Dreamweb

Well, almost ten years after the last entry in my comic series, allow me to announce this: Kings and Queens of the Sea will be back soon! And this is NOT an April Fool's thing! What are the plans? To make the story look and read better. Those early parts did not look that good and I'm aware of this. But it's been ten years, and even more if you count since the beginning. We have all made some progress, at least I hope I have. :) I myself am also a very different person from who I was back then. Some big changes are coming story-wise too. So anyway, stary tuned for more of the story soon! And if you want to catch up with what has happened until now, here is the story so far - some of it better, some of it worse: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Dreamweb/PiratesTheme/Comic

Obviously, this is very different from the original Ideas model. But actually I like it even better now. This is because I prefer ships over islands any day, and while I was going to buy the Pirate Bay eventually as it would still be LEGO Pirates, now I MUST get the Barracuda Bay - you have an instant ship in there, how can this be a disadvantage? Of course, I am not very happy with the ship being YET another BSB remake, but at least it looks like the best remake to date! Also, this is the first ever LEGO Pirate ship with visible tumblehome (well, except for the 4+ ship) so that's a huge improvement on its own!

Let's hope it's true! That would be a year too late for a 30th anniversary anyway, but I will forgive this if new sets are released.

That is indeed some very interesting information, thanks! Well that would certainly explain the inconsistencies in the look of this particular item - the stone pattern, the level of water on the sides, etc.

Of the two I only own the Flagship, but the Trading Post IS the better of the two, so that was my vote!

Following my earlier topic with just the characters as customised minifigs, it is time to present my version of the shuttlecraft from "The Orville" TV series. The original model from the TV series: The interior: And a group picture with all the characters: Enjoy!

So, any fans of this new TV series THE ORVILLE here? Here's my take on the main characters: The torsos are custom stickers which I made, and everything else are just standard pieces. ISAAC the robot guy uses no custom torso so he's 100% purist. Bortus was the toughest one to do obviously, you would imagine some kind of a custom head piece would be necessary. Anyway, I picked a standard LEGO head which I think fits the best. Enjoy!

Thanks! But I think the next one will be a lot bigger actually. We'll see though.

Hello! Here comes another rather small ship of mine, made in contrast to some rather large ships of the past (and other large ships which I'm working on). I really got to like these smaller vessels, as they are a fun and relatively quick build, a prompt way to enhance your fleet. By the way, I uploaded it to Brickshelf some time ago, but due to some technical difficulties I couldn't start a proper thread about it until now. The ship is called Melusina, after the legendary mermaid-serpent-like creature. I wanted the figurehead to look more like something made of wood and painted rather than just a minifigure pretending to be a sculpture. Maybe even like something not made very well out of wood. Speaking of fleets, this is a part of the same fleet as my earlier and also rather small Basilisk (named after another legendary creature) - hence the same sail colours and unifiorms. It uses only two narrow hull pieces, like the good old Renegade Runner - except it has much more structure on top of it. In fact it looks quite bulky, but that was one of my goals. There was even some room for a forecastle with a hatch for the crew to enter. A look at the helm (and the captain). Also, please note the swivel gun in the bottom right corner - the ship has two of them on either side. Now, in my review of the Brick Bounty I admitted not liking those pieces very much (go ahead and read the review if you haven't! This is my best review of a Pirate set! This is my ONLY review of a Pirate set!). Still, given the small size of the ship, I think this is the best opportunity to use those, and save bigger guns for bigger vessels. A look from the stern... The captain's quarters, accessible by lifting the helm section which rests on tiles. Not much room in here, obviously, but I am still satisfied for having been able to put all this stuff in here, considering that the Renegade Runner had nothing like this, despite using the same hull. Another look at the whole ship... ...and a final one from the top. Thanks everyone, and of course any comments will be very much welcome!!!

Thanks for your comments, they are highly appreciated! I really wanted to use those Imperial Flagship sails and they don't fit quite well with a bluecoat crew. The new redcoats were my choice, because the old redcoats are ground troops in the world of my MOCs, not sailors! There will be more ships for the bluecoats (old and new version) in the future so no worries! That would definitely require another mast. The point was to make it rather small, and besides, these are the only Imperial Flagship sails that I have!

