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MAB

Eurobricks Archdukes
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Everything posted by MAB

  1. MAB
    The store I bought from was "world figures store". For me, the figures were £0.66 each, plus £0.63 shipping for all (this was the same price for any number). Plus there was a coupon for new users, so I re-registered and for six figures it came to about £2.30 including delivery. I did that twice. I tend to keep low value orders to avoid having to pay VAT on imports, as this does get expensive here. Shipping prices are sometimes a problem on ali. Over a certain amount, I think sellers register the packages and the price jumps significantly.
  2. MAB
    I thought you might! I've gone for a dozen, with a mixture of accessories.
  3. MAB
    First of all, the xtra stickers, which are what you claim most MOCers rely on. MOCers were able to MOC before the xtra stickers were produced. There are years worth of history of MOCs here showing that. The xtra stickers have been around for less than a year, have they been a game changers? The answer is simple - no. I don't think I have seen a single MOC that would not have been possible before the xtra stickers came along. I don't think I have seen a single MOC where the xtra stickers have made it into something special that wasn't already possible before xtra stickers were being sold. To claim that most MOCers now rely on them (with the implication that they couldn't do without them) is crazy. As to more general stickers, sure some people use official stickers in MOCs just like some use printed parts in MOCs. Some people even use official stickers on parts that they were not intended for, which is not possible for printed parts. But not a majority of MOCers. Other MOCers make their own stickers to provide detail. Stickers are fine if they add detail that isn't possible through other ways, although if a MOC (or set) relies on them so much to define what it is then chances are it is not a very good MOC.
  4. MAB
    The problem with present is that it is not fixed. You need to go back some time to see what MOCs are being presented, and they are all in the past. But even so how many MOCers currently rely on xtra stickers, since they were first sold? In my view, most MOCers do not use xtra stickers. For a start, they only really cover City style stickers, so MOCers in space, castle, pirates, etc will not rely on them. And just within City, look at the number of MOCs posted on EB that have not used them. Those MOCers have somehow managed to keep going without using a product that is less than a year old.
  5. MAB
    What assurances are you making that the software will be kept updated with new parts and available over, for example, the next 5 or 10 years? You only need to look at another LEGO kickstarter - sbrick plus - to see problems when they don't properly serve paying customers. Also, do you have an agreement with bricklink to be able to use their numbering system commercially? If that got removed, then your device would lose a lot of its usefulness. You also say "With less time needed for searching, sorting and inventorying, more time to play, build, and have fun! " How does this save time with inventorying at bricklink, for example? Does your software interface with bricklink, and automatically change inventory levels at BL?
  6. MAB
    Well, you have made a statement that most MOCers rely on xtra stickers. That is simply not true. Look at the MOCs posted on here over the past ten years, how many have relied on xtra stickers?
  7. MAB
    I don't think the majority of buyers would want to spend more to get printed pieces. Maybe the majority of AFOLs, although even then there are those that like stickers especially if the printed part doesn't exist in a plain form. As a parent, I don't really care that my kids need to apply stickers to their sets. I wouldn't want a $20 to increase to $22 just so they didn't have stickers. Where do you get the idea that most MOCers rely on stickers, and particularly xtra stickers? Many MOCers don't use any stickers and instead let the parts be the decoration. It really depends what you MOC. The xtra stickers are very new. MOCers managed fine before they existed and would manage fine if they disappeared.
  8. MAB
    Yes. Which shows that they like making them. Personally I don't want another one, but then I didn't think the launderette was really necessary but they made that to fit in with a joke.
  9. MAB
    After the Brick Bank / Launderette and laundering money, I imagine they would pair a book store and a restaurant / takeaway, so someone would be cooking the books.
  10. MAB
    Some customisers do take genuine LEGO parts and cut them or adapt them to make their own. However, that is often hard / time consuming work, ideal for a one-off piece but not to sell them. People cannot take LEGO designs and then make their own molded versions, as this would be considered theft of the design. It's better to make their own designs, rather than copy parts of LEGO's. To have a minifigure hold a great sword with two hands would be great, but you'd probably need to adapt the arms for this to be possible.
  11. MAB
    The pipe is (or very similar to) this one from brickwarriors https://www.brickwarriors.com/gentlemans-pipe/
  12. MAB
    That is a nice MOC, but I wonder what the market for a fairly large model of a Peruvian / Chilean battleship is? It obviously sneaked past the "no modern warfare" rule on submission. But would LEGO make a (relatively modern) warship but not WW1 or WW2 tanks and so on? They did the Sopwith Camel, with guns, so would they also do this with guns...? It is also a war memorial, which again is against their rules.
  13. MAB
    Also porg / BB-8 heads reprinted.
