Rogue Angel

It may be odd, but I build in two themes: Historic and Star Wars. I don't build space outside of Star Wars, I don't build any of the licensed themes outside of Star Wars, and I don't build Pirates. I build Castle, Renaissance, Ancient History, Colonial History, Egyptian, Western, pretty much any era with CMFs. So the forums fit perfectly to my tastes. I see fantasy as being merely a Castle variant, and I buy LotR for my fantasy (GoH) building. I feel the division is perfect for what I build.

The Royal Cartographer's Guild of Albion is pleased to announce the following official entries into the Royal Registry of Historica's Locations of Note. The Port City of Sionach, located in Avalonia, has been officially upgraded from a Village to a Port City. Congratulation DeGothia! The Port Town of Barqua, located in Kaliphlin, has been officially registered. Congratulations Gideon! The City of Dalig Ulv, located in Mitgardia, has been officially registered. Congratulations MKJoshA! The Hamlet of Shadowmere, located in Nocturnus, has been officially registered. Congratulations Lord Vladivus! The Village of Daydelon, located in Mitgardia, has been officially registered. Congratulations Soccerkid! The Port Town of Euosmos, located in Mitgardia, has been officially upgraded from a Village to a Port Town. Congratulations Gunman! I am being a little more lenient on the requirements if the Settlement has significantly more buildings then required, or if the builders have put forward some larger, high quality builds. The requirements still stand, but I may choose to forgo them if I so choose (please don't ask, or plan on this. There are still a few communities that have than enough builds to be recognized or upgraded, but are still missing one or two required categories. Again - Keep up the great work everyone!

Beautiful armies! And very impressive at 220! The first squad (after the Mohawks) are my favorite with the Aztec (I think) heads. Those are perfect! I do like the commanders being unique, but I have skipped that with my Elves although I don't have them in the quantity that you do. 100+ troops are in more need of a visible commander than 20 troops. No capes? Those are adding a lot of cost to my figs, so I understand not using them. This was the only potential omission I saw. I think wave 1 LotR sets were excellent, I think wave 2 had logical sets, but they weren't as pleasing as Wave 1. I think Unexpected Gathering and Mirkwood Elf Army are the only good Hobbit sets, the rest are mediocre to bad. That being said, LotR/Hobbit is THE BEST thing to hit castle LEGO since the line's inception. After you get to a certain collection size, pieces stop mattering ,and figs are the primary reason you buy sets. LotR/Hobbit figures have provided about 20 utilitarian, detailed, factionless torsos, Elven, hobbit, Orc & Dwarven hairpieces, 5 or 6 new beards/facial hair pieces, 3 new helms, 4 new shields, 2 new weapons, 2 new hats, Orcs, Goblins, Eagles and a new Dragon. It has essentially doubled the variety of my troops, and provided Elves, Orcs and Goblins. Best. Theme. Ever.

Thanks! It's awesome that I helped inspire your very impressive Elf army! (your comment made my day last Saturday) I wanted to watch your video first before I responded, and I finally saw it this morning (and will be commenting over there). Very, very impressive. I count 220 so far, and it sounds like you have more on the way. Significantly more Elves than I have . I'm in the slow process of updating my armies to make them more customized, but it takes a lots of money, so it will take quite a while. Here's a picture of my Castle armies about 2 years ago - I have probably picked up at least another 200 troops since then. Most of them are not armed in this picture, but I don't typically don't arm the troops until they are ready to display/photograph - as I often make multiple changes to each unit up until the body/armor/helmets are complete.

Great series! I like the feather dancer, the fisher, the Mitgardian captain, the dark wizard, the imp, and the bat trainer.

