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AmperZand

Eurobricks Dukes
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  1. AmperZand
    When LEGO releases new parts that are more appropriate than existing ones, do you update your sets or MOCs with those new parts? For example, in 76202 Wolverine Mech, the legs are offset with one slightly in front of the other because there was no part at the time of the set's release that allowed you to have both hips in line. With the release of the 1 x 2 plate with ball connectors at both short ends (below), that's no longer the case. I have updated my mech with that part (and a 1 x 2 plate in dark bley to fill the gap). I also replaced the mech's finger and thumb parts with a bunch of these that are also new-ish: Do you update sets/MOCs or do you leave them as they are?
  2. AmperZand
    Mothers Back to Black. It’s designed for car enthusiasts so you can’t get it in small bottles, but that’s the stuff you’re after. It doesn’t just work on black parts by the way.
  3. AmperZand
    It may portend a minifigure scale Classic Space set. LEGO sometimes releases a smaller version or similarly themed set ahead of or at the same time as a larger one, e.g. the tennis shoe and the small GWP tennis shoe. When I saw the picture, I assumed stickers too. However, if they’re prints, that would indicate that the printed parts will be reappearing in another set - which would probably be Classic Space.
  4. AmperZand
    I’ve been an AFOL since 1993 and I believe the term SNOT pre-dates MOC. I can’t substantiate that or say precisely when either term was coined, but when I first saw ‘SNOT’ on LEGO usenet groups in the mid-to-late ‘90s, I already knew what it meant. I don’t think I saw ‘MOC’ until the late ‘90s or early ‘00s and had to check a glossary to find out its meaning.
  5. AmperZand
    A Classic Space set is being released! It appears to be slightly smaller than minifigure scale and will include two brand new space babies: one in blue and one in white. The set will include a rocket & launchpad, a base station, a small flyer and an all terrain vehicle/rocket transporter. It’ll be a ‘gift with purchase’. The spend threshold is $200 (£180?). The timing seems to be 16 to 25 February for insiders Insiders (VIPs) and 19 to 25 February for everyone else. Brickset’s review New Elementary’s review Tiago Catarino’s review
  6. AmperZand
    Phenomenally well done! I doubt LEGO’s designers could have done better. I’ve been to many Shinto shrines and this faithfully captures their beauty and serenity.
  7. AmperZand
    If you're looking for heads to fill mouths, you have a few options. Plain black is certainly one of them. Another possibility is to use a matching plain colour or a darker shade of the main colour. Here are a couple of examples from my display collection (picture left). They have the advantage over black that they don't stand out around the neck. There are also a couple of heads with purpose designed or very suitable prints. One is this head from the orca minifigure: Another is the head with tiny eyes and a huge mouth full of teeth. It's especially well suited to the dragon costume headpieces as the teeth line up perfectly (top of this picture from my collection - sorry about the poor picture quality): I also used that head for this carnivorous plant:
  8. AmperZand
    For the ipotane, I was hesitating between the faun and centaur legs. I settled on the former because they look a little better, but the latter don’t look bad especially in dark brown. LEGO’s way of attaching wings to minifigures is incredibly clunky. The official assembly is how I imagine a copycat brand that was skimping on moulding costs would do it. It’s cheap and nasty. For the harpy - and for many winged minifigures - I use SI-DAN’s backpack frame N2C. LEGO really ought to do a similar part. It’s this piece from the Harry Potter Triwizard Tournament set.
  9. AmperZand
    @Yperio_Bricks, Thanks for your kind words. I imagine the mushroom-men and mushroom sprites as related races. Unlike sprites though, mushroom-men are subterranean. They are generally not aggressive but can defend themselves when threatened. They have prehensile rhizome tendrils with which to grasp and restrain attackers, and mushrooms that emit spores that have various effects: sleep, hallucinations or poison, as well as antidotes to all three.
  10. AmperZand
    One is scary enough! Great minifigure by the way
  11. AmperZand
    I picked it up this evening in Surrey, UK. Woohoo! Usually, continental Europe is ahead of the UK on the magazine releases so it may already be out where you are.
  12. AmperZand
    Apologies if this is a no-no on the EB boards, but I have repurposed some of the Series 25 minifigures or parts to MOC a few fantasy ones here.
  13. AmperZand
    It *could* be a coincidence but seems very unlikely to have been. In any given UK police force, not two officers have the same collar number to avoid them being confused for one another. So that reduces the potential holders of that number to 48, the number of police forces. But 48 is further reduced by the fact that the various forces use different numbers of digits (not all use a 4-digit number) and some add letters. That subset is further reduced by many forces not issuing custodian helmets (police in Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t wear them for example). That sub-subset is reduced even further by the officer having to be male (WPCs aren’t issued with that style of helmet), having to be the rank of constable or a sergeant, and having a moustache but not a beard. It really doesn’t seem unlikely that there’s only one such officer with the number 1337. Moreover, had there been another, I suspect that that would have come to light after PC Thomas made the tabloid press for his resemblance to the minifigure. A person’s image is subject to copyright so LEGO might not have wanted to admit they used a real person’s look without their permission. Claiming that is was a slang reference would have been safer for LEGO.
