Gideon

Great vignette! I really like the rock formation and water as well I also like the NPU with the queen crown as an "action element".

Welcome to Kaliphlin! Our great guild is open to all races

I hope that's per LUG member at least? I also think everyone who participates has to be 18 years old, at least that's how it is here in Europe. Anyway, I've learnt that the LUGBULK program is not good for getting decent amounts of "basic" parts for a great price, the best thing is that some parts in production which are expensive on BL can be ordered much cheaper that way (like dark red leaves last year )

Sounds promising kabel

Nice landscaping! And the tail of the dragon is really nice as well

Thanks for the encouraging words! That happens to me sometimes as well, in my case it's usually being distracted by something as I'm writing the comment and then forgetting it in a tab in some forgotten browser window Building a collection is a business for patience, in my case I started buying tan bricks back in 2011 and always check the "tan color" category for cheap useful pieces when I make a BL order and checked for tan pieces at the rare occasions I have had the opportunity to get to a PaB wall. A build like this is not really that hard to pull off, provided the bricks and a vision of what to create is there. I just had a rough idea about how it was supposed to look and then started building. I started with a "top-down" approach, building the top part of the tower and then made the footprint of the wall (including the angle) and the tower on the base. The height was dictated by my supply of tan bricks, which actually turned out to be enough for a few more layers than I had anticipated. The only problem was that the wall then became too narrow in proportion to the height and I had to separate the sides and fill in more "junk" at the edges. A typical iterative way of building which I do way more when I don't have a deadline the next day I still think it ended up slightly too narrow, but if I had changed it more it would have messed up the angle I had made and I did not have time to rethink that before the MAC deadline. If the time would have been enough, I would have made the proportions of the tower better as well.

Sounds very good, I'll check that store soon! (Even though my wife thinks I've overextended my brick budget a bit now with a few hundreds of € in BL orders the last 6 months on top of ordering a bit of LotR including Orthanc )

Sounds great! Do you think that applies to European builders as well? I'd happily order for much more than $15 if I could get US BL prices without excessive shipment costs

Wonderful build (as expected I almost added )! The houses are lovely, especially the roofs and angled walls. I also really like the tower, I think it's good that you have outlined some of its features with dark bley as the higly detailed walls would otherwise blur those features somewhat.

I recognized them! Are those red cabinets also Raaco or just some very similar system?

For example: [img=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130601154046/lego/images/thumb/2/2d/LEGO_logo.jpg/240px-LEGO_logo.jpg] will give you:

Very well done build, with a lot of nice details! I have no hesitation to "+1-ing" credits for "Geography: mountains and cliffs", one of three credits for "Landscaping Design: trees" (for the big one, but maybe you should try some bigger trees for the other two?), "Architecture: roof rakes". When it comes to "Architecture: 1x1 walls" I'm not as certain of the +1, as it says "Demonstrate mastery of three advanced wall techniques." and I'm not sure of what "mastery" means here. You have definitely used the technique so I guess it's an undecided issue how extensive these different examples of wall design have to be to get credited. Any opinions from NM et al? Other than that, I definitely think this build overall is well enough to merit 4 credits, I'm just uncertain about that mastery issue When it comes to the image posting here, I'd prefer if you posted flickr thumbnails rather than a slide show since that is not possible to view on many mobile devices (including iPhone and iPad) which I know that many are using to view the forum.

Here is an example of how the landscape can look in the autumn in northern Scandinavia, not too far away from that color combo you had

Nice vignette, I especially like the ground! It really looks like fall colors in a subarctic (tundra-ish) environment, like what I would see up in the north of Sweden

That's strange, here they are listing 5 German-speaking LUGs (even though one looks Swiss). The "Schmidts-bunte-Steinewelt" looks nice, although I struggle to understand all of their website...do they have some kind of Pick-a-Brick there?

Interesting backstory of the character, he seems less evil than he looks I also really like the reptile character as well, vignette looks good as well. Looking forward to the rest of the builds!

Sounds good as well I suppose, not being a native English speaker I'm not too good at this...what would be other possible ways to name the citizens of a country? (assuming the name of the country is the base for the word)

Thanks a lot! I did some calculation on this, and depending of the scale used about 31 bricks high would equal 12.4 meters (if the scale used is 3 studs = 1 m), which actually is around the same height as the inner walls of Constantinople which I based the visual design on. The walls should however have been 11-12 studs thick (instead of the 10 studs in my build) in order to correctly represent the thickness of those walls. In that scale, the tower here is slightly lower than the towers in the inner wall of Constantinople which I think is good since my build looks more slender and would have looked even thinner being another 4-5 bricks high. Looking at the pictures of this build now makes me really eager to get back to building in the "Kaliphlin color palette", if only time and my wife permits it... Well, at least all of these pieces are neatly sorted and ready to use now

I agree that your compact castle design is a good inspiration! I always get stuck in thinking too much like an engineer and counting in 'realistic' wall thickness etc which tends to make my structures thick and making me avoid for example round wall techniques...

Really beautiful build, and awesome lighting and photography work! Is this a mythical creature from Historicas past or can these still be found somewhere like deep inside the forests of Avalonia?

Welcome to Kaliphlin Nahoj! As a member of the city council of Barqa, Sir Gideon does of course not approve of crime or any other shady business going on in the city (unless he knows about it and it serves his purposes ) Nice perspective and minifig posing in that build by the way! 'Kaliphlinites' sounds better, doesn't it?

I dont want to make any assumption for this particular build in question and its builder, but disregarding the specifics you could do the following calculation to get an idea of the answer: What's the hourly rate for commissioning a MOC expert to do a build? Multiply that with the number of hours to complete the build (cheaper if you assume it's a copy and that no or limited iterative process is needed) and add the cost of the pieces involved (e.g. new or used in good condition from BL)

Thanks! I think I made the walls a bit out of proportion, they should probably have been lower or wider. Originally I planned them about 10 brick layers lower, but I just kept on going and only realized they looked a bit out of proportion when I was finished and did not have time for any more adjustments before the deadline. But of course our capital must be well defended! Glad to have helped you come aboard!

Very beautiful stream! I also really like the cylindrical shape of the whole MOC Good luck in the challenge!

Apparently I missed commenting on this when it was first posted, I guess I was too exhausted after rushing my own MAC building in just 3 days (and nights). Anyway, I definitely think this build deserves credit for studs up rocks. The waterfall is also nice, and I will give you a +1 there as well...but as with many other waterfalls I've seen in Lego, the physics does not add up with the water too calm very close to where the falling water hits the surface. So another time I would have liked to see more motion