I have posted my Elves in the GoH forums http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=89539&hl=

Variation is nice, but not necessary. It is still an Army even if they are clones. Army building Phases 1. Initial Assembly (Most costly Stage) a. Acquire the 1-3 (typically) torsos or out-of-the-set minifigures for your army b. Acquire the helmets or/hairpieces (some of these are often filler because you don't know what looks best until you've tried different options, and once you find the best option, you find you don't have enough.) c. Add heads. (filler heads for 25-75% typically) d. Acquire the weapons (filler weapons. swords/axes, bows/crossbows, and some assorted other weapons. You won't be able to narrow this down until you have finalized your total number of each torso/minifigure type. Steps b-d can take place in any order, depending on what is on hand. 2. Establishing your main types of forces. (This is often the final step for many builders/collectors) a. Acquire all the torsos/minifigures you need to represent your different forces within your army- archers, and your footman, and your pikemen, etc. This may also be the phase in which officers are defined. (Typically the torsos are what govern these numbers for me, as they are usually the hardest to find and most expensive). b. Acquire the necessary Helms/headpieces and weapons to outfit all of your troops types. (At this stage, I will typically make final decisions on which helms and weapons each force will use) c. Match the legs and acquire any not in your stock. (Black and gray legs are often the standard legs I use until I can finalize my fig design. They go well with most things. At this point though, I try to coordinate between the torsos and an overall unity to the army as a whole.) d. Capes, Capes, Capes. Capes make a huge difference, but they are SOOOOO expensive. (This is the one step that may get moved to Stage 3 for me due to costs alone.) Steps b -d can be switched in order, but Step a pretty much always come first for me. 3. Customization - This is the stage that can be very long and drawn out, and potentially expensive. I am often stuck in this stage waiting for Lego to create new pieces to fit my units(Drow). This is also a much less important stage initially. I know that once I have the core figures in place, they look good enough to display, and I can come back and any point at not have to worry about skyrocketing Bricklink costs as I will have much more freedom of part usage. a. Add in some torso variety. This can be done through new torsos, arms or just hands. Establish officers if not done already. (I do very little torso variation within a force unless the entire force will be varied, in which case this would have been addressed already in Stage 2.) b. Add in some helm/headpiece variety. (I typically only alter hair and some hoods in a unified force) c. Add in some weapon variety. (Again, my unified forces will typically have unified weapons) d. Add in some head variety. (This is the most critical step for customization IMO. It's also the one I have accomplished the least in all my armies. The head is what defines the character as an individual.) All this being said, remember that the point of this thread is to "Post your Army", and that can be 300 CMF Spartans or 50 unique and individual Dwarven warriors (Thank you to the Hobbit for making this possible), so be accepting of everyone's armies however they wish to assemble and present them. It is much more costly to make a completely individualized army, and most of our builders can't afford to spend the money on it.

Excellent poster, and excellent use of perspective! I'm excited to see what comes next.

I have been through 4 different cases at least, have 10 each of the goblin, Egyptian Warrior and Space Trooper, and there have been NO hot dog men! I figured this would be popular, but not like this. All but one of the case were at least 2/3 full (or maybe multiple cases combined) so I really expected to have one in hand by now.

Most armed forces don't spend all of their time with weapons drawn. If they are holding a larger weapon like a spear, then they would have it in hand at all times, but most smaller weapons would be sheathed. That is an excellent army Black Numenorean. Don't be afraid to post incomplete armies, or uniform armies. Everyone's taste is different. Uniformity has it's place, as does individuality. A lot of armies are going to look like a bunch of clones - kind of like if you had an army of McDonald's employees. All of their floor staff would have the same uniform and all of their managerial staff would have the same uniform. This is the way organized forces have often looked through the ages. Your Roman Legions would have looked like an army of clones, would they not? I have held off on posting some of my armies as they aren't quite finished yet, so I have yet to post the majority of my forces...... after 5 years. I like to see everyone's forces, regardless of how they look because that's what they want to show. That's quite the army Nine09Nueve. You have about as many Elves as I do! I really like the formations and the individuality of your troops.

This series is on par with Ecc's, and one of my favorites! I'm not going to list my favorites since I would consider more than half of them my 'favorites'. Fantastic minifig customization!

Great series! The vintner, the horse master and then mountain man are my favorites.