EDIT: Five years after I first built it, here's a new improved version with new pictures! Hi there! This is partially a MOC, partially a MOD - something I've never tried before, but decided to give it a chance. The two classic sets of the late 1980s/early 1990s: 6274 Caribbean Clipper and 6271 Imperial Flagship have always been among my favourites in the whole Pirate theme. That being said, I also considered them both lacking in some ways. The Clipper was my first ever LEGO ship so the sentimental value is enormous. However, I found the lack of a proper cabin and some other details a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the Imperial Flagship is one of the most beautiful ships LEGO has ever released, but I always felt it could be better if given a wider hull and some extra features. So my idea was to take the best parts of those two sets and merge them into one ship, adding some additional details designed by myself for good measure. The result can be seen here. Since it's a combination of sets 6271 and 6274, I guess you can also call it by the number 6272.5. :) What is also important is that I tried to retain that classic feel of both sets, at the same time trying to increase the whole thing's play value. The hull is wide, Caribbean Clipper style, but it has been customised to fit the colour scheme of the Imperial Flagship (the grey top deck pieces are taken from the Red Beard Runner). The colours of the whole ship are adjusted to fit the palette of the Imperial Flagship. The Flagship had no figurehead to speak of and I really liked the yellow bird of the Clipper. Since no white parrot piece exists (as far as I know), I decided to use a white owl instead. The shape of the sterncastle is copied from the Clipper, but using the colours of the Flagship. I always liked this part of the Clipper with the two windows, in fact it's one of my favourite stern sections as far as all official LEGO ships are concerned. As mentioned above, there are some additions made on my own - one of them is the more built-up forecastle, with ladders leading to it. Also, you can see 4 cannons on the gun deck - both the original sets only had 2 guns each, but 4 gunports. The hatch in the bow section is very similar to what you had in the Clipper. On a side note, I used a redcoat crew just like in the original Flagship, but decided to choose the newer version of the redcoats, introduced in 2009 - just to be up to date (besides, I plan to use my old redcoats for different purposes). Neither of the two ships had a proper captain's cabin, so I decided to fix this. The cabin's front wall with the door is inclined, not vertical, and I must say I like it a lot. The bell is another addition, albeit a small one. The inside of the cabin - not much room in here, but I guess it's better than no cabin at all (like in 6271). That's it! Did this genetic experiment work or not? Feel free to share your comments and have a nice day everyone! :) FINAL EDIT: And here's a picture of the original 2017 version, just for comparison:

Count me in as the one who thinks we will have some new pirate sets when the 30th anniversary is here. What I would really like to see is a smaller ship with completely new narrow hull pieces, similar to the old Imperial Flagship or Armada Flagship... I don't really care who the pirates' opponents will be this time, as long as they have some decent sets, and a ship! It could be the Armada this time, why not - those guys only got 2 sets in the 1990s, they need more! On a side note, this new leaked Ninjago ship looks pretty decent and I will probably get it to modify it slightly and use with a new faction of Asian pirates! Ching Shih comes to mind...

A medium blue one exists. It was released in two Belville sets. EDIT: Oh, now I get it. You mean a blue one with a parrot pattern right? Well, maybe they will release it one day. There's always the clone brand parrot if you want one. I even have one just like it, please don't keelhaul me for this. Don't worry, I never used this in any MOC. The picture above is not mine, just found it via Google. Don't want to defend the clone brand by any means, but mine is in much better condition.

Thanks mate! Yes, those minifig stands were quite useful here. I will definitely use them for other ships in the future too!

Please keep in mind that I prefer the bluecoats myself, as you can tell by my sigfig. I built the HMS Eternity for the old bluecoats some time ago. Not to mention other ships in the past, but those are long gone. Now I'm planning to construct something for the new version of bluecoats (which I consider to be a different faction). But the more diversity the better - I'm planning to build up the redcoat fleet too, so that the bluecoats have someone to fight. And there's the pirates, and some other factions I'm also considering.

Thanks. Actually I'm planning on building something for the new bluecoats (the 2015 version). But the 2009 redcoats will also be getting at least another ship to form a small fleet along with the Devil Lady.

Thanks everyone! 14 sails in one ship is indeed my highest number so far. For a hull this wide (and long), you really need to provide a lot of sail surface, otherwise it might look too slow! On a side note, as mentioned above, I am currently working on two more vessels. One of them will have official LEGO sails. Actually it will be a weird combination of a MOC and a MOD - and it's the first time I've attempted something like this. Still, I'm having a lot of fun with it. The other one will be a 100 % MOC, which could go either way with the sails - at the present stage it looks like she might accomodate original sails or a set of custom ones. I'll make the choice later, when she starts nearing completion. And I still can't decide which faction she will belong to - I'm just certain it won't be the pirates this time.

The sails are made of thick and stiff paper. Actually that's the part of the building process which I like the least, as it has nothing to do with LEGO, you just have to take paper and scissors and make the sails. Unfortunately, custom sails are the only option with ships this size, as any official LEGO sails are simply too small.

Aye, still building. Due to various circumstances I actually have a little more time for buliding than say last year. So I'm trying to catch up with things a bit. Besides, right now I'm feeling this unstoppable urge to keep building, I haven't felt quite like this for... well, a while. I had some very unpleasant things happen to me last year too, so LEGO is almost like a therapy to me. All of this combined makes me want to build more and more and more. So until this changes, I will keep building.

Thanks for the comments! They're not supposed to represent stone, just as I'm sure the grey in the Durmstrang Ship set didn't represent stone either. I understand where you're coming from. Yeah, I suppose this might've worked as well, but I like the colours the way they are now too. Oh, and by the way, just today I learned that there was a ship by that name in the Pirates of the Caribbean Online game, however this MOC is not related to it in any way, moreover it's just a coincidence since I came up with the name long before reading about the ship from the game, and I've never even played it.

I'm always working on something. Right now I have two WIP ships. However, when they will be finished, no one knows. Quite like with this one - it spent a lot of time just waiting for me to find the inspiration to complete the build.

