rodiziorobs

Strange, I'm on eBay nearly every day and hardly see Lepin at all. Granted, I have saved my searches with N. America as the default item location, maybe try something like that?

Here's my anecdotal two bits: I was emerging from my dark age about the time MF was dwindling, and remember seeing lots of those sets on clearance at my local Target--almost every set in fact. Even on clearance it took awhile for the store to move them all. (This was the very early stage of leaving my DA, so I wasn't sure if I was actually into Lego enough to spend money on new sets. As a result, I didn't get any of them--I'm still beating myself up over that one!)

It may not be her that said no, if she signed some kind of exclusivity deal with the movie studio. Who knows, though. My guess is they went ahead designing the set with Johnson in mind, waiting on the deal to close, but when they were denied permission, there wasn't time to sub anyone else in. I suspect they had been planning on another minifigure and +80 pieces, with a $35/€35 price (which I heard rumors was the expected price) but it was simpler to drop the set size than scramble for an alternative figure. This is all conjecture; I know nothing.

POTC 5. It was a mix of brilliant over-the-top comic action and dull heavy-handed comic action, but overall, worth a watch with a free rental. I may leave some longer thoughts about it in that thread later on. Austenland. This was to make it fair to my wife, since it was me that chose Pirates. Remarkably, I could write almost the same thing about it as POTC 5, subbing the word "romance" for "action".

Yeah, the trailer seems less del Toro and more Michael Bay, with a heaping scoop of Power Rangers thrown in. The first trailer (the 'recruitment' one) was a better piece of marketing IMO. Also, John Boyega is no Idris Elba. Not that he's bad, but when it comes to "cancellin' the apocalypse" Boyega seems to be acting with a capital 'A' here. I'll still see it (in theaters? maybe) but try and keep my expectations low. That worked for me with the first one, I had a blast. Fingers crossed.

I completely agree with this. You have to find a happy medium or else you either spend too much time gathering parts from their disparate locations, or too much time sorting them out from the giant box o' pieces. Too much separation and you'll never find that random part which inspires some NPU of genius; too little separation and all you can find is random parts. And then by the end of the year all your new acquisitions throw your sorting system off-balance and it's time to do it all again.

But the hands have a significant difference. Hulk's hands used cheese slopes to simulate fists, but #36 has studs exposed on the left fist only--jewels in a certain character's gauntlet, perhaps?

I suspect it's Dr. Strange, and the "wings" are actually his collar and cape. #35, not #36. #36 is likely Thanos.

This was me too, and has been until about a year ago. My collection has grown, which is great except that now I'm not always sure what parts I have. I have a pretty good idea still, but it's no longer perfect like it was. Also, as my collection has grown I have needed to adjust my sorting, which means sometimes when I am looking for a part type I know I have, I can't always remember where it is. My storage solution works pretty well, but I need to tidy up. To answer the OP's original question, I guess I'm torn-- I see more sets and I want more sets, but I see signs that it my existing collection is about as large as it can be without being totally unmanageable.

Indiana Jones, the aliens one. I hadn't seen it since it first released in theaters, and while watching it I thought, "this isn't so bad, really". And it isn't, until about 2/3 through, and then it's absolute crap. The effects become painfully obvious, the dialog Lucasesque, the acting ham-fisted, the screenplay idiotic, and the story indescribable. But the first 2/3 is almost a good movie, nuclear fridge notwithstanding.

I like the aesthetic of the Elves dragons, but I think you've done a great job adapting them here to a chunkier, more obviously "Lego" style. I also have played around with using Elves hair on minifigs, and I think they look great. The only problem I have with my own collection is that I have very few fleshie minifigs, so my options are limited. Great job, my favorite of yours is probably the wind dragon.

I really like the design, the dragon looks a lot more muscular than the usual Elves dragons, especially with the added width and broader legs. I think that is why the head looks small, though--it's because the rest of the dragon is so bulked up. It doesn't look bad, just differently proportioned than what we usually see. Overall, I quite like it.

You could use a series of smaller plates instead of baseplates, to more closely approximate the tolerances from wall to base. I believe plates 8-long or 10-long could do the trick. It makes it hard if you're trying to match it to a larger display, though. If the wall isn't one unbroken string it will also eliminate the issue--you could break up the wall with another element in the middle, like a larger decorative bit or something.

If you're building the wall completely out of 1x2's, then the difference is due to an accumulation of tolerances. Each brick is actually a fraction of a hair narrower at the edge than the brick's nominal size. This is intentional, so that it is easy to place two bricks side-by-side without them being sandwiched together so tight you can never move them or that they damage each other. Its why you can rotate 1x1s a little even if they are built in a straight line. Each brick has the same tolerance at the edge, regardless of size or proportion--a 1x2 has the same reduction as a 1x12. What this means is that if you are spanning a long distance with smaller pieces, you are introducing more of those reductions than if you used fewer longer pieces. Over a long enough distance, that tiny gap that was imperceptible on a single brick gets more noticeable, and the more bricks you have, the shorter the overall length (real vs nominal). It's a reality in any manufacturing setting, not a defect or a flaw specific to Lego. Try using longer bricks and the difference will vanish.

