badbob001

Thanks, I had forgotten about that thread since there really isn't much discussion at all on this. But in general, I'm not quite sure which section Lego Dimensions fits in since it's not 100% licensed. Since it's mainly a video game, maybe it's not suitable for this forum at all since I don't see discussions on other Lego Games here.

According this this new Lego dimensions video, every vehicle/gadget can be built three ways (both in the real world and the game world). I wonder if you actually have to rebuild the model in the real world to see the change in the game world. No idea how would the reader even sense the change and I don't see any special bricks with sensors. I hope the instructions are not digital only and not only accessible from within the game. Digital-only In-game instructions would be bad for people that don't have a supported console.

I've found some pieces at the YMCA pool that I frequent. I guess some kids like to take their toys with them to the water. I've done the same in my youth but with the bath... and the family fish tank. Found so far: chrome light-saber hilt (badly worn) with trans-green rod. yellow 1x2 slope with 4 slots. The lower side of the slope has a hairline crack, which I think is common. I feel that all Lego bricks are precious and useful, even when damaged. At Lego stores, I see workers sweep pieces on the floor into a dust tray and I hope those pieces don't go into the trash.

It's nice that we have short sleeves, but you have to wait for Lego to create the combination of colors that you need. One idea is to have the arms be two parts (three if you count the hands). In the same way the hands are attached, the shoulder part has a rod that fits into a hole in the forearm. Now we can choose the colors that we want. AND the forearms can be swiveled out to the side, though I'm not sure I have much use for this pose unless it involves guns. The only concern is that it seems like the hands are made of a different type of plastic and this may force the arms to be made of the same plastic, which will introduce color differences from the rest of the body.

The best part about that figure are the cat ears on girl hair. They definitely need to create more color and style variations of that. My best bet is for the next series of Lego Elves to involve a visit to a land of all cat people (squeal!)

I like the shutters on the windows. Nice touches are the wok in the kitchen and the little metal statue at the cashier. Outside of movies and Epcot Center, I wonder where would one even find such an old-style Chinese restaurant.

The Town Hall is $200 so anything at that price should be of similar size. Perhaps you can mod the Town Hall to a public school since it already has a utilitarian look. It also has something like an auditorium on the first floor. What could work is to carve out the center of each floor for a staircase and hallways and use the sides for classrooms. Add some tall fencing to the roof and you can have an outdoor gym / love-confession-zone. The Town Hall has that any-government-building look and can be used for schools, libraries, hospitals, and police stations.

Continuing my research into furniture (ikea) that can be used to display a modular building collection. The Billy bookcase with glass doors looks interesting and glass shelves are an option: But it looks like the interior width is just a hair shy of being able to fit three modular: The Stockholm cabinet looks like a possibility. It's 35 3/8" wide, so it'll definitely fit three modulars per shelf, for a potential of twelve total. It includes the adjustable glass shelves. It is a bit pricey though. It is like a larger version of the Nornas cabinet, which is 5" shy of fitting three modulars per shelf. But the Nornas has all all-glass door, while the Stockholm has the frame of the doors obscuring the middle of the cabinet. On a side note, has anyone worried about UV damage to the point of adding UV-blocking film to their windows and/or their display cabinets?

The day has finally come: I have no more room to store to any more modular buildings and I have the Detective Office set unopened. So it's another visit to this thread to see if there are any new ideas of (affordably) displaying Modular Buildings. I like to first look at what is available from ikea because their stuff is relatively cheap and easy to obtain. But I have to admit that ikea recently has been doing their darndest to discourage people from using their furniture for displays, such as discontinuing the glass doors for their expedite and besta shelves. As always, I want my buildings to be placed side-by-side like a real city block, so a tall and narrow display case like the inexpensive Ikea Detolf, which only allows one modular per self, is out of the question. In a reviewof the Detective Office at brickset, the reviewer had his set in a Galant Wall Cabinet that seemed well suited for modulars: From the review, this is showing half of the cabinet: The full cabinet: The cabinet is 63" wide, 15" deep, and 15 3/4 high. Each modular is 10" wide so it's possible to put 6 modulars into it. I have even seen the center wall removed so to give it an even wider feel: Some negatives: The sliding glass doors have large holes at the edges that would let dust in The interior height is probably a little under 15", which only fit the taller modulars if you start removing some tower components and roof ornaments. The low ceiling also makes it seem a bit cramp. Recently, Ikea introduced the NORNÄS glass cabinet and it's about the same price as the Galant. When I first saw it, I thought it would be perfect. It's not low to the ground like the Detolf and doesn't look cramp like the Galant. But my heart sunk when I saw the dimension: 65 3/8" tall, 15 3/4" deep, and 25 5/8" wide. At about 25" wide, it could only fit two modulars per shelf. If it were only 5" more wider, then one could fit 3 modulars per shelf, for a total 9 modulars into this baby. Oh well. Stepping away from Ikea, I started searching for Glass Counters, which are usually for the retail market. I see nice items like this, but they can cost $600 - $900, and shipping would be also add a few hundred. Sheesh.

