Inspirational Lego # 107

Hey all, here we are again with another collection of "wooooow" pictures from builds found on the internet.

And I hope you will enjoy the varied collection once again.

First of all, we have this X-Wing... Benny style!  Now talk about a real spaceship!

The roses on this brides bouquet are truly great pieces of work.

If you ever get to Sao Paolo, Cristo Redentor will loom over you.  But if you don`t go there, at least you can enjoy this Lego build version.  Now how cool would this be as an Architecture set?

A really colourfull vignette for the CMF female space ranger, that creates a Friends like feel with all the pastel and bright colours.

A fantastic looking medieval dockyard from the Lands of Roawia online RPG.

This is a creepy build showing the well known scene from horror classic The Exorcist.

Talking horror, I would be horrified indeed if Godzilla himself would run rampage through my town!

Also black, but then of an unprecedented beauty, is this classic Lotus 72D formula 1 car.

The Disney minifigures are a hit, and this is a great scene made with them from Alice in Wonderland.

We started this episode with a spaceship, so we`ll end it as well.  The Omega Destroyer from babylon 5 has always been high on my favorites list (both on television and in wargaming) and this Lego rendition is just an amazing piece of work.

Well, that`s it again for this week.  Next week I`ll be doing a Batman special, as the The Lego Batman movie will come out then.

LEGO Deadshot giveaway

I recently put together the Gotham Cycle Chase (yeah yeah, for the Harley figure) and that set also included Deadshot.

Now this is a figure that intrests me not in the least, and instead of just putting it up for sale, I`m raffling it away to celebrate the 50 subscribers benchmark over on YouTube.

So if you are intrested in winning this figure, just go to the video below and follow the simple steps to participate in the raffle.

The results will be filmed and posted somewhere in the beginning of next week.

The Haul Report # 66

Here we are again with the weekly Haul Report, and due to some extensive trading, it has some lovely gems.

But let's start modestly.

I`m in the process to rebuild some old sets to get rid off, and was restoring a Carribean Clipper for a mate.  So I did some BrickLink orders to complete the part lists and build up the sets, as well as getting an C-3PO polybag to get to the required minimum shipping.

The next box I received where two more copies of the NHow exclusive set, De Rotterdam.  This set was made only for purchase in said hotel and is really hard to find.

The big news last week was that Sam Jones is coming to Comic Con Brussels, where I am present with BeLUG, so of course I needed to have a figure of this cult hero for signing!

A nice little find I did in a Facebook group was this complete, but no box or instructions Shelob set.  I paid as much for it with shipping as I would for Samwise alone, so basically I have a free Frodo, Smeagol and the Spider for the purchase, I like those numbers.

The final trade this week was with two AFOL friends of mine, who pop by regularly for some exchanging of sets.  I traded a Lone ranger Silver Mine for this nice heap of Tolkien sets and a Creator Fountain for the Mustang I was still looking for.

And they tossed in a free CD of their band to boot :-)

A very good week as such, and hope to see you all back next sunday for a new update!

Ikki Tousen season 1

Welcome to the world of sacred beats, fated fighters and... a lot of fan service.

Ikki Tousen's first season hails from 2003, and this 13 episode anime sets the lines for the powerstruggle in the Kanto region of Japan.

In the Kanto region of Japan, seven high schools take place in a turf war for territorial supremacy: Nanyo Academy, Kyosho Academy, Seito Academy, Yoshu Academy, Rakuyo High School, Gogun High School, and Yoshu Private School. The fighters of each school bear the sacred jewels called magatama, which contains the essence of warriors from the Three Kingdoms era of Ancient China 1800 years ago, as well as their fates.

Hakufu Sonsaku, the descendant of legendary conqueror Sun Ce, is a highly skilled fighter with a strong sense of personality who goes to Nanyo Academy where her cousin Koukin Shuuyu attends under her mother's request. Her destiny, as with her predecessor, was to conquer all of the schools. But there is a darker and more dangerous side to her fate, one that may change the entire course of history forever.

While it has some epic battles and actually quit an unexpected plot twist in the two episode finale, the main grief with this light novel adapation is perhaps the fan service. 

