Brickthing

Scrofadillo When venturing through the dangerous dark jungles of Quatros, explorers must be wary of many beasts and monsters. One of such beasts is the giant Scrofadillo, who stands at almost twice the height of a Hero. The Scrofadillo was named for it's appearance being a mix of boar and armadillo features, although it is far more savage than either of those tiny Earth animals. This particular Scrofadillo has a corrupted Quaza spike on it's head, so is under the control of the evil Witch Doctor. Heroes beware!

I'm also fairly sure that they're fake, as I've never heard of LEGO reassigning old set numbers to new sets (~1995 isn't even very old). It's very early to get a list of names, and a lot of the names seem so good that they must be fan-speculation. Rocka, Evo, Surge and no Furno in the 4.0 wave? I love the theme choices though - Pirates and Ice. I wouldn't be disappointed if those were the themes of next year, although Pirates would need to be the Summer wave to fit in some sort of pirate ship/vehicle.

Blue hardly looks like Electricity though. Surge 1.0 relied on the trans-yellow, which is absent in the 2.0 (and presumably any future) version. Still, a lightning associated creature would be the best for Surge, perhaps a Cyclops or Pegasus?

If the Heroes for each wave are based mainly on popular characters, then they'll probably be in each upcoming wave. However, I think another factor is that the colour of each Hero needs to be reasonably distinct from the other 5 Heroes within the wave. This could be a reason for why there isn't an Evo 3.0, because he would be too similar in colour to Rocka 3.0. So (hopefully) if there will be a Dark Red Hero in a future wave, that Hero will replace Furno in that series. Likewise I think a Light Blue Hero might eventually replace Stormer occasionally.

That's very impressive! How well does LDD handle articulating the structures though, particularly the legs? I saw that you've also built the Fire Villains. You should consider adding these to the LDD Forum, where they're building an index of all the sets.

I love the use of headgear as weapons and waist details. As a small suggestion for Richard, you should make the lightsaber bar in his gun trans-orange to match the Furno blades (seeing as you can't change the colour of the blades). I like Sharon's wings, although I think they'd look better if there were a few more blades per wing, using smaller TECHNIC pieces to attach them rather than ball joints and sockets. I'm surprised that you were able to put John's chestplate on his torso armour. The real pieces don't connect "legally" - the chestplate can only be half attached without bending it slightly.

Just a small update on the progress of my Hero, and I assume everyone else's, including _shaddow_'s: It's only been a few days since I ordered, so with any luck this delay might speed up the process more than it's delayed it.

Along with Zarkan's reason, I'm hoping it is to do with some part of the instructions/online process using "he's" instead of "it's", so it would require another choice of Male/Female and all of the "he" areas to be customizable rather than pre-printed to allow having a Heroine. Those would be possible reasons, but not justification to a lot of people. I see you've also added some worthwhile armour pieces on your Hero. Are all the arm and shin armour pieces 5M shells, or are they a mix of 4M and 5M shells? You could well end up getting yours up to 2 weeks before me, as I ordered mine later and it will take up to an extra week to reach New Zealand. I think waiting for the part selection to be updated with 3.0 parts would be the only solution for the lack of armour choices (there is a fair amount of choice for some colours though). There could be many reasons for why there is only one exclusive piece to the Recon Team service, such as a question of funding, or whether it would decrease the value of new sets with armour colours that would've been new colours if it weren't for the Recon Team, or whether it's fair to customers to make a large amount of useful pieces only accessible through a (compared to normal sets) expensive service.

I do think it's slightly disappointing that you cannot build Merrick with the Hero Creator, and also that he uses non-existent white 3M armour. The shoulder armour is only 2 Nitroblasts/Jetbugs away though. I think most lighter coloured cores will work well with the Recon team armour, it's just that Lime is the only lighter colour available so far.