  14. AmperZand
    My mods of the Series 25 Collectible Minifigures as well as minifigures that have benefited from some of the series' new parts. Note: Three parts - one of the mushroom-man's rhizome stalks, the ipotane's shield and the harpy's wing-clips - are non-purist. Also, I removed the print from the mushroom-man's torso and arms. All other parts are purist. The goatherd, mushroom sprite and barbarian (Red Sonja) are as sold - no mods (unless you count the additional goat for the goatherd). Count Batlord is basically as sold. I just swapped the haft pieces around, putting the pointy one at the top and removing one of the axe heads. LEGO's choice of colours for the harpy was too busy in my view, so I muted them. I also changed the hair to one I like more. Sorry about Spider-man Noir in the shot. I didn't place the minifigure there. He must have snuck in while I was busy setting up the other minifigures. I would have included related minifigures from my display collection including a shepherd, the original Count Batlord and a couple of fright knights, three other barbarians, the forest elf (acorn boy), and a t-rex dino-man, but that would have been too many. You wouldn't have been able to see them all. I hope to be able to picture them as separate groups in due course. Comments? Questions? Myconic mysteries?
  15. AmperZand
    @hikouki, It depends what you mean. If you mean minifigures of people that LEGO recognises as representations of real people, there's the Hans Christian Andersen minifigure from set 40291. I don't think it looks anything like the real person but it is meant to be him: If on the other hand you mean minifigures of people LEGO doesn't officially acknowledge as being representations of real people but seem to be anyway, there are a few. The Hollywood Starlet from Minifigures Series 9 looks like Marilyn Monroe: The Roman Emperor from the same series appears to be Julius Caesar: And the Constable from Series 11 is a real British policeman called Rob 'Norm' Thomas. It's not just that the minifigure coincidentally looks like Rob Thomas; it's actually him. We know that because the minifigure's collar number, 1337, is the same as Thomas's epaulette number. That can't be by chance.
  16. AmperZand
    Cool! I upgraded the War Machine Mech too but not in the same ways
  17. AmperZand
    I slightly modded the War Machine Mech (76277). I'm not a big fan of the oversized shoulder-mounted blaster, so I got rid of it and mirrored the mech's left shoulder instead. I did add a couple of blasters using the existing angled parts that are supposed to keep the cockpit shut (but aren't needed for that - the cockpit remains closed without them). I slimmed down the upper arms so that they can be brought closer to the body, allowing the forearm blasters to point more-or-less forward. Some greebling added to the knees, elbows, forearms and coccyx, not all of which is visible in the picture.
  18. AmperZand
    You could still return them, wait a few weeks and then order another 24. The very first ones seem to have the smaller data matrices, but the later ones have the larger ones. So chances are, if you wait long enough, you’ll only get the data matrices that can be read.
  19. AmperZand
    I’m guessing that it’s a lot easier for sighted people to identify CMFs using the QR code - actually a data matrix - than it is for blind people ( @Lion King to confirm or deny). If that’s true and CMFs continue to be identifiable that way but never through through braille, CMFs will be blind packaged for blind people only, but not for sighted people. That’s a PR nightmare LEGO will most certainly want to avoid. So the idea that CMFs will be identifiable through braille is not as far fetched as it seems.
  20. AmperZand
    According to one of the members of staff at the LEGO store I went to, LEGO is planning to add braille to all boxes including identifiers on future CMF boxes. It may be quite some time though before that's rolled out, so it might not be any of the series this year. If that's true, palping bags will be replaced with another tactile skill: reading braille.
  21. AmperZand
    Si vous utilisez des balances, le chevrier et le chevalier vampire sont assez faciles à identifier. La femme barbare aussi.
  22. AmperZand
    I tried but wasn’t able to get the QR reader to work. Even if it had worked, you would still need a guide to which minifigure corresponds to which number. The Mexican factory’s numbers are not necessarily the same as the Czech’s. One thing I did notice is that the small number that runs up the side of the QR code seems to be unique to each individual box. So if you have two minifigures of similar weights but very different numbers, they’re very likely not the same minifigure. So for example, if you buy and open a box and it’s the harpy, another box with a very different number is probably a mushroom sprite. It’s not a perfect system but cuts the odds of getting unwanted duplicates. Conversely, if you’re after multiple of the same one, e.g. lots of goatherds, and you have several that are similar weights, if the numbers by the QR are also numerically close, you should be able to identify them after you buy and open the first one. You wish! It may yet appear in PaB online or BAM in store. Wouldn’t surprise me.
  23. AmperZand
    I wound up with only ones that I wanted and none that I didn’t, so pretty well. I wasn’t able to get any Mushroom Sprites though as its weight was too close to some others and I didn’t want to risk it. One reason that the weights vary (in addition to slight packaging differences such as how much glue) are the spare parts. Both my goatherds have two cheeses and two sticks each. I’m not sure that that’s true of all factories or production runs. So in future, it may help if the weights of possible additional accessories are taken into account. I’ve kept the boxes so can check if the QR codes work in Europe if anyone is interested.
  24. AmperZand
    I’m in the wrong part of Europe. The 12-packs are in limited countries and I’m far from them. Besides, I’m not after all 12. There are some such as the Train Boy that don’t interest me, not even for spare parts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re in LEGO stores. I picked up 11 from the Westfield Shepherds Bush shop. I used scales. The staff had no problem with that. They even brought out some fresh display boxes for me to go through.
  25. AmperZand
    True but the issue isn’t really consistency but overlap. From the weights I compiled above, you can be certain of getting the Train Boy for example. However, some will indeed be hard to distinguish by weight alone; the Sprinter, Triceratops Guy and Mushroom Sprite are easily mixed up for example. The endoscope method will probably be frowned upon by retailers as it may appear to them that you’re damaging the box (even if you’re not - they don’t know). The weight method, in contrast, is obviously non-damaging. The large QR approach seems promising but all the reports of it that I’m aware of refer to production from the Mexican factory. In Europe where I am, it’s unclear whether the QR method will work as the factory(ies) that serve Europe may use the smaller QRs only. If anyone in Europe can shed some light on the QRs here, that would be great.
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