Shakar

Wow, I forgot about the ammo belt. These look really incomplete. Toyfair has shown not completely finalized sets in the past (stickers acting as stand-ins for printing being a prime example), but I don't remember prototype-looking sets to this extent so, absurdly enough, maybe they are mostly final. Yet, as foolish as it sounds, I can't shake off the feeling these are prototypes, because they have many of the typical tratis. Maybe I should just accept it. Cragger's blade is the same as Frost Beast's in the show..

Wow, tiny pic is tiny. The zoom on my mobile made it look bigger, and I spotted a few details. Eris's thigh shells look kinda big. 6M white shells? Stormer probably uses them too (on his lower legs). Seems like my prediction/wishful thinking about Worriz was right, he does use silver recolours of the new fur elements from Laval/Stormer/Frost Beast. He uses a printed shield too- neat. And of course, awesome dark red shells- I knew he'd be the one to include them. Gorzan's limbs look rather short like on Hulk, but I excepted it. I hope the titanium metallic chest is the final one, but I don't have much hope. Razar is probably the best looking (really curious about that clawed left hand), along Cragger (exposed shells, sure, but I love his torso build). He seems fairly faithful to the minifig, and he looks cool overall. But I want to say this- I've grown incredibly bored of the 2.0 torso. It looks cool when coupled with some stylish armour (the 2.0 chestplate for example), but on its own or coupled with an equally plain chestplate (like the Super Heroes chest) it looks rather boring. I'm not saying its use should be banned (Black Phantom made it work), but in 2013 it is WAY overused. All 4 Winter HF villains use it, at least Aquagon in Summer and now all 6 Chima Ultrabuilds. I know the Breakout torso isn't very organic, but you can pretend it's armour.

I don't know, the other Laval and Cragger looked more finished, not to mention they had more recolours. If these are finalized, I'm happy to get tr. red blades, but a gold Hulk chestplate is far less useful than a titanium metallic one Eris is the worst of the bunch, her colours are messed up and her head looks nothing like the minifig.

I'm kind of disappointed the narrow shoulders torso has been removed. It appears in more than half of the sets this year, but it's pretty rare and I feel I never have enough of them. But all the new stuff is IMPRESSIVE, so I'll forgive them for that.

Wow, those are the "prototypes". What the heck is going on?

I llike how (Breakout) Furno's right arm is missing a shell, while the other one is upside down.

I don't get the need for pupil-less eyes. They look evil and unnatural compared to the cartoony minifigs. I guess they're charged with Chi energy, but.. Heck yes, olive green! Cragger's chest armour is located very low, like on Black Phantom. Is he using a large torso bone? Laval's shoulder shells are tr. blue (Breakout Stringer's torso), no doubt.

^^ I'm pretty sure that is tr. bright green like on the rest of the set. 4M shells in that colour were introduced with the winter wave. ^^ Speaking of PaB- the Breakout torso shells are way less expensive than the printed pieces they were selling before (0,75 Euro vs 2,17 Euro), so they're likely going to be not printed, after all. Sadly, it seems yellow, white and tr. blue are the only available colours..I would've loved a titanium metallic one.

I just checked PaB, lots of stuff isn't available yet (at least here), but the XT4 torso, the double C, the new hole/balljoint/hole, the friction sockets, and maybe we're getting unprinted Breakout torsos too, so many new stuff.... Speaking of Jet Rocka again, I still think a darker colour scheme would looked better. Also, there are too many exposed holes, though my global perception of the vehicle might change depending on how well deisgned the wing/booster sections are. I wonder how many white pieces could be replaced with bley ones? Rocka looks definitely cooler than his Winter form (which I got last Sunday BTW..kinda bland compared to Breakout Rocka, but I love the sword), though the higher amount of pieces certainly helps his look. Looks like I was right about Stormer's and Frost Beast's transparent blue shells after all.

I would have liked if the jet was dark bley or titanium metallic, but it still looks good. Rocka is medium sized like Surge and Stormer this time, but there seem to be some non regular building techniques involved in the torso, look at those gold 3M shells.

That's ok, thanks. Stud/modules are useful when talking about single pieces but I think comparing MOC heights to existing sets is more intuitive. You're welcome!

I love him. The head's my favourite part, but the whole model reeks of creativity. Really shows the versatility of the 2.0 system. How tall is he?

Cool! I agree, they can be useful to give a character a battle damaged look..

Those shell stickers are...curious. Are they life sized?

People thinking HF is junior ized...

^ That is the truth: Of course, show models aren't always 100% faithful to the sets, but changing the slug colours seems pointless. 3 different tr. blue shades exist and are still used to this day, so I think it'll go like this (I'll use Bricklink names): Dragon Bolt: Trans-Dark Blue (Breakout Stringer's torso shell) Frost Beast: Trans-Light Blue (Chi Crystals, Bionicle's Ehrye's eye colour, etc..) Aquagon: Trans-Medium Blue (Stormer's usual eye colour). I'm pretty sure about Frost Beast for the reasons I stated in a eariler post, Dragon Bolt and Aquagon can be switched. In the show they seem to use the same colour, so maybe they won't bother to recolour it for a large set like Dragon Bolt. Since Dragon Bolt is confirmed to use tr. yellow, I wonder if those Ninjago/Speeda Demon giant katana pieces on its wings are going to be recoloured? Gold would seem kinda tacky IMO.