I commend your determination in building this big - has your computer slowed from the amount of pieces? I'd love to see how your model transfers to real bricks though, to answer the question of how well the bones handle being part of such a large figure. As you made the limbs, were you placing the bones to create a certain shape, to allow articulation or to make stable structures? I'm having trouble telling with so many pieces, but it looks to me that the 4 C-bones at the elbow won't provide elbow-like articulation. In regards to the necessity of C-bones, I've been looking for solutions with only Hero-system pieces (The 4 C-bones I have are absolutely essential to any of my larger-scale builds). The best alternative I've found is similar to in Raw-Jaw and Fangz, where a Av-Matoran connector is used to join two bone pieces in opposite directions. Your progress shot with armour reminds me of the difficult of building large scale Bionicle figures - the pieces are simply too small for the model, and most don't have wide and flat shapes that you can use to "tile" over the outside of the model to create an uninterrupted surface. Tiling torso armour might work though, and I'm hoping that the two new 3.0 "shield/hand" pieces will be suitable as well. It would take a while before I accumulate enough of the pieces to try building that big though. I look forward to seeing the rest of this model.

I'd love to see this Bulk made into a set! The choice of weapons suits Bulk very well, although you could alternatively have only one bulked up (sorry for the pun ) weapon to match his 1.0 form. But I suppose double weapons mirrors his 3.0 form as well... Stormer's headgear is certainly the best choice, and it arguably fits Bulk better than Stormer because of the chin area being similar to Bulk's 1.0 helmet. The single display screen on the headgear wouldn't be the best for two guns though, as he wouldn't be able to aim the guns too far apart from each other. One suggestion I have is that you mix the leg armour up a bit, to make it more interesting. I think rotating the shin armour sideways would work, although it might need to be switched up to 5M size. Is it possible in LDD to use trans-injected tubing? Seeing as the headgear ultimately leaves Bulk as a hypothetical set, it wouldn't hurt to dream of trans-clear with orange tubing instead of regular orange.

You could remove the spike and add another 4M shell to the right arm as well. I think that would help substantially, although then you've got the small issue of including 3,4,5 and shoulder shells on the same Hero. As for fitting in with the 2.0 lineups, most people won't look closely at piece count to determine whether a set matches the rest of their series. The strong design style of Hero 2.0 pieces, the nametag, a 2.0 helmet and the shield is more than sufficient to make Stringer suit, regardless of how many armour pieces he uses.

Keep these coming, especially the LDD Heroes! Webs 2.0 is certainly my favourite, because of the well-incorporated brick-built guns. You should try branching away from the basic Hero design though, such as making Villains, creatures, larger Heroes or even vehicles. Are you aware of LDD's Extended Mode? I ask because you've only used pieces in existing colours, while the Extended Mode allows you to use many more colours. Unless of course you intend to make some of these out of real bricks, which would be fabulous.

Seeing as this is more of a mod than a MOC, I don't have too much advice to give - your Stringer would fit in fine as a 2.0 Hero, albeit without any water/ice tools. My main advise/personal preference would be to stay with Evo's headgear in Silver, as it closer resembles a speaker/sound related motif than Nex's headgear does. I also think it's essential that Stringer's upper arms are properly armoured as well, as he isn't a lean or thin character. Even though this would cause him to exceed the piece count of 2.0 Heroes, he could only be a special edition set anyway, right? On a presentation note, your action figures would look much better if you posed them as if they were physical MOCs. However, I haven't properly tried to make an action figure in LDD yet so I'm not sure how much easier said than done that is.

