Dreamweb

The figurehead is obviously slightly inspired by 6493, and one of the dragon's heads and dragon's wings come from this very set.

Which one? Please explain. It doesn't look a lot like any of my old ships to me. This is my first ship with 3 masts, the first ship that uses red and gray hull (poor Red Beard Runner... I bought it and never cared to build it according to instructions :-D )... Oh, and everyone remember there are two pages of this ship's photos at brickshelf, so make sure to check them both out!

I think so as well. And it's also the biggest one so far. And having build this I can assure you my next custom ship is going to be SMALL :-D

Hahaha! I was going to post it today, really! But you were faster. Anyway thanks for that. And thanks to another Eurobricks member Kahgarak for helping me translate the ship's name to Dutch. Because the ship is supposed to be Dutch, you see :) Well, tell me what you think and I'll post some more info about the MOC soon.

Just a little addition to my collection - another 6234 Renegade's Raft (plus some extra minifigs - 5 pirates and one islander but they don't count as sets :-D )

Perhaps I would've understood it better had you written that "there should have been a theme called Shipwrecks INSTEAD of the Divers theme" rather than "Perhaps, Divers could have been a sub-theme of Pirates aptly titled Shipwrecks..." and so on. But that's just my way of thinking and nobody says it's perfect ;)

I understood it well, but my post didn't repeat what you wrote, it just added some extra thoughts to it. :-D So you think those Divers/Shipwrecks should be a subtheme for Pirates? Are you sure that would fit the theme? After all Divers were set in the 20th century. Or do you mean the divers and their equipment should be completely removed leaving only the shipwrecks and setting the action (or rather lack of it :-D ) in the same time frame as original Pirates?

But in that sets we only saw upper parts of the shiwrecks - parts that emerged above water surface. But we never had a shipwreck that was seen under water, lying on the bottom, something like the whale skeleton in one of Divers sets, and we never saw a shipwreck made of standard hull parts.

Well maybe the fact is that some of them don't want us to see too much, just the overall look, and keep all the secret details of their creations to themselves. This seems strange to me as I try to show as much as I can while publishing my MOCs and try to take close pictures of everything that I think is worth noticing. But maybe this is what they prefer.

Yes I've just introduced the Dutch to my Lego world, they have mainly the kind of coats I showed in this thread, I think it looks all right. I'll make a thread about them and especially their ship (the biggest MOC I've ever made BTW) really soon (as soon as I take some additional photos and upload them to Brickshelf and the gallery is moderated). About the merchant vessel - I'm still not sure, perhaps it should be French (but the way I decided for the things to be I don't have any French soldiers), or maybe British after all. What about your pictures of Portugese soldiers?

There's one more method worth mentioning - you can ask your friends or neighbours or anyone in your vicinity if they collect or - even better - used to collect Pirate Lego and have something they can sell you. The second option is better because those who don't collect Lego anymore and only have some stuff from the old days don't treasure it as much as active collectors and can sell it to you for lower price or, if they are your close friends, even give it to you for free. And they might have sets they purchased while Pirate Lego was still in the shops. This is how I got my free Black Seas Barracuda, which I mentioned some time ago in another thread. I told my friend who had it that I could pay for it but he refused and gave it to me for free.

Well, bingo! It looks like I was correct when I posted that - the army thing contains 7 minifigs. So in fact it is a good army builder, it has more Vikings than the Viking Longboat from 2005, which was a much bigger set. However we should remember that the final versions of these sets may look different, just like the first time. Well, I don't think it is stated anywhere that these two are going to be the only 2006 Vikings sets.

Each time I see a ship this big I wonder if one can see the stern cabin's interior and actually play in there, or gain access to guns on lower deck and so on - the more areas of the ship are actually available for playing the better. These pictures don't answer my question so I'm not completely satisfied with them, and also one would think that if such pictures aren't shown, this means there are no such features.

Yes, and I think it would look extremely cool if the constructor placed this MOC in real water - in a water tank of some sort that is, with the water level placed where the sea level in the MOC is supposed to be.

