Aanchir
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Everything posted by Aanchir
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I'm loving the function where you press down on the Technic beam/liftarm on either side to fire all three cannons!
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I think you need to refresh your memory a bit. LEGO used to do this very frequently. Remember the yellow arrow tiles on Muaka and Kane-Ra? The yellow triggers on the arms of the Tarakava? The red switches on the Ussanui? Even the Competition/Cyber Slam sets which predated BIONICLE regularly featured brightly-colored switches and triggers. It's not that the human race is worse at LEGO building than they used to be, but that the LEGO Group is better at actually making the sets accessible to a wide audience than they used to be. Just because many of us who went on to become AFOLs had no trouble learning the ins and outs of LEGO Technic building doesn't mean NOBODY has trouble with that. I remember the way my peers struggled when I had Throwbots sets as party favors at my 7th birthday party. Using axles of the wrong length, putting them in the wrong holes, etc. These things which were common sense to me by that point were a tremendous hassle for kids who were mostly used to LEGO building as a simple process of stacking parts vertically, and who weren't used to there being so many wrong ways to put the same parts together, or having to measure a part in any way other than counting studs. Even Huw Millington, the lead admin of Brickset and an extremely experienced LEGO builder, had to be corrected twice on how to attach the Titanium Metallic armor to the torso Furno Jet Machine in a review last year. The first time, he attached it like this, and the second time like this. On his third try he finally got it right. Huw is not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but as a beginning constraction builder he simply didn't know there were so many potential errors to watch out for!
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People don't have to be stupid to make mistakes, or to get frustrated by said mistakes. Even AFOLs can be surprisingly error-prone when building constraction sets. I'm glad YOU can tell the beams apart without them being color-coded. That's no excuse for insulting people who can't, whether they be kids or adults.
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These bad guys generally look pretty cool to me, but there's not really enough detail for a thorough analysis. I still can't quite figure what Skull Scorpio's tail does. In fact, I have mixed feelings about the new enemy weapon pieces in general. They're an awfully strange shape and one that seems like it'd be tricky to use in MOCs. I can't quite figure if there's some sort of functionality to justify that shape or if they're just weird for weirdness's sake. Certainly they don't seem to have the same elegance of the Toa weapons, but the sets use them in enough ways that I'm willing to give them a chance to prove their versatility. I love the color schemes, though! Very unique and nightmarishly elegant! And they certainly stand out enough from the Toa color schemes for it to be clear that this is a separate "evil" faction. The packages also look nice, from what we can see of them, and I love the new blended Toa masks — though I'll agree with others that I hope Tahu's and Gali's get similar treatment sometime soon.
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We do not know that the sets are about Shadow of Ronin. Frankly, there's only one set that we have any reason to THINK has anything to do with Shadow of Ronin, and that's the one that actually has Ronin in it. Anything beyond that is pure speculation. It wouldn't surprise me if just that one set is tied to the game, the same way just one of the 2012 LEGO City sets was tied to LEGO City Undercover.
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That's an Oculus Rift headset. Cool to see LEGO using that kind of technology. Shame we can't see what he's seeing! "3D Experience" doesn't give us a lot to go on...
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They actually still DO make black upper limb beams — but only in certain sizes. I explained somewhere recently why the limb beam colors are like they are. Odd-numbered lower limbs and even-numbered upper limbs are now Black by default, and even-numbered lower limbs and odd-numbered upper limbs are Dark Stone Grey by default. The goal is to make it harder to inadvertently confuse an upper and lower limb of the same size or two upper limbs of similar sizes — basically the same reason that Technic cross axles alternate between Black and Medium Stone Grey as you go up or down in size.
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First look at the Elves castle! It does, in fact, have an opening portal like 8078, and comes with all four keys! Emily Jones also apparently comes with a fabric cape. Wonder if that signifies anything. Overall, it's a really elegant-looking set!
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Don't forget this image and this one!
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Brick Colorstream is one of the most reliable resources out there, but the Peeron Color Chart is also fairly reliable in most cases.
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Very Light Bluish Gray (Light Stone Grey) was discontinued a couple years ago, so that's not really a possibility. Also, Breakout Nex and XT4 didn't use that color at all — they used Light Bluish Gray (Medium Stone Grey).
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Why in the world are you blaming Ninjago for Chima coming to an end? Whether a theme gets bigger, gets smaller, or ends completely is based on their sales potential. If this year's Legends of Chima sales figures surpass expectations, then maybe it will come back just like Ninjago did. But if it turns out that its popularity has run its course, then its end is inevitable, regardless of how Ninjago performs. Personally, I really liked last year's Ninjago story arc, and I have a feeling this year's is also going to be amazing. The theme has definitely been successful for a reason. But that's not to say Legends of Chima hasn't been popular or successful. Three years is very good run for a LEGO theme, and in fact was what the designers of Legends of Chima had planned for it from the beginning. The fact that its sales didn't surpass those initial expectations does not mean that it failed or was unfairly cut short.
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I think the new sets feel plenty "Ninjago-ish". The first wave this year combines motifs from the 2011 and 2012 sets along with some brand-new concepts. The second wave, meanwhile, features a new Destiny's Bounty and lots of unique-looking dragons. There are some small shrine-like structures, but the images are so small and blurry that they're hard to judge. The new evil mech resembles a previous one from the show which has never appeared as a set, as many other people have pointed out. Cole's new vehicle exemplifies the stylized futuristic zaniness that is characteristic of Ninjago vehicles. The one set that I can't say for sure how well it fits with Ninjago is Ronin R.E.X. It's a peculiar one for sure.