Set Name: Hero Recon Team Set Number: 11995 Price: $12.99USD, 11.99 Euro Pieces: 23 to 32 Year of Release: 2011 Hero Recon Team Website “Have you ever wanted to create your own unique Hero unlike any the galaxy has ever seen before? LEGO Design byME welcomes you to the place where personal and unique Heroes come to life. The Hero Recon Team is a brand of LEGO customization that offers you the tools for creating your own personal models. Besides building your personal Hero in the Hero Creator you can also play online games with your Hero, and upload your Hero to the gallery for other kids to see.” Welcome to Part 1 of this review on the new Hero Recon Team service. The ability to create and order your own custom Heroes is a first for LEGO action figures, and I was eager to find out what it would be like. Read on to find out how the first stage of the Recon experience works – creating and buying your Hero. Of course, this part of the review can be experienced directly by going to the Hero Recon Team website, so a lot of what's included in this review is purely for reference purposes. Website Arriving at the homepage The first thing that we see when we arrive at the Hero Recon Website is Mark Fortis in some sort of industrial warehouse. Moving tracking lines direct us to the right hand box that gets straight to the point of the website, mainly with the “Exclusive Chest Armor!” and “Build a Hero Now!” text. Curiously the little Hero on the green button is a 1.0 Hero, but it looks nice anyway. If you haven't already rushed into the Hero Creator as the website strongly suggests that you do, you'll notice that there is more to the website in the forms of a gallery, games and some storyline information accessible from above and below the main area. I won't be looking closely at the rest of the website for this review as I'll be focusing on the Hero creation process, but it's interesting to note that a lot of the Hero graphics are either reused or made in LDD. There's even a recoloured Breez! I realise it's probably not worth making high-quality promotional images for the webpages of an online side-service, but I would have preferred that they at least used images of Heroes that can be built with the Hero Creator instead. About Page The main about page shows a rendering of a Hero along with a box and a customized building guide to match the Hero. I'm not sure if this is exactly what the box and instructions will look like in real life, but I'd be pleased if they looked that good, considering it's a custom product. (Hoping for a Hero pod would be too much ) Notice the armour orientations, shield position and the three-piece gun...anyway, onto the Hero Creator! Hero Creator Tutorial? After a firey loading screen, we are confronted with an offer for a tutorial. If we click the tick, a nice animation shows us how to add pieces and explains the “weight” limit to the model. Cruelly, the tutorial buttons flash when you roll over them, so I was fooled for the first few times into thinking that the tutorial was interactive. On a trivial note the torso armour colours shown in the tutorial include Lime and Blue, which aren't avaliable in the editor or even in the 3.0 Summer sets. I hope they will be made available eventually though... At the end of the tutorial you are given access to the creator, and your Hero still has the Yellow- Orange torso armour that was demonstratively added. Stage 1: Basic Armour If you choose not to take the tutorial, you are immediately taken to the Hero Creator, and you are presented with a basic skeleton in the assembly tower. The assembly tower background really adds to the experience, because it looks like you are creating a Hero in the same was as in the story. There is a nice atmospheric humming in the background, that can be muted by the sound button in the lower right corner. Unfortunately there aren't any options to change the skeleton – your only choice is to add torso armour/hands/feet/a head, as directed by the progress tabs at the top of the Creator. It would've been nice to customize the skeleton and use the less-common body without double ball joints, but I imagine it would've made the Creator massively more complex to program. On the bright side, you receive normal length arms and the longer legs currently exclusive to Stormer, which is a better combination than in any of the 2.0 Heroes. Each green plus indicates a spot where a piece can be added. Adding a piece to the head or torso area unlocks another green plus, for the next piece to be added on top. For reference purposes, here are all of the pieces avaliable in the first stage: Head: Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Lime, Purple then Helmet: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime then Headgear: All six 2.0 head-gears, in their respective colours Torso Armour: White, Black, Trans-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Silver, Gunmetal then Hero Chest