Shakar

That wizard is awesome. I've been wanting a blue wizard for a looong while to renew the legendary Majisto's looks a bit. I love the Battle Goddess as well but I'm not sure if she could fit my Legoverse. Really looking forward to the Genie Girl.

I don't get the problem.. Rule 34 hits everything. Chima rule 34 I'm pretty sure already exists (though furries hate Chima, I've heard). I can get Jang's concern if the figures were sexualized, but that doesn't seem to be the case (the "worst" I can think of is the female figures having breasts, but that just helps kids distinguish their gender/sex, really). Bionicle rule 34 exists too, but I don't feel like going into detail.

Yeah, I spent 5 Euro to ship the pieces here. You can find 99% of the pieces, even for slightly older sets (2011 for example). If you want to buy pieces from licensed sets, though, you're out of luck. Lego isn't authorized to sell pieces that are related to other IPs. So, you won't be able to buy Loki or any of his pieces. Luckily there are some loopholes- his staff piece was introduced in that 2011 Egypt theme (forgot its name), which is Lego's IP, so you can buy it.

I made these in a rush so they might not be perfect (well, they aren't ):Vardy with the new torso (just realized his printed shell is missing And sorry, Stormer stole the transparent hands) Vardy with last year's torso shell+Super chest combo (yeah, it's all black..didn't have time to dig up pieces for a titanium metallic version The two torso facing eachother. The new one is a bit longer, but the 2013 build is a wee bit wider in the chest area. Hope these answer your questions.

The Berserker class of the Xivian Empire disagrees with you: (Then again, that's my taste, and the way the colour is distributed is quite different than the original Splitter Beast.) You read my mind on that! The hand/head is one of my favourite Transformer features and one I tried to replicate many times in my Bionicle and HF MOCs. Does it make sense? Not much, but it just looks so cool! The Beast head, especially the underbite variant, seems perfect for that purpose. I'm pretty sure I can make a cool robot and beast, but I'm not sure if I can actually work them into a transformer.. never tried to build one.

Indeed, Stormer being inside of her abdomen doesn't make much sense aside from being another play feature. You can pretend she ate him, but if you apply some logic it seems like he's ripping her abdomen open.. yikes. Anyway, looking forward to the cocoon leaves. They seem like awesome pieces to give characters an alien, bizzarre look. Like plant/animal hybrids. Splitter Beast is a great idea (even if I reworked the two halves into two separate Beasts, it still stands as a cool feature), but the colour scheme leaves something to be desired IMO: the orange Beast's head and the cladding should be in the same colour, and the titanium metallic should disappear. My judgement is somewhat biased because I heavily modified Splitter Beast to the point they're, head aside, two completely different creatures. And I plan to do the same to Tunneler and Crystal. But my ranking, with the sets out of the box, is probably this: 6)Flyer Beast- nice overall look, but the awful wings and weak left arm make him drop to the bottom. 5)Jaw Beast- great little scout set, but there are overall cooler sets. 4)Splitter Beast- he would've probably been second place if he had a different colour scheme, because there are very little design problems otherwise. But...he doesn't, so he loses to 3 and 2. 3)Tunneler Beast- original design, great colour scheme (different than the other Beasts, sure, but I love red+lime), awesome head print. But again, there are bigger, more striking sets. 2)Crystal Beast- I love this guy. He looks menacing, regal and has a totally awesome colour scheme and a great head print. And I can't wait to get some black/lime Quaza. Aside from the rather short limbs, he's basically perfect 1)Queen Beast- despite the wings (still better than FB's), and some other design issues, she's just awesome. Possibly my favourite large HF villain so far. So, well, she wins. Of course this might change. I wish we got less Machines and more Beast though- the 1:1 villains-heroes ratio of 2012 (and 2013, Jet Rocka aside) was perfect. *I cannot stress how much bright orange and tr. reddish orange clash- they're NOT the same shade like tr. light blue+azure! Tr. reddish orange is closer to red, while bright orange is closer to the sadly underused tr. flame orange.

This is something I wanted to see for YEARS (well, two years..). Hope this becomes reality, I'm kinda tired of being forced to use dark bley on all my large MOCs.

Through Google Images reverse search, I found bigger pics of the Queen! No sign of the other sets though. Yeah, I'm wondering what the heck's up with that "translation" as well. Piattaforma di strategia? Wut? http://www.amazon.it/Factory-QUEEN-PIATTAFORMA-STRATEGIA-Bestia/dp/B00HUN0KF0 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71kMTZNCm1L._SL1300_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81xku7ZVLsL._SL1080_.jpg (the other two images are the same as these but of worse quality)

Oh, a scorpion! Haven't thought of that. But still, looks pretty great. Looking forward to see how it's built. And the three Beasts on their own are looking sweet. Loving the colours, the designs and the head prints soo much. I think the Beasts are my favourite HF villains to date. They're so varied yet consistent in style, and they just look so dang cool and menacing.

We never got anything on 2008 prototypes AFAIK. Just some 2008 Makuta prototypes from the official site.. Too bad, would've really liked to see them.

Like with the Winter line, I'm getting the Beast sets but I'm skipping the Machines. I think they're mostly well designed sets (well..I have a lot of reserves about Surge Combat Machine, but still) but since I decided to downsize the Beasts to Hero size in my HF canon I really don't need them (well, except the awesome printed shells). I'm going to skip Queen Beast too and just buy the pieces I need. I would've bought the Queen alone for 20-something but I don't want to pay 40 Euro to end up with a Machine and 3 minifigs I don't want, so.. So, in the end, I'm excited for the new sets but I'm going to buy just 2 out of 7.

