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SirBlake

Eurobricks Dukes
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Everything posted by SirBlake

  1. SirBlake
    Ok, since the scale issue doesn’t seem to be going away, let me ask this question: why must either be scaled up or down? Why can’t they stay their original scales, and one goes on one shelf, appreciated for its own merits, and the other stays on another shelf, appreciated for its merits? This “issue” exists for all themes, whether it’s modular city buildings or UCS versions of Star Wars ships or whatever. Except it doesn’t have to be an issue. I love the MMV for several reasons. It’s earned it’s place as one of the best in the history of castle. I love the blacksmith, it provides detail and techniques never before seen in the theme. I tried to get to the bottom of this in the “how do you display your castles” thread, assuming that everybody with this problem (?) had massive tables set up in a grand display of sets where everything was in the same context together. Based on the responses there, a couple of people had some shelves set up and everyone else had their collection packed away in boxes. Please don’t confuse my little rant here with me being upset, I’m just genuinely confused how this “scale issue” remains part of the discussion.
  2. SirBlake
    Agreed, tone is tough through text. Thanks for bearing with me, lol.
  3. SirBlake
    Wow, this is beautiful. Definitely captures the feel of Jackson’s elven architecture, but if I’m being pedantic (and really, that’s kind of the name of the game around here, lol) it feels more like Rivendell than Lothlorien to me. But really, who cares about that? Really nice build.
  4. SirBlake
    Interesting, I didn’t know that. I’m not sure that’s conclusive though since it’s been a minute since CitF came out, and the special circumstances (not a regular production set, very limited number). I can see how they may have used that set to get rid of old metallic silver stock. Still, I’m glad to know that bit of info.
  5. SirBlake
    Whoah, easy killer. I was just being polite and not insinuating anything deeper. Truth be told, outside of this conversation, I don’t know you or your past posting at all, and I’m certainly not trying to imply you displaying a lack of respect for others’ opinions. Star Wars is an odd duck relative to minifigs because TLG can’t sell them on their own unless it falls into a different category, like a keychain. Hasbro has exclusive rights to anything around the “action figure” space, so Lego is limited to things like battle packs as far as minifig-centric products go. In other words, it needs to have a construction element or be paired with a book or something like that.
  6. SirBlake
    Hard to know for sure, but considering that flat silver is currently in production for the Creator 3-in-1, I'm going to guess flat silver.
  7. SirBlake
    Interesting. The Scots must be really leaning into that packaging, lol. I truly haven't encountered this situation. I respect that position on a personal level, but hopefully you can respect that not all folks feel that way. The pandemic certainly changed a lot of things about normal life, but I didn't let it inhibit me from finding the CMFs I wanted. A little hand sanitizer before and after, and no harm done. I think that's a bridge too far. Even if that were an effective method, that's just too many hoops to jump through just to try and buy a product I want. Once again, hoping cooler heads prevail and there's some sort of code on the packaging.
  8. SirBlake
    Is the “messed up bags from feeling” thing really an issue? It’s certainly just anecdotal evidence on both sides, but I can honestly say I have never encountered bags that have been manipulated to the point that they looked worn out or otherwise unsuitable for retail. Also, I can’t support a limit rule. Patience always pays off, and I’ve always been able to find what I’m looking for with enough time and vigilance. Codes wouldn’t change that. (Again, anecdotal)
  9. SirBlake
    Well, I really didn’t plan on the thread being derailed by house sizes, lol. I was just hoping to see pics of how people have their castles displayed. Based on how people have been talking about the scale differences between sets, I had imagined that a lot of people have large tables with whole landscapes set up or something. I figured my shelving situation would be kind of boring by comparison.
  10. SirBlake
    Really appreciate you doing the math and sharing the info. I think the split in two plan is going to work out just fine. I somehow hadn’t considered that approach and the ability to do that allows for a lot of flexibility.
  11. SirBlake
    The optimist in me would like to think that's a possibility, but the realist in me thinks there's no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks. You know they did a ton of analysis on this and made their decision, fully expecting a lot of pushback from fans. The only hope I'm holding onto is that they'll include some sort of code that real fans can read and make an informed decision on, and the casual impulse-buy people who never even thought to feel the bags can blindly pick up. If they don't do this, I can see it being the beginning of the end of the line. Without a code system in place, I can say with certainty that I will buy zero CMF's at retail, and only pursue a significantly smaller few in the secondary market if they're particularly amazing. I just wish they didn't work so hard to make it so difficult for me to give them my money.
