Laura Beinbrech

Hi, all! I've been kind of lurking this forums for the past week or so (mainly due to having LEGO block), and not knowing what a "Mafia" game was, decided to look it up on Wikipedia. I found the concept to be rather intriguing, and started reading through the Yakuza Family threads to kind of get the feel of how one plays these games (I also have come up with some theories of my own about some of the night action events, but I shall respect the no-kibitzing rule ). I would be interested in enrolling in this new Mafia School, if you'll have me. There are a few things I would kind of like cleared up, specific to this forum. Namely, what's the policy on non-players posting in the mafia game discussion threads? I know that it's against the rules to post in the actual game threads (Duh!), but I kind of wanted to post some comments on the pictures Def posted in the Yakuza discussion thread, having lived in Japan myself, but decided to wait until I knew it would be OK... Oh, and a big thank you to everyone who hosts these games! I can tell just by looking at the various vignettes used to create the scenery for each day thread in the mafia games that a SERIOUS amount of work goes into hosting them! Oh, and I'm getting a few good laughs at all the "Princess Bride" references going on here... Too bad we'll never see an offical LEGO Princess Bride theme (although I'm planning on incorporating the "Dread Pirate Roberts" into my wacky LEGO setting somewhere).

Thanks for the compliments! I was in the Navy (but not on subs), so shipboard details sort of come naturally to me. I may have to get a MOCpages account, because this one LXF file used up half my total attachment space.

Well, due to current budget and time constraints, I haven't been doing too much actual building, however I did manage to successfully design a fairly large-scale submarine in LDD.. I present the Federal Navy Ship Black Pearl: Sub Final by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr The Black Pearl is the third ship in a top-secret building program initiated by Admiral J. Hook of the Federal Republic Navy to combat both underwater pirates and sea monsters. The submarine is fusion-electric powered, meaning that in addition to extracting oxygen from seawater, it can also extract hydrogen for use as reactor fuel/in its fuel cells (for silent running mode). The sub is equipped with eight 3" blue laser cannons, which are capable of engaging close-range surface and underwater threats (i.e. most smaller sea monsters), as well as two torpedo tubes that either can hold one MK-55 long-range sonar-guided torpedo or two MK-10 short-range sonar guided torpedoes each. The torpedoes are mainly for dealing with large underwater threats (i.e. those pesky Kraken) or attacking enemy surface ships. Usual loadout is one MK-55 and two MK-10s for greater tactical flexibility. Sub WIP Interior by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr In this interior view, you can see the airlock/diving chamber in the sub's nose (useful for deploying SOCOM commandos or undersea Search and Rescue divers), immediately aft of which is the communications and operations room, which has the weapons control consoles. Amidships is the crew berthing with bunks that fold up when not in use and in the aft end of the sub is the engine/reactor room with the engineering/reactor control console. Sub Cutaway View by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr In this cutaway view you can see the interior of the Conning tower, with the quartermaster's console and the captain's chair. The periscope can be raised and lowered. The two other tubes sticking up are the snorkels for when the sub is operating at periscope depth. Note: The captain is supposed to be Jack Sparrow, but they didn't have any of the PoTC parts or prints in LDD, and the reason I used the butcher's hat is because for SOME reason, LDD ALSO doesn't have the series 4 Sailor hat (even though they have every other CMF accessory!)... Also, I DO plan on actually building this thing, eventually, but that could be quite a while (although I did find a BL site that had several of the most key pieces, along with some others that I need for other projects), and the coloring of the stripe/details might change, pending part availability..... I basically came up with this as a representation of a long-range high-endurance submarine built to a similar scale as my other ships (i.e. it is about the same length as my frigate). I had some trouble with the hull design, but after a month or so I hit upon what, I think is a good design, and went from there. I may yet change the rudder/aft divin plane design, though. So, what do you guys think? Wacky enough for ya? Submarine.lxf

Dude, you have no idea of how insanely jealous of you I am! My brother and I got the Caribbean Clipper for Christmas in 1989, our first (and up until I bought the Black Pearl) only "big" ship... Unfortunately, we had to get rid of it when mom made us give away our LEGO stuff when we stopped playing with it in High School (well, we were allowed one small set/MOC each), and I've regretted it since. I agree 100% with Bobkov's suggestion: Put that sucker in your trophy case, because you definitely scored an epic win on that deal!

Nice! It kind of reminds me of the restaurant delivery scooters they have in Japan, but if they were hover-scooters.

Nice shuttle, very swooshy! Do my eyes deceive me, or is the Pilot's torso the one from the Series 6 wind-up robot? If so, I must say that is a clever use for it, not to mention the old UFO alien armor.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing as SI-mocs until I saw your explanation... As it is, it fits in better with M-Tron (who originally had the Black, Red and Trans-neon Yellow/Green color scheme going). Anyways, regardless of what you call them, that is one mighty fine space-pickup truck.

I've had dreams about LEGO before, usually along similar lines.... I.e. when I first got back into LEGO I had a dream that I went to this one department store (that has been out of business for at least 15 years) and found all sorts of classic Pirates, another one shortly after where I went to a different department store and found some old Castle sets still on the shelves (Royal Knights, Fright Knights, Black Falcons, etc) I also had one sometime last year where I went to this HUGE LEGO store and there was this clearance aisle that had boxed sets going back to the 1980's! Needless to say, I was always rather disappointed when I woke up.