Welcome to the Guild BMS and Nevyneke! Good choice of guilds. DeGothia, you just keep pumping out fantastic builds. You are a MOC-Monster! Mpoh, I love the tree in your build -excellent technique! ZCerbrus - beautiful build! Great to see your finally coming back to the best guild! Ahilson - Helm's Deep is about the best set you could get if you can get it for a reasonable price The Joust is also a good set overall. The Simpsons House is another great part-per-piece set, but it is primarily tan, so this will be less easy to fit into Avalonia. The Sandcrawler comes with a lot of brown and tan plates and wedge plates, which are decent for free build bases like MPoh's build above (although he used gray). But you'd probably be better off Bricklinking these parts. The King's Castle comes with a lot of gray, but the panels will probably be more useful as inner supports than walls themselves so keep that in mind. The Parisian Restaurant has some decent grays and olive greens as well. I would say Helm's Deep and the Joust at retail would probably be the only sets better than Bricklinking parts yourself.

I think the CMF accessories should be an integral part of their design, and I wish we would get some more unique ones in the future from TLG. The cake design just occurred as I was looking through all my specialized minifig pieces. The pastry chef concept spawned from the cake.

Great job Bregir - the plains shepherd, the Drow and the Orc Warchief are my favorites. I like that you incorporated a number of outside factions.

We were spoiled with LotR and the Hobbit alongside Castle for the last year, plus LoTR/Hobbit was arguably one of the best 'Castle' lines to date. My hope is that with this delay, we will see a nice new concept like the yellow/green dragons and the fantasy dwarves/trolls. The best things about last year's line was the new dragon faction (even though the crest isn't the best) and the return of a dragon (even though it's almost a complete duplicate of an earlier version). For me, the CMF's have provided as much excitement as Castle in the past few years with the amazing variety of castle and historic figures. I would love to see some gnomes and new Elves or Dwarves, or other races, but only time will tell. It seems like the TLG's LotR/Hobbit run was completely altered, and so they may have a very different schedule proposed originally.

Quite the series.... Everyone keeps saying that Lego dropped the ball here, but I think they complete hit the mark with what they were aiming for. These are Halloween and Halloween costumed characters with a general 70s feel. It will be very contemporary with the Scooby Doo line without being licensed. The skeleton guy is a kid in a skeleton shirt wearing a skeleton mask, and the witch is another kid in a costume. The piranha plant suit guy falls right in line with the other 'suited' characters. The mad scientist skirts the copyright infringement with the minions without crossing it. The cheerleader and the new businessman are good variants on existing characters, and how many frankenstein's monsters do we have already? The guitar is a bit wierd, but it seems to fit in with the theme of this series. I think they have pretty much nailed what they were aiming for, I don't think they are 'losing ideas' or 'losing steam'. I don't think this is any worse than 2 Simpsons themed lines. All that being said, this is a huge disappointment for me. The camp doesn't work into any of my historical builds, so the only figs I pick up will be for display. The tigersuit girl, the witch and the pigtails are the highlights of the line for my tastes, but we will see what the remaining figs are. I prefer the brown Monster Fighters werewolf to this one, but I prefer the zombified pirate captain to the previous CMF version. And Simpsons 2 is next up, followed by S14 in the fall. This will save me a ton of money, but S13 was pretty stellar, so I can live with it.

TLG always takes every 2nd or 3rd year off on Castle, plus they are doing Pastel Elves this year. Castle is not quite an Evergreen line, and must not sell well enough to be one. I was pretty disappointed with last years sets, so I look forward to a new focus in 2016.

I love all the humor in yours. Fishwhiskers and the Jarl are my favorites. Great job!

Very nice build. I love the tree technique you've used - very organic.

Very nice landscape work on this build. I wouldn't change a thing, feels very complete. I like the use of the insectoids for Nocturnus.

Excellent concept and great execution! I love the incorporation of the Dewbac as well, but the story is my favorite part.

Fantastic build! The windows were what really caught my eye. The sweeping roof is gorgeous too. I really like the combination of white walls and the brick beneath. Beautiful!

Nice build! I really like the green roofs and the brick wall. It's nice to see a specialty store!

Great series! The duke and the Dwarven Artillerist are my favorites.