Armour: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Exclusive Black/Silver or Fire Villain Machinery Armour: Gunmetal (Picture) or Shoulder Armour: Blue, Yellow, Black, Lime (Picture) then Hero Core: Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Lime, Purple (I'm disappointed that White and Orange cores aren't avaliable, considering that they've been found in the Pick-A-Brick sections of Lego Stores. ) Hero Hand: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Silver or Ben 10 Claw (left hand only ): Black or Y-joint: Black Hero Foot: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime Once you have added hands, torso armour, a Hero Core, all 3 head pieces and feet, the second stage is unlocked and the first stage is complete! (image) Next we'll be adding weapons! Stage 2: Weapons When you click on the weapons tab, the background slides along to one with weapons and tubing, giving the impression that your Hero has been moved into the area of the factory specialized in arming Heroes. It's odd that you add weapons before armour, but that may be related to the piece limitations on your model. (Notice how the green “weight” bar has filled up? It's purely based on piece count rather than plastic weight, which is something I'll look at later.) Depending on which hands you chose, you will be able to add certain pieces. Ben 10 claws cannot have pieces added to them. Hero Hand: Furno Sword: Silver/Trans-Orange or 2.0 Saw Blade: Gunmetal or 2.0 Gun base: Gunmetal or 2.0 Hook/Claw: Silver, Gunmetal or Villain Claw/Bow: Red, Gunmetal or Minifig Spear: Black, Silver, Blue or Minifig Chainsaw: Dark Grey or Minifig Battle-ax: Black or Minifig Pickax: Grey Y-Joint (left and right points): Furno Sword: Silver/Trans-Orange or 2.0 Saw Blade: Gunmetal or 2.0 Gun base: Gunmetal or 2.0 Hook/Claw: Silver, Gunmetal or Villain Claw/Bow: Red, Gunmetal Y-Joint (middle point): Hero Shield: White, Red, Yellow, Orange then (2 per shield) Minifig Spear: Black, Silver, Blue or Lightsaber Bar: Trans-Red, Trans-Light-Blue, Trans-Blue or Minifig Chainsaw: Dark Grey or Minifig Battle-ax: Black or Minifig Pickax: Grey I'm not sure whether the Black minifig spear is made out of the rubber like the other two spear colours or plastic as it is currently only avaliable in. If someone orders a Hero with this piece, please let me know what it is made out of. It's disappointing that you can only add one weapon piece to each Hero hand – this means it's not possible to make Surge rifles, Furno crossbows, or other multi-piece tools, despite then clearly being shown in numerous promotional Heroes around the Recon site. You can get around this by using Y-joints to add the pieces you need for tools you want, but it means the instructions/online version of your Hero will look very strange. Once you have added at least one weapon, the next stage is unlocked. There is small typo that says the next stage is adding extras instead of cladding, but it doesn't detract from the overall Recon Team experience. Honest! Stage 3: Cladding In the next room you add armour, as reflected in the new background. The green pluses in this stage are strangely positioned, but they add armour to the upper arms, thighs and shins. Sadly you can't add armour to the lower arms, but that would've been complicated with the large weapons you can choose. The 2.0 and 3.0 Heroes don't tend to have completely armoured arms anyway, so your Hero won't look lacking without lower arm armour. The choices for all six spots are identical: Size 5 Armour: White, Red, Blue, Black, Trans-Orange, Silver or Size 4 Armour: Yellow, Black, Silver or Size 3 Armour: Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Silver I compared colours multiple times to be sure, and it seems that you can indeed choose Size 5 Black and Silver armour, which is currently exclusive to the Hero Creator and the online Pick-a-Brick (until the 3.0 sets are released, which have these pieces). I imagine the reason they are avaliable is because they are non-printed versions of Villain/Hero nametags, which gives me hope for non-printed Trans-green armour being avaliable in the future . Oddly, you cannot choose Nitroblast's Size 5 or 3 Gunmetal armour. I shamelessly chose a healthy selection of Black and Silver armour pieces, to get the most out of my custom made Hero. The next stage is unlocked once you've added the top four pieces of armour (the only bottom two are optional). Before we continue to the final stage, I want to highlight what is, in my opinion, the biggest issue with the Hero Creator – you can't choose how you want the armour pieces to be orientated. Instead the Hero Creator shows all armour pieces facing forwards, and then the armour is sometimes repositioned automatically later. The Hero building system is designed around and depends on the ability to put the same armour pieces onto bones in different positions, which makes a great deal of difference to the look, shape and style of each Hero. I'll certainly