quite cheap (around 20 euros a kilo-not a lot even for a set as large as rivendell)- the real cost is everything else (as I mentioned in my post). Also, if Lego really had "pure profit" of 60%, I'd be really impressed, because that's not the numbers they have on their financial returns (around 30-40% profits). And anyways, I was merely giving example values, for all I care it costs 1$ to make the set and 1$ to make 4 smaller ones, the points I made all remain valid, the costs INCREASE as you make more things.