SkaForHire

Brilliant ending... You captured one of the ten deadliest (or at least most painful) thing about Lego.

Also, tan across the gunports would probably be most accurate for smaller naval vessels such as brigs. I know tan is in short supply though... However, that would probably be the most realistic. I once did a somewhat replica of the US Brig Niagara with tan and black, it looked pretty spiffy (color wise, my MOCing abilities are come and go...) I wish I still had the pictures.

Mine is in the mail! Yay! But I stupidly had not checked the Lego Store website for almost two years... when I did this weekend and found out that there were not just one store in my area but two!!!! A year and a half ago we had none! So I went this weekend, and both stores had five of these on their shelves. Unfortunately they did not have anything else but a few Brickbeards Bountys (I did get one though!) left. Still, I would get this set sooner than later.

I take it these were not like the Viking Chess sets and available for a couple years? Which stinks, wish I had money back when these came out (Or when that massive Castle chess came out!!!)

I didn't trust that it would stay around long, as soon as it was in stock and I had money at the same time this summer, I bought it. As was said about green grocer (which I still haven't picked up!) sometimes they stick around for a long time, so I guess it is kind of a game when deciding when is the last possible time to buy it.

Not to be a buzzkill, but there was no standard for most ships. In European navies it usually had to do with what the Admiral or Captain preferred. The American Navy was perhaps the most uniform, but only during downtime where many of the vessels not originally designed for naval service were discontinued. The link provided lists different color schemes, but has no real historical basis. Remember, most ships by the Napoleonics had copper bottoms, tarred hulls (black in color) and the decks were often whitewashed or stained to preserve them. So most ships would look black and white. It would be ridiculously expensive to paint a ship green as that link said Russia did. Perhaps a few ships were painted green, but for the most part I am sure they were black in appearance because of the pitch used.

Great post. Well currently, my masses of Lego are about a 1000 miles away at my mom's, where my whole collection is slowly being disassembled when I visit and put into storage containers. I have more than a van-full in my main collection, so I really can't bring them to me until I finish my PhD and find permanent employment. My mom and sister were really nice, and have been de-masting, and shrink wrapping all of my ships which used to be on display in my basement (last time I counted I was up to 30+. Here my Lego has not been opened since I moved... I only have some of the last castle line and exo-force. I finally got a second job and can buy Lego again... but of course it is nearly impossible to find the new pirates now! So I missed out on them (I did just order the Imperial Flagship 10210) Which makes me pretty sad... I don't want to pay way over original price so I am hoping some TRU's and Shop@Home will restock them. (crossing fingers). However, I do wargame with my armies when I have other people that are interested. I have played Evil Stevie's pirate game, and brickwars. However, I have been developing my own rules for quite some time. I wanted to make a game that could be easily converted from small unit play to large army play, while spanning from ancient mini-fig time to far-future realistically. Brickwars just assumes all technology is pretty much the same, and everything can fight everything... which is good for a pick up game and for novice gamers... but I wanted to create something more in depth. My brothers and I have come up with a basic set of rules and are working on scaling. The last time I was home my pirate hordes fought my brothers town / modern minifigs and we were relatively happy with the balance. The big problem is, other than horses, we don't really have vehicle rules yet. Some day I will finish it... Anyway, long winded answer, but currently I store my pirates.

i miss the vikings too, they could have soooo pulled another year out of them... or at least made them the human bad guy for castle (i do have enough that if I ever get to set up my collection again I can make them the human bad guys... then again, if i set up my castle collection I probably won't have the room to set up my 40+ pirate ships. But well, would I ever have that much room? lol) anyway back the the poll, i have not built the troll ship (which isn't on the poll) or the skeleton ship yet, but I think the best ship i have built out of these is the Viking ship. also, it is quite easy to make brick built center hull pieces for the time cruiser, I have done it a bunch when I bought a bunch of those for five dollars.

