brickzone

I like this, it has a nice blend of classic look and Medieval Marketplace. The amount of detail packed into what is a small enough building is great. I may have to rethink my avoidance of using classic colours for MMP-style buildings in my own village!

One consideration may be cost - KCS is €100. I've bought old castles (used of course) for anything from €30 (Mountain Fortress with one or two substitutions that I fixed) to €50 (Black Knight's Castle, King's Castle). Also while many like old grey, you may want to consider whether having more new grey will be more useful if that's what you intend to get more of in the future. Also you can at this stage get used KCS.

I don't know what it is like in other countries, but Lego could perhaps lobby the retail sector to be more energy-conscious (and save themselves money!) Here in Ireland, even now in May, it isn't especially warm. Yet many retail developments here, *especially* recent ones, have *ZERO* insulation (e.g. warehouse style retail parks with plastic panel walls, steel frame and metal roofing). Even worse, they are then heated to temperatures sufficiently high for employees to wear short-sleeve shirts. There is a distinct lack of natural light too, so they have to be floodlit inside. You have to drive to these developments, and that means they have huge carparks taking up land, causing a drainage issue and interfering with the local conditions. Anyway, I do not think Lego themselves are the biggest environmental factor between Lego sets starting as natural resources, and ending up as sets in your own house.

I've had this same issue and it didn't click (excuse the pun) as to why I was having great difficulty dissassembling sometimes, and othertimes it was easy. I shall have to make sure to use the 90 degree technique next time. Next question is how to use the joints in MoCing for much other than mechas (I did some prelimary fiddling to see if one could arrange a transformers style vehicle using them, but it seemed rather complicated to work out).

Very nicely done considering the limitations of just using parts from that set. I did have ideals of using my copy of the set for some apartment-style modular building, but in the end I swiped the parts for random MoCing (although tonnes of tan bricks from this and harry potter are still mentally reserved for a future city modular building MoC).

I think Rincewind's beard is supposed to be scraggly - much like the printed beard on that minifig head - I would lose the beard neckpiece. Twoflower and the luggage look the part - the clips for feet is simple but effective!

I don't think it has affected consumption of pork here in Ireland much. Most people here were loathe to throw out pork products even when we had the national recall due to dioxins (affecting pigs from just a couple of farms for a month or two - one would have had to eat *affected* pork at a rate of kilos a week to suffer any effects). In fact I know many people who just ate any remaining "possibly contaminated" stuff they had! I'm not of course suggesting this is an entirely sensible attitude to authority!

It's a matter for a bit of concern, but so far it is not too extraordinary. E.g. there are deaths expected in Europe, but an ordinary flu would have quite a number of those. It isn't really known yet if this will be worse than an ordinary flu (which isn't that great a thing and does result in thousands around the world dying each year). People should be practising good hygiene all the time, there have been various studies showing that a significant proportion of people don't wash hands after using the loo, and spread all kinds of disease all over the place. You can't stop such things entirely (and people need some exposure to disease to build up resistance) but such reasonable precautions would make things a lot better, even just with normal winter illnesses. As for the media, well, there's no guarantee that it won't come to the worst and be a very bad pandemic, in which case it would probably make the media coverage at the moment look restrained. But certainly for now it looks over the top and scaremongering. The authorities are mostly proceeding rationally and with the required caution (even if it turns out to be a bit of a false alarm) but ordinary people don't need to worry at all at the moment, just follow how things develop. Admittedly I would not plan a vacation to Mexico right now!

I was away when this was built, it was quite a surprise to see in person. I think it's an admirable addition to the village :)

How about an outdoor seating area? As you say, visitors won't see the interior, so why not put some such elements outside the building to fill the empty space. I like the Café, it's a neat little building, and the angled bits and detail look nice.

Congrats Peppermint M. I hope my being a contestant doesn't affect how this opinion is received, but the truth is I found some of the other entries not crazy or funny but just crude and/or objectionable (drugs, poop, violence) - especially for a light-hearted subject. There were of course a number of really great entries, and it was a great idea for a competition! I enjoyed taking part!

Actually on many recent sets, they do resize the objects to fit - or rather they use exaggerated "perspective" ("further back" objects in the scene are much smaller). Often it makes some part of the model look smaller than it is - which on one or two sets I think is not to Lego's advantage - but they have their own ideas about which parts will be most "interesting" to consumers. Example on S@H: Construction Site - note the digger in the rear is smaller - the minifig in it way tinier than the minifig in the foreground.

