Dunjohn

That's actually fine by me, I thought it'd have been a pain in the neck to get them all in if they were individual parts. The front of the 'mech looks great - but it has no knees! What does TLG have against knees!? Is the sausage in the Claw Catcher new?

Do you know if those new ball joints will be used in regular Lego sets? 'Cuz I just broke a third one giving my Buzz Lightyear elbows.

Nie, jestem Irlandczykiem, ale uczę sie Polskiego. I thought you were German (because of your name) until you mentioned złoty....

Well, I'm a bit of a sorting-and-filing freak, so most of my sets don't last a week before I take them apart and gleefully separate the bits into the correct yiplock bags. Some don't even last the day. As well as that, I'm only a year and a bit out of my dark age so obviously I don't have anything that's been intact for ridonkulous lengths. I got the Agents robot in the summer and I just can't bring myself to tear it up: it's too awesome, and probably my favourite set of all. It's guarding my DVD shelf. The Crystal King is still there too, having been bought either shortly before or shortly after Dr. Inferno's mech, so I don't know which holds the record. It's invading my DVD shelf. I don't see either being broken up soon, and no other model has lasted even a month, so who knows how long they're gonna last....

I've always wanted some Rock Raiders, and not just because I love Power Miners. I love the colour scheme, brown, grez and turquise. Not quite seventies, not quite eighties, but some in-between decade that hasn't been discovered yet. This theme completely passed me by, I only discovered its existence since joining these boards, so thanks for the look! Not sure about that Rock Monkey (my official name for these from now on - thanks!), I vastly prefer the crystal guys from PM because you can actually make out some details. But they'd still be cool to have, as would be that cockpit piece.

Yeah, everybody here does. It's me. I'm the only one who doesn't

Woohoo, I hit Argos today and got RC and the giant Buzz. I'm even more disappointed with Buzz now: I knew about the lack of knees and elbows, but I didn't realize he had restrictive ankles and a loose waist. There are virtually no good poses he can pull off. This is gonna take some thinking. Delighted with RC, though. It's small but very nice-looking, and comes with the two most important figs. It's a shame they're made of cheaper plastic; that plus the high level of detail and non-regular connectors on Buzz's equipment, plus Woody's taller design, means they almost don't feel like Legomen. Build-a-Zurg was out of stock.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is all I want. Ideally with an Ysalamri wrapped around his shoulders, but I'd settle for the dude himself. Not certain what set he'd come with, since he commanded a standard Star Destroyer. Maybe a Mount Tantiss scene, with Joruus C'baoth and Captain Pallaeon. Or one of those Interdictors with the gravity-well spheres, but that's be out of my price range.

Yeah, I'm wondering that too, do you have a regular Fett fig for scale? I've never seen these guys. The legs look strange. Very strange. I know I've seen legoman legs go like that in CG animations and computer games, but in an actual model, I'm not so sure it looks good. Congrats on what is obviously a great collectable, but I probably wouldn't want one myself. Though the helmet and gun do look excellent.

Interesting review! I don't own any Fabuland... thankfully. This line disturbs me. It ain't natural. Especially those dead eyes. I think he sees with his brain....

Don't worry, I wasn't insulting Italy! The Italian rules are the last of the four languages and are followed immediately by the ads, so if you're not Italian, you probably won't be looking at that part of the book.

Sweet! They're on argos.ie too! I'll be heading in that way tomorrow or Monday so I'll try and get some. Thanks for the heads up! Build-a-Buzz is 26.99, Zurg is 27.99. Wonder why. Army Men is 13.99, around the same as Star Wars BPs. RC is 20.49 and still the priority.

Yeah, I got this set a while ago and liked it. It has a great attention to detail, particularly with that engine. There was one glaring oversight, though, that hurt my overall opinion: The claws just hang there, dead, when it's moving. It surely couldn't have hurt to have them move up and down, even by attaching a bumper or something to the front wheel axle, which they already rest on. A missed opportunity, made worse by the fact that the rest of the set is so good. It's kind-of the half-way set between the Thunder Driller and the smaller models, and as a result, fails to really stand out in my opinion. But still nice, with loads of room for upgrading and customisation.

