David Thomsen

It's a shame the movie doesn't give us any decent Pirate parts... there's the queen mermaid, if you allow fantasy elements in your Pirate theme (and then, blue-haired mermaids?) and Metalbeard's head and hat, which also have limited usage. Unless your pirates have their eyepatches riveted on. For a set this large, it really doesn't have any exclusive minifigs, so I'm sure they could have included a decent pirate, although then I guess he or she would be crazy expensive to get hold of. Unless the ship is so fully automated that it doesn't need any crew, and what kind of ship would... oh... Also, can't believe no one has pointed out that the title for this page has been outdated for a few days now.

I doubt it's a modular building, it would have a set number in the format 102XX. And I agree it does sound amazing for a Creator set to have such a new and interesting idea behind it, the Creator buildings are some of my favourite sets because I like my buildings to be affordable and have proper brick-built walls, but they are often just a 'house', a 'cottage' or a 'hut', with an adjective like 'family' or 'small'. I hadn't looked at the price but I'm glad it sounds like a large set.

Ooh, excellent... as a collector of Creator houses, I do like it when they are not actually 'houses'. With a bike shop and cafe, my Creator house city might actually start to look like an actual city.

It just occurred to me that an excellent competition for the forum to have to go along with the movie would be for people to convert other 'normal' sets into battle sets, the way this theme does with the ice cream truck and the plumber's truck and the castle gate and so on...

Yeah that's even more than the Imperial Flagship, but it looks like this set has lots of very small parts. I would love to see inside the ship. What other accessories and features does it come with? Ah, it's a smokestack... I couldn't figure that out. Thought it was some kind of weird periscope.

They include the double-decker couch! Um... okay! And it has the space guy and the Morgan Freeman guy, and Metalbeard gets a smaller version of his mech. Ship definitely doesn't fit in with the pirate theme very well, but good enough parts set... I'll probably get it just to satisfy my craving for pirate theme, and maybe to send a message that pirate ships always sell... It's a shame that the other 'themed' sets, the city, space and castle sets from the Movie theme all have quite good models that fit in well with their themes, but the Pirate sets don't fit in well with the Pirate theme at all.

All of mine had bent masks because the soft rubber bends when people pick over the box. :( I store my islanders built up with some string around the head to try to get the rubber to 'remember' where it should be. I wish Lego wouldn't put easily damageable pieces in the minifigs, or would protect them in some way.

That's good to know, but hopefully it won't be 'Captain Pete'. Maybe if it's a 'special' pirate character, we'll get a new piece, like maybe a pirate bandana with hair under it like Emmet from the movie has hair under his hard hat... #randomspeculation

You could always trying giving them a phone call... I only want the Mountain Hut, I have no idea when it'll reach New Zealand but I'm in no hurry.

Yeah, the Mountain Hut set clearly has a couple of BURPs, it's kind of disappointing. But I understand why they did it, it costs less for them to produce two large pieces than lots of little pieces and we get a larger set as a result. At least the hut itself is very much in the Creator style. I do still rather prefer the alternate builds in this set, mostly because they don't have the weird out-of-scale mountain.

I can't find a picture of the set any more but I hope not... rock pieces really don't belong in the Creator range. I don't mind that the buildings have started having minifigs and small accessories, but large specialised pieces will always be wrong.

The Mountain Hut looks a bit bigger than I expected, but the mountain looks weirdly out of scale, I thought it was going to represent the beginning of the side of a mountain, but that actually looks like a whole mountain in miniature, including (I think) a bar representing a waterfall? I actually like the alternative builds more, which is a bit unusual for me. This is only the preliminary image though, so it might change a bit. We'll see.

I'm still convinced an alternative build will be a mine entrance. It would make good use of the 'hill' pieces.