Yeah, what he said... Other than that, it looks promising.

Now that's an interesting idea, but I doubt that a weapon-less martial arts theme would sell very well... Now if they had different martial artists with traditional martial arts weapons associated with their country/style (i.e. Chinese martial artitst with a guang-dao or meteor hammer, Japanese martial artist with Naginata, nunchaku or samurai sword, etc) competing in a grand tournament, now that would be awesome!

Oh man! I love Avatar the Last Airbender... Funny enough, considering when it first came out in 2000, my friends and I (I was in the Navy at the time), who were all big anime fans were like, "Meh! Just another anime wannabe ripoff that's trying to jump on the anime popularity bandwagon..." ...Then I saw a clip from the Day of the Black Sun episode that someone posted in the Steampunk forums at Brassgoggles.co.uk, and I was like holy MEGABLOKS! They have some kind of magitek submarines, and giant bomber zepplins?! You know, I might have to check this out after all! Unfortunately, the LEGO sets came out somewhere between me getting interested in A:TLA and getting back into LEGO. I really like what you've done so far, and I also used the Series 4 Geisha for making my own version of the Kyoshi warriors, as can be seen here: Kyoshi Car by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr Suki is the one driving, and the reason their uniforms are red and black is because Green and Black/Brown is the main color combos used by one of the primary villainous factions in my scenario.... Now I just need to get on BrickLink and see if I can order some of the official TLG heads....

Did someone say Pirates in Space? Oh yeah, I'm totally down with that! :D I also wouldn't mind a Jake Raines version of the Jungle Expedition and Oriental Expedition as well (why, oh why did you have to come out when I was on board a miserable US Navy Destroyer, Oriental Expedition?! )....

Absolutely brilliant! I remember seeing some old nature specials featuring Mr. Cousteu on TV when I was a kid... Its also nice to see a modern ship built using many of the same techniques that some of the behemoths over in the Pirate section use.

Ooooh! That would be awesome! Actually, come to think of it, the Space Marine project on LEGO Cuusoo is pretty much along those lines....

I love it! Kinda reminds me of that British Officer sketch in Monty Python's Meaning of Life....

Oh, I quite agree: I've found some, such as the 3x3 jet turbine thingy that was introduced in the 1999 Naboo Fighter and X-Wing is perfect for making boilers for ships and trains in my post-apoc steampunkish setting, and IIRC, the fighter-jet style bubble canopy was also introduced in the Star Wars line... Still, I wouldn't mind seeing some more stuff along the lines of Classic Space, but at least they kind of satisfied that with the CMF spaceman and space girl....

Also, don't forget about Pick A Brick.... When I first got back into LEGO about 3 years ago, I discovered that this windscreen piece: ...had been discontinued some time ago, which prompted me to do a fair imitation of Luke Skywalker when he found out Darth Vader was his father. Then, last year, Star Wars and Alien Conquest brought us this windscreen piece: ...which is basically a spiritual successor to the old "Space Police I" (that's what I call it because it was introduced in that theme) windscreen, meaning that I'll now be able to make updated versions of my Sky Spear space fighter, among other things. Not only is the new windscreen now widely available in Ninjago, Star Wars and other sets, but you can actually buy them through Pick A Brick! The main draw of Star Wars sets for me, aside from being able to get official minifigs of my favorite characters, is the aliens.

Well, as our fearless leader just pointed out (more or less), the 80's and 90's were BEFORE LEGO Star Wars came out. ...although I will admit to doing a marathon session of the happy dance when I first found out that actual Licensed LEGO Star Wars sets were coming out: My brother and I would have been willing to chew off our left arms (well he would have chewed off his right since he's left-handed) for an official Star Wars theme when we first got into LEGO back in '88. Instead we had to make do with using a Blacktron I torso with one of the black castle noseguard helmets and a custom face mask made from a piece of index card for our Darth vader, and use trans-red and trans-blue antenna pieces for lightsabers.... So, yeah, Star Wars is the main reason why LEGO Space has tended to be shoved off to the sidelines the past twelve years or so. On the plus side, the Star Wars parts and figures are great for general Sci-fi MOCs (as can be seen with the Mon Calamari on my PT Boat crews....)

As the resident Narrow Gauge afficionado, I must say it looks good, thus far, if you're going for the British 2' gauge look (sort of like the Leighton-Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway)... With a bit of tweaking, it would be perfect!

Awww! It's just adoreable. I really like the caboose/dining car... I may have to steal adapt the design for my purposes.

Nice flower design, definitely nailed the classic Blacktron I look with this one.

Oh, come on! Everybody knows that the cake is a lie.... Seriously though, I would like to know what the meaning of the "Zip Gun" tag is (heck, I'd like a comprehensive tag key somewhere so that I can figure out what some of them mean... Some are obvious, like LDD indexer, but others, like "stud lover" are rather ambiguous).... ...Not that I'm likely to ever get any, considering I'm lucky if any of my MOCs gets more than 1 comment. Personally, I think that the banner should have some Blacktron I minifigs in it, but I'll be the first to admit to some bias on my part.

That is just freaking awesome! I love how you got the motion down... Looks VERY authentic, and this is coming from a guy who's worked with real live steam engines before.

If you look closely, he's clipping them on with one of these 1x1 clip tiles: There's a ridge along the front edge of the wing (representing the bone) that is just about thick enough for a minifig to grip....