Grrr

So how did you gain access to this most sacred place? The disorderley nature of it all really surprises me - they could quite happily have made a nice display out of them - or at least have them stacked in some sort of order. As for stealing them and Ebaying the lot - that would earn a small fortune. Being as though there are apparently four copies of every set in there, sell one of each - keep one or two misb - and build with the rest - well; at least that is what I would do - after somehow acquiring a custom-built dust free facilty free from yellowing lights (am not sure if that is possible, but I wouldn't steal from Lego either). One day - when I have lots of money! ... :).

To me it is just a no-no. Having purchased quite a lot of used lego over time I find that modded parts are the bane of building existance (mainly because they are never done to the same level's of accuracy as lego, which often results in a situation were even with their intended modded use, they become incompatible. An example being persons drilling holes into standard bricks for technic pins - I have yet to see one line up 100%. Having said that however, I am an absolute purist, even seeing yellowed bricks for their mocing value (great for those varied textures, particularly in castle building. The only time that I would consider modding a part is a situation whereby a broken (and not really useful) part can be converted into a smaller but usable part. This is comparitively rare however. Vandalism is how I regard it - and painting bricks - don't get me started. It's *almost* as bad as gum and lego. I for one am happy to use lego within it's limitations - and if not, would probably not use lego in the first place. I feel that competitions should hold this in regard.

The list doesn't seem as big as the pile of lego. Anyway: 1713/1733 Shipwrecked Pirate 1747/1802 Treasure Surprise 6232 Skeleton Crew 6234 Renegade's Raft (x2) 6235 Buried Treasure (x4) 6236 King Kahuka (x2) 6237 Pirates Plunder 6244 Armada Sentry 6245 Harbor Sentry (x2) 6246 Crocodile Cage (x2) 6248 Volcano Island 6251 Pirate Mini Figures (x6) 6256 Islander Catamaran 6257 Castaways Raft (x2) 6259 Broadside's Brig 6260 Shipwreck Island 6261 Raft Raiders (x2) 6263 Imperial Outpost 6265 Sabre Island (x5) 6267 Lagoon Lock-Up 6268 Renegade Runner 6270 Forbidden Island 6271 Imperial Flagship (x2) 6273 Rock Island Refuge 6274 Caribbean Clipper (x3) 6276 Eldorado Fortress 6277 Imperial Trading Post 6278/6292 Enchanted Island 6285/10040 BLack Seas Barracuda

I regard it as lego's be all and end all of fortress's for the Imperial Guard. While it has a relatively small scale - it would at least be vaguely believable to have one of the lego ships alongside it - unlike the forbidden island, released at the same time. Some of the arguements above about it not being able to hold it's own against lego's ships are quite irrelevant when you consider that any lego ship could happily take on any of the lego islands (including the larger 6273,6277 etc) The reason for having the island sets on a smaller scale is quite economically visable really - the average kid will generally get one large set per year (christmas, birthday etc) and generally a handful of smaller sets. All of the other lego themes upto this time had very few large sets (500+ pieces), in general two being available in each year for each sub-theme. I mean really, how many of us really had multiple ships and large islands before becoming AFOL? And having half a theme never made it as playable as it could be - what are pirates when there are no soldiers to hunt? I get the impression that over this period lego was also trying to make the larger sets more affordable to the less effluent children, as can be clearly seen in the castle line over following years with sets like King's Mountain Fortress and Wolfpack Tower. Lego was clearly making a break from larger sets here. The pirate theme (particularly the large islands) would always also face internal competition, I mean do you really need a fortress when you have a handful of smaller sets? Of course, all of this has very little to do with realism - but I don't think lego has every been to overly concerned with that (trading it off to economics and playability). I don't believe lego was ever intending to have a very high amount of overly large sets in any theme, and pirates are definately one of the themes with the highest concentration (most castle and space sub-themes had one very large set each, often not even to the same scale as the pirate sets).