BeardedNerdSE

It's stable as long as you don't move it around. The legs are very weak so you can easily break them off. That's cheating. And it would wear off horribly from the friction. Dinosaur foot, part 40393. Oh, and I just realized that I forgot to put the horns back in the LDD version... doh!

Thanks to the Balrog being included in Lego Dimensions, I managed to reverse engineer the design in LDD and build it for real. It turns out that the design used doesn't really work in plastic, and some of the parts simply don't exist. This is my edited version to stay as true as possible to the original and still have it working. The Lego Balrog by siegfried_fm, on Flickr I've included the LDD files and wing templates in my original blog post: http://www.beardedne...e-rings-balrog/ Feel free to build your own and improve on the design!

Fire Brigade is an awesome build, minus the back walls. It was my first so there was tons of entirely new techniques for me, but it's generally very neat.

Not sand green?

And make sure that existing collectors will never need to buy another modular again. Yup, sounds like a plan.

It's not pretty (not my style of building), but it's pretty cool! I like how the palisade bricks add a slight curve to the front of the pillars. The trashbin is also a nice touch.

I've done this for tiles/plates on a big town square, but it's mostly covered up by minifigs anyway. It's good for a weathered look I think. I also used some old brown on a mainly reddish brown building to get a suggestion of brick colour variation.

Maybe my guide can help you get started with Bricklink: http://www.beardednerd.se/how-to-piece-together-a-ucs-millennium-falcon-or-any-other-expensive-out-of-print-lego-set/ I haven't checked, but if you want to do an accurate build you should focus on getting the unique parts ASAP before they get really pricy. Use something like Rebrickable to see which parts only appear in Town Hall. It's mostly the unique prints like the shields, but I think the orange will get hard to find soon too, especially in huge quantities. The clock should also be a priority since the winter set that also used it was out of stock pretty quickly. If you use the online PAB at lego.com, you might be able to substitute dark red for the entire building (dark red is generally too expensive on BL) and use the new Pirates texture blocks instead of the palisade bricks for the front, that might look rather awesome.

I like the power lines with lamps, they make it look very realistic. The overpass is also interesting, I might consider something similar for my town.

Fantastic work! Im currently furnishing a modular and there's tons of great ideas here which I may borrow.

Then stay tuned for my next build ;)

173A The original Lego Pirates, back in 1989, was the first theme I collected, and I managed to get all of the first wave. The flagship, in more ways than one, was the Black Seas Barracuda, and I was smart enough to store it properly once my Dark Ages started. Since I returned to Lego, I've had this awesome ship around. But now, with the arrival of the 2015 lineup of Pirates, I might not have to do that anymore. Not because the new ship, the Brick Bounty, is better in any way, because it's not. But with a bunch of new, great pieces available, as well as great minifigures, I was inspired to finally attempt a remake of one of my favourite sets ever. The basic idea was to keep the dimensions and all the major features of the original ship. I started from the newer hull pieces and built up from there. The deck now stretches from the front mast all the way to the rear since I don't need the cannons to be readily available. I did make the middle section removable, since these cannons tend to slide around a bit. Apart from that, there's not much below deck, since it's not possible to take the ship apart like the Imperial Flagship. I did add a hatch to get below deck in a similar place as the ones on the original. The cabin on Black Seas Barracuda is rather unique in that it has two double doors. This was a bit of a waste of space, so I removed one. I considered using the originals but the newer big door looks better. Inside the cabin, there is a small desk with navigation tools, some paintings and a globe. Towards the rear is a bed for the captain. I added the narrow windows from Brick Bounty, but apart from that it has the same arrangement as the original. The rear wall also slopes outwards, and on the outside there are some details in gold. The gold, yes. The pearl gold colour didn't exist in Lego's inventory at the time, but it was always obvious that the yellow trim on the ship was supposed to be gold. So I picked up as many gold parts I could find, to be able to recreate all the trimmings and the figurehead. Now, there isn't a gold headwrap, but there wasn't on the original either. The ship is way too gaudy for a pirate ship anyway - I'm assuming that it was originally a rich trader before the pirates captured it. I lifted the masts pretty much straight from Brick Bounty, but I substituted black ones instead. The sails end up a bit too small on this larger ship, but they will do for now. I'm considering experimenting with printing on canvas, so we'll see what happens. Overall, I'm quite happy with this remake. The ship turned out looking like a slightly more expensive version of the original. I've learned a few things after building Imperial Flagship and I hope it shows. More pictures at my blog: http://www.beardedne...seas-barracuda/

Meet Shaana, the heroic warrior fighting against monsters and evil-doers everywhere! This is an original character made to feel at home in any fantasy styled story. The details may differ, but the basics remain: a strong woman, armed with a two-handed sword and with a bone-headed sense of justice. I've built many of my own custom minifigures, but with the improvements and possibilities introduced with Mixels and the new joints, I wanted to build a giant-sized, highly posable figure. While there are several lines of bigger, articulated figures like Hero Factory and Bionicles, they tend to focus on playability. I wanted to see how much detail I could cram into a figure in this scale, although she did end up bigger than existing designs. She is fairly durable, but at this scale she would need a better designer than me to stand up to actual play. The idea here is for a display model. For the build, only existing pieces were used, although many of them are rare and currently out of print. I briefly used standard orange wedge pieces for the shoulder pads, but I fell in love with the bulky parts from Knights Kingdom II (2004). I used lots of silver parts which were available in the Agents (2008) theme to add a lovely, realistic sheen to her armour. The only part that simply wasn't available was the ball on the sword hilt: I would have wanted it in blue. Some parts also literally turned up in the last second: the dark orange slopes on her waist were introduced in a 2015 Star Wars set... Points of articulation include ankles, knees, hips, neck, shoulders, upper arms, elbows, wrists and individual fingers. Also, the skirt and shoulder pads are on hinges to allow more posing, and both the front braids and the long hair have multiple joints to flow better. If you liked this, please support it on Lego Ideas (this is allowed, right?): https://ideas.lego.com/projects/92054 Many more pictures here: http://www.beardedne...ego-moc-shaana/

