Dreamweb

Very impressive! So many details. A real beauty, and a powerful vessel too. [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp] ...soon!

Some nice buildings here! Somehow the fort reminds me of the Castle sets from early 1990s. Anyway, expect your MOCs to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

I agree that old sails are superior is many ways, they are thicker and most importantly, have printing on both sides. The one-side printing is really annoying. Anyway, the Imperial Flagship is a great set, but I have just one major issue with it. These minifigs sitting on the lower deck (where the cannons are) seem to be kinda trapped. How do they get out of there? It seems that in fact Brickbeard isn't the only prisoner down there.

Very nice outpost! It looks kinda like a mixture of classic bluecoat sets and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean stuff (the island itself somehow reminds me of the Isla De La Muerta set).

The black one's the best. The brick built hull is excellent. Nice job!

Good job! Simplified, but really catches the feel of that ancient building. Expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

Hi there. I remember reading those reviews a very long time ago, before I even knew Eurobricks existed, and long before Classic-Pirates.com was born. I thought there are many users who haven't seen those, and the review section of that website seems to have been abandoned long ago anyway. Luckily the reviews are still there, and they're really interesting, with a nice made-up backstory for every set. To give you some taste of the stuff that you can read there, I chose to copy and paste one review as an example, and that would be 6249 Pirates Ambush - because it's a set that has not yet been reviewed on Classic-Pirates.com. (this picture taken from Brickset) 6249 Pirates Ambush review by Joseph Gonzalez Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5) Pros: Good source for brown walls Cons: Structures aren't solid; Suspension bridge was a neat idea but it falls down when you don't want it to unless you move the bridge rods to extend further into locking bricks Contents: 155 pieces including 3 mini-figs Price: $19.99 - Discontinued Reviewed: 16-Jul-1997 Hours of work on the rusty lock prove fruitful as the device springs open and drops into swampy water. Already up to his knees in the mire, the imprisoned soldier works the door slowly open. He steps on a bar of the door and swings his tired body up to the second floor and carefully works his way onto the swaying bridge that leads to the main guard shack and possible freedom. Alligators below snap dangerously close at the soldier's feet. The slightest misplaced step will send him over the railing and into a terrible death. The mere thought sends shivers down his spine, and then he sees him. At the other side of the bridge, the toothless grin of a pirate smiles back at him with the pirate's hand on a trap-lever to the bridge. A few more steps would bring safety, but that is no longer an option. With a last breath of hope, the desperate prisoner lunges into the air as the gnarled hand of the pirate drops the lever and the bridge falls into the swamp. Recent Pirate projects have included combining sets to come up with larger models and while I originally never intended to pick up the 6249 Pirates Ambush, the set looked like a good purchase for parts and it has not dissatisfied me in that aspect. The 6249 is a small bay or inlet-based structure of two buildings joined by a booby-trapped suspension bridge. Neither of the buildings is very sturdy but I liked the idea of spanning them with a bridge. One structure is a three-level defense tower with a cannon on the second floor roof and a prison cell on the first floor. The suspension bridge crosses from the second story of this tower to the roofless top of a small hut. Two pirates defend the small fortress from one Spanish soldier in a row boat (the pirates also have assistance from a hungry alligator). The only unique pieces that stood out to me were the wide-leaf plant element and the net which is used for the bridge. While the plant pieces look kind of cool on the boxes, sadly they don't stay stuck very well to regular bricks. They are the same flexible plastic that green flower bases are made out of but for some reason they keep falling off. Another flaw with the set was that the booby trap bridge doesn't lock in place very well (a slight modification without extra bricks solves this problem, though). A brief overview would state that while the principal structures are not very stable, the pieces included make the set worth buying (I think three or four of these sets alone could build a good small size fort). ---END OF REVIEW--- If you liked it, visit http://www.adequate.com/lego/reviews/Pirates to read more of them! You can find a lot of classic sets reviewed there, like Black Seas Barracuda, Skull's Eye Schooner, Eldorado Fortress and many others! Also, if you follow this link, you will see that they've reviewed a lot of sets from other themes, like Town, Castle etc. [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]...soon!

A very interesting challenge Mr. Skipper! I really like some of those new-old sets! Expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

Some of those sets are really good! This is some valualble info, so expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

You need to wait some time until the Brickshelf folder is public. Just have some patience and check it later!

Now that both ships are available, I shall blog this poll so that more people see it and tell us which one of the two latest Pirate Ships they prefer. [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]...soon!