57.

Sure the metallic printing will presumably not wear off if you avoid *using* the parts (i.e. build once and display). Now for minifigs, even using them in various scenes you can avoid rubbing the front. But for parts - well, the silver parts in my Agents Turbocar Chase have slightly worn corners and that is just from the original package/shipping, first build, and then a second build of a customised version. Really one has to be *SUPER* careful to avoid serious wear on such parts, so I think it is a genuine concern, and obviously one that's been around decades - even if the issue is amplified today by greater use of such printing. Interestingly my brother recently washed some old Lego in the washing machine, and accidentally left in some torsos with printing - some in good condition through little use. Even the metallic highlights (e.g. buttons) remained intact - which I have not always experienced with even careful handwashing. My reasoning is that the washing itself must not be as much of an issue as rubbing (e.g. even just picking up with wet hands - I now try to pick up by the "neck" and avoid any contact with the front at all). I still won't be putting any metallic printing through a wash myself!

It's kind of bizarre - it seems they racked them up not only enough to cause an outcry, but so high that people stopped buying (I agree that's probably the more likely reason for revising the prices). Seriously - someone was living in some kind of numbers alternate reality to enact such pricing! Now - if they would just fix the Exclusive model prices (esp. for Ireland) I'd be happy.

Yeah, I used the small/large/small/large technique with just a bit of shaking of the tub in between when I used PaB wall for the first time when in Munich last year. I didn't have all day to pack stuff in fanatically. I'd love to have access to PaB here in Ireland!

Maybe along with other price increases (e.g. €50 more on Town Plan, Green Grocer for Ireland) this means Lego have been taken over by beancounters. And furthermore, beancounters who aren't acknowledging the theory of diminishing returns (prices go up, you sell less).

On my laptop, if I visit the frontpage by any means other than link inside the forum, I am magically logged out!

On S@H for Ireland, and for UK (probably other countries too), Emerald Night is now listed as "Preorder Now, will ship by 29th May"!!! Argh!

Eldorado Fortress was *way* more expensive when released - I'll tell you why: £35 was worth *way* more in 1989 than in 2009. Just think, 20 years later with annual inflation every year that was quite significant in some years. So the new Lego is particularly incredible when you consider it is essentially dirt cheap today.

From Amazon.de: Spielwaren können nur in folgende Länder versandt werden: Belgien, Dänemark, Deutschland, Finnland, Frankreich, Griechenland, Großbritannien, Italien, Luxemburg, Niederlande, Österreich, Portugal, Schweden und Spanien. Allerdings werden Brettspiele & Puzzles in alle Länder versandt, in die wir auch Bücher liefern. Translation: Toys can be dispatched only to the following countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Sweden and Spain. However board plays & puzzles are dispatched to all countries, to which we supply also books. No go for Ireland :( Amazon.co.uk also no longer ship toys to Ireland, they allege that it's because of the WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipement) recycling scheme here. Strange that every other company manages it - such a lame excuse. If true anyway it is just gross ineptitude and laziness on their part!

On S@H for Ireland, prices for both Town Plan and Green Grocer jumped today from €129.99 to €179.99, a price increase of FIFTY EURO!!! Any other countries affected or other sets?

Mirandir: That's true - but 6xAAs enclosure does take up a lot of space. Also, some of the cheaper NiMH are not as good as they make out - poor quality. It still costs a lot to get 6 decent quality high mAH NiMH batteries. In fact I think any cheap ones I have were ones I got from Lidl/Aldi specials. You still have the choice anyway - because there is the far cheaper power functions battery box for AA batteries.

Apparently 1100 mAH is a lot for a battery like that, e.g. compared to a mobile phone battery. Expert opinion I have here is that €50 is probably the best you could sell the Lego battery for... and €60 is a bit on the high side but not that extreme.

My building is sporadic during the week/month, but fairly evenly distributed across the year I think. Holidays obviously provide opportunity for building. I manage to fit in plenty of other activities - although computer gaming has been in the backseat since becoming AFOL. I have played just one PC game since Christmas (Sacred 2 - still playing through it with my first character)! No bad thing I guess, although computer games have their place too. Even if there is fair weather this summer here in Ireland (not a foregone conclusion - we had rain from mid-June till end-August last summer) - I'll probably have at least one evening free in the week to build Lego.