This set (Elsa's Sparkling Ice Castle) has been released in Sweden. It came in a separate display just for this set, with preview pictures of the rest of the line, so I don't think it's a case of a retailer slipping it out early. Here's my review: http://www.beardednerd.se/review-of-lego-disney-princess-elsas-sparkling-ice-castle-41062/ I hope you guys get an opportunity to officially get it before Christmas too. I'm guessing Lego are doing everything they can do deliver this in time.

I doubt a regular customer service grunt would know before they get the official memo, and even if they did they wouldn't just announce it to the first customer who happened to ask. Lego has a great support department and they might be in-house, but it's just as likely they're hired help from somewhere different. At this point the only ones who know are the higher-ups at Lego and the designers of the sets, and they obviously aren't talking. You don't get leaks until things start getting produced when too many people have a chance to find out. Although, just to contradict myself, the person who answered my request for ship materials on the special order page knew that some pieces were going to be put into production again (for Sea Cow and Pirates 2015) several months before either was announced, so you never know. But to a direct NDA-breaking question, there's no way they're going to answer.

Town Hall isn't bad, it's just that it's a 7/10 set in a series of 9's or 10's. Unless you already have all the others, Town Hall shouldn't be a priority. Also, size can be a problem when you're building a modular street across the top of Ikea book cases. And yes, I would recommend buying Green Grocer rather than TH. It's more expensive but it's also THE best modular, and you can get it cheaper by substituting some parts like the 1x8 bricks in sand green.

Heights for modulars: Market Street: 33 cm Green Grocer: 33,5 cm Pet Shop: 28,5 cm Grand Emporium: 29 cm (without sign) Parisian Restaurant: 30 cm I've had to shorten the towers on CC and FB to fit them so I can't say how tall they are: more than 35 cm anyway.

For the past few years, I've been drawing pictures of the characters we used to play in ICE's Middle-earth Role Playing system (MERP) back in the nineties. I began with my own favourites but as they were completed I turned to others, some of which had a picture drawn back then but some I had no idea how they looked. That was the exciting part - finally deciding on a look after all this time. Then, when I once again ran out of reasonably interesting characters to portray, I wanted to make physical versions of them. As I had become interested in Lego again, it was an obvious choice. Thus, here's my collection so far. Shaana Meneghan Shaana was my first character when returning to MERP in 1995 after some time with Mutant. Initially based on a character in Ultima VIII, she was later inspired by Laurana in Dragonlance. Shaana is an adventurer to the core: she's brave, strong and independent but she's also rather naïve and has difficulties fitting in a civilized society. Daughter of a southern trader and a rohirric woman, she grew up in a small town in Rohan. After the death of her father, she befriended the guard Kerryn who taught her weapon skills and gave her a strong sense of justice. She gained her armor and the mighty Dragon's Toothpick sword after defeating a wight in a tomb underneath Eriador, but was forced to relinquish this sword after a misunderstanding regarding a thief, a stolen purse and due legal process. Eventually, she replaced this with a new eastern styled sword named Dragon's Fang. Shaana would, after we stopped using her in the game, ultimately go on to defeat a drake in the Misty Mountains and live a long and prosperous life as an adventurer. I'll be posting more of my characters to my blog and here if there's interest. http://www.beardedne.../tag/lego-merp/

Are you by any chance talking about the 1x4 tile in front of the shelves? That's supposed to be a dark brown one (on top of a medium brown 1x4 plate), not a black one. I was confused by the instructions there when I suddenly needed five black ones.

I bought 12 random figures off Lego S@H and got Mr Gold in one of them. He was promptly sold on Ebay, and the proceeds are now funding the entire summer series of LotR (yeah, it could have been more if I didn't pay Swedish prices for some of it). It's a bit sad how even tiny local shops know about it, so there's pretty much no way to find one in the wild, unless you get to open a new box and get lucky. I've thought about ordering another few figures off Lego, but what are the odds of getting him again?

Loving the Discworld stuff. All of them are quite recognizable.

There we go! This little project was perfect for me as I have a bunch of those parts and don't really have a need for them (bought some Star Wars droids and Ninjago stuff for other parts). The basic body can be varied in so many ways. Thanks for the inspiration. And my Death Automaton and Samurai Automaton can totally defeat your Knight Automaton! :D

Oh, that's awesome! Working on my own automatons now, brb.

Awesome! I bought one Council here at retail just because ($75, oh joy), but I ordered another two without the minifigs for exactly that purpose. I plan to build something similar with two, and have another section for the Narsil scene. For the mural, I'm thinking a screenshot of the game could do the trick...

I was surprised to see Smaug already. Maybe that means that there will be Smaug merchandise this year after all. I was thinking they'd keep him under wraps all until december, and normally stuff gets leaked way before then (see: Tauriel). I need it in a better quality though, with the poor color detail the entire thing looks washed out, and Smaug himself is a blob of red. A fricking huge blob of red though.