  12. SirBlake
    Interesting. Forgive me if I missed it, but what is the depth when it's closed? I ask because I figure the angle of the walls dictate that it's possibly deeper when open. Just trying to figure out how I'm going to fit this on an 11 inch-deep shelf, lol.
  13. SirBlake
    I’m jealous! Believe it or not, there are actually some castles here in Texas, but they’re of course modern creations, and therefore have a sort of artificiality to them. Kind of like going out for a steak dinner, and you end up at McDonalds instead, lol.
  14. SirBlake
    You guys can slice and dice probability all you want, but no matter the details of that math, the conclusion is still the same: 100% blind packaging sucks.
  15. SirBlake
    Great question. I’d love to know that answer too.
  16. SirBlake
    That’s huge news for me! The bright silver helmets on the BF’s never made sense to me, and I immediately swapped to pearl dark grey conical helmets for the regular guards and PDG kettle helmets for the archers. I’ve kept the silver great helms on the knights because I didn’t want to lose the shoulder armor, but I still don’t love the silver. Thanks for making me aware of the pearl dark grey shoulder armor. This’ll be a nice upgrade when I can get my hands on some.
  17. SirBlake
    Well, they do. There's a quantity they have to run to make manufacturing worth it, and it's likely many, many thousand units before it crosses over into the range of profitability, and once they do that, they have to put them somewhere until they're distributed. A little "back of the napkin" math and some Googling tell me that warehouse space costs between 60-70 Euros per square meter, per month. Disregarding the costs involved in production and the person-hours it takes to inventory, pick and fulfill orders, or what the material costs and salary for the workers running the machines cost, but you can see that there are real hard costs involved when it comes to manufacturing and storage. How many minifigs that are high value right now are there? Thousands? If a bin of them is just one square meter, you can see how those add up. I'm certainly not close enough to the whole process to determine the what/if/when of how a minifig should qualify for re-release or extended release or whatever, but TLG is speaking loud and clear with their actions.
  18. SirBlake
    They could do that directly, but the thing is, what you're paying for on the secondary market is mostly (with certain notable exceptions like rarity/low production) in the storage and handling. What I mean by that is, the reason a fig is expensive is that you can't get it from TLG anymore or it was only available in a larger and/or low production run set. The most direct way to get their piece of the secondary market (or almost obliterate it) would be to over-produce minifigs and warehouse them, offering them for sale online as individual products. They could mark them up based on this. For example, a 2 year old minifig costs $5, 5 year old minifig costs $10, etc. I'm sure there's a world of complexity to doing something like that, and they've likely deemed it not worth it, but speaking hypothetically, that's how you do it. Warehouse space costs money, but does the space for a single minifig cost them more than $1/year? I doubt it.
  19. SirBlake
    I can't imagine. Anything less than 1,000 sqft in Texas is considered tiny. I just googled it, and apparently the average house in Texas is 2,400 sqft. I wish! haha
  20. SirBlake
    Lol, she’s patient with my hobbies, but I give her every reason I can to make it worth it.
  21. SirBlake
    Whoah! Dang man, I’d be living with the inlaws too if that’s what houses cost around here. This new-to-me house isn’t huge or fancy (3/2, 1,700sqft), but I work from home and just have one kid, so it’s easier to justify having a whole room. No Lego anywhere else in the house. I want to stay married, lol.
  22. SirBlake
    The recent discussion of scale (Ideas Blacksmith vs. most other sets) got me thinking. It had never occurred to me that sets being built at different scales would be an issue. Ideas is usually higher detailed and larger scale, and that's what I wanted out of that set. It being in a different scale always seemed like a bonus to me, rather than a problem. It sits on its own shelf, so that didn't bother me. So, scale inspiration aside, I wondered how other folks display their collections. I've recently moved to a new house, and set up my home office with some new features, so I thought I'd post some pics. Since we were remodeling the house anyway, and this room had some pretty substantial crown molding, I had some acrylic shelves made and installed RGB LED lights behind them so they'd light up the acrylic. EDIT: I just noticed how apparent it is that I've got one major hole in the shelving, and you can guess what's going to go there. Office 1 Office 7 Office 6 Office 3 How about y'all? How do you display your castles when you're not building?
  23. SirBlake
    I think it would break my heart to neuter the blacksmith for that. Better to just build a more appropriately sized MOC that borrows inspiration from it. For me anyway.
  24. SirBlake
    Great job on these! I think it’s fun that you did this with the funky licensed stuff.
  25. SirBlake
    Super cool! I especially like seeing the pic with the castle partially open with the MMV tucked in there.
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