be changing the orientation of each armour piece when I receive my Hero, but it means he won't look nearly as good on the instructions. Stage 4: Accessories In the final stage you add extras such as spikes or claws to your Hero. By now the progress bar is almost full, so you cannot add very many spikes. All 12 spaces have identical options, but you will not be able to fill each one. The entire stage is optional, so if you chose two Hero Shields and filled out all the weapon spaces, you wouldn't have had any space left for this stage (or two shin armour pieces), but you can still complete your Hero. Spike: Red, Green, Lime, Yellow-Orange, Purple or Flame: Trans-Orange or (Atlantis) Claw: White, Black or Viking Horn: White, Lime Stormer's Headgear: Eyepiece: Trans-Orange, Trans-Apple-Green Once you've finished your Hero, click the Save button... Stage 5: Export Here you can choose your Hero's codename out of a multichoice range. There is a wide range to choose from, but you're limited to male names and cheesy Hero-style last names. I'll list them here, in case they change in the future... First Name: Alexander Anthony Daniel Edward Ethan Gary Jacob James Jimmy Joshua Michael Noah Peter Richard Rick Robert Samuel Middle Name: Missile Gold Stone Ultimate Slime Power Fire X-Ray Mercury Ice Hammer Flame Machine Shock Max Super The Stealth Blizzard Iron Claw Pierce Last Name: King Breaker Stone Gunner Claw Master Shadow Torch Walker Burner Fist Vision Mind Ice Stinger Sight Viper Hider Runner Power Claw Thunder After you choose your Hero's name, you and your Hero are whisked away from the Hero Creator to the next page! Final Touches Choosing details about your Hero The next page shows your completed Hero in 3D glory, and lets you customize information about him, for what other people will see and for what will be included on the information sheet when you order him. I'm really impressed by the technology behind making the Hero images. By clicking the “Edit Hero” link, you can change your Hero's name and the following information: Latest Mission: Tanker 22 Rescue Mission Tanker 22 Reconnaissance Outer Galaxy Patrolling Tanker 22 Battle damage assessment Tanker 22 Observation Favorite Food: Pizza and Coke Stewed Bolts Metal mousse Mexican Nano smoothie Olive oil Mission Teammate: Furno Breez Surge Evo Nex Stormer Favorite Music: Futuristic Punk Classic metal Electric violins New age Oily blues Robo rap After you've chosen your Hero's mission details and personal likes, click the “Send to Cart” button... Choosing your Hero's stats ...Which will take you to another stage, where you can give your Hero stats (25 points total, max 10 per area) and a specialty: Skills: Double Shot Fire Blast Stun Attack X-ray Vision Instant Invisibility Power Armour Ultra Speed Click the “Send to Cart” button again, and your Hero is finished, ready to arrive on your doorstep 3-4 weeks after you buy him! Time to order! You know the rest. Analysis The price of a Recon Team Hero appears to be always the same, despite some parts of the website saying otherwise. The only restricting factor on your Hero is the piece-counter, which counts the number of pieces, not the value of the pieces that you choose. The advantage of this system is that certain combinations of pieces will make your Hero very much worth the price you pay for it, but it will cost you just as much if you want to have a lighter Hero that does not max out the piece-counter. The minimum number of pieces is 23, while the maximum is 32. Please let me know if you find a way of exceeding the piece-counter limit as is shown in the tutorial. Although you deserve to pay extra if you design a Hero like this... Recon Heroes cost roughly 50% more than normal 2.0 Heroes, they have limited armour and weapon configurations, and roughly the same amount of pieces (23-32 compared with 29-31). However, because you can choose which pieces you'd like, you can choose pieces which are much more useful and valuable for you. You can include pieces such as hands, spikes and uncommon armour pieces (Especially those from the villains) that you'd usually need to buy multiple sets to aquire in a single Recon Hero. Hopefully if the Recon Team program is successful, it will be updated later in the year to include 3.0 parts as well, which will greatly improve the options for unique Heroes. I also hope that a future update will bring more customization options, to armour pieces and to the skeleton, especially as the 3.0 Heroes have started using different coloured bone pieces. Personally I'm very impressed with the online part of the Hero Recon Team, as it expertly combines a game-style character creation interface with ordering an actual product. I ordered my Hero a few days ago, so come back next month to find the conclusion to this review! Feel free to share your thoughts on the online component of Hero Recon Team, as well as any suggestions you have for designing Heroes with it. Till next time!

