robuko

The article is deliberately sensationalist. The Father does make very fair points. We did not grow up with zombies and angry faces on our Lego. It is good that children are given role play models with a balanced range of expressions. I have not checked but the explicit conflict bias in many themes probably does give a big weight to anger. How many parents want angry role models for their child?

Nice start! I like the protruding parts of the build, and great door! Nice trees too.

Awesome Layout Simon. The roof of the carpenter is really nice, is it with jumper plates under it? The bear is so cute and funny! What a great build.

Well this is just gorgeous! Really impressive build. I especially appreciate that you have gone for something so original and inventive. The parts use is very bold and I think it looks great, and the level of detail is fantastic. I can't even count how many plates you used, this must be massive! Congratulations on the front page, very well deserved.

Very nice and detailed build Jakon. I like the studded base, it emphasises the old skool feel of the model. Really nice mini fig posing too. UoP +1 for anthropology and fortification. I do like what you have done with the storehouse roof but I think you can develop the idea further. I like the modular construction and the flag too, it is a really nice play set type build.

Nice bio. The gate is tantalising, looks like part of a very interesting scene.

I love this so much. You have made a really great job of the classic 60s bat mobile, which is one of the hardest cars to build I think, especially at this scale. I would love to see an official model of this car, I wonder if children are still familiar with it. Would you consider showing some break down shots so we can copy your build please?

Great to see you here Brother Stephen. I hope you will have a look at Guilds of Historica in the history forum! Welcome!

They are definitely worth getting. What is special about them is basically the rarity and the exclusivity. Most of the characters are rather minor, but there have n been special editions of iron man, captain America, the green arrow and the green lantern. All are listed in the brick link super heroes page. Sorry for double post, this came up while I was writing. Yes, I have bought quite a lot of them on eBay and they were all legit, although one guy described the batman as mint even though the cloak was glued to the card, which was really appalling.

Thanks soccerkid, I did enjoy the hull and playing with the colour lines. I'm glad you like it. Thanks very much Gunman! Thanks Gabe! Not a patch on your boat I'm afraid Actually th hull was fun, it was the decks and masts that gave me creative block. Thanks a lot HammerBro, I'm happy that you like it. Oh where to begin? Fear that the history regulator would find it too inaccurate as a caravel, the 83 million times it shivered to timbers in my hands and scattered all the rigging pieces, the total impossibility of mounting a brick built spinnaker/foresail, lack of string for rigging, the 1/4 stud gaps on the SNOT offset...this thing drove me crazy. The hull was fine and quite fun, I should have put some oars on it and stopped there! I'm so happy you haven't ripped it to shreds :laugh: Thanks a lot Gideon, a great compliment from one of your skills. We have been having amber/red rain (eg a lot of rain, so very dark) all week. I did the photos outside, and of course a gust of wind caught the backing board and...smashed her to pieces. Again! I wish I could find a way to put a ripple or wake and reflection in the water, but I think it will take me quite a long time to learn that. Thanks a lot Scaevola, I thought I was on to something original with these, then I found out it's been done thousands of times before. The barrel built mast might be original though Thanks very much Carson. The 'H' is a contribution from my 3 year old son, he stuck those tiles in there and it was impossible to take them out! Thanks very much LV! Oh wait, let me throw it in the ocean and find out! :laugh: . I was naive enough to build this as an actual ship eg lay the keel first, which is 2 studs wide. So, it just wants to fall over. There is a good reason those Lego hull pieces are so fat and ugly! Ping! Got it in one. Thanks Lord Duvors. Yes, the Kaliphlin mast tops look fine in the brick but they don't look that good on the photo, I agree. The Chima Ninjago sword thing was going to be an elegant bowsprit carrying the foresail...but I could not find a way to hold it on, so it's like an appendix now, just a redundant organ. Let's pretend we are sailing in such a way that we can't deploy the foresail (not sure if we can say this of a square rigged caravel, I don't even know if the foresail would work like a spinnaker, or even if they can sail much across the wind?) but that is where it would go. Otherwise it might be an elaborate Kaliphliny device for cutting the rigging on ships it doesn't like much.

Wait, what? Michael Bay and Megan Fox are working together again? I thought they hated each other. Can we have a remake of Transformers 3? Honestly, until the turtles showed up I thought that trailer could have been a Transformers movie. And when they did show up :sick: . Maybe this is how Bay is punishing Megan. So in this case, I actually prefer the Lego figures to the source material. The new blue turtle looks quite good to me, and the little van is cute. The truck set is kind of meh though, it is not really any better than the speed racer truck 8160 , and that was $40.