Have we ever had a green series? Not like the neon used for Series 13, but a normal green? Wow, we really could use some concrete news about the figures here...

EB has a pretty stiff rule regarding using the forum to propagate leaked material--directly linking or sharing leaked info has led to some major shake-ups before, members getting banned, etc. so I assume everyone is kind of holding their breath and playing it safe. 4chan is a weird maze of weirdness, but, as have others said, you might find what you're looking for. That's probably all the info you're likely to get from anyone on these boards until we get some official pics, since the EB admins (rightly) don't want to spoil their rapport with TLG, and none of us wants to get banned.

The vultures are a real standout here, but if I had one critique its that the one with wings spread has them too low down. You'd need to find some way of attaching those claw pieces closer to the shoulder. But the effect of the hair and the positioning is spot on.

If you want new only, then retail or BrickLink are probably your only real options, and since purely Historic themes are absent from TLG's current line-up, then BL is it. If used is cool, then BL is still an option, but my favorite is to hit up eBay for incomplete lots. Search for "Lego missing" or "Lego incomplete" and you can often find good sets that are only missing one or two bits (or are actually complete but the seller wasn't sure), for a huge drop on the original price. Another tip is to search for lots without minifigures; super hero and other licensed sets frequently sell more than %50 off because the figs are a big draw, and the plain bricks can easily be used in historic builds. To me the biggest benefit of eBay vs BrickLink is that while with BL you get exactly what you asked for, eBay can surprise you, which is often a treat. I've gotten rare parts buried in a lot of standard stuff, seen great parts and colors I never knew existed, and bought lots where that one set I thought I was getting was actually two, with parts from several others thrown in. I've also snagged several MSIB sets, usually ~25% off or so, but sometimes as much as 60%. Of course, the usual eBay precautions apply: compare the item to similar things, study the pictures for non-Lego bits and overall value, don't buy big-ticket items from sellers with bad feedback, be patient until the right deal comes along, etc. I've only ever had one unsatisfying experience with eBay, which really means the thing I spent $20 on ended up being worth knly $50 instead of the $70 I was hoping for.

I just saw the movie (my spoiler-free thoughts are in the movie thread) but didn't pay much attention to set accuracy at the time. All I can say is that the small villain craft seem the most screen accurate, but all of the sets feel like they fit the tone/setting of the movie, with the obvious exception of (this could actually be a spoiler:)

Yes! I didn't have a chance to see if he pulled up in the credits, but since he didn't have any lines anyway, I figured he wouldn't. Plus, the hair color isn't right. But my thoughts definitely went straight to him! Edit: ah, I see he was lucky enough to make it into a set, not just a cameo in the movie.

The Lego Ninjago Movie. My sorry spoiler-free excuse of a review is in the Ninjago Movie Thread on eurobricks.

Not banned, but you'd get a reputation at the warehouse. Every time you placed an order, the employees would roll their eyes, talk about you on their coffee breaks, etc. Like, 'hey did you see that another @Gnac order came in yesterday?' And the other guy says 'agh, are you serious? I just spend three days filling the last one!' That kind of thing.

Here's my micro-review, which is completely plot-free, and therefore spoiler-free. Basically, this is how my experience seeing it was and what you can reasonably expect, quality wise: I saw it a few hours ago (non-3D, for those keeping track at home), and took with me with four kids <10 years old: 2 boys of mine + a nephew and a niece. They all had an absolute blast, and for me (30-something dad, little experience in the Ninjago TV show or theme other than drooling over some of the TLNM sets), I enjoyed it: more than my second viewing of TLBM, but slightly less than my first. The story seemed as well-written as most good-to-decent kids movies, most of the jokes landed, some got old, and the animation was amazing, although some of the close-up shots revealed almost too much minute wear-and-tear/scratch/fingerprint detail, occasionally to the point of being distracting. I thought the pacing was good, but I did miss a few scenes across the movie while taking kids for potty breaks, so I'm probably not the best judge of that. Overall, it seemed less manic than TLBM, but in a good way. Summing up, I'd say it's more worthy of your time than any movie with Minions in it, better than a bunch of Dreamworkses and a handful of Pixars (although not in the same league as the best of either), and more enjoyable than any Disney live-action remake of a cartoon is likely to be. Rating 7/10: I will rent it when its available, but am not sure I would ever love it enough to buy it. A note from the Target audience: my 6-yr-old just commented how he wished TLNM was on Netflix already so he could watch it again right now--if it was, I would watch it, too. Edit: one more note, about the music, for those so nerdily inclined: so far neither TLBM or TLNM have matched TLM on song choices, but Mark Mothersbaugh's score in this is only slightly inferior to his work on TLM. It really enjoyed it, and it has me even more excited for Thor: Ragnarok (which MM also scored) in November.

I suspect it's a current color, just poorly rendered. I thought the same thing about some pictures (rendered) I saw of the Minecraft Ocean Monument set--turns out, nope, it's colors we already have. That being said, I'd love to be wrong.

They have a similar aesthetic to the Elves dragons, although IMO less graceful. But, they are just prelims so hopefully the final designs are more polished.