ZCerberus

There are many things to like about this fort, a custom cannon, some nice vegetation, and though it uses multiple colors, they flow together nicely. I think Phes is right, though, about the tower on the left. It seems very out of place, not only am I not sure it does anything, but it is also not supported. A few 'long' inverted slopes would do the trick!

Well I am completely removing the Imperial Flagship ones from the Arbiter II I only put those ones on the Arbiter II (they came off the Venganza a.k.a Old Arbiter) because I had no time or materials to make new ones! Go see the Arbiter II thread here to see the new sail plan for that ship, but make sure to scroll to the bottom so you can see this image in particular: So I will have access to the sails from the Arbiter II if I want to use the ones with the Imperial logos. However, I plan to make sails for the Covenant in much the same way as I did for the Arbiter II. That means the nicer looking sails from the Arbiter II will go to the Fortune and the Adventure, which might also get light overhauls, but nothing spectacular!

Yes, it does need a moving. I do like the tower, very nicely done! I like the design over all, and some nice detailing like the bookcase, torches and exterior doors *y* *y* A note about the staircases. Staircase wise, there look like they would be made out of stone in a real building, since it looks like you used 2x4 bricks, which is just fine for a large tower such as this, but I have found you can make some pretty nice staircases using inverted 2x2 slopes and 1x4 plates. They look a lot like the Lego staircases without having to buy actual Lego ones! Just a note since you seemed excited that you had made an avenue to actually reach every floor!

After the color change... yes! Sails at least. I made some dails for the Arbiter II out of canvas and they worked out prety well, so I think I will use the same material for some on the Covenant. I don't know if it will need functional rigging like the Sienna though.

Indeed! Yes this ship is still in progress and will be for a little longer while I convert the color scheme. It was obviously not as polished as my other ships. In fact of me 'big three' (Arbiter II, Coevenant, Sienna) only the Sienna is done as I am working on changing the sail plan and making the Arbiter II a little longer and more detailed. Target completion is the end of February while I am on Spring Break. The Covenant, however will be worked on in the mean time and my be finished earlier than that. I will try to keep updating as I make progress and receive the necessary parts!

Yes, in fact they are alive and well, but I think the ship is missing a few details like, I don't know, sails and mast sections!! I think I need to add those before the monkey can move in. I am also short latticed windows and an interior of the captain's very small cabin. In short, I am going to redo it in red, dark gray and black so I can get rid of some of the strange elements, and get the design a bit better. I think it'll be good if it so also will match my other ships a little better. I have been thinking about using the midstone and bluish grey on some small cutters/sloops. I don't fell like I have enough... err... any civilian ships or small utility ships, so I think I will be designing a couple soon. Also, thought the type of ship wasn't specified in the pictures, it is looking like it will be a brig. I thought about doing a schooner, or a barq as per some suggestion from Phred, but the stern castle kind of makes that unrealistic/ not really as possiblity! rear mast, bottom most section. Look carefully, you will see it is not there!! maybe instead I should only post one or two pictures with a link to the BS folder. That would load faster. From now I will try to limit the pics in the post and give some links. yes, well some interested to see how the scheme was going to work out. Phes and Phred both express some minor interest in seeing how it would look with the bluish gray and midstone in there. I tried it, but to me, it isn't as nice looking as the Sienna

Well there will certainly be ships out there that will be MLCAD but will never become real Lego versions. What if we did another post (inside the same thread) that showed MLCAD only models? Maybe this is premature... if there are only one or two ships that are MLCAD only, why not just include them? Would it be a big deal?

I didn't forget the rudder... I just don't have the right color pieces to finish it!! if you look close you will notice other things missing too... like a mast section perhaps? ;) Anyhow, it is also largely why it is black in the cabin area, I was out of mid stone and bluish gray! I also noticed the vanishing cabin in the first picture, but since I am not sure I am going to the color scheme, I didn't retake the pics. I might be able to edit and lighten them though! we'll see! Also, the pics are 1024x 768. I think is a good size! They are already resized from the res on my camera. I COULD make them smaller, but maybe you just need to make your screen bigger! (unless you mean too big in terms of bytes, in which case, I apologize that you are on dial up! sorry man!!) Finally, like I said, I am thinking of going back to the dark gray, red, black scheme, I just wanted to see how it would look in the new colors, it isn't bad, but it isn't great either.