My brother got me this for Christmas, and since it doesn't seem to have been reviewed, I'll give it a shot. ____________________________________________ "The Mummy King Ramses is planning of conquering all of Egypt with his army of mummies! Unlock the crystal coded layers to climb to the top of the pyramid and defeat the Mummy King, taking his crown and the treasures within. A family game of memory, skill and cunning. Compete against each other or take on the Mummy King together!" ...Well, that's what the box says. In reality, there are no cooperation rules, this is a cut-throat, bare-knuckle, dog-eat-dog battle to the end for ages 8 and up. INFORMATION: Set Name: Ramses Pyramid Set Number: 3843 Theme: Lego Games Year Released: 2009 Number of Pieces: 217 Microfigs: 13 Price on Release: €24.99 Bricklink _____________________________________________ THE BOX: Front: I love the picture here, great use of dark colours to make the box stand out. The two explorers must have been on their way to sort Ramses out but got completely absorbed in the board game, and are ignoring the obvious danger in the background and the scorpion that's about to demolish the beardy guy's right hand. Top Corner: Anyone who's really into their boardgames will recognise this name (and may even be able to pronounce it). It suffices to say that there's a reason he gets his name on the cover of his game when none of the other designers did on theirs. Back: And the rear. Nothing unusual, a photo of the full board, some functional close-ups and the blurb I just quoted, in four languages. Also a note of who Reiner Knizia is, though apparently he's only a Doctor in Germany. Top: And here we have the usual minifig callout, showing preci.... WTF!? Where are my minifigs? And why is this upside down?? Ah, now I get it. It's so it won't be upside down when you store it with your other boardgames. I thought that was a good spot on TLG's part. That should be enough to save it from the usual fate that befalls my Lego boxes: Cutting board and raw material! Apologies to you box-folders who may be distressed by this image. I am not of the brotherhood. Moving along.... INSIDE THE BOX: Contents: A game rulebook, an instruction booklet (the larger one), a 32x32 tan baseplate, the iconic customisable die, and three bags of parts separated roughly by size. As with the other board games, this one will fit back into the box fully assembled, though you will need to remove some layers of pyramid (which is fine, since they're designed to be seperable anyhow, as you'll see). Rulebook: Here's a page from the rulebook. The game rules are concise enough to fit into four pages per language and there are a few pages of ads at the end, showing each other game box and a photo of their boards. Instructions: The instructions book, with another fantastic image. Random Page The entire gameboard features in every step, so each one takes up a full page, and two full pages when you're doing the pyramid layers, as in this shot. Note the lack of a piece callout, which would have been very welcome in the early stages when you're placing all those fiddly bits around the board. Ads: This booklet also has ads. A bit redundant, since they're the same, but unless you're Italian you're probably not going to be reading the back of the other book anyhow. Inventory: Here's the parts listing. Apologies for the lousy picture editing. The baseplate isn't really textured to look like sand dunes... but wouldn't that have been awesome!? Parts: Here you have all the bits n' bobs, laid out in what turned out to be a rather neat rectangle. Again, apologies for the photo quality, I'll need to work at that a bit more. A couple of the cooler bits: 2x2 dark tan jumpers (eight in the set), dark tan domes (six), a dark tan regular brick, scorpions, some treasure, the die and its tiles, and a wrench that's used to pry the tiles off the die. Microfigs: Here are the thirteen dudes, with a regular fig for scale. Four explorers, Ramses, and eight identical mummies. And there's one thing I've always wondered about, ever since I first saw pictures of microfigs.... Yes!! Regular headgear fits! Moving along... THE BUILD Stage Six: Here's what it looks like half-way through the thirteen building stages. The non-detachable elements are all in place. The jumpers are under the 2x2 bricks to make them easier to remove - they get moved around a lot during the game. The coloured roof bricks represent the explorers' tents. The interior of the pyramid has no part in the gameplay, so that's all just bonus. Pretty spiffy. Stage Ten: The individual pyramid layers rest on the black tiles of the layer below and fit nice and snug. The brown 1x1 tiles mark where the coloured "crystals" should go and aren't really necessary, but maybe they help younger builders. Gameplay-wise, those crystals could really go anywhere on the line, but they look cooler in this arrangement. The scorpion on the hinge above the door has no game relevance and, again, is only there to look cool. Stage Thirteen: With the mummy-infested capstone in place, Ramses is ready to begin his quest for world domination. Turns out that gold crystal piece is his crown. How he managed to put it on with no arms is not fully detailed in the booklet. Overall, the build is straightforward and repetitive, but quick enough that it doesn't get dull. The Spares: Wow. Moving along... GAMEPLAY Game On! Okay, we're tooled up and ready to go! Note that I've arranged the explorers according to where their tents are, something even the rulebook writers didn't bother with. That's just how moronically perfectionistic I am. The object is to climb the pyramid and challenge Ramses. To do that, you can only climb on layers that match a crystal colour you control or one of the secret ones you know about that are hidden in the dark tan domes. Before tackling the pyramid, each explorer makes a clockwise circuit of the secret temples, picking up loose crystals and memorizing secret ones. All the while, Ramses' mummies will be descending the pyramid, blocking off any layers they occupy. Since I have no