Rocketbilly

This is pretty cool. I like anything bone related. Speaking of bones, the bone the caveman is running away with is HUGE! surely that's not from a person? Nice MOC.

I have a question for anyone who might own the recently released Battlepack. I understand that the figures are made at a different facility to the minifgures that appear in the regular sets in the theme. This means that they feel slightly different to regular minifgures, or so what a review has told me. Now I'm not bothered about them being about the same quality as Collectible Minifigures, but there's one thing I want to know. Some of you may have noticed that the Collectible Minifigures seem to have a looser grip on accessories than minifigures we tend to get in regular building sets - items placed in their hands tend to fall out easily, or seem to "spring" out of their hands, probably due to slightly differing properties of the two different plastics I'm not sure if I'm being very clear about that, apologies. Since these battlepack figures seem to be made from the Collectible Minifgure series plastic rather than regular minifgure plastic, I assume that the hands are the same too, and thus don't grip accessories as well. Can anyone confirm this? P.S - I'm trying not to make this post seem biased in any way towards regular minifgures. In my opinion, the difference in quality between figures from the core line of sets and extended lines like battle packs and the collectible figures is mostly negligible, save for the minor issue I have with the hands.

I thought that was the case too, but they've got them in my local branch and one other branch I've visited too. With your find being nowhere near mine then I think it's a nationwide thing. Pretty good. I cursed myself for not picking it up for £11 on sale after Christmas, so I picked it up for £13.50 last week. Both branches I went to had 5 copies each, so I think that's how many come per case.

Great work, as always. I have to say your town is one of the most realistic and detailed I've seen and this is just another great addition to it. It looks believable and that's a great use of those big glass canopy pieces. If only our shopping centres looked like this in the UK. The outside detailing is grand and the coffee stand is a great detail - small in comparison to the rest of the MOC but I think it really makes it - I can taste coffee just looking at it!...ok, I can taste coffee most of the time, I'm nigh enough addicted to the stuff....but I'm sure you get my point. As you say...I'm a conformist!....and whatnot! *reason for edit: what witchcraft is this? looks like a certain well used phrase of yours has been blacklisted...

Happy Birthday Siegfried, hope you have a good one!

This is really great, the detail is perfect for the sscale - spot on work.

Thankyou. I hope this is the case though I'm not so sure - I've read somewhere that the branches have all of the sets they'll need for the entire promotion in store already. Not sure if it's true or not though I've seen Thursday's set on eBay already - sold by someone in the UK so I'm thinking it might no the the case. I'm hoping they stuck to selling the wrong set all day and didn't swap to the proper set after I'd gone. Otherwise it's loads of skeleton choppers for me! which isn't so bad...but I'd still like my glider!

I went to pick my two Ninja Gliders up today but got given tomorrow's Skeleton Chopper instead. The woman behind the counter gave them to me with my paper and didn't cut out the voucher (I got two papers) She didn't rip the coupons out, so hopefully tomorrow I'll get my Gliders instead. But I'm worried I've missed out now, I'd take the glider over the chopper if I could only have one. Anyway, has this happened to anyone else during the course of any of these newspaper promos, Sun or otherwise?

These are really nice! I like the little details you've put into them like the sword stuck in the sand and the ragged sails. Very cool! I hope to see some more of these, keep up the good work!

Well I'd say just having two to sell doesn't really affect your integrity as an AFOL really. It's not like you're selling hundreds like I've read somewhere. In my opinion,t here's a difference between having one or two spares to sell on or trade and hording large quantities with the sole intention of selling them on for profit, with the side effect of denying children and other Lego fans from getting these sets. Anyway, I'm glad there's a way to send off for the sets now, even if it is a lot less useful than the Mirror's version.

That sounds like a good way to go, but by "troop transport" do you mean a detachable APC type vehicle, or an area (with seats and a ramp, that kind of thing) for troop deployment straight from the main vehicle? I can see advantages and disadvantages for both styles. Hinges. It depends what type of hinge you want to use I'd say. Since it's pretty big and I assume you're going for an armoured look then I'd imagine the hinges are going to be taking a lot of weight, and if that's the case then they do get flimsy pretty quick. You could use the "click hinge" plates. They're far sturdier when compared to alternatives such as the 1X2 hinge brick and have a superior range of motion and also because they're click hinges you can set them in increments and have all of the angles matching, so it wont look too wonky at all. So I'm thinking if you do go for hinges then "click hingest" are definitely the best option. It would certainly help playbility/access too which is something I personally like to include in all of my MOCS.

A wise move! While this pack is cool, the Tripod Invader is infinitely cooler, and if you're a fan of the sets you're sure to end up with a fair amount of ADU Troopers and Aliens anyway. Even if you just buy the smallest set in the theme on top of the Tripod, you're making up the battlepack anyway, give or take a different face or two for the ADU Troopers.

