The_Cook

64025 - The first thing that I mentally wanted to do was push the dragon through the arch and I don't think it's big enough. The arch either need to be smaller so that it's definitely not dragon sized and therefore minifigs can pass through it to escape from the dragon, or it's go to be big enough for the dragon to fit through easily. 64027 - The first thing that I want to do with a gate is to attack it and I just don't see that with this set. It needs a dragon or a siege engine to attack the gate. I appreciate that there's a storyline but sets work best when they're obvious and it's not quite obvious at this stage. Minor points on some very well designed sets.

There are costs involved in holding inventories of parts in lots of colours, there was a Reddit thread where Mark Stafford talks about designing the ExoSuit for Ideas and how he was only allowed a certain number of colour swaps, ie. requests for an existing part to be produced in a colour that isn't already in the manufacturing schedule. In his case he ran out of swaps before he could change the colour of Barrel that so upset many AFOLs because it was the wrong shade of grey. The hull pieces aren't a common part; to get them produced in a new colour that isn't Dark Brown or White means more storage is required both to hold stocks of the old colour for spares and the new colour for immediate use in the sets and as spares. That may not sound like much but multiply that by the hundred of thousands of different elements that TLG produces and the volume of elements that they need to keep in store for a global supply of spares and you're talking several very big warehouses for items that are ultimately sold for just a few pennies (a few cents for non-UK readers). Thus even a new colour for an existing part is a major economic decision and therefore designers are limited in the number of new colours that they can get elements in. Ultimately TLG would produces parts in all colours if they thought they could charge for them but that isn't the case, we're always looking for how can we get our bricks the cheapest; just read the threads about how I'll pass on it now and get the sets when they're on the clearance shelves! To pass the minimum cost on to the consumers TLG have to limit the palette and elements to minimise those storage costs.

Monster Fighters was 8-14 age range, ie. teenagers rather than young children. The last pirates wave was 6-12 which is older children rather than the 4-12 ranger for younger children and it produced a D2C set but that was when D2C sets were still in their infancy and TLG was exploring what did or didn't work. Much as I personally would love another Imperial Flagship or an Eldorado Fortress I'm approaching it from the hard-headed business stand-point that TLG will be approaching their decisions from. That is; What is likely to make the most money? There is probably a lot more money selling hundreds of thousands of smaller sets to children across the world than there is selling a couple of thousand bigger D2C sets to xFOLs; therefore their finite design and manufacturing capacity will be directed towards producing sets that hit that target market.

Again, I would counsel against raising your hopes. The range is clearly tragetted at that younger age bracket and there is no recent evidence of them making expert D2C set to tie in with such a low age range. Your average 7year old isn't suddenly going to be capable of building a 1500piece set when they're only ever built 200 piece sets before. As evidence I point to the recent castle range. Targetted at a younger audience it hasn't had a D2C set; the old Kingdoms Joust which is still around is thematically tied back in to the earlier Kingdoms range that was targetted more towards the 8-15 age range in terms of size and build complexity.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. The structures will be as they're shown, they've been designed to be deliberately simple. In terms of brick counts compare the sets to 6263 Soldiers Outpost or 6267 Lagoon Lock-up rather than Eldorado or Imperial Trading Post. If you re-appraise those set you'll see that they don't have much more structure than the 2015 sets. The bias seems to be very much towards smaller, cheaper sets, TLG have obviously been looking at their sales records and are tailoring the ranges accordingly.

In terms of structures, what you see in the preliminaries is what you're going to get. The printed parts on the minifigs obviously aren't there and there are a couple of stand-in pieces (such as the bowler hat) where we expect there to be a piece from a new mould, however the structures are made out of standard bricks; they don't need revising. The designers have obviously been given the brief to keep the models simple enough for young kids (the target audience) and keep the part count (and therefore the price) down as well. The part/price ratio is commensurate with other non-licensed sets released during 2014. Be thankful that you've got something Piratey, TLG are under no obligation to release Pirate sets and they wouldn't if they didn't think it would sell amongst their target child audience.

I like the look of the new parts, fences particularly. I'm not sure where I'd use them but they're definitely nice...

I just did a very quick piece count of http://www.familiens...digung-des-Schi, and I can see about 70 pieces which tallies with the 84pieces listed on the box, remaining few bricks being structure that can't be seen from the illustration. Price and piece wise it's a direct comparisson to http://brickset.com/.../Riverside-Raid from the agents theme, 10euros, 88 pieces. Apart from the minifigs which have to be stand-ins, I think what you see is what you get. Just like Castle 2013 it's aimed at the lower age bracket so the builds are simple, in-expensive and just what young kids will like.

I've just been re-appraising these and noticed that if you remove the dangling sash from the torso and legs of the left-hand mini-figure then the torsos and legs of the two left-hand figures would become interchangeable; whereas with the print spanning both parts they aren't interchangeable. Whilst this might upset the historical purists who want their uniforms just-so, for those of us that like a bit of variation in our figures it gives us 4 options rather than 2.

Every other year is better than, sometime, maybe...