friends, I'll play through a game by myself. We'll start with the yellow explorer, purely because he's standing in everyone else's way. He rolls a 1 and a spin. He chooses a layer of pyramid to rotate ninety degrees, but that has no relevance this early in the game. He also moves one step, onto the nearest base. Okay, now he can choose to either nab that purple crystal and store it by his tent, or he can flip open the Secret Temple and memorize the crystal inside. Since it sounds more interesting, we'll check out the temple. The Secret Temple is designed to come off that dark tan single-stud tile, so you can pick it up and cup it in your hand before opening it. This prevents other players from seeing what colour it contains. However, I'm playing against three other me's, so yellow dude opens it up for all to see. Hmm, okay, purple. Purplepurplepurple. Got it. Now, instead of putting everything back the way it was, the cap is replaced and the Secret Temple gets shuffled onto one of the other blank bases - and once that's been done a few times, your memory's really going to be tested!! It's an excellent touch. That's the end of yellow dude's turn: Orange dude is up next! 3 and a mummy! The high number isn't necessarily good at this point, since it's better to take your time and collect as many crystals as possible to make navigating the pyramid easier. Orange dude skips along to the third base and decides to nab that crystal. It gets sent to his tent. Meanwhile, there's a-stirrins atop the pyramid.... Ramses begins to send out his army of darkness! Or daylight. Do mummies hate daylight? I dunno. Anyhow, whenever you roll a mummy on the die, you choose a mummy on the top of the pyramid and move it down onto the next layer. You then move every other mummy that had already started to descend down another step, ensuring a constant cascade of screaming undead that will affect the entire board with each roll, rather than just the occasional troublemaker. If a mummy reaches the dark-tan bottom layer, it vanishes from the game, suggesting that there are parts of his plan that Ramses didn't fully think through. At this point, I'm going to skip on a few turns. There's one other "marked" side of the die I haven't used: the black triangle. Roll that, and you get to steal a crystal from another explorer. Right, by now, most of the explorers have rounded the pyramid. Red dude is in the lead, and rolled a two to climb to the second layer. He didn't control a yellow crystal, but he knew where one was hidden, and in front of him was a green layer, so he ended his turn in good shape. Unfortunately, blue dude has just rolled a 1 and a spin, and slyly rotates that green layer away! Orange dude did remarkably well, controlling three different crystals (two stolen) by the time he returned to the entrance, while Yellow dude is lagging behind in both pace and crystal count. Hours pass, and it's twilight by the time an explorer finally reaches the summit to challenge Ramses and ask him how he got his hat on. To defeat the Mummy King and prise the precious answers from him, Orange dude must roll a mummy on a single roll of the die. Does he? I didn't bother taking a picture, but no, he didn't. Ramses kicked him in the head and knocked him back to the base of the pyramid. Blue dude won. IN CONCLUSION And that's pretty much it. It's a lot of fun, and the balance between luck and strategy strikes me as having been particularly finely balanced. There's no die roll that simply "does" something; every roll results in decisions to be made and opponents to be screwed over. And there are a huge number of ways to catch opponents out. You can rearrange the pyramid on them, send mummies their way, shuffle their carefully-memorized Secret Temples around, thieve their crystals.... but they're doing the same to you, too, so it never feels unfair. At the same time, ganging-up on a particular player is difficult because you won't have access to every option reliably. So, pretty much all win there. As for building, if there's one thing these board games are great for, it's for getting oddball pieces in huge quantities. Plenty of tan bricks, trans-coloured cones, single-stud 2x2 tiles and solid domes, as well as the ever-useful tan base. The microfigs must have dozens of uses as statues,... uh.... totem poles... literally dozens of uses! The board design is basic but sturdy and will be fine if you do store it in the box on the boardgame shelf. It also looks rather spiffy sitting out by itself, with that multicolour cone spiral. Design: 9/10 As a boardgame, it's a case of function over form, but they still squeeze some nice bonus details in there, and the aesthetics are very well built into the functionality. Parts: 8/10 Again, another requirement of being a boardgame, there are good multiples of everything but not a huge variety in the individual bits. I'd have liked if the explorer microfigs were based on existing minifigs rather than being completely new, that would have been very cute, but these'll do. And thirteen of the blighters is very nice. Build: 7/10 As long as you don't have a ridiculously low repitition tolerance, the building speeds you on to the playing as fast as it can. A steady but unexciting process. Playability: 10/10 Does exactly what it says on the tin.... Well, it would, if it actually said "game" on the tin. It doesn't. And if it came in a tin. But it also doesn't. But AS a game in a box, playability is maxed out, and it's a particularly good game at that. Price: 7/10 Well I got it as a gift so no complaints. Otherwise, €24.99 seems decent for the parts, but coming in at the twenty feels better. We're probably paying for Knizia's involvement, too. Total: 90% I don't like totals that are just straightforward tots of the individual scores. It's not accurate; they don't all stand equal. For me, the total asks if I liked it, and the answer is a resounding yes. The game is terrifically well thought out and will appeal to the non-Lego fans in the house far more than a regular set would. Thanks for reading! Microfig-Scale Tombs: All Too Easy - Dunjohn

