Bearded Castle Guy

Ahh it's posted in all it's glory! The collab build just has fantastic detail, great job Torgar and zcerberus! Many of the MCBA Springcon attendees were just amazed that 'That's Lego?' It gathered a lot of attention and many folks took quite a few pictures of the collab. I can happily say I got to see this in person :) Kudos guys!

I picked up a small cup of 1x2 Purple tiles with my personal tradition of 4 2x4 grey bricks in the stud formed in the lid. This was at the MoA store, due to the timing of my visit the wall was pretty well picked over being late on a Sunday afternoon.

No, it's not the Ice Cream Stand, the Friends giveaway polybag at the event has no barcode or traditional set number on it. The only id number is ITEM: 6043173 which I assume is a LEGO internal tracking number. I didn't find any reference to said number on Brickset, I never tried Bricklink. Comparing the appearance of the polybag itself (printing, numbers or lack thereof etc) to 'regular' poly's I assume (guess, surmise,speculate) that this poly was designed specifically as a giveaway. I have yet to decide whether or not to open it for the parts or keep it sealed.

To some extent I view buying storage as investing in either time savings when building (well once I get stuff sorted, ARRRGGHH!) as well as protecting what I've spent on the parts already. By having proper storage I know it's unlikely that I'm going to have pieces get damaged, randomly lost etc. There is some cost to it but for practical reasons you need SOME way of storing your parts. Obviously there's a wide range of options with the same range of cost and usefulness. I posted a ways back that I choose the Stanely Professional Organizers in a mix of Deep and Shallow lift out bins (they're the black and yellow ones). The feature mix of having the lift out bins and a securely latching lid works for my active, sorted storage. Sets and larger or unsorted brick are in large flip-top storage totes. Collection size can also influence what you use to for storage and how easy it is to change it over, as well as the expense of doing so. I'd suggest keeping an eye out on which options are/have been available over time, very little is worse than have incompatiable stoarge, beyond have said storage fall over and spill out parts because it was incompatiable...... In the end folks need to decide what works for them, their budget and physical space, I think I can guarantee that it will be different from what I have wound up with.

I linked the Micropolis to show the technique , glad it's of some help. We just had a Micropolis display this past weekend, and the support layer varied from builder to builder (and how big the build above was). Some were solid, others were minimal. You should be able to easily adapt the shown spec's to whatever needs you have. if your not worried about matching the height specifcation an easy modification is to just start with a baseplate versus a layer of plates. The only real downsides I see to making completely solid are piece count and weight.

One thing you can take a look at is the Micropolis standard, that's a plate-brick that are used for the base and then you add your creation to the top of that. http://twinlug.com/m...-city-standard/ So normally you have plate-brick-plate/tile or the base of a building on top of that. It normally creates stiff base to build upon.

Correct Earthforce (aka humanity) didn't have gravity generation technology, at least until they access to the Minbari/Vorlon technologies after the Intersteller Alliance was formed. The Agamemnon was a EarthGov ship built well before the Shadow war and the formation of the Intersteller Alliance. The ship is a good overall representation of an Omega class destroyer for scale it's at, I do agree it could use a bit more detailing but it's not bad at all. Welcome to Eurobricks btw and thanks for posting your MOC that guy!

One place to look at some nice landscaping is Derfel Cadarn's Detailed guide to building a medieval village thread http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=60907 He covers various foliage and landscaping at different parts of the guide, useful even for those that are NOT looking to build a medieval village

Nice MOC, my first thought that it might have perhaps been inspired by 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Hayao Miyazaki. I like the look of the middle level the best. The top level is a bit 'busy' but given the subject matter it works, going from the railing to full height wall seems slightly out of place though. Overall the design works pretty good, keep up the good work.

I found a list of programs that are listed as handling the .eps format here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eps_file .

I doubt that it's primarily the Nicotine or any surface discoloration that folks are majorly concerned about when getting LEGO from a smoking home (there's a way to clean that easily enough), it's the SMELL from the smoke that can be released back out of the bricks over time, this is especially important for those allergic to elements of the smoke. Rinsing or even soaking doesn't always do much if anything about the smell, I don't recall offhand where I read it but there was speculation in the past about using a vacum bell in order to remove the ingrained elements of the smell. Some folks are sensitive to it, others are not, for those sensitive it's IMPORTANT information to take into consideration.

Multiples? heck yes, it's all about the parts, plus it'd be hard to build Castle armies with just a single copy of each set...... I whole greatly reccomend the MMV, singlely or in multiples. Most sets get... integrated into my LEGO Collective, but some sets are spared such a fate due to their design or even size and complexity. An example of this are the few trains I have or the 10210 Imperial Flagship. Edit to correct the IF set number...

I don't have the reciept handy but believe the ones I got locally were $3.99.

It is *Extremely* likely that the MMV is in it's twight time, it's 'place' in the lineup has been 'taken' by the Medevil Joust. In a over on Brickset, in a unconfirmable post but from a good source the MMV is on the list of End Of Life sets, aka it has already ceased production or will soon do so(in this case by the end of the year). Considering how long it's been out already I would not suprised if this is true. I'm a big fan of the MMV and would reccomend it to just about anyone to start with but I believe that if you want one at (or near) RRP you should consider it now before they're gone.

This would be a tough call, while there are a lot of sets that flash thru my mind just for their size and the amount of pieces you could get, such as any the various Modular's, UCS or even older sculpture lines, I'd have to go with something older. Also while the Classic Space sets have some draw I'd still have to bypass the likes of the 497 Galaxy Explorer for what's become my 'core' focus, something Castle related. The 6040 Blacksmiths Shop has eluded me, the 6002-2 or 0016-1 Castle Minifigs would be a great temptation, my choice would have to be a town set: http://brickset.com/detail/?Set=1592-1 Town Square- Castle Scene.