I very much doubt that you are. Remember that each batch of 7-12 years old that arrives every 5 years will have similar thoughts about pirate ships; eg. Pirate ships are cool (therefore our range needs a pirate ship), Pirates live on an island (therefore our range needs an island base), I want more pirates (therefore our range needs an army builder pack)... For us AFOL's that have been with it since the beginning, the repetition is frustrating, once a theme we get something a bit interesting or unique (Shipwreck hideout instead of Pirate Island) but the likelihood of them exploring other related topics such as mercantilism is relatively slim given their need to target the desires of the core audience to sell product. You can see the familiar cycle with the other ever-green themes like city or castle where the same style of sets keeps appearing again and again. Sometimes they do something a bit different, eg. Forest Police, but ultimately they can't stray from what the 7-12 year old market wants. There's been a lot of consternation on the Historic forums that the "Elves" theme wasn't the high elves that they dream of but Mini-doll Pixies for 5-7yr old girls; therefore no castle release this year. I wonder if TLG are going to alternate between Castle and Pirates every year or so. For themes that aren't backed by a cartoon (or movie) to provide the longevity they seem to be thinking in 1 year slots at the moment.

It looks like I'll have to go off and do some research. There's probably a minimum line thickness that the screen printers can handle. It's one of the reasons why the TLG design's look "cartoonish" the black outlines have to be a certain thickness and thick black lines around colour is indicative of cartoon drawings. If HJMediaStudio's proportions are necessarily wrong it's just that the black outlines need thickening up.

At least Pirates aren't having to compete with an existing line, as Castle 2013 had to against LoTR, which is why Castle was targeted at a younger audience. That doesn't mean that it won't be targeted at a younger audience with no news of Castle in 2015 perhaps Pirates replaces it as the entry level "historic" theme. Ultimately TLG is in the business of selling to kids so they're going to target kids and that may well mean simpler builds than the AFOL community would like. Get the bricks, build your own! Looking through the prices: $12 - Probably 2 minifigs and a raft or piece of scenery $20 - Probably 3 minifigs and some scenery, think army builders see 60042 High Speed Chase for an example of the sort of size that you'd get. $40 - Probably 4 minifigs, approximately 400 pieces. 70163 Toxikita's Toxic Meltdown for an example of the sort of size that you'd get. Could easily get you something akin to Soldiers' Fort from 2009. $90 - Probably 7 minifigs, it's obviously a ship. I can't see it being quite as big as 6243 Brickbeard's Bounty given that that retailed for $100 six years ago. I'll let your imaginations run riot, but that should give them some sensible boundaries to run within!

So... In summary, everyone has a different strategy. Some buy sets to break apart, some buy sets and can't bear to break them apart. Some sell the figures to finance purchasing bricks, some hoard figures to build armies. Some use Pick-a-Brick, some use Bricklink, some trawl through garage sales, some use eBay. There are lots of ways to get hold of bricks, some might be cheaper than others, some might get you more pristine bricks than others. Some have the money to buy bricks that they might use one day, some buy just the bricks they need for the next moc. Some have money to buy thousands of bricks for giant MOCs, some have to limit their ambitions to the size and style of their brick collections. The question becomes not "how do others collect", but "how can I collect the bricks I would like at a budget I can afford?" Only you can answer that question, because you know your circumstances, but there are lots of options out there; choose the one that work for you.

Whilst I wouldn't say that I did an exhaustive search of every torso everything that I looked at had 4 colours plus the plastic. Stippling can be used to make it look like there are more shades but ultimately there was still no more than 4 printed colours.

4 printed colours over a base (the plastic) colour. Black lines count as one of the printed colours. In the aforementioned image Base (plastic) colour of Dark Flesh Colour 1 black outlines Colour 2 brown belt Colour 3 tan tassles You have one free colour left to use for either the buckle, the sash or the collar. Everything else will have to utilise an existing colour. It's also worth pointing out that the number of colours available isn't necessarily 4 for all parts; I only did the analysis on torso's because we needed that information to make progress. It's quite conceivable that the printers for the heads are different from the ones for torsos and may not have been set up to handle the same number of colours!

Nice build. Good use of BURPs and panels at the bottom to give it height for a minimal piece count and then the wall above provides sufficient textural difference to stop it looking monotonous. The architectural style is clearly different from the opposing faction and consistent applied through the model. Lots of detail on the rear. My one criticism would be that you can't fold it around to create an enclosed castle. However there's plenty of precedent for a straight wall instead of an enclosure, viz Vladeks Dark Fortress, Battle of Nu Metru from Bionicle and Lion Fortress from Chima; so obviously kids are fairly adept at imagining that "the walls go around the back".

A very nice first building, lots of playability. A sensible and balanced number of figures. The construction looks suitably interesting from a wall texture perspective whilst still being simple enough to create instructions for. One question about structural stability, if I pick it up by grasping just one tower (and not supporting the other) how does it cope? I see that you've got the white bar in there to act as a spacer, is that sturdy enough? It may sound trivial but as a "play" set rather than a "display" set it's one of the first things that needs to be considered because it's exactly how kids will move them.