I'd like to see that please, the frames look great, I'm not certain I can link what you wrote to how I think it's built. The more I look, the more I see on this build. The shades of grey colour scheme looks appropriately wintry, and the primary colours on the cart and the flag stand out very nicely. I like the floor tiles and the massive dark bley corners on the building. The roofs are superb. To have this built with a nice interior and this level of technical expertise is extremely impressive. I guess my criticisms are - the old grey pieces stick out a bit, if you ran out of dark bley maybe it would be better to put the old grey all on the same vertical line so it looks like a water stain. The 5th photo shows the building gaps on the top floor, better to turn the building very slightly so these are not apparent. I think the headlight bricks rather confuse the architectural style, though I always appreciate that you experiment and innovate to use new ideas so it's totally your prerogative. Beautiful build overall, UoP +1 for all.

Nice build Kai! I really like the experiment with purple. It's great that you build the front, back and sides of the gate, and the figure use is very good. I like the quite brave dark red/red brown timberwork (I would never be able to photograph that). and the wall texturing. Lovely entry!

My entry The VanHorn

The VanHorn is a former Mitgardian privateer, detained for its own safety while its brigand crew was slaving in the Gulag Archipelago. She is now flying under the Kaliphlin flag on a mission of mercy to deliver oil and armour to Avalonia. Sme of the former crew have renounced slavery and opted to take Kaliphlin citizenship, and they are joined on this leg of the journey by PGTC enforcer Urthrak Rockbiter and two elven emissaries from the Western Isles. This ship is for the Merchant Marine category. My duty is done with this. I am not building a ship again. This build is inherently very unstable out of water, with heavy fragile parts on top and it fell over and shattered all the damn time

Ooh nice! Love the curtains and the purple floor! Too many brave souls were lost that day

Jared, this is awesome! That shield is amazing and the ride is very sweet! ;

Nice build. I like what you did with the droid arms and vegetation, and the SNOT. It would be nice to see more of the vegetation. I agree with all the other comments. One thing that stands out for me is stylistic rather than technical: in real life I believe these cobblestone or flint walls usually have larger retaining stones in the corners to stop them from crumbling apart. Nice build

Well Ras el Akhen has been a swampy backwater for a while, maybe it's time for it to get a shiny new sister city down there. I remember there are plenty of lagoons and islands and rivers, although most of them are covered with mangroves and mud. As Mike says, not all of our wonderful land has been mapped yet so just pick a spot.

Wow, I somehow missed this whole series of builds back in the summer. What a great storyline! And this remake of Sultan's rock is just fantastic! I love what you have done with the brown and dark tan, it looks very naturalistic. Black is just too hard to photograph especially when you have these high contrast colours against it, but the shapes and build are great in there. Excellent minifig posing all round too. Awesome series!

Aranethon, here is the Kaliphlin map from page 1 of the Kaliphlin thread (everything south of the text that says Siccus Badlands is basically Kaliphlin. See if there is anything that works for Nasitadel. Here is the how to link pictures topic for our new members. It's quite a steep learning curve, but well worth it.

Oh for some reason I thought it was end of May for the gate. I will do another one anyway but I would like to request a special deadline extension for Mike. 6 weeks to ship?! That sucks. Great entry Gideon, totally beautiful ( and thank you for the shape and the feather )

It's great to see new members in Kaliphlin, a warm welcome to you all. I hope you all have a lot of fun here. There is a tutorial on using and deep linking flickr photos in one of the forums which is really helpful, sorry I can't link it from my phone - search for deeplink in the top right search box. Please let me know when you get flickr accounts so I can invite you to the Kaliphlin flickr group. Sir Horatius, slavery is a live and unresolved issue in Historica, Kaliphlin has no laws against it but we find the results are better when our labour force is incentivised properly. Jerrik, great to see those Roman parts in the guild! Arenathon, Nasitadel sounds great, although I am not sure we have a lot of lakes on trade routes. You might want to check out Barqa on the map and from Mike's builds, which sounds similar and could use some more buildings. In this guild some people "own" territories and others do not, but we are all free and welcome to build anywhere. Gedren, that really is an anti climax! :laugh:. I am looking forward to seeing some more from Nestlands. Gideon, congratulations on your very well deserved tag! You and Gabe makes 2 now in the guild (I think), which is awesome! I really don't know how but the whole Dugal resurrection story passed me by. The story telling and builds from Mike and Ska are brilliant. Great stuff guys, the collaborative stories are always the most creative and entertaining. I am kind of stuck/bored with my ship build. Just not my thing, and I can't really be bothered with strings and historical accuracy (sorry kabel). Unfortunately it's blocking my building table from getting on with more Sultan's Gate, which I am much more interested in.

Beautiful Gideon! I love the old walls, and the colours are pure . Wonderful lighting and photography, as always. Superb build. +1 all UoP credits

Written as a reasonably contemporary anachronism in 1605. Not sure what that means for hats. I am reading it at the moment, it truly is a great book. I love this build! So it was a giant after all