  14. MAB
    Has anyone tried the new LOTR elves being sold as "Noldo Warrior Golodh" on ali? I've ordered some for the helmets and shields as before (I use genuine figures, but custom accessories).
  15. MAB
    These look great. I like how an "evil" character can be turned into something more heroic with a few minor changes. I feel the same with the Evil Knight from S7, with a head change he also looks great. Although my S7 knights are currently posing as orcs.
  16. MAB
    I started by doing something similar, just swapping around body parts and realising I could make a figure out of only one colour. Then did it again. I am sure many people have "invented" monochrome figures in the past only to find out others do it too. I know I had done about 15 of them before I even knew that monochrome minifigures was a thing.
  17. MAB
    There are loads of free instructions on lego.com. If you want some houses, then open up some Friends or Creator house instructions and copy them, changing colours as you see fit. That will give you a load of similar houses with some variations in colour. Now get another style house and build a few variations in that. After a while you might start to tweak a design to change it to what you want. You are now MODing. Now build a similar house without looking at the instructions. You are now MOCing. Build 100 houses and you have a street. Build 1000 and you have a small district. You are still a long way off having enough of a population to pay for the City's services, but you will probably see why they focus on interesting action sets rather than on city planning.
  18. MAB
    There are already people making and selling articulated wooden ones. I've seen some similar to this (not actually this one) at shows and thought they looked nice but were too expensive. And they were about half the price of LEGO's one. Maybe LEGO will be going after them wtih cease and desist orders.
  19. MAB
    That is why I said remove the ADVERTISING stickers.
  20. MAB
    I know they were booked up. My point was if everyone is going to show up now they have revealed the product that is being sold at the event, and the price. No doubt some will try to sell on at a high price, but the general release date is so close and the VIP release even closer.
  21. MAB
    I don't think kids think or worry about how LEGO City would pay for all of the police services, or about things like property taxes and sales taxes, or local government spending. Do kids of today really want 1000 similar LEGO houses for every police car they get just to keep it realistic? I doubt it. Look at AFOL designed City style set-ups at LEGO conventions. Guess what, they don't have enough houses, they are unrealistic cities. Occasionally microscale builds include enough living space, but at minifigure scale I don't think I have ever seen anything like a realistic display with enough citizens to pay taxes to cover the costs of running the city services. Adults tend to focus on what they want - which is often depicting a few streets of shops and sometimes a smaller number of houses to give an impression of a city for display. And kids tend to focus on what they want - which is generally action. For boys, this tends to be focused around vehicles. For girls, this tends to be focused around homes / shops / tables, etc. Although, of course, both of these are generalisations and there are some more action type sets in Friends, not just houses and shops, and there are some more civilian type sets in City not just action vehicles. If you want to play more like a town planner then why not go for something like the town plan sets of the 50s and 60s, although even then there are never enough houses to justify the civic buildings or petrol stations or shops, or go microscale.
  22. MAB
    It's only a week until general release, so with posting time, it will probably be just as quick to buy from LEGO. It wouldn't surprise me if there are empty slots at the covent garden event.
  23. MAB
    https://hypebeast.com/2019/10/lego-originals-customizable-wooden-figures 7 inches high. 29 other bricks make up the other parts. Those hands definitely look plastic. Definite pass for me too.
  24. MAB
    Why are named subthemes so important? After all, City has also done these four substantial sets this year that you are ignoring in the list of themes: Brickset labels these four as Town, bricklink in a different way as food and drink, recreation, traffic, etc. But what does it matter whether they have a label on them saying "SPECIFIC SUBTHEME". LEGO could easily have tagged them in some meaningless way such as "everyday life". Does that suddenly make them worth considering? They are still civilian sets within CITY. Are they any less of a set than say this one, that in some places of catalogues or websites has a tag on it to group it with other vehicles?
  25. MAB
    I don't really understand why you need to use the rather pointed word deliberate here. For example, I think LEGO should not make only civilian sets within City, with no police, emergency or explorer style themed sets, not because I deliberately want to crush your dreams of having only civilian sets within City. It is not to deliberately crush your ideas, it is because doing so would be a huge shake up for City. It would be losing a large proportion of the proven City sales and trying to replace those sales with something that they already doing within City and so would either need to bring in many new customers for City, or convert those mainly boys wanting police to wanting buses or shops, or sell much more similar products to the people already buying civilian City sets. Plus if others cannot crush your dreams, why should you crush the hopes of the kids wanting to have LEGO fire and police and the helicopters and trucks of the explorer type sets, as when they are gone from the shelves for a year and replaced with shops and buses, then they have nothing to buy. Which is why a balance across emergency, other sub-themes, civilian based sets and all this across sizes / price points too works for City. It offers some choice to many customers rather than lots of choice to a few.
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