24d Okay, so a little background... the old Covenant... found here, was built out of left over parts when I took the hulls off the old Arbiter (now Venganza) to make that ship white. I didn't really think much about it, I just sort of built it. Those ships were OLD. Maybe 7 or 8 years since building, but I had not done anything with Lego pirates until I rebuilt the my Imperial Harbor now called Fort Brighton. Since then I have been rebuilding old ships. As a result I stole the hulls from the Covenant to make the new Sienna. This of course meant I had hulls left over from the old Sienna to make the new Covenant. Anyhow, as a result I wanted some ideas as to how to remake the Covenant. I opened this thread to discuss it. I ended up using the designs there to build the Arbiter II which is getting a mini overhaul in February. However, one idea I did go forward with, which was to try to use the new colors to make the ship, namely, mid stone and bluish gray. The results are mixed, and the ship is still incomplete. I think there are some good ideas, but because I am so limited in piece choices with the new colors, the ship has some weird element and less detail than the new Sienna or Arbiter II do. I think I might end up taking some of the ideas learned here and then applying the red, black and dark gray color scheme of my other ships to make this ship a little more detailed and consistent with my other recent works. Anyhow, some pics of how the ship turned out with the new colors used.

I said long ago that I thought we needed to do it alphabetically by builder, or brickshel folder name, but this topic would be better presented in the Ship Index addition and suggestions thread. It is not pinned, and is different than the index boney made. go there to gripe! Link to Thread

Hmm... I am not sure that was appropriate, to condone such a suggestion, the intentionally slitting your wrists part... Anyhow, from the review sites I have seen, the quality of the plastic is inferior, and the pictures on the boxes, don't necessarily end up being the parts inside in terms of patterns or colors. The chrome gun, for example, might end up being black instead, etc. Also, Lego has tried to stop importation in several places of the knock-offs for countries that have copyright and patent protection similar to the US and Europe (and Australia I would presume) but if these laws are not enforced where the sets are made, they can copy all they want... hence the knock-offs mad in China. As for the knock-off set itself, I do appreciate the chrome pistol, and the hat, and I do think we need more small ships like this in our forums here, but I think we need to make them out of Legos, and not buy the inferior garbage.

Yes, I was getting that all yesterday as well and for a while this morning. So are you ever planning an adding sails to the Challenger? As I recall there aren't any on that ship either. EDIT: Re-reading the posts I see that is indeed what you said, you were going to add yard arms to the Challenger. I once again recommend an actual canvas as a cloth in sail making. It is stiff enough that it doesn't require Willy's glue methods and can still be dyed if need be. I was considering some sort of slide out idea on the Arbiter II, but went with a pull down approach instead because I thought it would be too hard to get the slides to work with mast rigging. I didn't make any working models though as I decided on the pull down method after realizing how useful technic lift arms could be from the Viking sets. Unfortunately the pull down method made the distance between the two decks a little larger than I would like and makes the lower deck look a little, well... low, but I was happy overall with the approach. Hey, it the War of 2007 is kinda like the war of 1812... US versus Canada (w/o the British), it should have been over before it started, you burned some stuff, I sacked a city, then Phes came along and made us give it all back.

Yes, yes, Mr Phes., you are the man, we all know this. I was just annoyed for some reason, more than usual. I have no qualms with my Canadian friends. I wouldn't call it "personal", I have nothing personally against Mr. Morse, or his excellent contribution to the forum, I was just expressing an opinion. I didn't intend for it to become a flame fest. Anyhow, for my part, I promise to behave. Back to the last question though, last I saw, there were no masts on the ship, it only had a hull and some cannons. Has there been a lot of progress since the last pictures? I know we won't see any updates until the move, but we haven't seen any pictures in a while.

Yeah? Maybe the war of 1812 is the most known Canadian/American conflict but it has nothing to do with Agamemnon and the origin of the word, at all. You can't deny it was almost a knee jerk reaction that when an American says "I don't know about Canada" the standard reply is, "Canada burned the White House". It is silly, and I was just trying to give you some braindrying to go with all the Canadian washing. Canadian brainwashing soap? Canadians use soap? Oh and be nice to Phred he is from Wisconsin, it is well known that all Wisconsinites have a guns and are ready to defend the border from Canadian spies and invaders. And if you do get deported to America, be aware we don't put gravy on our fries... The ship has masts? last I saw it was hull with some cannons on it. Have you made some great progress since last post? Or are you speaking of another ship?

Ooooh, I like the jolly roger symbols (taken from jolly rogers flags) on your signature... Thomas Jew and Henry Avery if I am not mistaken! EDIT: I suppose additionally the skeleton with the cup with the sailer man could be turned into the symbol on Black Bart's flag with a little work. Very nice. I think you are a Pirate after all!

First of all, look earlier in th thread to see the ship it is going on. This one... The main mast there will be getting the mast design in the post... Secondly, the uppermost sail I definitely will be including as if I did not there would only be 2 sails on the fore and mizzen masts, maybe later I will show you what those mast would look like, but basically the bottom sail on those mast will be roughly the size of the bottom sail on the main mast and the sail above that on the main mast will not exist on the mizzen and fore ones. The upper most sails may need to be reshaped a little on the sides still. Maybe I could draw them in by having them cut at a steeper angle. This is still a possibility.

