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What I ilke about those Disney Princess sets is that they deliver minidolls in clothes that don't look modern. That way they can be incorporated into historic themes like Castle, Pirates etc. And since they mix pretty well with fleshtoned minifigs IMO, putting one of them on a Pirate-themed ship as a governor's daughter / kidnapped princess / whatever wouldn't be such a bad idea for me.

I can't help but wonder, what 's so special about the red/white colour scheme for the sails that LEGO insists on using it again and again. The Black Seas Barracuda, Cross-Bone Clipper, the 4+ ship, Brickbeard's Bounty, and now they're doing it again if the rumours I'm hearing are correct. So that will be the fifth ship with that colours, and that's not even counting the two shipwreck sets from the 1990s which used it too: the Pirates Perilous Pitfall and the Shipwreck Island, and the small boat seen in Imperial Trading Post and Lagoon Lock-up. Curious...

It's been 5 years already? The time does pass quickly doesn't it? Anyway, looking back at the 2009 wave after 5 years I must admit it was a pretty decent series of sets and a solid return of the much anticipated theme. Those were the first 'real' Pirate sets since the 1997 termination of the original line and I remember the hype and the excitement when people in here learned that they were finally coming back. The Brickbeard's Bounty was a good ship, then came the Imperial Flagship which was great, although I still prefer the Black Seas Barracuda over it, but that's just a matter of personal choice. The other sets were more or less OK, the Shipwreck Hideout was pretty good. I own everything from that line except for Tic Tac Toe, the Chess, the Advent Calendar and some other small unusual sets like the battle pack released some time later. But everything else that came in a box - I have it. Overall, a good series, a much needed resurrection of LEGO Pirates, could have lasted a little longer though. Looking forward to the 2015 wave!

For one, the Shipwreck Defense looks like one of the best army builders we'had so far. I always found it frustrating that those small sets with cannons seldom had the proper small wheels for the cannon - and this one does, so the cannon is basically ready to be transported to a proper sized Pirate or Imperal ship as it is, while in the past you often had to provide it with the right set of wheels before doing that. I will probably get multiple copies of that one, as I really am in need for more cannons - with wheels!

The review is great, but the set itself... I understand what their intentions were (although I haven't seen the movie yet, but planning to do so eventually) and they probably succeeded in what they were trying to accomplish. Actually this reminds me of a pumped up version of the old Flying Time Vessel - remember that one? :) Both were equally crazy. Neither is really a Pirate set but both are kind of appealing to Pirate fans. And while I did get the time vessel, as it had a unique hull and was obviously much more affordable, I will not be getting this one. I completely understand why some people might find it a great set, but to me it's just a giant parts pack, where most of the parts I care about I either already have or can get somewhere else.

Well, to me as far as each new wave of Pirate sets goes, it's the ship that I always consider the, well, flagship of the entrire wave and its most important element. If the ship is great, and the other sets are just mediocre, then the series as a whole is at least pretty good. If the ship sucks and the rest is even very good, then I wouldn't rate the series anything above average. That's how I see it and I will use this standpoint when the new series is released as well. So if I like the final version of the ship, which I hope will be better than the prelims, I will still be overall content with this new wave, no matter how the other sets turn out. If I like them too - that's even better.

When looking at the Brickbeard's Bounty and the (preliminary) Brick Bounty side by side, it's the 2009 ship that actually looks more detailed. It has a lot more subtle decorative elements which the new ship seems to be missing. The much higher piece count of the new one seems really strange under the circumstances. Guess either the image is VERY preliminary or this ship has the most detailed interior of the captain's cabin we've ever seen.

