SlyOwl

Thanks for the lovely comments everyone The old style arm fits into the socket in the torso nicely. For the new style arm, I used a viking horn/barb piece, which wedges into the socket (the torso must be the old style for this to work). Ah, you yourself inspired me to start this, with your epic port dios Aw... Technic brick with a loop of string through it, pulled tight over the bar. Lots of knitting! They're similar to this, which I made last year; I adjusted the back bit to make it heavier.

96b To be honest, I don't get it. I spent many weeks on Aslan's How, yet I spent a couple of days on this one, and it's bigger! Just a classic invasion scene. :pir-skull:

Thanks for the review I decided to pass on this one, as it hasn't got much going for it, and the heavier price tag put me off. That said, I do like 1x2 trans blue tiles... Is the 2x2x2 white slope with or without the tube in the bottom?

There are numerous micro-scale ships in the MOC Ship Index (at the bottom), which may be useful to you. The use of ships in Stratego may be confusing, as it is primarily a troop-based game, with the exception of the bombs and flags. A minifig-based version may be more readily identifiable and easy to play. Just a thought

Looks like you had fun! And that t-shirt looks great on you Can someone explain this pic to me?

Released: 26/10/09 Price: Free with Daily Mirror Newspaper, cost 45p Parts: 28, plus 7 spares Minifigs: 1 The "box" - The standard polybag packaging for this type of promo. The transparant sections let you make sure that the tan fedora is still there! The parts - Lovely selection - green headlight bricks are always useful, no large useless parts. The spares are great - 7 in all - that's 25% extra free! Not sure why I needed an extra wheel hub. The build - Very quick - a matter of seconds. The tyres felt unusually sticky, but wasn't a problem. The minifig - The highlight of this set, and it looks fantastic. The reasonably new green dungaree torso, Pepper Roni face and green legs are decent additions, but the tan fedora is the ultimate part. You'd expect to pay $2 for one at the moment, as it only appears in the new Farm set, yet here it is for 1.5p! It's no wonder I bought 3 of this set! The tractor - A small tractor, and, judging by the green and yellow colour scheme, it's a John Deere. It looks more like a ride-on mower, though. Overall, it is very aesthetically pleasing, and detailed for such a small set. Back view. Note that on one side there is a gear-stick, but on the other there is just a round grey 1x1 plate. Initially I didn't notice this, and put on 2 levers instead, which is a format I prefer. 3 men went to mow... 45p for 35 pieces is always a good deal, but the great part selection and especially the minifig make this a must-have. An easy 10/10, which would still be the same score if it cost double.

Released: 25/10/09 Price: Free with Sunday Mirror Newspaper, cost £1 Parts: 30, plus 2 spares Minifigs: 1 The "box" - This polybag packaging wouldn't stand a chance on the shelves, so they're kept behind the counter until you hand over the voucher from the Daily Mirror... The parts - 32 in all, the two at the very bottom are spares. A reasonable selection of parts, but nothing special. That car chassis part is plain ugly. Nice to get some slicks, though. In comparison to the other Daily Mirror promos, 30 parts isn't a lot... The light bley tap is unfortunately the type without the hole in the nozzle. The build - Nothing special here; worth noting that the instructions don't tell you how to put the wheels together, but it is pretty self-evident how to do so, even for a "5-12" year old () The minifig - A simple doctor fig, but nothing new. The cap is the old style, not the new one which has a bent peak. The car - Well, it's supposed to be a car, but it looks more like a go-kart, or buggy. It looks neat enough, but isn't particularly inspiring. The back of the car. Here are the doctor's instruments of torture - his black bag, which slots between the red 1x2 panel and the thing with the dial on it, which no doubt contains some sort of mailicious implements, but theses are unfortunately imaginary in this set. The pole with the blue light on it appears to be some sort of sharp rod for ramming down people's throats (or elsewhere), or stabbing them with; or it may be a beacon so that people can run away when they see the medicine man a-coming... There's the thing with the dial and blue light on it, which comes off (see 2 photos below) to make some sort of machine for measuring blood pressure or alcohol levels etc; either way, I don't like the look of it. Finally, the trans-clear cylinder with the tap coming out the top could either be a hi-tech water pistol, something for gassing people, another thing for sticking in orifices or pepper spray. It makes a sinister rattling sound as the car drives along, because the tap doesn't fit in properly if you push it in too far. The car looks more like a medical buggy you get at theme parks and concerts, so here's the doctor attacking a poor helpless raver... So in conclusion, was it worth the £1? Maybe. Sure, it was cheaper than an impulse set, with roughly the same number of parts, but I consider those to be rip-offs themselves. This would be worth it at the normal Daily Mirror cost, 45p, but for over double that, I'm not so sure. But 3p per part is always good value, so it was worth picking one up. A resolute 7/10, which would go up if it was cheaper, and down if the cost went up. Hope you enjoyed it!