The idea for the Dragon Carrier came from looking at my Troll Town and realising that the defining features are the Troll Navy and the Flight of Dragons. How to combine the two? Inspiration also comes from the novels of Naomi Novik which exist in a parallel universe where the Napoleonic armies are fighting with Dragons as well as the usual wooden warships of the era; one of those ships is Dragon Carrier, a giant ship with platforms from which Dragons can launch at either end and the usual square rigged sails inbetween. How can I recreate those concepts in a Troll style. The obvious Troll ship characterisics are a dark brown hull, the junk-style rigging with it's red sails, outriggers and the sterncastle structure. Extending a standard Troll ship by an extra hull segment was fairly easy, I then considered a different bow structure rather than the rising Viking hull a flatter set of stacked bow pieces, however this wasn't really working in terms of supporting a dragon platform. In terms of the platform itself my initial sketches had a platform surrounded by nets. How to support the nets? It took a bit of effort to arrange a suitable support structure but I'm reasonably pleased with the results in LDD. The sides also posed problems as there are only a limited number of Dark Brown 1xX bricks and I'm already having to source these from all across Europe to get them in the quantities that Troll Town is consuming. To my surprise it was reasonably easy to source the dark brown hull segments and some Troll sails at a reasonable price, reasonable enough to buy spares just-in-case. The hardest part actually turned out to be the turntables at the bottom of the mast, these only ever appeared in 7048 Troll Warship and some Star Wars sets of the same era. Bricks sourced and on to the build; nothing fancy no more complex than 7048. The dragon platforms are a little fiddly and with hindsight there should probably be some ties between the sections prior to the octagonal platform going on just to make connecting the platform easier. As well as building up the Dragon Carrier I've been extending Trolls' Landing by adding a few more quay sections, there are some new designs as well as the existing designs. The big issue now is that my photo stage (2 pieces of A1 foam-card) is now too small to capture the whole navy as these photos don't include the graving dock. Quite how I'm going to photograph the whole of Troll town is now a serious question, I might just have to lie the card and models on the floor. It will easily fill an 8'x4' space. As always; LDD files can be found here on the MOCPages equivalent of this post.

If there were going to be a theme released early next year then details of it would be out by now as it would have had to have been promoted to the toy stores. The best hope of news of a continuation of the theme is going to be from the toy fairs early next year. D2Cs are different since they don't need to be promoted outside of TLG therefore we won't hear about them until TLG decide to make them public which could be just weeks before release.There could be something out there, there might not, we just won't know until TLG says something. I would also point out that the current castle range has had "easy" builds so that it doesn't compete too directly with the "harder" LOTR builds, to have a complex D2C set for an "easy" theme seems out of character. Faefrost is right to look towards the movie franchises, they're a great hope for getting the raw materials for castles. As well as a Warner one should consider if Disney have any family orientated Swords and Sourcery movies in the pipeline that might be franchised as was done with Prince Of Persia and Lone Ranger? I'm sure that the staff at TLG (and the studios for that matter) are looking out for the next franchise that follows the same success pattern as Harry Potter.

5, nay 6, years have passed since the last pirate theme was released so it's quite likely that the old concepts will be reprised as there will be a new group of children who are potential customers. Whilst this infuriates AFOLs who have been following TLG for many, many years, and get annoyed by the repitition it makes sense from a business perspective to keep re-inventing the sets that sell well with children every few years. Conversely they realise that there is some money to be made in models of ships (as there is in models of trains) but there's not enough money to be made to justify a full theme so they release one every few years (as they do with trains). Good news in that it would mean ships every few years, bad news in that it's only every few years.

I'm looking forward to this. I was very impressed with your series of LOTR sets. It's a great start, my only comment would be that the figures are the wrong colour. TLG rules are flesh for licensed themes, yellow for everything else. The are quite rigorous at following that rule, the soon to be released 21109: Exo-Suit was proposed with flesh figures but changed to yellow figures during the design process. One of the limiting factors is going to be the number of Sand-Green minifig heads available, just 3 from the Fantasy Era Troll line, I know I've struggled to build variation into my army of Trolls with just those 3 heads.

I'd second that recommendation. Borrowing ideas from existing sets means that the idea has been through the Lego participation groups to see whether kids actually like the idea. Borrowing build techniques from existing sets means that the technique is legitimate and has passed the strict design criteria that Lego set themselves.

A nice little piece, it adds the necessary conflict and storyline along with a little bit of action. It might work as a standalone set but I think it would work better as part of the larger fort. Is there a particular reason that it's a two 6x8's and a 2x4 for the base? Would a 6x8 and 6x10 work?

This can be attached to 6074/10039. In order to connect to any of the "big" castles you need at least one point of articulation, ie. hinges. This set has 2 so fits in quite easily, the companion siege tower set will also fit in but The Guarded Inn, Armour Shop and Blacksmith all need to be accompanied by at least one of the two hinged wall sets before they can be attached into a castle.