No, by 'that crap' I mean Canadian we have national pride 4 things to mention everytime you meet an American crap. No need to look it up, I am not teased by any Canadians I can think of, I just don't like people being brainwashed... I personally am well versed in North American, including some Canadian, history. The war of 1812 though is so crap-tacular. fighting ensues, white house is burned down, there is a battle in New Orleans, everyone gives back what they took... boring... nothing worth remembering in the grand scheme of things unless you are Canadian so you can say 'we (and the British) burned a bunch of stuff in New England and Washington, including the White House!' And I think it is misleading to say you hope Phred doesn't offend the people of the 'second largest country in the world'... it makes it sound like you are talking population, not land mass, including all the coastal waters. I would normally have no idea were the US ranks in such boring categories, but I am sure in many categories it is way higher than Canada, but we don't have to memorize that in one category, land mass including coastal waters Canada is ahead of the US!! Sadly, you only mention this stat because there is no world stat were Canada is first, or I am sure you would be forced to memorize that worthless stat and repeat it when an American says Canadian. In fact, I bet excluding coastal waters, the US is probably slightly larger than Canada (if there is such a thing as a pure land calculation). Maybe if you weren't brainwashed, then you would have to say 'you wouldn't want to offend any of the people in the 5th largest nation in the world, by land mass' or 'you wouldn't want to offend the 36th largest country in the world by population'... 36th would even be including the Fundies... (who knows without them). I think what bothers me is that there is this intentional, let's not be like Americans crap that the Canadian government uses to brainwash its citizens to from some Canadian identity, and then it gets repeated on the forums here and everywhere else, and it is usual such mundane stuff, like burning the white house in the war of 1812. I mean do you know how funny most Americans would consider your program to add 'Canadian sections' to US magazines, or requiring the radio stations to play 75% content some how affiliated with Canada just to foster some nationalism? Or that every time a Canadian gets honored in some sport with an MVP all they say is 'Yeah, now I am a great Canadian too, I have memorized all the other Canadians to win this or a similar honor because Canada is so cool'... it's like they are afraid if they don't mention Canada 4 times they are going to get kicked out of the country or something. All Phred said before you hit him up with 'we burned down the white house' was that he was wondering if the name Agamemnon was Canadian. I mean it is like you are brainwashed that as soon as an American says Canadian, burning down the white house is the next thing out of your mouth, or, a worthless memorized stats about knowing how large Canada's land mass including coastal waters. What if everyone in the US had the some national pride espousing requirement implanted in them? Then EVERY time you said you didn't know something about America, they would HAVE to respond by saying "Oh, Canadian eh? Your country sucks so bad Quebec tried to leave, but the English speakers wouldn't let them, your country's history is so boring you had to invent a holiday for when you became independent because you had no good defining moment or definite date that you made one up close to the fourth of July just so you could celebrate that instead of America's Independence Day! You are just mad because you HAVE to learn American history just to get to your own, and then on top of that all the good TV shows and magazines and music is from the US so you have to resort to government created programs just so they can be 'acceptably Canadian enough'. You wouldn't want to offend the people in the third largest nation in the world would you? (or maybe insert 1st because we are talking about military might or something... I mean I supposed if we were brain washed to the same degree we would have to pick the highest ranking we could find, so let's go with #1 baby!!)" It is so silly and reflexive. You could have said, no Phred, Agamemnon is Greek... but instead you said 'No Phred, learn something about Canada, we burned down the White House.' I mean honestly, so silly... silly, silly, silly. Wow- that probably sounds far more hostile than it is. Maybe you are aware of the national identity/pride building thing, and that you are intentionally or not continuing it here. Either way it gets annoying to hear all the time and I was just sick of reading it. Anyhow, to the ship again... well technically speaking all parts of each sail would be attach to the yard arm by rope. there is no need to have one on the bottom since you tie them off on the deck rails. Does this mean you intended to not use the traditional 'tow ball' approach and make a sleek yardarm that the sails will be tied to? Additionally Lego on the last ships did try make somewhat functional rigging (in that moving the ropes raised and lower the sails). Are you going to try to make the rigging functional at all, or just 'authentic looking'?

No, I don't think so, I know plenty'o Canadians, it is just so persistent it gets annoying... I mean, do they make you memorize that crap? I am not sure I have ever met a Canadian who hasn't said, 'Oh you are American... we burned down your White House!" Anywho... Yes, Canadian Willy... err... Evil Willy has made a tutorial, but I have recently made a few discoveries that should be of note. Take a look here. Make sure not to just look at the first picture as it was still in need of some work! I did these out of dyed 'outdoor canvas'. It is stiff enough to not require and type of stiffening with glue. I used 'RIT' (the brand) dye and I only had to place the canvas in the dye for about 6 or 7 seconds and it is already a little darker than the LEGO version. I wrote some stuff about making sails with logos on them as well but for a more realistic ship, that isn't terribly necessary. You can view that here.