Yeah, I know a different colour for the hull is highly unlikely. Still, I can dream, can't I? :) Dark blue hull would look absolutely amazing, sadly it will never happen. Somehow I think red would be LEGO's first choice IF introducing a new colour - like they did with the RBR long ago. Now that I think about it, this new hull is already available in 4 colours. The old wide hulls came in 3 colour variations, the old narrow ones in 4... So it seems that 4 may be the final number this time around too, for such a specialised (and large) piece. On the other hand - it wouldn't hurt to have at least one more. :)

I wish they released this new hull in a new colour instead of brown or dark brown again. Friends gave us white hull, so how about red now? Or dark blue for that matter - for the soldiers perhaps? It would correlate nicely with the dark blue boats that the soldiers have.

Looks like a standard type to me. Although if they did release a ship with a narrow hull, for the soldiers perhaps, as a counterbalance for the Brick Bounty, I'd be very, very happy. Something along the lines of the Imperial Flagship, the old one, not the 2010 one. We really miss those smaller hulls.

What's real funny is, if I wanted I could probably build this new ship the way it looks now, using pieces from the Brickbeard's Bounty + some extra ones. It wouldn't be 100% accurate obviously, but the exterior would look very much the same. And such thing was never possible with the previous ships...

I really hope the final version of the ship will use different sails and they simply used what they had available at the moment for the prelim picture. The way it is now, not only is its name almost identical to Brickbeard Bounty's, but so is its overall look. Almost as if LEGO were ripping off themselves. It reminds me of all those clone-brand Black Seas Barracudas I've seen over the years - very similar to the original yet always slightly different. Only this time it's the guys who actually made the original that are now presenting us with this knockoff.

Haven't tried anything with that one yet, however the brown and blue combination itself looks pretty appealing to me. It remains to be seen though how and if that will translate into a full and good-looking ship.

I'd rather call this a very general WIP thread, but I thought I'd share this anyway. Hello there! Long time no see. Hope someone here remembers me :). Just recently I purchased the white hull from the 41015 LEGO Friends ship, one day to be used in a - hopefully - decent looking white coloured sailing vessel. While adding this to my collection I decided to run an inventory of all the precious hull pieces I have right now, waiting to be used one day. So here's the picture I took today: I must say I was really surprised that there are so many of them. After all, I haven't counted them for quite some time, and the collection grew gradually amd over the span of many years - starting with the first Caribbean Clipper I got, yes, back in 1989. BTW, as you might have noticed, some of them have been customised using the procedure I once described in this tutorial. There's 16 hulls of bigger and smaller ships in the picture. So quite a lot of building awaits me. However, with my current rate of MOCing, this might take me a good 200 years or so... :-( Suffice to say I started work on my latest ship MOC more than half a year ago and it's still not finished. Speaking of which... There are some things missing from the picture. First of all, I have a built 10210 Imperial Flagship, and two more middle hull sections in dark brown, apart from those seen above. One day I will disassemble this set, add those two to the four it already has and build something bigger. Next, I have the Black Seas Barracuda in all its glory - this one is staying as it is. This was the best LEGO ship ever IMO and I will let it remain intact on my shelf forever, hopefully. :-) There's also the WIP ship I mentioned in the previous paragraph - it's not using any of the pieces seen in the picture, in fact it does not use any of the hull pieces we've seen in the Pirate sets (including PotC etc.). But it does use a certain LEGO hull from outside the Pirate theme - try to guess what it is if you want. :) And finally, just to make this post complete, the two finished ship MOCs I currently have on my shelves, are HMS Eternity and The Golden Stallion. Not many, I know, but hopefully they will soon be joined by the WIP ship, which I'd say is 85% complete. And then there's all these hulls ready to be used - but when I will find the time to build all these ships remains a different issue altogether. Anyway, that's it! Thanks for reading and stay Pirate!

Lobo, probably. Although you never know, they can always tone him down a bit.

This new X-Men set is a must have for me! Cyclops, Wolverine, Magneto and Storm minifigs in one set - what else is there to say? Can't wait to get my hands on it!

I've posted it before, but it fits this thread, so anyway, here it is... Spider-Man - One More Day.

Could you please add my review to the index as well? Here it is. Thanks!