Most fighters are beautiful girls, and every two moves in battle involve an underpants shot, while bobs are bouncing all around.  Add to that the bad fabric of the school uniforms whom tend to spontaneously rip apart in the chest area... well, at times it's just TOO much for the neutral viewer.

The humour however is rather fun, and then there is this one...

But all in all, it`s more of a juvenile audience series with the blood and nudity, then a decent anime series in my opinion.

Rating: 3 / 10

Is Lego worth more then Gold? The Test part 4

Another month has gone by, and that means time to make the tally of how January 2017 went in my test.

Well, it's truly a bit of a special month, as with discount period showing up in Belgium, you could do some excellent buys at local supermarkets and the like.  Which I duly did.

Now, that means that I have made a very small margin this month, topping out at 113.20 euro left over at date of closure, which was yesterday.  But that is mainly due to the fact I have been spending a lot of the total in amount, which was 400.87 euro, on new sets, and on loose parts to complete old, big used sets.  Like a castle for example.

Now, the most solid ratio this month has to go to Brick Link.  I had a total of 33 orders for used parts, for a total amount of 148.08 euro.  This means it averages at 4.48 euro per order.  Now this doesn`t seem much, but at the amount of orders that is about 1 order every day, making this a nice constant flow in.  Add to that the loose minifigures clocking in at 49 euro (of which 13 have been re-invested so far), and you have a solid base to play the game on.

On a set level, I have done some serious invests this month, spending 128.83 on new "not easy to get" things.  Outfloing in that department was less, with 57.29 euro coming in from two old Minecraft sets.
In the range of "new" sets both old and recent, 10 sets left for a total of 138 euro.  A large portion of that, namely 99.32 euro, has immediatly been reinvested, but the good thing is that for that amound I added 24 sealed sets to my portfolio.
And yes, I did dabble in some more used sets.  I grabbed 2 rather big ones for a total of 24 euro, and even though I only parted with three small ones so far for 8.50 euro, I`m confident the new ones will seriously bump up numbers in february.  Castles, sailing ships... just need to wait for some loose parts orders to come in and be able to complete them to full restoration.

But never the less, I`m getting really close to "point zero" now, even with the reinvesting done.  I`m currently hovering around the 400 mark, with a " Testing" portfolio at the moment worth 2400+ euro in parts, sets and the likes, so I'm going to aim for a february "sprint" to reach the break even point. 

Traditionally, february is low on sales and deals as the winter wave has hit and the liquidation of the summer wave has passed by, so this is the moment to unload some additional inventory and set up for the june buy-in offensive when the waves will "overlap" again.

Minifigs.Me Custom Printed Flash Gordon

Sam Jones is coming to Comic Con Brussels next month, and this cult hero means I now have my "signature hunt" prime target.

I mean, this is Flash Gordon, the man who saved us all on the tones of Queen's excellent soundtrack.

And of course, that meant I needed a fitting minifig to get signed.  Some searching around, this led me to Minifigs.Me, a company of whom I already possess a number of figures, like recently the Pokemon series with limited pokeball tile et all.

The figure arrived in their typical packaging, a stylised matchbox errm box, so I opened it in great anticipation, and wasn`t disappointed.

The Flash figure has the "hard" jawlines printed of Sam, and a bush of wild blond hair.  Now, it's cool they doubleprinted the legs, giving him black boots under his dark blue pants.

The torso features the big black waistband together with the star pattern on the front side, and it runs nicely to the back.

Now, they couldn`t much more with the figure to make it extra spectacular, as the movie figure wore a simple outfit.  It where the 80s after all...

You can find the Flash figure under the name of Mr Flashy on their website, and it goes for 10 pound.  Find the figure HERE for a quick search, and expect to see it appear again on this little blog when I do the convention report near the end of february!

Because remember, Flash Gordon is alive, alive, aliveeee...

365 Dingen om te doen met LEGO Steentjes

The latest "ideas" book by DK Publishing takes a whole different road that we gotten to know... and I`m not sure I like it.