Same here! It was also my first Pirate set ever! Well, actually one of three, but I got all three of them on the same day as a gift from my parents in 1989 (the others were 6251 and 6257), so technically they're all my first Pirate sets. It's funny how one remembers such things after all these years.

While I usually don't keep boxes, I somehow still have a box from this set. It's a nice little set, those small sets with one minifig were great army builders back then. Thanks for the review! Mine came in yellow box, without the set name on it. I guess it depends on in which country it was bought.

Those are rendered images, so it's not real LEGO (but it could be built of course). It was designed for the PotC computer game. Oh, and BTW, expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

For a first Pirate MOC it's definitely a very good one! I like it so much that I think it deserves to be blogged - so expect it there soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

It looks truly great! I'd like to see that in person. Expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

That's exactly what I'm planning to do for one of my future ships (probably the one I'll be making after my current WIP ship is finished). Sometimes a less colourful ship just looks better, and the original grey top from Red Beard Runner is really hard to mix with some other colours (especially now that we have this blueish grey instead of the old one).

Is the boat's bow a new part? I haven't seen it anywhere before. Might be a good starting piece for building small pirate ships.

It's just a matter of personal opinion I guess. Some people use decals for minifigs, some do not. Some people remove torso printings from minifigs, which is even bigger tampering than splitting the hulls. It's only a question of how far will a person go with customization, or how much of a LEGO 'purist' you are. I for one think it's not that big of a deal, it can be reversed to original configuration after all. There was also an article on Lugnet about cutting the hull pieces in half to make building wider ships possible, which is way more extreme.

