The_Cook

The rocks could do with being Dark Bley so that they stand out from the castle walls but I really like the clean classic lines and those dark orange rooves. I might have to pick myself up some dark orange for precisely that purpose.

The LDD can be found on the following MOCPage's Page. The siege engine is not complete. There are no minifigs I may have misrepresented the colours, particularly some of the metallics. Some of the interior details not visible from the photo's might differ from Nuju's original. Not all printed parts are available in LDD, particularly the main slopes that come from 8877 Vladek's Dark Fortress Having built this I can say that Nuju's building style is very close to TLG's building style. If this were to go through TLG's design process there would be changes, principally the manufacturing department would be asking the design department to limit the number of unique elements in the design. As an example; 1x4 arches occur in Nuju's original build in 4 different colours, reducing them to just 2 colours would reduce the unique element count with minimal impact on the aesthetics of the design. Without the Siege Engine and Minifigs it was coming in at 1200 bricks; compare that with say MMV at 1200 which includes Minifigures. If it were produced for real it would be in the $150 dollar range if not higher; therefore I would expect the marketing department to be asking whether one of the wall or tower segments could be left out in order to bring it back towards the $120 sweet spot for typical flagship sets in a theme. If you're interested in building it you'll need at least: 8877 Vladek's Dark Fortress for the Panel 4 x 6 x 6 Sloped with Stone Wall Pattern . 4183 The Mill for the Dark Tan 1x2 Door Rail Plates 7187 Escape From The Dragon's Prison for the Pearl Dark Gray Door 1 x 4 x 9 Arched with Bars and Three Studs a supply of Tan parts from one of the Harry Potter Hogwarts castles either 4709 or 4757 either Siege Of Alamut or a The FIght for the Dagger to get the Pearl Gold Brick, Round Corner 3 x 3 x 2 Dome Top. Some Chima sets for the Trans-Light Blue pieces Lots of Ninjago polybags 9553,9561 and/or 9551 to get enough Minifig, Weapon Sai in Pearl Grey. Nuju will be able to comment which sets he utilised from his collection, assuming that the parts weren't sourced through Bricklink or PAB.

If you consult Bricklink you'll see that there were 6 principle shapes, each one being produced a number of times in different colours and with different printing. 6024 - Canyon : 5 printed variants 6092 - Pool : 4 printed variants 2552 - Lefthand slope : 6 printed variants - The classic baseplate from 6081 King's Mountain Fortress 30271 - Four corners : 6 printed variants - From 6091 King Leo's Castle 44510 - Steps : 4 printed variants 51542 - Pyramid Base : 2 printed variants The later baseplates, particulary 51542, tended to utilise stickers rather than printed detail.

There is no right answer: The case for raised base-plates (also BURPs and large panels in general) is that they provide bulk and height for minimal parts/plastic cost compared to the amount required for an equivalent volume built in standard bricks. The case against raised base-plates is that they predominantly have just a single use; as a baseplate. From a manufacturing standpoint they also require a minimum size of box in order to be shipped and TLG has been working to reduce it's box sizes in a bid to be more environmentally friendly. Viewpoints of all parties might also differ: AFOLs : Typically more bricks, often as cheap as possible, probably will avoid baseplates Kids : Typically want something awesome to play with, probably quite enjoy baseplates. TLG : Typically wants to make money by reducing production costs whilst maintaining quality standards, will do whatever is going to succeed in the market. There is no right answer, there is a point somewhere in the middle where all three opinions are slightly satisfied but nobody is ever going to be completely happy.

That's the best idea for a successor to MMV that I've yet read; my only criticism being that as described it would be a repeat of the Lake-town sets. There is also prior form in the Imperial Trading Post from the original Pirate line. My suspicion would be that the $89 price bracket is optimistic and yet that corresponds to the sum of the two Laketown sets, but if I look at something like 70728 Battle For Ninjago City it's a $120 set but significantly more imposing than the handful of building fronts that the Laketown Sets provide. The most important thing for any TLG play set (and everything bar the UCS models is a play set) is that it has a story line that can be acted out by the children that build it. A shady port has plenty of options for play and play-features in terms of hidden passages and smuggling (few AFOLs appreciated the play features in the Modular Detectives Office but those things do appeal to children).