Thanks! If you mean that map: Then it's from the 4+ pirate ship - set no. 7075. Not this time. Because of the construction of the 4+ hulls, there's not really much room near the bottom of the hull for crew quarters. So i just left this: As a symbolic entrance to whatever may lie below the gun deck! The rest is up to the imagination. Whether or not this was LEGO's intention, I always interpreted the single hatch of the Caribbean Clipper and the mutiple hatches of the Black Seas Barracuda as serving the same function - just a passage to some additional hidden parts of the ship.

Considering that we are in a Pirate forum after all, it is funny how long it has been since my latest true pirate ship, by which I mean a vessel not for the bluecoats, the readcoats etc., just the villainous bloodthirsty sea rats. In fact none of my previous attempts at the subject were particularly successful and were all taken apart eventually. But now things have changed and the pirates have a new huge ship to sail the seas of my house, wreaking havoc among the various factions of soldiers who until now could only fight each other (or Redbeard, since my Black Seas Barracuda is in one piece, but let's just say they were tired of fighting him ). So there she is - the pirate ship Juggernaut. The ship uses the bow and stern hull pieces from Harry Potter set 4768 The Durmstrang Ship, which are the same hull pieces as used in the (in)famous 4+ pirate ship, just in different colours. Since no official middle sections for that hull exist in those colours, I had to go for a custom one, which was pretty tricky, and if you have one of those 4+ hull pieces and are aware of the way they are interconnected, you probably agree with me on that one. Still, I am happy with the result, the long custom middle section blends in quite nicely with the bow and stern pieces. I actually like those 4+ / Harry Potter hulls. They're bulky, wider than the normal hulls you typically associate with LEGO Pirates, and they have a great potential for building really big and nasty-looking vessels. At first, when I started the building process, I wasn't even sure if this was actually meant to be a ship for the pirates or for the soldiers. Then I got to the bow part and built the figurehead using the most fitting piece I could find - and it just happened to be a skull. Well, from that point it became obvious this was no soldiers' ship. A baby this size needs not one but two anchors to hold her in position when needed. Here you can see the mechanisms used to hoist them - pretty standard issue known from the first official LEGO ships, but the anchor ropes are nicely hidden under the deck. A ship this size needs quite a crew. You will find some interesting individuals if you take a good look around. It takes a lot of time to clean her decks too! Speaking of which, in here you can see almost the whole main deck and the gun deck down below! She is armed with 12 cannons on the gun deck... ...enough to outgun even a fully armed 10210 Imperial Flagship. Where is that Imperial Flagship? Such a big ship needs a big bell to call for the attention of the crew when needed. Also, I ALWAYS wanted to use this stairwell piece in a ship MOC. Now I have finally built a ship big enough to fit this! The captain spends a lot of time on his bridge, and his first mate makes sure that all the pirates follow his orders. Oh, and he takes care of the two parrots, too. We have seen the open parts of the ship, but what about the areas which are slightly more concealed? Well, first of all, here's an entrance from the gun deck to the crew quarters in the forecastle, hidden beneath the easily removable grid plate located on the main deck next to the anchor mechanisms, which you could see in one of the earlier pictures. As for the stern part of the ship, the whole sterncastle section is easily removable, to reveal the galley, and also the very top of the sterncastle can be lifted to allow access to the captain's quarters. Let's take a look at the galley first: Well, technically we have two rooms in here, separated by a door. Also, each room has another door leading to the gun deck. In one of the rooms the chef keeps some live animals for future consumption. We have some fish in a barrel here, and also a pig! In the other room the chef prepares meals for the crew. As you can see, lately they managed to catch some crabs. I'm sure the captain will be delighted with such dinner. Speaking of whom, there he is again, this time alone in his quarters. This guy surely does like to live comfortably! Even has two spare hooks - just in case! And that's it, and once again thanks to everyone who took the time to read it all, please share your thoughts on the MOC, looking forward to reading your comments, and have a good day/night/whatever!

A nice steampunk MOC once again! Great details everywhere. Although the proportions seem even stranger this time. I mean, I can imagine your two other airships fly, in the weird steampunk kind of way of course, but not so much with this one, looks too bulky and massive. Still, we're in an s-f world so anything goes!

First, let me begin by saying that I absolutely loved the original movie and saw it maybe 50 times (no joke, my VHS tape with it was quite worn ). The second movie, while not as great, was still pretty decent and I overall liked it as well. When I learned they were making this, I wasn't happy. Let's get it out of the way right now - it wasn't because they're all girls this time. I just didn't like the overall idea of rebooting such a classic and gender had nothing to do with it. BUT... I still kept a VERY open mind, saying to myself and others that if this turns out to be good and the movie is able to defend itself, I will actually be glad, and change my mind about the whole project. So, I watched the trailer without any prejudice whatsoever. And... I didn't like it. The tone, the colours, everything - doesn't feel like a Ghostbusters movie. And most of all - it wasn't funny. At all. It had attempts at humour but all of them failed miserably. I didn't laugh once. I didn't even smile once. Granted, this is just a trailer, but its function is to make me want to see the film, and the effects are quite the opposite.