Inspirational Lego # 87

Another hot monday here in Belgium, but here we are with our weekly selection of great builds I came across on the Internet.

And we start the week with a huge specship, which is only fitting as people are currently building for Shiptember again.

LL2016 in my mind's eye looks a bit of a carrier version of the Babylon 5 Hyperion cruiser, fortified by it's colourscheme.  Complete with opening baydoors and all, the picture of it's creator shows just how massive this vessel is!

Resting in the space theme, we have this mecha fighterjet, looking like it came straight out of an anime.

This is a cool build, of a robot looking at a sprue where he is build from...

More space in this episode, with the arrival of the Colonial Marines at the colony building, as we all know and love from the Aliens movie.

Next we have a massive Atlas tank.

Coming back to "our time", this is a gorgeous build of the french Clemenceau aircraft carrier.

Even further back in history we find this workshop of the great inventor himself, Leonardo DaVinci.

A classic saturday morning cartoon character from the 80s, we have Dungeon Master from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

This brickbuild figure of Rei from the Evangelion anime series looks just right.

The last build we have this week is this majestic Ironbelly dragon from the final Harry Potter movie.

And that's it again, see you all next week for another selection!

Weathertop display video

A small video I did for another one of my Lord of the Rings displays, Amon Sul (or Weathertop).

Known mostly for the attack of the Ringwraiths on Frodo and his fellow Hobbits, it was featured briefly in the The Hobbit movies as well.

And so we continue, slowly but steadily I`ll build my Middle Earth, and get it on film as well hehehe.

The Haul Report # 46

Another week, another stack of goodies for the collection :-)

Though it has been a really modest week this time round, as I`m more in the process at the moment of sorting stuff and with the ship moc being completed earlier this week.

This small lot was purchased on BrickLink because of the most recently added clubproject, Disney`fying a Star wars vehicle (though heck, isn`t it already a Disney vehicle these days?).  To that end, I bought some used instructions for the old Skyhopper, so I can go from there, and some small stuffsies to get to the minimum purchase requirement.

Another BrickLink parcel was the final sail I needed to complete my frigate earlier this week, so nothing to fancy about this one.

The last thingie I obtained where these two Indiana Jones russian soldiers and an uruk-hai, whom I traded for a Nightwing minifigure that was just lying around here anyways.

Nothing flashy or rare as such this time round, and until next week!

Life has a Way...

It happens all the time.  I guess one could call it the natural way of things, as life catches up and rambles all your plans.

Though in a way for me, big changes are on the horizon in a good way, as my legs are slowly getting better and I can try to get more productive again, which is something I relish.

Of course, that is going to have a major influence on my building time, and I`m going to be forced willing or not to be more focussed in the theme's I want to work around.  The past year has been marked with good intentions, and a lot of sidetracking as something else caught my fancy.

Now, I'm being "forced" a bit (okay, that is way to hard of a term) to refocus on my true Lego love, being the Tolkien-verse, and my attention, bar a few other projects I already commited to, will be turned on only that.  I have been checking my home made "map" of MOC's I wanted to build when I began again with Lego now 4 years ago, and I`m currently at 9 builds completed out of the 56 ones I want to make one day for Middle Earth.

Now, apart from those builds themselves, the entire map will in the end be made as a sort of "mosaic" around the mocs and displays I'll eventually have put together, but we are talking 36 square meters of build once all is finished, as the 48x48 baseplate is the "metric unit" on which everything will be based.  Needless to say, this is a 10 year plan if not longer hehehe.

Unfortunatly, this means I`m going to scrap some other projects I wanted to try, but heck, if that is what it takes, so be it.  Quinnsville for example will remain "intact" until I need the space it currently occupies, and the sci-fi convention builds will be good for 1 year of "touring", after that I`m taking them apart to refill my brick boxes for Middle Earth building.

But on the short term, I better invest in another 3 Fellowships and 2 sets of Thorin's Company before they become unpayable...

Ow, for those curious, this is the map I was talking about, drawn the first time said years ago.  Blue circles are "events" I want to build, and will be a mix and match of microbuilds, vignettes, set displays and pure mocs, while those filled in with red are already completed (see "LEGO Middle Earth" at the top of the blog).