The futuristic but realistic police vehicles from the LEGO movie work well in my city and gives it a Minority Report feel.

As any modular set builder will know, some part choices are mainly to limit the number of different parts required for the set. For example, the use of many 1x2 plates of a particular color instead of a mixture of longer plates. At first this seems like a scam to inflate the part count, but it mainly has to do with keeping the set within some sort of predefined budget. It would be cool to learn LEGO's magic formula for calculating the cost of their products. I think having the same head for all minifigures allows for more part types in other areas of the design.

I think I'm pretty good at quickly finding parts by just peering into a bin and lightly shifting around the pieces, so this is why it seems wasteful for me to spend time sorting pieces by type or color. And I limited myself to three bins to limit the workspace size needed and the number of bins I need to cycle through in a search. As needed, I would sometimes create a fourth bin by pulling out large/special parts/plates from the three bins so those large pieces don't cover smaller pieces. And as the build progresses and the bin content size dwindles, I will merge bin contents to further reduce the number of bins I need to search through. I also prefer large bins/trays than bowls because the flat surface lets me create ad-hoc mini-piles or staging areas. But for sets with no numbered bags and an extremely large number of parts, sorting into color piles seems like a quick method.

Any thoughts on sorting when building a new set from the box? Some people would dump everything out and maybe sort them into piles as needed, but I don't like having parts rolling off the table. I've seen other people use lots of little bowls and pre-sort all the pieces, but that seems like too much work and makes less sense now that we have numbered bags. My method is to first take out the immediately need numbered bags, roughly judge each bag, based on content, into small, medium, or large categories, and then empty them into three separate bins for small, medium, and large. The bin themselves are white shelf bins from an old refrigerator (each are roughly 28cm long x16cm wide and 8cm tall). My major dislike for the bins are that they are too deep, which makes it hard to see pieces that are at the edges. This means I have to stand up to peer into them and that is not great for my back in the long run. I am thinking of getting shallow serving trays as replacements, like the inexpensive IKEA Klack trays: Does anyone use the same or similar trays for their pre-build sorting? Suggestions for alternatives? The IKEA trays seem good because they have a white smooth inside surface, which won't scratch the pieces and is easy to clean. And the trays are shaped so multiple trays can be stacked for storage. I'm a bit weary of the handle holes that may let pieces escape.

Is it me or was that design video rather dull? The presenters didn't seem that enthused, but I suppose that is mainly because they didn't have much to talk about since the model has very few features. I don't remember another design video being presented by two people. I didn't think the print and sticker designs warranted the art designer to be there. Was this model built by a committee? Why not include the lawyer who helped sign the agreements with Lucasfilm. :) And the crooked sticker at 0:42 was the death knell for me. I think they are rather proud of the stickers. Why else would they include the art designer there in the video. I'm sure the crooked sticker is crooked on purpose. You know, artistic expression.

It looks like all the ninjas are getting black new black uniforms accented with their original colors, but why is Nya accented with light blue? At first I though she took a bit of Jay's powers, but he is still there but in regular blue.

You can see a closeup of the redish-brown ninja in the above video, the character found on the new Destiny's Bounty and the one we're speculating to be female. With this closeup, it definitely is female and I think it's NYA! Her collar has the same two loop design found in many of her uniforms. No longer a sidekick character!

I'm sure there are people out there that would love LEGO to zombie-fy existing characters and put out a series for that. And you know, for the people that missed out the S1 zombie. On that note, I never did find Mister Gold so it's likely LEGO will put out a completely gold-theme for an upcoming series.

As for the reason why CM 14 is a single theme, maybe Lego got sales data indicating that people tend to complete their CM set if all the figures are related? This could have happened with Simpsons CM 1 and The Lego Movie CM. I see that Lego is discounting CM S12 at 50% so that may indicate that the sales of the traditional non-theme CM is slipping.