Not a brand new set, I know. But as it has not yet been reviewed in here and I happened to get one lately, I decided - why not, let's review it. And by the way - it's my first ever review of a LEGO set, so please don't be too harsh on me! Here's the front of the box (I got a new and sealed one, but forgot to take a picture before opening the box, so here's one that's already been opened by me. Please note that I am not a fan of SpongeBob, I barely know the characters present in the set. However, as a long-time fan of LEGO Pirates, I got this set because it's as close to LEGO Pirates as you can get without it actually being a Pirate set. So I will not focus much on the aspects related to the cartoon, its characters and so on - I am not a competent person to do so. Heck, I don't even know what this ship looked like in the cartoon. So please consider it as just a review of a LEGO set, made by a fan of LEGO in general and LEGO Pirates in particular, but not that much of a SpongeBob fan. Alright, moving on... The back of the box shows the ship from a different angle along with some additional features which this set has - I'll discuss them later. And there's a small image of another SpongeBob set - 3818. There's a 1:1 image of SpongeBob on the side of the box. The contents of the box are two numbered bags, the ship's bow which comes without a bag, and the instruction booklet. No stickers at all and that's good - especially condsidering how sticker-heavy some other SpongeBob sets tend to be. The three minifigures. As mentioned earlier, not a SpongeBob fan, but I dig the cool pirate accessories which I definitely find very useful. The evil captain's green hat and coat are great additions to any Pirate LEGO fan's collection. As for the Patrick minifig - just switch the head, put on some hat or bandana and there you have it - a regular fleshtoned pirate. SpongeBob's hat is held by a 1x1 round brown plate and I must admit I like the hat a lot more than the ugly one which was introduced with captain Brickbeard a few years ago: I think I will use SpongeBob's hat in pirate MOCs, while I've never used Brickbeard's hat and probably never will - just a matter of taste though. The minifigs as seen from the back - apart from Patrick's stripped shirt, not much to see here. Apart from the minifigs, the first thing that one builds is the cannon - just a standard shooting cannon we all Pirate fans know and love, except for two things - it shoots with bubbles rather than cannonballs, and the other thing which I actually really like is how the wheels are installed on this thing: Instead of typical small wheels we have 1x1 round plates attached to grey half-pins which are inserted into these special black plates with round openings. I'm not entirely sure but I think that's the only LEGO set in which the cannons (or, in this case, the cannon) have wheels like these and I think I'll borrow that design for some future Pirate MOCs. By the way, the instructions show only two 'bullets', so the third one has to be considered an extra piece. On the other hand the box shows three of them, so who knows. Let's proceed, shall we? The first 'real' thing which one is supposed to build is the small island. Here's a random page from the instruction booklet. Note the subtle bubble pattern in the top part of the background. Here's what the island looks like at step 12 of the building process... ...and here's the complete island. I like the planks made of brown 1x4 tiles and the pattern they form a lot. The rock structure opens to reveal a treasure chest. This feature reminds me of this set which I got as a kid (although in that set the chest compartment was not covered from the front by any rocks): Let's take a closer look at the treasure chest: Instead of coins or gems we have some golden 1x1 plates, which is a bit weird but nothing I can't live with. Once again - the instructions show only 3 'coins', so the fourth one is an extra piece. The island as seen from the back - from this side the treasure chest is always visible. I removed the cannon for this picture - note that it rests on brown plates, and in fact so does the treasure chest, so there's plenty of 1x4 brown plates in this set. All bricks which are used to build the island are in bag 1. When we move to bag 2, we begin building what I consider the most appealing part of this set - the pirate ship! Note that the instructions use white outlines for black bricks, a solution I like a lot and one which should be definitely used more often. And here's the ship at step 12. By the way this was a very pleasant surprise for me, beacuse from all the images on the box you can only tell that the ship has 2 windows, when is fact it has 4. Cool! And finally - the finished ship. I like the one-piece printed sail, a nice change from the cloth or paper sails we saw in past LEGO ships. At the very least, it will probably last much longer without being torn or bent or whatever. The same ship from a different angle. I believe the grey cylindrical bricks are supposed to imitate smaller cannons, not a big fan of those but at least they add to the ovarall evil (in a cartoonish way) look of the vessel. Back and front views... Some close-ups... The lanterns are in transparent lime green or whatever this colour is called, to give the ship a ghostly feeling, which looks good. I'm not a big fan of the ship's wheel though, I'd prefer something more classic. The complete set with the minifigs. Definitely lots of playability in here - you have an island, a ship, a hidden treasure, a shooting cannon... No place for boredom. The ship can easily dock with the island. And finally - the extra pieces you're left with once the set is built. All in all the ship looks really nice, as a pirate fan I must admit that for years I've been looking forward to seeing LEGO release a Pirate-themed ship similar in size to the one from the famous Imperial Trading Post set from back in 1992: With this set LEGO has partially fulfilled my wish. Granted, the ship looks a bit cartoony, but in fact so do some of the ships from the Pirate theme. With some minor adjustments it could serve as an appropriate vessel to accompany the larger Pirate ships we've seen released over the years. Alternatively, one could modify it even more to make it slightly bigger, there's definitely room for that: The ship does feel kind of short when measured from bow to stern. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when looking at this picture, I can easily imagine moving the mast a bit to the back and adding an additional section between the one-piece bow and the sterncastle. Perhaps even giving it two masts and adding even more space in the middle would be possible without making it look too long and out of proportion. This ship has a lot of potential for improvement, but I also like it the way it is just fine. Overall, if you ever get a chance to buy this set, and you're a fan of LEGO Pirates and LEGO ships like me, I suggest you do so, even if you don't care much for the SpongeBob franchise. And if you do like SpongeBob, then I guess you will enjoy it even more. This set is now two years old or so, but I had no problem finding it. Just replacing the original minifigs with some pirates and soldiers plus giving the cannon some real cannonballs would turn this into a decent Pirate set! Want a treasure island protected by soldiers and attacked by pirates? No problem! And once you become bored with it, the pieces in this set are simply perfect for using in a Pirate MOC. I wouldn't call this set a masterpiece, but it's definitely a really really good one, and if you're into Pirates you'll enjoy it tremendously. If one day LEGO resurrects the Pirate theme and decides to release a similar set with a small island and a small ship, I'll be the first one to get it. They can even use the same one-piece bow and sail bricks - they're quite big but I like them. And I guess that's all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading!