The former technique in the folder, using a headlight brick on its side with a 1x1 plate, gives a similar effect, and at a fraction of a cost of the travis brick (you can also use the headlight bricks in whatever colour, as they are totally hidden). The corners get a little tricky to do, but using the travis bricks, and tilting the tiles on the ones near them, you can mostly obscure the difference in the heights of the protuding studs.

Cheers for the replies everyone He came out the castle, I guess... To be honest, not much of the MOC actually makes sense when you think about it... The 3 main branches rest against the inside of the grassy overhang, so it doesn't connect, but is quite stable nonetheless. It was quite a challenge to get the castle to be equally proportioned and weighted to make it balance, though. Yup! Supposed to be corn/wheat, although it's a bit out of proportion. Ideally I would have done it in tan/light flesh, but parts were lacking.

...but how long will the mighty yew stand? Gallery Started off as Yggdrasil, but a lack of inspiration simplified it into an anti-hierarchical statement, which faded out as I got bored...

I prefer to keep light bley/grey together (for the natural slight variation in colour), and the same with dark bley/grey. I would only consider mixing dark and light if there was something that had caused it, like mining (example). N.B. If a whole rockface is e.g. dark bley, the odd addition of a dark grey brick would be odd; it's best to have a reasonably even spread and ratio. As far as I can recall, only conglomerate rocks have an intense variation in colour, and to be honest, those are just weird

Hey, great MOC! The palm tree cover is something I really like in a harbour MOC, and the action is great overall. I can totally empathise with your lack of bricks and wishes to have more 1x2s BTW, jailbreak fits the PTVII theme fine, and we'd love to have this entered!

There's a Most Active In... thing in your profile, and you can probably guess the rough percentages of the other subforums you post in by how much time you tend to spend there...

Ah, I missed the bit about the ends sticking out the muzzle. I had a go at it, but it's very difficult to get much of the chain down the muzzle (I didn't want to remove the centre pin), and even then it doesn't fire very far at all. I had a go with a short bit of the chain you get on the plug in the sink, which worked better.

The trouble with this is that the ends jam, whichever way you insert the chain. A short length of the chain (they're cheap on Bricklink) could work, especially if you removed the centre rod of the cannon.

This thread may help, but beyond that I can't really help you (yet - I'm thinking about this)

- A bar can be inserted into the hollow stud, so more useful for building with - The new head also has a very slightly different shape overall, which is more aesthetically pleasing (some of the old ones were slightly more square) - The connection is generally better with the new one - If you choke on it, you can breath through the hole in the hollow stud

Ah yes, this was an idea that got mentioned in the staff planning thread Very well executed, and I must remember that ribbed-hose technique for palm trees. You could put in another hole (Islanders/Armada), with something like "get it in the kraken/shark's mouth", if you have some water there; you have to chip it into the beast's mouth...

In some old sets, particularly technic ones, there were instructions for the alternate models. These were, however, condensed, so many more bricks would be added per set. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there were never any alternate build instructions in pirates (apart from the Ideas books) - it was a question of using your ingenuity to come up with something similar to that shown on the back of the box. I guess the extra bricks were so that the models on the back looked cool, whilst still using the bricks contained in the box. Personally I never wanted instructions for the alternate models, and loved trying to build them from a tiny picture - it was a real test of skill.

Old and new...

Most impressive. It gives a good impression of a medieval flint church, and I like the light-up idea. I'm not a big fan of the 1x2 grills in the walls, as they don't look much like stone to me... Are you going to display your coastline publically anytime?

The cross-sections of the minifig torsos are also different: the originals had a hollow torso, whilst the re-releases had the X in the middle, like those of today.

Really nice. The micro-ships are great, made better by the X tiles, and the vine is inspired. As Martin said, I'd like to see the sea done in SNOT, mainly to avoid those 1x1 blue studs under the ships to get them at the angle. Using the cheese-to-cheese technique, you could get a nice transition from dark blue to blue to white. If it's cool with Dan, you could probably enter a modified version of this into the MCCV on Classic-Castle. You mean you don't have one?

Captain Zuloo talks to 10194 Emerald Night and 10182 Cafe Corner designer, Jamie Berard, in the latest edition of Behind the Helm. Check it out here!

3 weeks in, and already 30 entries have been submitted! Check them out in the Pirate MOC Sub-forum now, or get building yourself! - Prizes - Contest - Creative-Critic -