Ahh!! I get so sick of the intentional national pride espousing thing from Canada... I mean the war of 1812 PAH-LEASE! I am not sure I have met a Canadian who HASN'T mentioned burning down the White House. Or the amount of natural gas or other such things that have to be piped through Canada from Alaska, or how Canada is so much more civil than the US, especially in their national health care system blah blah blah... Additionally, Canada is the second largest country by LAND MASS (if you include coastal waters as part of the land mass), but in terms of things that ACTUALLY matter, like POPULATION or HABITABLE/INHABITED LAND MASS, Canada is WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY lower! I know Canada NEEDS something to be different and to be cool and unAmerican, but I hate worthless stats that Canadians seemingly HAVE to mention so they can be 'cooler' than the 'stupid' Americans who are all violent, ignorant of other countries and cultures and not educated on any Canadian issues. Even if Canada did give us Shania Twain, Steve Nash and Mike Meyers, most Americans just don't care, unlike Canada which takes extreme national pride in such exports... well except for Shania Twain... who seemingly is unliked because she acts 'too American'. Okay rant over. Go Justin Morneau, yeah for burning down the White House, moving on... Anyhow, let's talk about the ship, yes? Ships-of the-Line were ORIGINALLY 74 gunners... but grew larger as time went on. You needed lots of guns because as 'ship-of-the-line' implies, the ships were originally designed to sail in a line and bombard enemies, hence needing many guns. I think they were not nearly as maneuverable as smaller ships, so Captains who liked chasing and boarding probably preferred smaller ships. The progress has been good, and outside of the rigging questions Phred has, I was wonder if for this ship you are considering actually making yardarms and sails for this one. I don't recall any on your last ship!

So I don't like the look of the sails on the Arbiter II.... mostly because they are unrealistic and very old. Anyhow... I started to design a new sail plan, but the sails looked... umm... NOT so great... observe-- NOTE: This mast it is attached to a hull that will probably be the Covenant eventually, and the Covenant mast will not be this tall, but I needed something to attach the rigging to. As you can tell, I haven't done much too the Covenant yet. This sail plan will be on the Arbiter II, NOT the Covenant, but I don't have access to the Arbiter right now. So after the first run, I kind of figured out what was wrong with the sails on the first attempt, and I made a second attempt, which I am MUCH happier with... Here... And a few looks at the rest of the construction for the mast. It is pretty sturdy! The main mast will have 4 sails, the other two masts will only have 3 sails on them.

If you see the triangular like, blue fin (it is actually not a triangle... but I digress) on the fish or the triangular like black flap on the sea vehicle, that would be the part used for the sail that I think would be under discussion. It is on the back of the mizzen mast, but I have often heard of that sail referred to as the 'spanker' sail. I guess it is similar in meaning to a driver sail, but not exactly the same... anyhow, I think there is a white piece like that aft rigged on the mizzen mast! Have a look!

He said the ship is missing its courses... meaning it is missing its bottom most sail on each mast. They would be the largest (main) sails on the ship. I think you wouldn't have this complaint if there were courses there!

Thank you! Super... ohh... pretty. Right now I am the bookend guy! I have the first and the last ships in the post! I suppose it won't last :( But good nonetheless!

Hooray! But we are still missing the Sienna ;) Now that it has been sorted out, link... http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=223159 The one titled 'pirate ship' maybe the best to use as a thumbnail. Also... is there anyway to 'lock' the index post so only bonaparte can modify it? That could be helpful!

uhhh.... this is the Sienna my friend! Maybe you can move these last two posts into that thread!! EDIT: And to answer your question... I think mostly I was originally enamored with a ship type called a Xebec, which was an oar and sail powered vessel mostly used by the Barbary Pirates. I found out they Xebecs were both rowed and power by oar, but the ones used by Carribean pirates, though few, removed the oars in favor of guns. Xebecs were only a single deck you see. I however, was interested in the design as it was supposed to be excellent for sailing against the winds. Galleys had rows of oars as well as guns, so I kind of used ideas from both the Xebec and the Galley for this ship. It is a 'Xeballey' if you will! As for the Arbiter II... it is clearly a Man-of-War. A two decker with 28 gun capacity would be a sixth rate frigate I think... but I am making her a little bigger... 40 guns is the target, to get her up to fifth rate status. I am also redesigning the sail plan to be a little more realistic. That will happen... eventually ;-)