Too many colours - that's true, however the lack of brown isn't something I consider a fault - there were several original Lego ships in the Pirates line which didn't have brown either. The creator just chose to use Red Beard Runner's red hull and that's OK with me.

Scary, isn't it? I like the idea of cross-section seen on the first picture - people resting and having fun unaware of what's happening in the depths. Now we know what hides under the sea of Paradisa... And we learn that parts used in that theme can be applied for something really cool. Also, the combination of beach and man-eating sharks reminds me of the movie "Jaws".

We can best see it here. What pieces are those tentacles made of?

Yes, that's a good one. I always thought Lego should have released a set like this in the Divers line - after all we had Pirate parts there, like treasure chests, sabres or ship's wheels, so why not a whole shipwreck?

I doubt this army will contain 15 minifigs, I say more like 7-8. But that's just my guessing.

Here's what I'd do (without using MS Word): 1. Download the image 2. Open it in IrfanView (if you don't have it, download it, it's free). 3. Cut it at the sides so at either side it ends just where one of the squares ends (I marked it with arrows on the picture) 4. Count the width - in this case it's 40 squares, 1 square = 0,1'' so 40 squares = 4'' = 10,16 cm 5. Choose Resize/Resample in IrfanView (Ctrl+R) and check the width in inches, in my case it was 4,03'' - almost the same so I didn't have to do anything, the error was caused by cutting the image's edges which wasn't that precise. If the width is different type the right width and resize the image (make sure the box "preserve aspect ratio" is checked). 6. Choose Print in IfranView (Ctrl+P) - print the image. 7. Cut the sail In this example the sail was already the right size, perhaps the guy who scanned them made all of the images the right size already, so you don't have to do anything but print them, but you can always check the size in IrfanView. Tell me about your results!

So it won't be a problem to print them in the right size, for example you can paste such scan into MS Word or a similar program and then edit its size to match.

As planned, it's time for the first thread concerning one of the MOCs from this site. They were all made by a guy who calls himself Tom. You can see pictures of The Imperial Spirit here. First I'd like to say that it's always nice when there's a story behind a MOC - it's better than just showing some pictures. It shows that the builder has imagination and wants to give life to his creations. They are not just anonymous models thanks to it. There's one thing that can be seen at the first glimpse which I first found disturbing. Four masts? Until recently I was completely sure that 3 is the maximum number of masts a ship needs. They are called fore mast, main mast (the tallest) and mizzen mast. A ship can have only one mast and in that case it's the main mast, it can have two masts - fore mast and main mast or main mast and mizzen mast, depending on which one is taller. But FOUR? Then I checked Wikipedia and this is what I found: So I was wrong, it is possible to have a ship with 4 masts, although as said here such ships were rare. But that doesn't change the fact that four masts are too many for a ship of this length. They are too close to each other and I think this ship would do nicely with just 3 masts. And this is what I don't like about this ship - it looks like its creator wanted to make it as big and complex as possible and just didn't know where to stop. Apart from these 4 masts that almost touch each other this impression is also made by the long unrealistic looking overhang in the bow part. Look at the fore mast, it's located almost before the actual ship begins :) The sterncastle is too high and makes the ship look tippable. As I said - the creator of this ship went too far in making this ship look big and detailed. The overall shape suffers because of it. I also think it has too many colours. But there are also things I like - especially all these decorations. I regret that my own ships were always more utilitarian and because of it the aesthetics suffered - they were never as decorated as this one here. I especially like the use of these white arches (found also on Red Beard Runner) - I always imagined they represented whale's bones which were known to be used to decorate ships in the old days.

I was mistaken. It wasn't here that I saw this word in use, it was on lugnet. See how often it repeats there.

Yes, as I said I'm not sure if this word even exists. The truth is the only place I came across it is this forum :)

Yes, I've seen custom French soldiers as well but I think these blue pirate jackets would work well for alternative versions of uniforms. However as I said I don't know which country they should represent and this is due to my lack of historical knowledge. Did the Dutch or Portugese wear blue jackets? This knowledge alone would help me decide. When Lego is involved the uniforms don't have to look very historically accurate, but at least the colours should be similar - that's what I think.