They need to lower this ship's price to $80 its not worth 100... Then release an imperial man of war at about $110, by next Christmas I hope we have a smaller sloop to to compare to the old CC or IF, for about $50 a better fortress retailing at about $70 would be nice too. But, good start. MOre specifically about this set, i think the bow is seriously lacking... but the sterncastle is pretty nice. Too bad you don't get a few more pirates with this set, but that can be filled in with impulses (actually all the sets are overpriced now, I think the castle line had a better bang for buck ratio.) I will try to pick one up even if it is over priced, but it really just seems like a slightly better (maybe?) RBR. cool new pieces though, and at least we have pirates.

crap nuggets... really? release them specially at Orlando? two months after I moved to Texas... Two months after I had a discount at that store? Should have never got a PhD, should have worked at Disney forever! ha! I am drooling, and very jealous.

really? 20 bucks for that? I think the pricing on new castle was way more feasible... that set sucks for that price... maybe 14 bucks... but not 20.

of course they release new pirates when I am in grad school with absolutely no money, and now that I live so far away from a lego store... man... I hope they continue this line for a couple years. But it is good to see them back, although I would prefer the original type of imperial torso I think.

I also throw my lot in with Phes. He has been the driving force behind this portion of the site for YEARS. If there is one man that can sway the TLG to bring back pirates... it is him. I believe he may be willing to call each LEGO employee everyday until the deed is done. lol... that is exaggeration, but he definitely represents the interest of our favorite theme. I don't care if he doesn't MOC as much as the rest of us, he has the organizational skills to make things happen. I do believe he has the ideas needed to design new set themes and features, even if he lacks the expertise to build them as well as some of our other members. Furthermore, he has heard EVERYONE's opinion on pirates for years now. I think he would bring not only things he likes to the theme, but the general pirate lover's dreams to a new theme. I hope you get it Phes.

1) The ottomans copied western designs, they were just about 20 years behind and never grasped modern cannons. IE: as the west progressed armament became more reliable and readily available as the east recieved neither of these benefits. 2) Arab traders did use xebec like ships, the corsairs in Northern Africa rarely used fully sail ships in piracy, like most Arabian pirates they preferred the galley to anything else. 3) Almost all sailing warships had sweeps, (those oars pictured on the models linked to) Galleons (even the Spanish variety) had such oars also. towards the end of the eighteenth century these oars in large scales start to fade away. But most vessels included them all the way up until the steam age. Rowing is always a valuable tactic in naval combat.

This does provide alot of diversity when building an army from the knights standpoint... between the battle pack and the chess set, you can really get a large army at a decent price. I think it is the they skeleton armies that benifit most, as there is a lot of diversity in the figs. (although getting two armored knights in the crownie pack is sweet too!)

although i did just pick up three battle wheels at the local lego store, we don't have them on S&H in the USA. Then again I don't know why I bought three, thought perhaps I could offload one on Ebay or something I guess. LOL.

well I dont know why people buy them, but I sell them because I don't need some of my excess... I can usually make the cost of a chess set back by selling half of it. But,,, the floor has really fell out on the Mini Market for the new castle other than the special mfs.