I just saw the Atamaii TV video and the Destiny's Bounty was significantly changed from the prelim promo video. It got less wide, perhaps loss some length, and the hull looks much less substantial. So less like a flying boat and more like a flying shoe. And I'm not liking the change to smaller sails. I wonder if the rear engine from the prelim is retained as some sort of pop-out feature.

Comparing the earlier heads-on photo of the Destiny's Bounty with the one shown in the Ninjago Promo video, I definitely see some differences. The video one doesn't look as skinny and back-heavy as the photo, but it's likely the photo was taken at an unflattering angle. The photo version has more printing/stickers, as is most evident in the sails. This may mean this version is closer to final than the video version. It also shows the rear side engines/wings having more gold trim and are extended out. The roof of the cabin looks complex with it being made of the blade-like pieces that were previously used for dragon wings. The sails are in a helicopter-like configuration. The front dragon-head has a boom sticking out from it. The video version looks wider and sturdy, mostly likely from the side engines/wings being retracted. The sails are in a wing-like almost-traditional-sail configuration that looks rather good. The roof of the cabin looks smooth and is sloped up from front to back, which looks rather sleek. The front-dragon head has no boom. The rear shot of the cabin is especially nice looking and looks very steampunk-ish. It's likely that the photo shows the DB in flight-mode and the video one is in water-mode. The dragon-head boom is probably something that extends out (is it a perch for the black dragon?). I'm not sure if the differences between the cabin roof is due to some sort of transformation or is an actual design change, but I hope it's more like the video-version. The greeble placements of weapons are also different between the two versions. The DB2 has now moved from a non-purchase to a maybe. :)

The original Destiny's Bounty looked very sleek in shape and with its iconic sails. I was hoping DB 2.0 would be similar but in larger scale but the prelim looks all wrong. The rear cabin's scale is so much larger than the rest of the ship, so it ends up looking like a shoe. And the boom sticking out from the dragon's mouth is out of place and looks like a cheap attempt to balance out the front scale of the ship. And gone are the beautiful sails, replaced with helicopter-ish things. They could at least made something shaped like the old sails that transformed to the spinning thing. Isn't the ninjago line stable enough now to have a higher parts budget? Some design choices for ninjago sets reminds me of some 80s-era GIJoe sets, with their under-scale vehicles and fold-out hollow bases.

I guess I'll find out more when the new season starts in the U.S., but it looks like a 'HQ' set, like the 'Battle for Ninjago City' set, so it doesn't feel like the focus is on her. It's common for support characters to be only available in the HQ sets. Like Velma being only available in the largest Scooby-doo 'HQ' set. ...But it does look like there is a new Ninja that shares some common traits with Nya...

It really depends on how you approach the matter. If you are a crazy perfectionist, then you may spend more time designing and ordering parts than actually building. Then when are you ready to build, your creativity is overwhelmed by the great variety of parts you have access to. Alternatively, you can take one set and try to use the limited number of pieces to build as many things as you can. Look at the old 5867 Lego Creator Super Speedster set. The set is already a 3-in-1, but someone published a pair of books on how to use only the parts from that one set to make at least 20 more high quality vehicles! (See Amazing Vehicles and More Amazing Vehicles). I would sometimes dig into my kid's duplo bricks to build something relaxing. The limited variety of pieces means I spend more time building than digging around looking for the 'perfect' part.

I wonder if any of the 'mechs' in the new sets is an updated version of Nya's Samurai X Mech. Or will she never be in the spotlight again since the identity/gender of Samurai X was revealed?

Perhaps it works for both children and adults now. Children can enjoy the set as is. Working adults can buy multiple copies of the same set to modular up. Also perhaps LEGO is just responding to the more vocal portion of the market. I see many posts from people asking for schools, newspaper offices, police stations, libraries, banks, etc and these are functions mostly defined by what is happening inside the building... unless you want every modular to have a large cafe-corner-esk sign outside stating it's function. Some people may think the Town Hall is bland, but it can easily be re-purposed for much of the before-mentioned requests. I don't really see that many posts from people saying they want this or that specific type of architecture. If they build an example to show what they want, then they don't really need LEGO to design the same for them. And LEGO may face charges of 'coping'. If they are just waiting to see what cool architecture and building techniques LEGO comes out with, then their silent desire may not be reaching LEGO.