It's odd- last year the sets showed up in Germany around May, possibly even earlier IIRC. Zork did a review of some them as well. Now, that not happening this year isn't terribly surprising, but it's strange that the sets haven't shown up on S@H yet, while they're already available on Amazon and my local Lego store (well, the one closest to me :P) is getting them next Thursday. That's something I'd expect out of a US relase, or a German one, to predate the official release, but the sets are showing up on time, so it's S@H which being uncharacteristically late. I'll get them on Amazon or in stores like last year, no problem for me. But S@H is the only way I can get the HF summer sets before the sucky Italian release (September), so I hope everything's ok over S@H. I'll write later on the combiners.

As far as this guy is concerned, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw him for the first time at TF, but I don't think he has a place in my HFverse, unlike Fluminox. The torso design is what I was interested in the most. Overall, it's pretty streamlined and clever IMO, I'll try it in the next days. What surprises me the most is the tr. light blue bone on his right leg (oh Lego Lego, why the colour assymetry here? The arms don't have that!). I assumed it was the single hole one, but it's the longer one with two holes instead. This is..actually..better! Since I wanted to use those on some fairly large MOCs, this will boost their size and allow for some interesting ideas (like Stormer XL's lower legs). As usual, thanks for the review.

I would say that the set would have been worth the 20 Euro if the crossbow pieces went into his body (sorta like Sir Fangar). As of now, he's a stretched out mid size figure, with an awkward wing mechanism and an overly complicated launcher weapon. The upper section is great- I love how the new armour flows with the torso. Too bad the legs don't feel as cohesive- they're too lanky and the colours feel messed up (really don't like the dark red shells TBH, and those awful black Piraka feet should have been replaced with Laval's feet). The wings look even worse than I thought. I like the concept of the figure and I think he would look good as a HF character. But there are so many things I want to change I'm not sure whether I should buy him or just buy the pieces I need and build my own.

I don't get why minifig!Vardy uses "sand purple" (sand purple was discontinued IIRC, but it does look really similar) while his CHI self uses dark tan. At least, I'm happy the dark tan shells are 5M (I thought they were 4M size for some reason). I still don't know where I could use them, but they do somehow seem more useful now. Anyway..light tr. blue saw, 2 dark tan shells, 1 short tr. light blue bone, FOUR "average length" bones in the same colour, one oOo liftarm... I might get this one.

First off, great review and usual. I'm not sure if I'll post on all 7 review topics, but still, thank you for all your hard work! Design-wise I think I like this one better than 2013 Laval, mainly due to the armour and the much more feral feet, but 2013 Laval's sword and colour scheme were muuch better. It's the problem all Fire sets (except maybe Panthar) are plagued with- not enough contrast! As it is, these sets are a mass of mostly warm colours. I would've either replaced dark red with dark blue (as you said), or replaced the gold with silver. Anyway, the feet and the armour are the only pieces I'm interested in, so this one is a pass (unlike 2013 Laval).

Amazon Italy has the sets up at their correct prices. That means they should be out in stores.. I might try to get one next week.

Looks like they're available from Amazon Italy as well. They all have a 3 Euro markup and 6.90 Euro shipping fee - I'd rather not pay 10 extra euro just to get one now, they'll show up in stores in about 2 weeks anyway. And I make a point in never paying the full price for parts packs. :-P

If these do follow last year's dates to a T, looks like we'll get them in stores here soon as well. I'm quite excited! The wait for IfB wave 2 seems less painful this way.

I don't think that's what VBBN meant... Simply that, since we got pretty much the whole info on this year's story and sets, we've had little to speculate/discuss about and thus the topic's been pretty dead (still more animated than Brain Attack, I'd say).I don't think HF has fallen from anything. Sales are going strong enough and so the theme keeps going on.

Legojang got his review of the Battle up. The Overlord is just fantastic! I really like Nya too.

Hooray! I can finally stop using the Fire Villains flames as substitute for the new claw pieces! Shame about the heads, though- those always come in later updates, I guess they're harder to render than the other pieces?

Sorry, didn't have the time to find the link, I meant this: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=10288 It's in Toxkita's copter.And speaking of her, really great minifig all around. The face is good for female villains and the torso suits a punk girl minifig nicely.

I guess it's nice of them to include a pair of legs for Overlord..still, if I get my hands on him I'd try to find a pair of legs with a matching print.

Now that I think of it..while I really didn't like the souped up Evo XL Machine, I think it was done with a purpose. The set's build is heavily Technic-based, so:1)It would've been hard to fluidly combine Technic parts with the pieces of the other, 100% CCBS based sets forming the combo model; 2)The set's build being significantly harder compared to that of the average HF set, kids would've probably been hesitant to dismantle the set just to try out an alternate model. They did the same thing with the Dragon Bolt+Surge combo: the wing section was completely kept intact. I remember never ever building the "Bahrag Spider" because of this mindset- at 10, the Bahrag twins were some of the hardest, most tiresome Lego models I had ever built..no way I wanted to take those monsters apart! That said, the idea of attaching the Machine arms without a lick of modification was a really lazy one, but it's not that evil. IMO, combos are like those alternate models on the back of the box we all know and love- you're not supposed to follow the idea 100%, they're just there to provide some inspiration. Anyway, in the end what I wanted to say is that the Queen, unlike XL Machine, is completely CCBS, so hopefully the combination is something more complex. Yeah I got mixed up on the colours in a (failed) attempt to describe them in a quick way. All 3 use lime and/or tr. neon green accents, while azure and tr. light blue, while not present in TB, still work anyway since they're colours common to the Beast faction as a whole. Red is basically the only oddity but it's one of the main reasons I'm excited for this (possible) model- the designers chose to avoid blue accents for TB (opting for a few green accents instead), so this could be the first time we see red and azure together (a very cool looking duo, IMO).