Dreamweb

I'm from Poland. COBI is a Polish brand and it's very popular in here. I have one COBI set, bought it a few years ago, mainly out of curiosity. The quality of plastic is really good, better than most clone brands I've seen. The bricks are really compatible with Lego, but some of the colours are quite different (especially grey and tan of those which I have). Minifigs have identical shape (I think COBI introduced fleshtones before Lego, but it's a different shade as well), but you can't rotate their hands or remove them from their arms - they are simply glued, well, the ones that I have at least...

Thanks john cleese, these are all perfectly valid arguments and I will consider them. Like I mentioned before, this is my first ever attempt at making anything steampunk-related, so you can hardly call ma a "steampunker" :) I will try and improve it when I find some time and inspiration. The valve is not a steering wheel used in the water, it's just a... valve :) The wheel used in water is the bigger wheel next to the starboard yellow seat. Sorry to disappoint you :)

Well, I think that's what steampunk is about - putting realism aside for a moment and building things that look as weird as possible...

First I'd like to say that I love watching steampunk MOCs, I just never had the opportunity to build one, until now. So, allow me to introduce the PUWALV: Prototypical Universal Water and Land Vehicle. On the upper picture you can see it traveling in water, while on the lower picture it's in its 'land mode'. On this picture on the right you can see the eccentric Professor Lophophore - the inventor of the vessel. Here's a closeup of the engine, and here you can see the helm - the bigger wheel controls the rudder, and the smaller one is used while driving on the land. A lever is used to switch from one mode to another. Here's the whole eccentric gallery.

What I really like about those skeleton horses is that you can attach things to their heads, for example if you take this piece: and place it here: the horse looks like a... bull? Giant goat? Hard to tell. In fact the head reminds me of Satan: Viking horns look good too... You can also experiment with the eyes. Unfortunetely I can't post any pictures right now as my home computer is down and I can only use the one I have at work.

I own the 7090 as well... Couldn't resist getting a skeleton horse. I was a bit dissapointed when I saw it's only made of 1 piece - I was hoping that at least its head would move, like those of the normal horses. But apart from that it's a great little set, and the whole line looks really good!

The hull fits pretty well. I agree she's missing an aft sail, I also think she needs a string or two. I like the clever use of red and black slopes. It was one of my biggest mistakes not to buy (or take) a hull from this set (I think), when my friend was trying to dispose of one. I could've taken it and tried to make a pirate MOC with it (something would have to be done with the printings though). He finally gave it for free to a young cousin of his. I regret that ever since. BTW I made an attempt at making a pirate-era ship with the Viking longboat hull. It's already built, I just didn't have time to take photos, maybe this week... :)

Niece little ship, although somehow I don't like the green colour of the sails... But that's just me. I have a few of these 10-wide sections stocked somewhere myself, I purchased them to use in a Pirate MOC some day, but they are not my top priority right now so they'll have to wait a bit longer (the same goes for my 6-wide hull sections BTW).

Nice! I love Spider-Man comics. Doc Ock is accurate, however I always prefered his different image, also comics-accurate - with suit and sunglasses. The vig is nice too. I plan to see the third movie soon and perhaps will try to make a movie-inspired MOC myself - after all there's no Spider-Man 3 Lego line, so why not make it ourselves? :)

Dark Bley = DkStone Light bley = MidStone Very light bley = LtStone I think. The last colour is the rarest as far as I know, although I'm not an expert in new sets :) EDIT: See the peeron colour chart: http://peeron.com/inv/colors

According to peeron, the other two sets are Fort Legoredo Re-release and this set. So, in fact the printed parrots are more common than the all-red ones. What about Caribbean Clipper's figurehead? *sweet* I have quite a few of these printed parrots, I also have 2 or 3 yellow birds from the CC, and I once had a dark gray one from this set, but I lost it somehow a few years ago...

Very clever usage of those small island baseplates! I like the way you made this "tunnel" above water with a bridge below it. The whole building looks just beautiful. Great work! I am a fan of lighthouses as well, too bad I haven't seen many Lego ones :)

The best ship in the whole Pirate theme, period. A bit smaller than the Skull's Eye Schooner, but a lot more realistic and prettier! I really wanted to have one when it was released. I couldn't afford it, so I asked my mother to buy me one for Christmas. But she considered it too expensive for a gift and bought me the Caribbean Clipper, which is also a great set. But I still kept looking at pictures of the ship in catalogues and dreaming of having one :) One day I went to the shop and asked the seller to give me the box so I could examine it. I opened the cover and looked at the parts, I looked at the pictures on the box, and I wanted the ship even more :) But it wasn't until 2003 when I finally got one - from a friend of mine who wasn't interested in Lego anymore and gave me his for free (the 6285, not the re-release)! My first impression was "It's even bigger than on the pictures!" :) Some time later, I bought myself two more and now I have 3, but only one of them is assembled, with some minor changes though. This is one of the best sets Lego has ever made, Pirate or not! I like a lot of things about it - the opening cabin with the sloped back wall, the 4 hatches! - they make this ship so realistic and they're one of the things I miss the most in other big ships. It's also the only ship to feature separate gun deck and upper deck extending from stem to stern. Of course I gave it a 5/5, I'd give a 6/5 if I could X-D