WARNING! The procedure described in this tutorial requires applying some pressure to your LEGO hull pieces, as well as using sharp tools. If done improperly, this can result in scratching your bricks, as well as - in absolutely extreme cases - bending or breaking them. Anything you do, you do at your own risk - I will not accept any complaints or bills for damaged LEGO pieces! However, worry not - if done properly, everything's gonna be just fine and no visible damage will be done! I'm sure this subject is not new to some members, in fact I started a similar thread myself a few years ago. However, what we were missing was a complete, step by step tutorial, so I decided to make one right now. If you are unfamiliar with the procedure, just keep reading and it will be all made clear. Let me once again mention that the first person who described it was Richie Dulin, aka Legeaux. He wrote about this a long time ago on Lugnet, not showing any pictures though. He also used to post his MOCs here at Classic-Pirates.com, but I haven't seen him around in a while. Anyway, big thanks to him! The thing is, the old type hulls - both wide and narrow - had bow and stern sections that were made of two parts - top and bottom. For example, 6280 Armada Flagship had blue top and white bottom: (by old type hulls I mean the ones that were used before a new type was introduced in 2009 - first used in Brickbeard's Bounty - a type that uses different bow/stern sections) The top parts of such old type hulls can be removed and attached to a hull of a different colour, allowing for more colour combinations. Here's how it's done! We shall start with the narrow hulls, and use the aforementioned Armada Flagship's hull as an example. To perform this task one needs a screwdriver and a knife. One screwdriver is enough, I just took the picture of the two that I used while checking which one fits better. The screwdriver should be of the right size (rather small), preferably with a cross-shaped tip ("Phillips screwdriver"). The knife should be similar to the one in the picture, with a rounded tip (a typical butter knife is fine). Let's start with the bow section. In this picture you can see where the two screws holding the top part are located. Those have to be unscrewed. Sometimes removing the screws is all it takes to separate the two hull parts. Try just holding one part in one hand and one in the other hand and pulling them apart. The result looks like this: However, sometimes (pretty often actually) they will not give up so easily. This is when the knife comes in handy. You gotta turn the hull piece upside down and insert the knife between the bottom hull part and an area of the top hull part that looks like a 2x2 brick: You gotta move the knife up and down a bit to loosen the connection between the two parts. If that doesn't work, push the knife deeper, so that its tip appears in one of the two small narrow holes present on the other side of the hull: Push it through both holes, one at a time, but not too deep - only the very tip of the knife should be visible! It is possible that while doing this, you will cut off a very small slice of plastic from the bottom hull part - or even two, one from each hole. Don't worry if this happens - it will loosen the top hull part and make it more easily removable, and it will have no bad effect in the future, it will not be noticeable in the assembled hull either! After this, you should finally be able to remove the top hull part. Now let's do the same with the stern section, which has 4 screws that need to be undone: When the screws are removed, take this section apart, using the exact same procedure as with the bow. From my experience I must say that the stern sections are much easier to work with, sometimes you won't need a knife at all. The bow sections are tougher and need some work with the knife before they give up. Anyway, here are the two top hull parts - bow and stern - after separation: And here's the hull without them: Someone should definitely try to build a MOC using just these as the boat's base! I'm sure this can be done with some clever building techniques and might give some interesting results! I used the same procedure to remove the black parts from the hull of the 6493 Flying Time Vessel: Next step is attaching them to our white base. This part is easy. Just put them in the right place and then put the screws back in and tighten them! It's ready! Don't worry, even if you had cut those little slices of plastic earlier, the screws will hold your hull firmly in one piece. And if you want to separate the hull pieces again at some point in the future, you might find out it will not be easy either! Taking them apart is always the hardest part of the job - even if it's not their first time! There it is, our new hull in stylish black and white: Some more custom hulls I've made using the same procedure - this one uses the blue parts from 6280 Armada Flagship and the brown parts from 6271 Imperial Flagship (6268 Renegade Runner has them in brown too, but it has no middle section): And a completely grey hull - bottom parts taken from 6493 Flying Time Vessel, top parts from 6271 Imperial Flagship or 6268 Renegade Runner: This procedure allows for a number of new colour combinations for your hulls. Let's take a look at the narrow hulls and the colours they are available in: Originally available: Dark grey top + brown bottom (6271 Imperial Flagship as well as 6268 Renegade Runner) Green top + black bottom (6250 Cross Bone Clipper) Blue top + white bottom (6280 Armada Flagship) Black top + dark grey bottom (6493 Flying Time Vessel) Other possible combinations using the procedure: Dark grey top + black bottom Dark grey top + white bottom Dark grey top + dark grey bottom (shown in the picture above) Green top + brown bottom Green top + white bottom Green top + dark grey bottom Blue top + brown bottom (shown in the picture above) Blue top + black bottom Blue top + dark grey bottom Black top + brown bottom Black top + black bottom Black top + white bottom (shown in the picture above) All right, but what about the wide hulls? Let's check those out too! The only wide hull piece I have available right now is the bow of the 6286 Skull's Eye Schooner - all the others are currently used in MOCs and sets - so let's do some experimenting on that one! As you can see, it also has screws, so nothing new here. Just unscrew them (note that they are exactly the same as in narrow hulls). It's not willing to give up so easily just yet, so let's turn it upside down and take a look! Instead of a 2x2 stud area, there's a 6x2 area here. Bigger means more friction, so I guess it's gonna be harder to separate! What? Six narrow holes instead of just two! Definitely more job to be done here. It definitely took a lot of effort and I had to use the knife a lot more in this case... I had to insert it into all six holes several times to loosen it a bit, however I managed not to cut off any plastic from the hull. Finally! I gotta admit it was A LOT harder than doing this to the narrow hull, and I actually got blisters on my fingers from pulling the two hull pieces apart. Nonetheless, it is possible! Note the scratches from the knife inside the hole in the bottom of the brown part - they are rather unavoidable, but they will not be visible once a new top part is put in place, so the harm is acceptable. Let's take a look at the possible colour combinations for the wide hulls: Originally available: Brown top + brown bottom (6285 Black Seas Barracuda as well as 6274 Caribbean Clipper) Red top + brown bottom (6286 Skull's Eye Schooner) Dark grey top + red bottom (6289 Red Beard Runner) Other possible combinations using the procedure: Brown top + red bottom Dark grey top + brown bottom Red top + red bottom Phew! That's the end of this tutorial. Thanks for reading and I hope someone finds it useful! Please once again keep in mind that this procedure might cause some damage to your hulls, especially if done too quickly and not carefully/patiently enough. For one, you gotta be careful not to scratch any outside surface of your hull with the knife or screwdriver. However, I assure you that once you've learned how to do this properly, it can be done with no visible bad effects, and it certainly will give you some new and exciting MOCing possibilities!

That's a huge collection of soldiers you've got! Must be the biggest LEGO army I've ever seen. Also, a good idea with EB users' sigfigs paying their honours (too bad I'm absent ). Zorro would be happy with a tribute like that! Expect it to be blogged soon! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]

Thanks everyone once again! I'll do my best!

I don't have The Black Pearl yet, but although it's smaller, from the pictures I've seen it seems better than QAR design-wise - it's the simple things really, like doors, stairs, hinged walls, that kind of stuff that just make it more playable.

Anything is eligible as long as it is interesting and connected to LEGO Pirates! Be it a film, a MOC, a review, a written story etc.

That's a very good video! I would never have the patience to do that - I'd just build the thing as fast as possible! It definitely deserves being blogged on our website! [bloggedcp][/bloggedcp]...soon! EDIT: Let us embed your film here as well!