rollermonkey

All I know is that mine has been on its display stand for over a year now, and shows no sign of droop or sag. <shrugs>

The deployed angle looks great, but from just these two pictures, I can't tell what you've done.

If you can't be bothered to even have a teaser image, why should people be bothered clicking through to your flickr?

Between all of the various angle brackets and headlight bricks out now, I'm sure there are several ways.

Somewhere in Europe, Marcus Kossman is weeping. Simply stunning. HoF, Pro, Front Page, all that and more.

They certainly look like they could be unprinted basketballs.

A unicorn / Pegasus hybrid is called an alicorn. I don't know why though.

I never mocked the Hoth set. I merely felt that the set would be more accurately described as a Three-In-One rather than as an Ultimate Collector's Series. There looks to be nothing remotely challenging or ultimate in the building out of a bunch of small vignettes.

I can't count how many MOCs on here have had a planet visible out a window somewhere in it. The builds were nice enough, and the figures were usually pretty good, but the planets themselves were surprisingly useful in mood setting.

Very interesting sidebar. I'm actually an engineering major (civil/structural) in college right now. I think a lot has to do with the huge reduction in creative play that kids have experienced over the past few decades. I'm even willing to put a tiny bit of blame on TLG for participating in that trend. When I was a kid in the late 70's, it seems as though many or most, if not all, LEGO sets had zero instructions, but rather an idea book. We were never told what those bricks had to be, we were encouraged to make them whatever we could imagine. Now though? Some 90% of sets or more are sold with one model on the outside, and one set of instructions inside. Kids in America are not encouraged to play outside, ranging through neighborhood and countryside, making up everything as they go, unlike how I grew up. Everything is a little premade package for them. Scheduled activities and playdates, toys that profess to foster creativity, but only along some narrow, predetermined path. It's all sad, really. But, even my instinct to acquire has been primed to want this set. Frankly, it's a thing of beauty, and who has the money to buy enough parts to build something like that from scratch?

Nay, the dragster is fine, I just want those wheels!

Consider me as underwhelmed by the dragster. I immediately took apart the A model, but the B-model is still together. Probably not for very long though.

Any possibility that they were brick built space-holders? If the new PF motors aren't available yet for general use, I could imagine that happening.

Don't mind me, I just mis-remembered what they look like...

Present estimate has me using 5 of the HFW, I have 3 on hand now. It's going to be bigger than I expected. :) Sadly, these new ring gears wouldn't work, as I needed a gear with a large open center, and as these are 1/4 gears, the center isn't open. I definitely look forward to all the MOCs that will revolve around them... I just realized: the BWE can't operate its tracks independently, I wonder if it is because the drive cannot go through the exact center?, and thus cannot use previous methods for doing so.

The Tyderium Shuttle does an admirable job

Yes, this is true, but there is a lot more 'meat' on the hailfire wheels than on these new ring gears. You were originally addressing size, by way of gear ratios, and although there may be some comparison, it's a bit misleading, as the new rings are 1 stud thick, and the HFW are 3 studs, the HFW are 4 studs thick from outer tooth to inner tooth, the new rings look closer to 2-3 studs in that dimension. Don't get me wrong: they are clearly enormous when compared to 99% of Technic gears, but I think that once we have them in hand, they will look surprisingly puny next to hailfire wheels. Yes, yes they do. I'm putting together a MOC that revolves around that connectivity right now.

You would think someone would have mentioned that, much as how it has been discussed that photography was off-limits for the new Ideas Maze on display.

I was actually busy enough with school I didn't get to vote for six days, and there's a full page of votes after me. Three days would have cut off a huge portion of the voters.

Very important! They are too hard to come by, as is.

I really wanted to like this, as I don't have The Death Star, or Ewok Village, but I just can't. There's nothing cohesive about the set. Sure, it all takes place on Hoth, but it just looks like a collection of small vignettes, instead of what I'd really want: a decent Echo Base, that really looks like a base. Calling it Assault on Hoth is even worse, THAT set would be better served by an AT-AT with an AT-ST and a bunch of snowtroopers, with a small number of rebel troopers and maybe a fixed placement turret. This gives us neither the base, nor the assault, and certainly doesn't live up to the prior standards we've come to expect from sets carrying the UCS tag. While this is certainly a collection, there's nothing ultimate about it.

Seriously. It's not a licensed property, so why have secrecy?

Yes, but the hailfire wheel teeth are much larger than, and do not mesh with, standard Technic gears... The tooth spacing on the HF are roughly double the linear distance. I'm using them for a MOC, and I have to use the old Samsonite gears to mesh with them. Better to use stud counts to figure sizes.

An account created solely to promote an individual website/project? Yeah, this is going to stay open a long time.

Sigh. Here I go again. Wal-Mart or Target buys a product from TLG at wholesale, and sells at retail, or at a markdown if they can still make enough profit. Resellers, on the other hand, buy product from retailers, then hoard them until such time as they can charge double the retail price or more, and often deplete inventories from retailers so that those that want them, at the time they are sold at retail, cannot. If you cannot understand why that's an unfair practice, I cannot help you.