Etzel

As you said, that's only true if this is the final set. And I don't think it is. We have seen the box art for the sets and there it's clearly the bare torso, and I don't think they will change the box art.

That's some serious inspection of the pic! Always nice with printed torsos, I hope it's a good generic-looking one.

And +1 to Bobskink too.

If I recall correctly I think that only some pieces are glued. The towers and knights are glued and so is the horns to the helmets, and I think that the slopes for the queens dresses are glued to the torsos. But I'm not completely sure

How about the Indiana Jones set 7195 Ambush in Cairo? I looked at the page and it wasn't there but I thought I could ask since it's usually in the same price class as the battle packs. If it's available for 11.99€ too I'm very interested.

I remember that we heard rumours about battle packs a while ago so I'm pretty sure those are real. The Attack wagon is most likely the one we saw recently as a promo set (but it's weird that the Target Practice set isn't listed too in that case). Never heard of something like a "window decoration box" or the Exo-Force birthday party kit you write about, I guess it's a store specific thing? And I agree with you, the medieval market set must be the 10193. As much as would like another awesome castle civilian set I can't see TLG making something so similar with that little time between. I was a little tricked by the price first, 85,50€ seemed very cheap for the 10193, but I checked their site and all the prices are below the S@H-price so I guess it's the same. Maybe TLG has decided to let the 10193 be selled in regular stores now and this store just thought that all the castle sets this year is supposed to be marked as "Kingdoms".

Well, the native Americans were the first people to come to the American continent. When is however a very debated question amongst archaeologists, the first people might have come as early as 40 000 years ago but the habitation weren't widespread until 16 000 - 13 000 years ago. If we shall discuss who the first person from Europe that discovered the North American continent it can be a little complicated too. Leif Ericson, the Norse explorer, was the first one to set foot on the continent in Newfoundland in 1002 or 1003 AD. But he only did that because he had gotten information from another Norse, Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had sighted land southwest of Greenland when he had been blown of course by a storm in year 986. Bjarni never landed on the new land because he was eager to continue his journey to his parents on Greenland, But you can say that he (and his crew) was the first Europeans that saw the North American continent. The Viking settlement in Newfoundland only remained for a couple of years and there were never any big scale colonization. Back in Europe little information about the new land was known and no one really cared The main interest amongst the ruling families in Europe was to control their own lands, go on crusades and import luxury products from the Orient. That last reason was the one that got the age of exploration to begin later at the end of the Middle Ages. Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Caribbean and the mainland (Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) was a very important event since it triggered the whole colonization of the American continent. It's true that Columbus himself never believed that he had found a new continent (thought he had come to East Asia), but explorers that came after him could soon realise that it was a whole new world Amerigo Vespucci is the person that has given name to the continent (originally only the South Americas) and it might be so that he was the first European to discover the mainland of what we call today the United States of America. Before Vespucci did his more famous journeys to South America he did a journey in 1497-1498 when he might have explored the coast between Yucatan to Florida, but the information is very hard to interpret and might be false. If it's true however, Amerigo Vespucci discovered the land of today's USA just about one week before John Cabot, the Italian explorer working for England. So, choose which one you want, no one is wrong as long as you can explain why you choose him. Sorry about the long answer but these things are complicated (and therefore more interesting too ) As a side note it can be worth mentioning that it's very possible that fishermen and sailors from Europe's western countries, e.g. Ireland and Portugal, were blown of course to the Americas now and then during the Middle Ages, but no one paid attentions to their stories since they were just people without any power.

I don't like the minifig, but I do love the pieces that it comes with. Perfect pieces for landscaping and always useful! I wish it had come with a better figure than the Manta-man, I really can't find a good use for him. I find this impulse better than the other Atlantis one, which IMO only contains one part of interest - the minifig head. The red underwater scooter don't appeal to me at all.

Don't forget Sweden, we got our own money too! It's not a big deal though, many stores and places in Sweden and Denmark accept euros too and if you got a credit card it usually also work fine.

This far I have only bought 1 real AFOL set, the 10193 Medieval Market Village (I got the 10197 Fire Brigade too, but I didn't bought that myself). I don't really have the economy to get all the great sets that TLG makes these days but I try to save money for those I really, really want. I'm planning on buying a second exclusive set this year but I'm not sure which one, the 10210 Imperial Flagship is tempting but so expensive here. I'm leaning more to get me a second MMV which has a much better price for the pieces you get.

It's just on the website. There is no way we are getting that hairpiece in the real sets.

It's on S@H

I bought the small green Creator truck (#5865) with the intention to try out some build-in-bag. But unfortunately I discovered that there was no bag for the pieces in that set

Just a small MOC that I happend to build when I was supposed to be sorting my LEGO instead (that always happens, don't it ). Thanks for watching! I hope I will be able to make a bigger Indian MOC sometime soon, but I need to finish my sorting before that I'm afraid... /Etzel

Now this is a little weird, an Atlantis MOC by me? I'm certainly not a fan of the Atlantis theme and the only sets I got is the two impulse sets. But I was surprised that there was so few Atlantis MOCs here on EB so I decided to make one myself. Not a big one, but at least something Never step between a Manta-man and his fish larder. Thanks for watching! /Etzel

No, not exactly the same. The back of the fairy torso is indeed the front of the Admiral's Daughter torso but the front of the fairy is similar (but not the same) as the front of the Admiral's Daugther (and the back of the fairy).

Great work, Svelte! I really liked the roof (that's a serious amount of dark red jumper plates! ) and all the different plants (I really like the ones at the door with these and these parts, I might borrow that idea). Your trees are very good and the use of the green soldiers stands as foliage is a nice idea But the best part of this MOC is of course the classical Svelte-humour and jokes

Wow, I hadn't heard about that one before! That's a great torso on the fairy, I hope it will be available as a regular torso too somewhere.

Nice work, Erdbeereis! I'm not familiar with this bird but all the different slopes and angles gives it a feathered look that is very good. All the SNOT-work looks very advanced and difficult to make. And I really like the use of crossbows as feet.

It's just a preliminary picture and the actual LEGO piece was never made. Making your own bison seems to be the best option if you want one. Sir Nadroj made a really good one if you want some inspirations: LINK

It sure is expensive. Norway got the highest price of the S@H countries but Finland and Sweden doesn't come far behind. It's no doubt that it has become much more cheaper to buy the sets from US and get them shipped here. I guess that is the way to go if you want to get sets at an affordable price these days. I wonder how long it will take before TLG realise how crazy their pricing is.

But do you even have to use glue? It looks like those pieces would stay in place just by gravity if you treat them carefully, or am I wrong? Anyway, you made a good job finishing that text. I had a lot of trouble coming up with a technique for making the letters for my sign in my western shop MOC (see sig.), eventually I settled with the Fire Brigade technique. Letters like R, K and N are really difficult but at least words like SHOP and LEGO can be spelled out.

Excellent review, Svelte! I had really fun reading it The Grand Emporium sure looks good. The amount of tan and lot of useful pieces makes it interesting from a part perspective. I will have to wait and see what this will cost in my country before I decide weather or not to buy it. It will probably be quite a bit and there are a lot of other LEGO that I plan to buy this year

The difference wasn't 0.2mm but 0.02 mm. And as davee123 wrote in his post, the stud hight is 2mm

It's just because of the mass start, it really favours the racers that are good at spurting (like Petter Northug). Many times the race just becomes a long slow trip to the last kilometre when they start skiing for real I wish they would go back to use individual start for the longest distance races.