All sounds like sound ideas to me. Bunks sound especially good, and would be pretty cool if implemented properly. I also think a couple of support fliers would be a great addition too but if they were to be manned then I think they could take up a lot of room - perhaps a single, mid sized flier or maybe some unmanned drones would be a good idea. A bridge is also a good move, I'd say, more useful than more guns in my opinion, and you need somewhere to command all of these individual vehicles from! I think if you planned carefully then you could add an extra deck on there, because it's quite a wide MOC and should look balanced enough still. As for eyes I think that's the best idea to convey an arachnid aesthetic, and the multiple eyes is also a good choice. There are a lot of trans dark blue elements that are great for creating eyes, so you could get some really good designs going there.

It's looking pretty good now. Only thing I'd say is the legs seem a little too short compared to the width of the body - but I know making them much longer would make them pretty flimsy. Also, you may want to find another way to attach your legs on the turntables other than using those jumper plates - that doesn't strike me as being able to withstand a lot of handling before it falls apart. It's a good idea, too. As for interior, I'd suggest any of the following: seating area for troops...or a medical bay perhaps? how about a control centre? you could have banks of computers and printed tiles...that would be pretty good or perhaps living quarters? a few beds, nothing fancy. Or perhaps have some sort of hangar for mini vehicles? OR how about a suggestion from the Container Heist set and have it open up to reveal a concealed laser cannon? Whatever you do though I would certainly suggest making the interior as accessible as possible whether that means using hinged pieces or just a detachable roof. It'll make it a lot easier to play with, photograph and to adjust later without disassembling your MOC too much.

I was browsing The Sun website to look for the terms and conditions of their free Lego offer when I came across their alternate builds. What they've done is provide building instructions for models you can build from the pieces in the seven promotional polybag set that they're giving away this week. Fair enough. But the results are less than impressive... Not sure if I can post images directly from The Suns website, but here's a link to one of my favourites. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/affiliates/lego/3579494/Wing-it-with-our-first-Lego-craft.html Impressive, no? Also keep an eye out for Jack Sparrow's banana-boat mobile...thing: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/affiliates/lego/3579469/Build-this-vessel-ship-shape.html Gives the Black Pearl a run for its money, eh?

Very nice. This is far better than I thought ti would be, and I actually think it might be worth buying doubles of the sets to have this assembled as a proper set in the theme, if Lego doesn't make their own Port Royal. Oh, and the little "Boat" I believe is supposed to represent the scene where Captain Jack arrives at the port on the mast of his sinking ship - so it's just supposed to be the mast with the rest of the ship already sunk beneath the water. I think that's pretty cool!

Nice review, thanks. I think you've got the torso and leg pieces (and possibly the heads) a little mixed up on the ADU Troops, though. Looks like the best set in the wave I think.

Superb! sets are looking great. I love the civilians fleeing in terror in the background on the back of the box. That's charming!

Mixed news then! good that they're so close to release, but it sucks that getting hold of them for the time being is going to be hit and miss. I've heard rumours that they're available in the UK now too, with similar restraints on when we can purchase them - only I read that the sets are in store here. Anyway, I'm glad you got the Jet Copter, that looks like a great set and I'm looking forward to seeing your review. I know you've posted before about how much you like the set, and I agree. Seemingly not alot of fellow AFOLs like this set when compared to the rest in the theme. Let's hope our anticipation is justified!

Looking at the picture again, I realized I made an error at calling that area par of the tail. In fact, the area I am referring to looks to be part of the body - just in front of the back legs. Sorry if I caused confusion about that, my bad. Though it's a fairly naff picture (no offense to Spiderspaceman - he did his best) so it's hard to tell really.

It looks great. It also looks to have a new piece on the middle tail section - like a sloped brick with a jumper plate on it at an angle - this could just be the picture, though but such a piece would be interesting to have. (it's the dark blue piece with the light blue transparent cheese slopes on it, near the tail)

By all means! your pictures are good, showing the tiny details in the weapons well and your opinions are honest. You've half convinced me to get some Brickarms with this topic already, maybe you'd push me all the way with a review of the main products

Tommy Guns? where are they? I can't seem to see them (if by Tommy Gun you do indeed mean what I think - the black gun with a drum magazine that has most recently appeared in the Pharaoh's Quest sets)

Really nice pieces here, thanks for showing this unique collection. My favourite has to be the digi camo sniper rifle. The Short longslide ( ) is pretty awesome too, what with that being one of my favourtie Brickarms weapons...all compacted and whatnot. What's not to like?. Also, the minifig holding the longslide has some sort of dark grey neck accessory underneath the fire fighter breathing apparatus. I'm curious as to what that is. Would you mind telling me please?

The Torso in question I believe is a TIE Pilot's torso from Star Wars. It wouldn't surprise me if Lego have removed it for some reason. I think there's something in the contract that prohibits Lego from selling Star Wars specific pieces separately. It's likely it was uploaded by mistake in the first place. I could be wrong, but I imagine the reason it's no longer available is that it's a Star Wars torso.