The tutorial shows pieces in other colours as well. If HeroRecon is successful I'd think that future waves will have their associated new pieces added, but I don't think that your image or the tutorial is meant to suggest which new pieces will be added.

The box images look nice, although it doesn't look like they're the final versions. It's a shame that the boxes of Raw-Jaw and Fangz are now upright instead of sideways, but I suppose that was to make them easier to display on shelves. I like the extra animals background detail on each "Rahi" box, but the flying/falling Fangz look very strange. I'm also quite shocked at the massive head piles on Rocka XL's box. Are we sure that Rocka XL is a good Hero, and not the one making these piles?

Stormer might be an exception, but I think that only Rocka's helmet is designed to fit on the XL design - all the other helmets will look too small. It's still worth trying though, especially as there aren't many gold/Rocka exclusive pieces in the design. On another note Averick, can you please use proper capitalization and punctuation? It keeps the topics easier and more enjoyable to read.

Storyline wise I'd hope that the TV series is accurate, but it certainly isn't strongly concerned about visual continuity - Thresher, Von Ness and a recoloured Red Bulk appeared amongst the crowds during news reports.

Despite the digital benefits of LDD, you can't hold the model in your hand and see/feel how strong it is. This is certainly more important for action figures than other Lego MOCs, because they often need to be built to be balanced and able to withstand moderate play, which is something that LDD can't simulate (yet? ). In that respect, I suppose LDD is both good and bad for building larger figures/creations with the Hero Factory system - you have access to the quantity of pieces that you need, but LDD can't handle the complex assemblies that large figures would use in real life.

It's available in all countries, although the price of the model and shipping varies greatly as usual for S@H.

Zaktan and his fishbowl were blown up. There was supposedly uncertainty around Tuyet's death when The Pit collapsed (did she die trying to escape or trying to stop other prisoners escaping?), but she was definitely said to be dead and the plot involving Teridax recovering Nui Stone fragments from her reanimated corpse confirmed it. At the time it shouldn't have required direct "She is dead" confirmation in the story to infer that she was dead, and not inter-dimensionally switched with a double by secret OoMN members only to escape & return two years later with little explanation.

Hero Recon has been launched. The part selection is mostly pieces available in the current wave, along with some extra accessories such as chainsaws, spikes and flame pieces. You have the potential to have up to eight of the single-per-set spike pieces, two Hero hands, uncommon armour (eight trans-orange armour pieces?) and the exclusive dual armour piece (optional, if you'd rather not have it ).

I agree with Refia about this episode. This update set up a lot of action for the next chapter, but the next chapter probably won't come for another 3 months. Whoever the disguised Great Being is, they seem to know as much information as we do from reading the serials - are there any MU characters that are that omniscient? Hopefully we will get to see how they set up the fortress to be destroyed so quickly - I'm not at all satisfied with "a complicated and delicate job was done". I also noticed that the Great Being thought or said "the fortress would be so much rubble" and "the Great Beings’ fortress and its occupants would be so much ash". The use of "so much" strikes me as a strong clue to who the Great Being is, only I can't remember if any/which BIONICLE character uses that phrase.

Nice find! I'll update the first post with those. Bulk's weapons are silver again, but there isn't much else new in those images. The 3D and special effects make them look wonderful as usual, but the actual sets will look no better than they did at Toyfair (aside from prototype parts). It's strange that in those images Furno looks the bulkiest of all the Heroes, despite his actual design being the opposite.