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Keep in mind that there is one milestone from the original story we haven't reached yet — namely, the Toa haven't even met each other yet. With that in mind, it seems a bit silly to complain that the story is moving too quickly, since in 2001 they had met each other by the end of the first comic. Anyway, I'll just copy and paste my comments from Facebook here regarding the sets: I'm definitely intrigued. It's hard to make judgments with these pics as blurry and preliminary as they are, but I do like some of what I see, namely Ekimu. Nice to have at least one non-humanoid set, though it's hard to tell whether it has any interesting functionality. I'm not really digging the new "scrawny" limb beams, though. I think regular 5M beams with center ball would work just fine for skeletal enemies without their versatility being nearly so limited. I also ought to mention that I REALLY like Ekimu's shield! It seems like it uses the wheel pieces from Cinderella's Dream Carriage and Battle for Ninjago City, which I hadn't even considered using in BIONICLE!
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Just wanted to share, I took some new BIONICLE photos today! 70789 Onua - Quiet Wisdom by Aanchir, on Flickr 70784 Lewa - Daring Enterprise by Aanchir, on Flickr
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The Naida and Aira character videos have been posted to YouTube! I'm definitely starting to notice what some people have mentioned about the lip movements and sound not matching up. Perhaps these were originally recorded in another language and dubbed into English? From these videos, it seems like Aira is not just inventive, but also really perky and energetic. I actually like that, since that energy helps her to break from the shy nerd stereotype. Naida, by contrast, seems much more soft-spoken.
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The DB-X has her logo plastered all over it, including a massive one on the back. The idea of it being her vehicle doesn't seem at all subtle in the set itself. Can't comment on the TV episodes because I haven't seen any of the new ones yet.
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See here. There are 36 awards given out to what are considered the best new toys on display. LEGO won all three awards in the construction toys category: one for the new Toa, one for Elsa's Sparkling Ice Castle, and one for the Minecraft set "The Dungeon".
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Assuming that everybody else has the same building level as you is a serious mistake. Younger or less experienced builders make mistakes all the time that many AFOLs would consider "amateur". Sometimes the mistake is in identifying the pieces in front of you, sometimes it's in identifying the pieces in the instructions (the readability of instructions is a factor that most people don't even consider about set design), and sometimes it's both. Even if the builder eventually catches their own mistake it can be incredibly frustrating, especially if they're just a beginner. Me, even I make mistakes. While building a larger Technic set last year, I ended up putting some pins in the wrong place or putting a clutch gear in backwards or something like that, requiring my brother and I to flip through pages and pages of instructions and undo all of those steps when we finally got to a point where that mistake kept us from proceeding further. Constraction building usually doesn't penalize as severely as advanced Technic building, which often needs incredible accuracy for everything to work properly, but that feeling of frustration is still there for people who make building mistakes without realizing it.
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Actually, since 2013 they've followed a very consistent pattern. For every black "B" beam, the corresponding "A" beam and the next size up and down only come in Dark Stone Grey, and vice-versa. Presumably, it's to make it easier to tell the beams apart. It's hard to confuse a 5M "A" beam with a 6M "B" beam or a 3M or 7M "A" beam even if they're the same color. But it's easy to confuse a 5M "A" beam with a 5M "B" beam or a 4M or 6M "A" beam of the smae color, so it is a different color from all of those beams. In the current BIONICLE sets, the only beams that are te same color as the similarly styled beams one size up or down from them are the Tr. Light Blue 3M, 4M, and 5M "A" beams. I agree that sometimes it can result in slightly unusual color blocking, but I certainly understand how it can be helpful, especially having seen photos and reviews of sets that managed to get beams of the same color and different sizes mixed up.
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Huw's descriptions in the comments to his Toy Fair coverage lead me to believe we WILL be seeing new Frosticons (Krug, Chilbno, Snoof) and Glorp Corp (Dribbal, Gurggal, Slusho). Gox, Junky, and Kamzo sound like they will be from a new mechanical/steampunk tribe. Not sure what to think of the others.
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Judging from the figures in the Frozen set from the Disney Princess range, I imagine an actual fabric cloak is the more likely possibility there. Anyway, Brickset has descriptions of the new Elves sets as they were displayed at London Toy Fair: Sounds exciting! The castle is no Portal of Atlantis at that size, but it's still shaping up to be very impressive. I'm sure with a 16x32 footprint it could boast a lot of neat play features. I'm guessing the Pegasus Sleigh will also include the hiding place of the air key, and the sky castle might include all four keys (similar to Portal of Atlantis, Vampyre Castle, Fire Temple, and Temple of Light, which all included all the magical artifacts for their respective theme/wave).
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You're getting the currency wrong. Those prices are pounds sterling, not dollars. Most of the sets are the same price as the smaller Toa (so probably $15 in USD). Hard to say what Mask Maker vs. Skull Grinder will cost. Maybe $25, maybe more.
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I'm not tremendously disappointed about that. Not counting the 2012 Pythor, we have three Anacondrai now, which is just short of the four characters we got from every other Serpentine tribe. Granted, they don't follow the same Scout>Soldier>Warrior>General ranking system as the previous Serpentine tribes. But it's certainly more than I ever expected to see before we heard about this "Tournament of Elements" wave!
