Missing Brick

My thoughts: $500??? They’ve used a huge number of bricks for the plinth to elevate the track. I would have preferred no plinth and a lower price or more track & carriages. Also the track plinth requires the platform to be elevated to match - which looks weird to anyone familiar with the normal height of a train platform. Also - I’m not sure those printed quotes from the movies are particularly iconic or memorable. An easy pass from me - although the engine is nice.

Great alternate build Dorino. Much more attractive and interesting than ‘left over bay’ - and looks great with the ship docked next to it.

Very nice details and texturing. Particularly like the wall panelling made from stacked 2x2 box pieces - and the gold trim.

Nice crane mod Dorino. I too am thinking of adding something similar - although I was considering a ball-jointed boom similar to the rear mast so the crane can swing out over the dock for loading. Toroto - I agree yellow highlights on the window top decoration would be an improvement. My only criticism of the ship’s design is the large black sides of the sterncastle. One idea I had was to change the colour of the two ‘go-faster-stripes’ on the sides. That might help breakup the wall-of-black. I’ve got some yellow quarter rounds on order to see how it looks. One other tweak I made was to convert the top rung of the boarding ladder into a retractable sliding plank which can be slid out of either side of the ship but is invisible when stowed in the central position. Seemed like a no-brainer. No self-respecting pirate ship should be without a plank!

Nice set and review but disagree with the rather naive comments about industrial wind energy. Which is more environmentally friendly? : A) A gas well about the size of a tennis court feeding a 300MW gas power station the size of a medium industrial unit. or B) an industrial windfarm capable of intermittently generating the same power - requiring about 300 x 3MW industrial wind turbines, each 100m tall, spaced 700m apart, occupying an area of 140km2, plus the associated pylons necessary to transmit the electricity from the remote windy hills to the city where it's needed. Consider the impact on birds and bats of 300 blades spinning at 180mph over an area of 140km2. Consider the impact on the natural landscape. And don't forget you still need the gas power station for backup when the wind's not blowing - although it now requires extra subsidy payments to sit in standby mode. > I also think it is a very educational set and could inspire young builders about sustainability and renewable energy. Yes - I hope they read widely and don't just unquestioning accept the demonisation of fossil fuels which are used to make wonderful plastic products like Lego and which provide billions of people with abundant low-cost heat, light, transport, fertiliser, clothes, medical & household products and electronics. People questioned the Lego Shell sets. I hope they apply the same critical thinking to Vestas sets.

Hi Dwayne, Sorry I don't have an LXF (I just build the old-fashioned way, by eye). However I intend to post up some plan views of my latest tweaked APC design soon. I now have a much better design for the turret - much closer to the source material with better shaping.

Thanks everyone! The 45° connection from the girders to the underside of the landing platform is similar to the connection you can see at the bottom. At first I thought setting the girder angles would be a problem - but it turns out that since all 4 struts are identical they automatically adopt the correct angle - so the structure is self-levelling and quite sturdy - even without the elevator tower attached.

I decided to rebuild and mod my LL918 for the 40th anniversary. Then I thought 'this thing needs a landing pad' so I threw this together. Tropical Landing Pad by Missing Brick, on Flickr

Thanks for the great review as always. I find this series a bit too zany for my liking. I prefer the traditional mix of figs: mostly everyday professions plus a couple of historical figs, sci-fi and maybe one or two comedic fancy-dress figs. That way you can build up a good library of fig parts for use in your own mocs. A whole series of very specialised fancy dress figs is a bit too much of one thing.

Nice job

I must agree that the above ideas project does a much better job of capturing the all-important curves around the 'eyes' which give the bus its friendly face. The official set just has that area totally square so the 'face' of the bus is all wrong. Probably fixable if you can somehow fit the ideas grill and headlights to the official set.

Nice job. I think you've covered the one half-memorable scene from the film. Not that we knew or cared about any of the characters involved beyond thinking they were dumb for blundering about on an unknown alien planet without space helmets sniffing and tasting alien flora and fauna.

Hi SilentSoul. Just wanted to mention that Havoc's excellent APC is in a giant scale so if it's your first AFOL MOC you might want to start with a smaller minifig-scale version based on Larry Lars classic design. Happy building.

Really great design and packed with great details and play features. I like the realistic layout with airlocks and ladders between all the floors. Very cool.

Nice. For the background I'd recommend getting a large sheet of white paper (A0 size). If you sit the model on top of the paper and gently roll the paper upwards behind the model, you can get a nice infinite horizon.

Yes, I've not found any 2016 sets sufficiently appealing to justify a purchase at full price. So far I've just bought a handful of CMFs & mixels using VIP points - and picked up some 2015 sets on sale. I may pickup the Brick Bank eventually. But I can't help feeling TLG have wasted too much of their design resource on producing hundreds of ridiculously overpriced dimensions 'sets'.

Cute looking train but shame the engine doesn't have any pistons because I always love to see those things pumping away. Guess that would be the first thing to mod.

Nice. Might benefit from some more greebling on the tops of the wings.

Nice vignettes. LOL at the 3rd image: So I guess Commander Dave will be drinking er.. recycled water for the duration of his journey.

The AT-ST looks quite nice except for those awful technic beams in the legs. Looking back at previous AT-STs this new one is light years ahead: http://brickset.com/search?query=at-st&scope=All TLG have copied the techniques used by AT-ST moccers like 'anothergol' to get the angles on the head panels closer to the original. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=120770

Nice job. I haven't seen Galaxy Of Terror but I hear it was James Cameron's first movie as production designer - I can see the similarities to Aliens even in your moc.

Great looking tanker. Like the brick-bending hull and the upside-down use of the blue windscreens.

Ha ha - very nice scene. I see what you mean about using the crab piece for the face huggers. I also had powerfunctions LEDs built into the table under each jar - but not sure if you can do light sources in LDD.

Great job. Love the steering control - great play feature. And you're right about the stud shooters: that's exactly what TLG would do if they made an APC set :). I spent quite alot of time working on the nose of my version- trying to make it shorter and smoother to match the movie version. In the end I got rid of Larry's half-stud offset plinth to make a smooth taper to the nose. Also, if you look closely at the movie version, the tail ends immediately in line with the back edge of the wheels - unlike Larry's which sticks out by one stud - but that would clash with your steerable wheels so probably best to leave it as is. And if you really want to get technical: the roof lamp is actually closer to the centre line and should have an angled grill plate in front of it :)