Which is the best way to potray realistic bird wings, and I sort of excepted them to do that. The question is- will the main part of the wing use a new part? Obviously they can't use too many pieces, since they have a number range to stay in, not to mention that would make the wings too flimsy. The article writer didn't mention anything about Worriz, I'd like if he used a silver version the new spike/fur armour piece found in Laval and Stormer. I agree the Eris minifigure is quite..attractive. I hope the Ultrabuild figure does her justice.

Well, they better make a Eris x Laval Eris+Laval Eris-Laval combination model, because that would make a gryphon, which would be sweet. They're Lego minifigures, do they really need to be sexy? Anyway, I'll quote myself from the HF topic: Since Laval uses 4M shells and Rocka blades like Stormer does, maybe he doesn't use tr. blue afterall, but Trans-Light Blue. It maches the colour of Chi.

The thing is, he said Evo and Aquagon used a "different shade of blue". And you don't need to know about HF to tell blue and turquoise apart. This doesn't surprise me entirely, since I had noticed Evo's and Stormer's visors had slightly different hues in the animated episode. I think Evo/Aquagon use the regular tr. blue (like Breakout Stringer), while Stormer/Frost Beast use this colour. It makes sense when you think that Stormer's flick missiles use Chima crystals, and those are indeed Trans-Light Blue. Either way, Summer is shaping up to be a MOCer heaven (these+Chima figures).

I read the Brickset article and, to be fair, I can't exactly blame its writer for calling the sets "terrible". To one who doesn't know much about HF (he even compared them to the Super Heroes Ultrabuilds, rather than the HF system they're built upon), the way the sets look can be a bit jarring. You can't except the article writer to write "Cragger includes more dark green 3M shells, and introduces the shoulder armour shell in the same colour. Eris seems to use what looks to be azure cladding!". And to be fair, I can't say I love Laval's and Cragger's heads too much, I'm mainly in for the pieces and the designs* (and Eris, provided she looks as cute as her minifig). Actually, it seems most of us see the sets as parts packs. *Personally, my hope is that the sets show lightly more experimentation with the HF building system, like the SH Ultrabuilds did (with mixed results, but I still appreciated it a lot). In terms of MOCing, HF provides me little inspiration this year, at least the Winter wave. The Chima figures already look more creative than those sets to me, what with Gorzan being a Hulk done better, the birds finally introducing some new wings, Cragger having a unique torso and Laval having feral looking legs. Those are pounds, though. Speedorz are 10 pounds and 15 Euro, CHI figures are 11 pounds so they're going to be even more expensive than Super Hero Ultrabuilds..Still, I just checked and mid size Hero Factory sets (Pyrox, Ogrum, etc..) and those are priced at 10 pounds too, so the CHI sets might be 15 Euro (which would allow for more slghtly more complex designs like Gorzan's Hulk-esque design+longer limbs).

I'm not sure of what to think about the Temple set. It feels more like a playset-wall than the castle I was excpeting. Yeah, you'll say "But it's geared towards kids!", but it's a 100 Euro (I guess?) set. It could've had lots of more stuff. Lagravis looks awesome, however. Foxes are cool, but enough mammals now Lego! We need Penguins, because..they're penguins, do I need to explain that?

So the Ultrabuilds are going be pricier than the Speedorz? 15 Euro for them would've been enough, this is too much.

Exactly. Dark bley works for Bruizer only, other characters, who are more "techy", look better with something metallic like, well, titanium metallic. Yeah, a Stormer XL torso plate in such a generic colour opens the possibilities for some really cool stuff.Which pre-existing HF character could use it for a revamp? Lots of them! Finally Bulk XL shall be possible, and I already have an Idea for him. I'm pretty sure the ones in the first image we got show the finalized Laval and Cragger- the amount of recolours and new building techniques (ie Laval's, uhm, rear legs) is too great for all this stuff to be suddenly scrapped in favour of the more generic and less recolours-filled figures the video shows. The only recolour we're going to miss out is the gold Rocka sword, but honestly it's not such a great loss IMO- we already got a silver one, and I think that piece looks much better in transparent (slightly opaque, to be exact) colours anyway.

I just realized Razar has no dark lilac.....craaaaaaap. Y u no love us, Lego? And a dark bley torso plate would have no use and would look dull to me. Titanium metallic is much better as armour.

Prototypes are prototypes for a good reason. I'm happy these designs didn't make it to the final version, the gorillas look scary (and dull), and that Eagle (Eglor?) looks too...modern.