Having considered all the pros and cons, I guess I might make some new episodes after all, even despite the fact that it's been ages since the last issue went online. Today I discovered I had even taken a few pictures intended for the next episode, and it was so long ago I honestly forgot about taking them. I just got stuck within this story arc which isn't really about pirates and sailing, it is much closer to castle/fantasy, but it is a vital part of the story nonetheless. I'm still struggling with this but I think a few more chapters wouldn't hurt.

If it means a possible new Pirate theme in the future, they can now release all the leftovers they want!

Or that torso, also from the Collectible Minifigs... Imagine if they put four different types into one battle pack, then you could collect four different armies to battle each other!

That kinda goes with the tradition, doesn't it? I mean, back in the late 80s - early 90s we had Captain Red Beard in EVERY freakin' set! That's why today I have an army of him but only 2 or 3 Broadsides. And I agree, they've missed a huge opportunity by not realeasing Soldier battle packs - say, 3 standard soldiers and 1 admiral (the blue one from Soldiers' Fort and Imperial Flagship). They already had the pieces, and that would istantly become a bestseller!

I guess one long post would suffice. And to be perfectly clear - I don't have the whole story, just what would happen in the next few episodes. What follows is anyone's guess.

She's from 6253 Shipwreck Hideout, one of the better sets of the 2009 Pirate line... Hope to see more sets like this next year...