Excellent! Now, the next step, the really hard one.... Make her an AFOL and get her to join these boards!

Heh. I actually like the looks of this. I'm not going to judge how good it is yet, not with so little info, but I'm going to keep a good watch on it. Combat racing is always spiffy, I was rather disappointed when the Speed Racer sets completely ignored that element. I figure there's only two colours because there's just the two teams racing each other around the world...? Heck, as a Power Miners mentalist, I'll take as much lime green as TLG care to send my way.

My brother got me the Ramses Pyramid boardgame. It hasn't been reviewed yet so I'm gonna give it a shot, and haven't opened it yet because of that. I've never reviewed anything before. Elsewhere, some books, clothes, DVDs, the Ghostbusters XBox game, and the Nelly Furtado CD I'm currently chilling out to. Plenty of stuff to keep me going, as well as some cash to get the stuff I obviously didn't drop enough hints for ;)

Yeah, but that's a Star Wars set. Nobody buys those....

Wow. Impressed with that hinge-clip technique. Beats the Camper Van's one by a mile. The Power Miners are probably doomed to suffocate because Buzz stole their last lime green air tank. Not cool, Buzz, not cool. I probably won't be getting this set, but thatks for the great review!

Yeah, still planning to get this set, and the second thing I do with it (after building it, obviously) is give it some elbows, and maybe a lightbrick laser. I've wanted this set since I first saw it, but the more I saw of it, the better I knew it could have been. Thanks for the look!

The last day is up.... and I ain't on it! Roll on next year!

Gotta say, not a fan of the packaging style. It'll look extremely out of place alongside Lego's usual bouncy, colourful style. However, that's more to do with the movie's motif and Lego seem to have done their best with it. The lack of vehicles is a bit disappointing for me, too, since I rarely go for "scene" sets. However, again, there's probably not a lot of room for those in the licence. Fortunately, all of that is amply mitigated by the volume of interesting pieces inside the boxes. Never played the video games, probably won't see the movie, but the Lego line looks interesting. If I have anything left over after Power Miners and Toy Story, I might funnel some funds this way.

I never give out my exact age online. It's just this habit I have. Or anti-habit, since it's something I don't do. I dunno. Anyhow, for a laugh, I've totted up all of the ages given so far (and being brutally honest with I Scream Clone ;)) and come up with an average age for EB: And that is... 20.2333. So we're still legal. And respectfully removing AllanSmith from that :p : 19.48864. That's right, you add almost a full year to the average! And as for me, I'm older than those two averages. Still in my twenties, and my age is shared by two other posters. Just to be ridiculously and pointlessly mysterious about it.

Aagh, one more day, three more chances!

Wait.... Squidman's naked!? I never noticed that....