Coming with a sort of "activity randomiser tool" this book grants you a daily quest of what to do with LEGO bricks over the span of one calendar year.

Now, it contains a variety of building, making games, tools for your desk, minifigure and larger scale items and much more, and is a truly magnificent collection of some fantastic builds.
And that is exactly where the problem lies in my opinion.  Even though build tips and tricks are scattered around the whole book, it has some seriously advanced builds in it (like animating a bearhead).  And I fear those might be far out of reach for the target audience, which, face it, are around the 10 year old mark.

Never the less, for an old fox as myself, I even saw some intresting things to "carry over" into my builds and techniques to try out, but I`d rather have a "normal" build book again like their previous volumes...

But then, that didn`t stop me adding it to my Legobrary at all...

Build Report: 41017 Squirrel's Tree House

This weeks build report tackles one of the first series of Friends " pet set" bags, the Tree House for the lovely Squirrel pet figure.

Retailing around 5 euro back in the days, they are rather sought after by collectors I found out recently, and I'm one of the fans of the little series for the parts and "cute" animals to use in moc's.

Released in 2013, this 41 part set comes with a pile of bricks and the instruction booklet, just like "regular" polybags tend to do.

The "star" of the set is of course the squirrel itself, with it's lovely blue bow-tie.

It also has a plate with some snacks, because your little companion needs to eat of course.

The build starts on a lime coloured plate, to wich a long inverted brown slope is placed to serve as the basis to build around.

The base of the tree is made up of several reddish and dark brown slopes.

A platform, again in lime, is added on top of this, and serves as the floorplate for the actual tree house.

A small scaling ladder is connected to the front of the platform, allowing easy access to the small hut.

The two side walls are mirrored builds, and connected to the base platform by means of clipped elements.

And the little set stands completed:

Now, I like this little set not only for the squirrel, which was a new figure back in 2013, but the colours of the parts included.  Even though it uses mostly brown and greens, the few colourful elements add to the Friends feel of happy looking builds.

Brik Wars! scenery pieces

The circle has come to a close, as near the end of the year, my old hobby and my LEGO hobby will meet on the glorious field of battle.

Now, those that have followed this blog from the beginning know I`m coming from a wargamer background (just go at the bottom of the blog to the first year of this site), and have been a member of the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp for almost 20 years... basically my whole LEGO Dark Ages period.

Ever since I returned to the bricks of my childhood, I have been eyeing the Brik Wars! ruleset, a free set of rules designed to fight wargames... with LEGO minifigures.  So I finally bit the bullet and with some to and fro mailing yesterday, I confirmed a space for BeLUG at the next Crisis event of TSA.

The game will consist of gaming Tolkien forces versus Star wars troops, with the used forces containing 2 units of 10 troops each, led by a Hero.  Like which can be seen here, a force of 20 Lake Guard led by Bard the Bowman.

Now, the total game space will be 4 plates of 48x48, which if needed can be split up in 4 sections to run up to 4 games simultaniously.  Considering the rules are a measly 3 pages, with an estimated game time between 30 to 45 minutes, this is easily feasible.

Of course, this will mean we`ll be needing scenery for the games, and I have spend the afternoon putting together some easy to make pieces to serve as examples.  The trick is that the scenery doesn`t have to be intricate moc's, but easily moveable, and able to be deconstructed and reconstructed during a game as minifigs can actually blow things up and build other stuff with it if you want to.

It does serve however to restrict movement paths, obstruct line of sight for missile attacks, and provide light defensive positions if under attack.

The first thing I've put together is this mystical pool, which will mainly serve as an objective marker.

Of course, every battlefield needs some trees and ruins, those are mainstay classics...

A little goat is grazing in a patch of tall grass.

The little dragon is guarding it's beginning hoard of precious crystals, another good objective marker.

I also build this small ruined shrine, which will block Line of Sight but provides a good rallying point.

Those are the example pieces, and I`ll be sporadically be adding to the scenery collection for the demo, as I still have 9 months to get it all together.  I`ll probably buy a few Star Wars battlepacks during the summer sales on Amazon to boost the sci-fi part of the scenery, and then we are all set to go for this new adventure.