I own this set... Bought it in early 1990's. I give it a 3 - it has a lot of useful accesories, but the construction itself is not that good... Although when I was young I liked the treasure hiding place very much - I liked the fact that it had arches and fit the treasure chest really well. The baseplate has a good potential for using in MOCs, if used cleverly. Are there any all red birds in the Pirate theme or in any other themes? Never heard of them. I don't think the colourful parrot is rare, I have quite a lot of them :)

I've never seen the real thing - just the pictures - though there was a time when I was planning on getting one to use the hull and the masts for a MOC. Eventually I didn't and from what I see here it was a wise decision... :)

A very good review. I really admire your sails - they look like new! Mine are worn quite a lot. When I got it for Christmas in 1989 or 1990, it was the biggest set I had at the time. I remember I was disappointed with the number of minifigs - I was expecting more :) I was also expecting 4 cannons, not 2... I also didn't like - and still don't - the fact that the cabin has no door or wall and there's no stairs or ladder leading to the brigde. The rigging in the middle isn't that realistic but doesn't look that bad! I still give it a 5/5, for it's a true Lego classic, and despite all those things it looks just great - I especially like the yellow bird, the sails and the back of the cabin with windows. And it has one of the best Lego minifigs I've seen - Governor Broadside who comes only in one other set aside from this one. I have one complete - the one mentioned above - and one almost complete, but they are both disassembled and are parts of MOCs right now :)

Either would be good.

A bit too colourful for my taste, especially the red mast. The hull itself seems too tall - I think it would work better if the ship was longer, right now the probability of capsizing seems quite real, and you surely wouldn't wanna that to happen to your ship :)

French are OK, I always wanted to have some French soldiers. *sweet* As I mentioned earlier, these aren't decals, I used Avery sticky paper. http://www.avery.com

Star Trek all the way. I've been a fan of it for just about as long as I've been a Lego fan... I'm sure that if I wasn't such a big pirate fan, I'd be building Star Trek MOCs instead... ;-)

Here's the Polish entry, I personally think it's crap. The band's called "The Jet Set" and the song's called "Time To Party". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vc8wkql3Jw What's even more interesting, the lass who sings is Russian and the lad who sings is British... But they represent Poland anyway :) I think Eurovision's quality is poor in general, but I liked Lordi and last year's Lithuanian band who sang "We are the winners of Eurovision"... But most of the bands who take part in it are really crap. But I watch it every year anyway :)

Perhaps when the first couple of Rock Island Refuge and other 1991 sets were released, they had minifigs with solid studs, and then, when the 1992 sets were introduced, some of the 1991 sets which lasted long enough were re-released with the new heads, but with the old instructions. I'm only guessing though :)

Perhaps I could do that, however the torsos I used weren't just plain white, so I needed a full torso, with the white part, to cover the original printing (yes, I know there's a way to remove the print, but I didn't want to do that). The same goes for every other colour of the torso. These are stickers, not decals, with which I have no experience :) That's one of the reasons I chose white - It's one of the easiest colours to match - it's much easier than looking for the right shade of blue or gray or whatever :) It's not the high quality of the prints, it's the medium quality of the picture :) If I showed you a big picture of one of these minifigs, you'd see they aren't so great, and the fact that these are stickers is visible. But they're good enough for my requirements *sweet* I used an inkjet printer. Here's the torso, like I mentioned it's just one of legofreak's designs, repainted. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Dreamweb...ats/uniform.bmp You can find it in the brickshelf gallery, where you can also see pictures of some of the original torsos I used: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=245774

I think hollow heads appeared in 1992. This was the year when Imperial Guards were introduced, and I remember their heads had hollow studs, while the blue soldiers had solid studs. The cannons with the crossed cannon pattern were in some US sets, perhaps they were introduced later like you wrote. I have only one set that includes them and that's one of my two Imperial Flagships - AFAIK it's the olny US set I have, so I can't be more specific, sorry. ;) I'm sure those cannons weren't available in Europe.

I needed to bring more diversity into my pirate world, so I decided to make one more faction... I used one of the torsos posted my Mr legofreak in this thread, so the credit goes to him! I repainted the torso to make it white, becasue I'd never seen white uniforms based on those worn by Admiral Woodhouse/Governor Broadside before, and I had too many modern looking white torsos anyway. In addition to the whitecoats, I used black/blue ninja torsos to make some ordinary sailors. So here's the picture of the new crew: Now I just have to build a ship for them :) And BTW, any idea what nation they might represent? :P