I can answer that because I asked the same question of the ealier waves, the answer is no; Nuju builds in bricks. However I did reverse engineer most of The Siege Of Issiad into LDD in order to build it. There are probably some minor differences and I haven't yet built the catapult nor assembled the minifigures in LDD. I could make it available if Nuju doesn't object. Having done that I can say that Nuju's sets are buildable and very close to TLG design guidelines. This bodes well from the perspective of Nuju's Minas Tirith Ideas project passing through the design review smoothly, it will be down to whether TLG want a last hurrah for the LOTR line and whether their license agreement will allow them.

Or they could choose to make nothing. They choose how many winners there are at a review, it could be none, it could be one, it could be more. Ultimately even if MMS doesn't get made it does remind TLG that there is an appetite out there for Medieval Village Sets; they already know this at heart because the MMV was in production for about 4 years (someone will probably correct me on the exact time period) which is a long time period even by the standards of in-store exclusives. The 2014 castle range was never going to get a UCS set as it was squarely aimed at the younger market segment whilst LOTR was occupying the older market segment and providing UCS/in-store exclusive sets. If we get Castle 2016 there won't be the internal competition with another range which should allow it to use more mature building techniques and there would be space for UCS/in-store exclusives. Although as AFOLs we might have been frustrated at the juniorisation of the recent Castle range, one could argue that TLG releasing the Castle range at the same time as LOTR shows their commitment to the historic genre. It was a brave move since one range could have been eating away at sales of the other. We're more likely to see a village set as an exclusive as it is niche market (xFOLS) rather than their core market of children. However I don't see how another village would differ from the MMV, after the castle itself the first things that everyone typically thinks of in a Medieval are a Tavern and a Blacksmith. As xFOLs we probably want more variance but it's likely that we would get more of the same; it's a similar argument/reasoning as to why City is always Firestations, Police Stations and Hospitals.

In-ter-net is da fishies go when we is trawling the seas afore landin' our catch at Newlyn! Aaargh

They would have more freedom with their in house line, whereas they are constrained by the terms of the license agreement for the LOTR franchise. The pre-conceptions around an in-house theme are also significantly less, which was something they were never going to be able to live up to (for sensible price points) with the LOTR franchise; to many competing viewpoints that could never be satisfied between the mini-fig collectors, army builder and the LOTR complete-ists that desired ABS versions of every single character in every possible costume.

Apologies for the double post. I wrote that last statement and it turns out that there are reviews out there in the wild. http://www.brickhamster.net/?p=284 The link was posted by Cwetqo in the comments section of Brickset.

It would be more appropriate to say that Brickset speculates that the sets will be available form February 1st in some countries. Given what we know from history and the official March release date I would expect (again speculation) sets to be coming onto the market within February; where they've been released to retailers ahead of the deadline and retailers just stick them on the shelves instead of waiting. I wouldn't be surprised if we see reviews within the next few weeks; where the Customer Engagement and Events team have send out copies to the main fan sites for review purposes ahead of the official launch.

Yes the answer is combinatorial maths and yes the number get very big, very quickly. The trick is to narrow the search down... First narrow it down geographically, ie dont search countries that you're not going to buy from; for me that means constraining it to Europe and often just the United Kingdom. It reduces the number of stores searched across from several thousand to about 600 for the UK bringing the combinations down from Billions to Millions. Reduce the number of parts that you're searching for. In particular look through the list and see if you have any rare parts that are only present in one or two stores, change their status to either excluded or additional. Prior to checking the combinations for each part the program contacts Bricklink to find out how many stores that part is present in; that information is output to the progress window and allows you to tell you which parts are rare. Order the rare parts separately from those stores; by excluding them it gives the program more options to find the remaining parts cheaper rather than forcing it to concentrate on the few stores that contain those rare parts. Consider breaking up really big lists.

Perfect, it works now. It would appear that Adobe Reader hijacked a number of file associations when I last installed it, including .html which I was expecting to route to Firefox (or at the worst IE). Many thanks for what looks to be a very useful piece of software.

It's not unusual for the New-Year sets to sneak out a little before Christmas. TLG have to get the sets shipped out to retailers prior to delivery networks shutting down for the Christmas/New Year period and some retailers ship it on as soon as they've got it rather than waiting for any official release dates. Good luck, you might have an early Christmas surprise. I'm surprised that we haven't seen some sets sent out for review by CEE (Customer Engagements & Events); although they may well have done so but imposed restrictions on when the reviews can be published in order to provide some news and exposure in the post-Christmas lull rather than putting it out now when it could well be lost in the noise that is the build-up to Christmas.