I would think that sticking as close to possible to what the ship most resembles would be less confusing. Frigate is a pretty general term, and can be applied to multiple types of ships - of course it would be very hard to make a first rate lego ship - so listing by ratings perhaps would be too much to ask. However rig type would be the easiest. Sloops (one mast) Brigs, Snows (two mast square sails), Schooner (one - five mast schooner rig, could indicate mast number to differentiate) ships (three mast square sails not big enough to be deemed ship of the line), and for you behemoth builders, ship of the line category. I think the measurement should be in inches or centimeters, studs will be too hard for people with larger ships. Since I do have some experience researching sailing navies I will give you the "standard" format when listing the particulars of a ship, keep in mind these are in no particular order but just for comparison: Hull Dimensions: Gun Deck: Keel: (waterline) Breadth extreme: (Longest width of the ship) Depth of Hold: (COuld be irreverent for lego - but some know this statistic. COuld adjust it to from waterline to top of the hull.) Tons: I don't know how you would figure out this *interestingly enough, alot of plans and records don't record the total length of a ship from bowsprit to the other end... Number of Ports: Lower Deck: Middle Deck: Upper Deck: Dimension of ports: Spar Dimensions Fore Mast :top, topgallant Main: Topmast, topgallent Mizzen: top, topgallant bowsprit jibbom driverboom gaff Ordinance:numbers, weights and types Now i don't suggest we do all this... especially spar dimensions since many will be the same. Just presenting what it looks like usually to a researcher... with that said this is my suggestion for the table: Ship's Name / Number of Guns / Ship type (by mast and rigging type, also followed by any descriptor such as frigate, corvette, 3rd rate, etc...) / Water line Length / Overall Length / Width / Height of tallest mast / Captain / Nationality / Home port / No. Of Crew / builder / Links In that order It would be really awesome if the table was organizable by any of the categories so you could always compare ship statistics. after that long wind... I really don't have any information for my ships as I am 1000 miles from them now. they are all bubble wrapped and being stored at my moms house... (shes not so happy about having 40 ships laying around her basement lol) And I have no ship building materials in my very small collection here. mostly unopened castle sets lol. But I am interested in seeing what comes of this little project, I would even be willing to be the one who records all the information and stores it until the web designer can make the page / and or update it. I did something similar a long time ago back on lugnet with fleet indexes, we only recienved information on a couple fleets so it didn't work as well. but it was a neat experiment.

Ok a couple things. Great that we are getting more sets - though bad for me because i have little money to spend on lego and I love castle, Indy, and Exo-force (plus #1 being pirates, but not much of those to buy nowadays is there lol) I really think a new human faction, even if they are not bad guys would be cool. Just to spice things up, although I REALLY love the minifigs for the crown knights... although I would be interested in seeing how they make elves. I just think a new human faction is logical for continuing the line. Back the last time they made good castle sets, we only saw factions stick around 1-3 years (heck it was that way with pirates too (other than the pirates themselves). Whoever made the comment about barbarians would not work because vikings did not do well - I don't think that is true - i would like to see the final sales totals of vikings, because they seemed to sell very well in my area and at the lego store. I also think they were very well designed, and a good precursor to the castle we have now. I would love to see the vikings make a reappearance as the "bad human" faction sacking the knights and what not. Also, i missed the terminology along the way somewhere... what is the definition of an impulse set? vrs a normal set?

i also must agree, both are just more armored knights to me..... not really generals.

I suppose the moral of the story was don't ever pass up such a good thing... I just wish they would have said "limited edition" or something on them, if they had I would have at least bought 2 or 3. (as i did with the now hard to find dwarf mine)

yeah I saw that, they have had that for a while... I only want the castle version to build up my army...

Ok, so i made a huge blunder. I live next to a Lego Store in Orlando, FL, I also receive a 10% discount because I work for Disney - so last November I walked into the lego store and saw a shelf full of castle tic tac toe - five skeleton knights, five armored knights for $12 before my discount. Being tight on money, i figured I would pick some up in January or February when things usually go on sale at the Lego Store. Boy was I wrong... I checked back a few days they were all gone. I asked a cashier and he said they were limited time only and that they would not get any more again. I figured he must just not know what he was talking about, because that was a very limited edition if true - and it doesn't seem like something lego does. anyway now it is January and of course they don't have any and not even the Lego Online shop has any mention of these sets. SO I was wondering if anyone else had seen these sets and knows anything else about them... like if they were really extremely limited edition? (they didn't say on them that they were limited edition either) for 12 dollars they were the ultimate army builder for the new castle. I am kicking myself a lot considering i have a discount at the store and I had a chance to pick up as many as I wanted...

Great ship - excellent detail. I do get the sense that she should be lengthened one midsection length though... but still an awesome ship.