I imagine there will be a larger Creator house later in the year. The Mountain Hut sounds like the 'Small Cottage' we got this year, before we got the 'Family House'. I am a little disappointed that the colour scheme sounds exactly like the Log Cabin, but then most other Creator houses tend to have white walls and/or red roofs. I don't mind it being small, sometimes I like a quick build... but a larger Creator house or other building later in the year would be very much appreciated. Any idea when we'll get pictures of the Mountain Hut?

If you are referring to the guy with feathered hair, I'm pretty sure Luke Skywalker has hair like that. Wow... I'd just started organising my modulars so I could sell them over the internet (poor and no room), but this is seriously making me reconsider that...

Twinblade Adventures sounds to me like a series of planes with two propellors... and I think I read that the Mountain Hut will be the next in the series of Creator houses, a small cottage with a 'hill' behind it or something. It was talked about earlier in the thread.

When they only have the technology to produce like five different minifig heads, I don't judge them so much... at least the stripes were different colours on the two torsos. Also looking at this early 'battlepack' set, every minifig gets a weapon and only the soldiers get duplicate torsos. Good times. It's disappointing to hear that this set really is just about getting rid of old parts. But I guess it makes sense from a business perspective.

Or it says that pirate fans will buy anything, even if half the pirates are dressed the same... although I think Lego have more integrity than to release substandard products just because they know people will buy them. I might pick up a set if I see one, but not for myself... maybe as a future present for my nephew or something.

The one I would want already exists, it's the Revolutionary Soldier, perfect for my pirate collection. I've made a decision though to limit myself to no more than three of a minifigure I want, otherwise I'd spend far too much on the buggers... works well for the musketeers, unfortunately my bluecoat army is a little small.

Well it's being reviewed in the City forum, but it's a head that hasn't been in Creator sets either. I think technically the review should be in the Special Themes forum, being a Creator set, except that having minifigs and no alternative builds, it fits in better with the City theme anyway.

There's a few they could have used... Standard 2009 Soldier: 2009 Admiral: Collectible Minifigure Revolutionary Soldier: Barbossa's Torso:

Does anyone know what quality the pieces are? When they come pre-assembled like that it used to mean they were lower quality pieces... although I haven't really been active for the last year, so I have no idea if this is still the case.

Even if we don't see a full range of Pirates in 2014, it's possible we could see a good D2C set anyway... the Imperial Flagship came out in 2010 and was still around for the POTC theme in 2011, and it complimented that theme well while also being reasonably affordable for not being a licensed product. A good D2C Pirate set in 2014 could compliment POTC in 2015 in the same way. And if there is a single D2C Pirate set in 2014 we probably wouldn't have heard about it, whereas rumours of a full theme would probably have surfaced by now. So that's another possibility for the future of Pirates. I wonder what updated set they could homage in a new D2C? Something like Eldorado Fortress or Forbidden Island came out exactly 25 years ago next year, or maybe something like the Imperial Trading Post...

I think there's too much of an 'each modular building has a clue to the next modular' mentality here... always looking for clues and hints and signs. From a kid's perspective, an eight year old now might have been too young for the 2009 pirates, so this is a quick and easy way for TLC to put out an interesting new set for them. I'm not sure about the 25th anniversary pirates range idea either... the 2009 pirates were obviously a direct homage to the 1989 pirates. An anniversary range would cover much the same ground. I also think that at this time of the year, we would have heard some rumours of 2014 pirates by now. Although having said that, POTC came out in 2011, and three years seems to be a common cooling down period for big themes like this, so maybe I will just eat my words. A lot of new Pirate-specific parts were designed for the POTC range that have never been used in 'generic' Pirates, and haven't been used since (anyone seen those scabbards recently?), and if 2014 is the soonest after the POTC range, they might just want to do that. Hmm. Still, I think there would have been some rumours by now? Edit: Wait, apparently a new POTC film will come out in 2015? And presumably more Lego sets with that film. So possibly they could do another one-year release like they did for Pirates in 2009 before they came out with POTC?

Are we sure those are Monster Fighter heads? I didn't collect that range, but it seem to me these heads are different...