Brickficiency is finding a solution to my wanted list but Adobe Reader is complaining about the report output. Any thoughts? System is Win8.1 64bit, latest patches. Adobe Reader 11.0.09 which appears to be the latest Where does the pdf file get created in order for it to be sent to Adobe Reader? Nothing obvious in my temp folder, nor the folder in which the bsx is located, nor the folder in which the Brickficiency executable is loaded? If I could find the pdf I could try some alternate viewers.

I'll echo what others have said, it's a MOC not a playset and Lego produces the later. For advice on playsets look towards my TrollTown or Nuju Metru's Dragon Lands series. All of those creations are designed to be buildable by others, they follow Lego's rules around legal connections and use appropriate numbers of bricks for sets. When designing a set also ask yourself what is the story that this set is supporting. Is the story so obvious that it doens't need to be written down; especially important when your toy is global, obvious stories don't need written translations.

From a historical perspective, for me, the most interesting figure is the builder. Not so much for the minifigure but what he's holding. What gets used a lot of in Medieval building? CMFs always come with printed parts.

The background definitely gives it the classic feel. Is it done old-skool with lighting and backdrops, or photoshop? What it lacks is the use of the Yellow and Black half timbered panels, rebuild those two outer towers using the panels and you'd have something that's definitely Black Falcons, whilst still honoring the 8877 design.

I was thinking just that as I read the earlier comments. It's also worth noting that mechanical tolerance is intrinsic to the function of the item, hence such tight tolerances, whereas colour tolerance isn't. Think about their packing processes. How do you ensure that you always get exactly the right number of parts into the right bags. Given the millions of bricks that they must pack a day the fact that the error rates are so low is amazing.

I can understand why people might have wanted other molds developed for new items but it's worth bearing in mind that it might have been necessity not waste; the original bandana mold is over 20 years old, has produced numerous million bandanas and was probably wearing out, therefore if TLG wanted to keep producing bandanas then it needed replacing so they might as well do a bit of a redesign.

At 18 years distance for the 90's pirates there's also a chance of nostalgia in parents, ie: I had that set as a child I'll get the modern version of that for my child that I now. I also wonder if they've done some analysis around which price points sell best, and in what scenario's. It feels like they're producing a range focused more on the lower price brackets. In the UK it's the smaller sets that get picked up by the supermarket chains (they'll stock the £10-30 sets but not the £80 sets) because the supermarkets are in the business of moving boxes, therefore TLG is trying to hit the price points that get them the most exposure by being on shelves all across the country rather than just in specialised "toy" shops. Same logic probably holds for North America and continental Europe although I note that in North America Walmart, Target et-al tend to stock a much larger range because they're "one-stop for everything" type shops. Whilst AFOLs might be annoyed by the repetition and the sets being small, it's perfect for the target audience of 8year old boys with pocket money or the ability to pester their parents into buying small to medium sets.

I would prefer something on this forum rather than Facebook or Twitter. Not everyone is signed up to those services, whereas everyone that is participating frequents these forums. As an aside, if there is a strategy for making progress on the project then others can help shoulder some of the burden.

I have to agree with you. Consider the most recent Castle theme it was been aimed at a more junior target market, like the new Pirates theme, therefore it's a good benchmark. There have been no exclusive sets for 2013 Castle. It makes sense, the younger builders that are the target market aren't going to strive for a larger (more expensive) tougher challenge and their parents won't buy them something that is beyond their abilities; therefore an exclusive isn't likely. Contrast that with the previous Kingdoms and Pirates waves that were aimed at a slightly older age bracket where there were exclusives because the older age bracket could cope with and aspire to the complexity that tends to come with exclusive builds.

I'm going to support because I want to make sure that Pirates gets due consideration within TLG. However; I'd expect the design to be changed, whilst the shape and structure should remain the complexity of the rockwork needs to be reduced in order to productise it. Whilst the AFOL might desire the number of bricks there'll be complaints about the tedium of the build when such a large proportion is rockwork; it's not a battle that can be won as AFOL we tend to have conflicting priorities that will never be realised within a set, eg. more bricks, less cost.

I would say continue. Even if it doesn't get submitted it's the process (and there was no guarantee that TLG would even listen to our suggestions) it's the process of getting there that is fun and that process is also bringing people together on the forums and encouraging more of a collaborative community around the Pirates forum; which is worth it in it's own right.