Yes, this used to be called LEGO mocs, but I`m cleaning that all out at the moment and only putting the Middle Earth builds there still, making it a bit easier and more oversightfull for myself as well :-)

Well, time to scour the internet for some minifigures, cheerios!

The Rabbit of Caerbannog

Okay, I admit this MOC wasn`t planned nor foreseen at all.  Consider it an accident that I actually build this...

Well, there is of course a story to that, and it goes something like this (enter Run DMC music).

I was actually building a part of a cave entrance for a Tolkien MOC I`m building, and in the meantime it was Monthy Python and the Holy Grail on my television.  When they came to the cave sequence (Run awaaay!) I saw that the thing I was putting together so far resembled the entrance of the scene a bit.

I went into my box of Friends animals, and grabbed one the cute little rabbits, added some grisly pieces to it and the poor half eaten knight and voila... the famous killerbunny stood on my desk.

Now, the actual cavern is the first layer of a hill in progress, but for now I'm going to leave it like this and take it along to FACTS next month, before removing the skeletal pieces and the rabbit in order to build it up further to what it is supposed to become ;-)

But for now, prepare the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch!

The first Draft in two years...

Well, it happened.  I wetn out and played Magic the Gathering again for the first time in over two years, going to my regular spot, Outpost Gamecenters in Antwerp to do a Draft.

Now, a LOT has changed apparently with new mechanics, new block rotation cycles, new Mulligan rules... so this was going to be a study round, expecting a 0-3 as I knew about zilch of the cards in play at the moment.

So I went with a plan, namely to draft weenie beasties and just go for all out attack.  The rules there have also changed, in that you know "keep what you draft" compared to the pickings of the Rares afterwards.

My first booster gave me a Blue Mythic, nice, and I decided to keep it just because, well, it was a Mythic.  Not the greatest around though, but heck, if it`s mythic, it`s tradeable!

I was rather proud of myself that I "read" the draft, the guy on my left going red / white, the guy on my right going green / white... and cursed for it, because I quickly got this card:

I would have loved to have played that, and while I did get a few good black cards, in the end I only had a measly 3 whites.  Blue on the other hand came through by the droves, and I drafted a mono-blue deck in the end.

Which didn`t work at all, the curve being to high.  So after a 2-0 loss to Willem who fielded green white humans with some nasty flipping beasts.  I switched out a couple of blues, and exchanged 6 of my 17 islands for swamps, splashing in black.

The second game against Philip this actually worked, the little skulkers, flyers and the witch killing him slowly while my black zombie and the two gheist walls held off most he could throw with his lifelink white greens.  A 2 - 1 win in the end and I was onwards to actually play for thethird place in our pool and the booster of price support.

This was against Jim, another opponent I knew for years, and his red / green deck.  While the first game was very close, the second was a quick kill as he had his Dragon out, together with a werewolf that fires damage if he is blocked or blocking... game set match 2 - 0


In the end though, I came out 10th overall on 14 players, and obtained my first 4 Planeswalker Points in a VERY long time, just glad I wasn`t smashed left to right due to my "50 Shades of Rustedness", and the best of it was that I had fun while playing :-)

Loot wise, it wasn`t the greatest of drafts, as bar the blue mythic I only got a blue Rare, but I did pride myself that this time round I interpreted the "signals" correctly, never been my strongpoint before.

Now, this time round it will be a very casual career though, the Lego staying on the first place by far, but it`ll give me a "socialising" venue once in a while again...

HMS Pendragon

"Quinnsville ahoy!!!" the lookout yelled down from his position high in the front mast. 

"Excellent" admiral Thornmorckton commented.  "This was a smooth journey, double rations of rum to the crew!"

As cheers erupted, Thornmorckton couldn`t stop pondering about the orders he had received.  He was to take the HMS Pendragon, a 6th rate ship of the line, to the small colony of Quinnsville, though he had to admit that the local mayor, Smaugton, was seemingly doing a fantastic job as it was growing steadily in size, more and more colonists flocking to the Banner of the White Bra.

But it was the intention of command to put the big ship there, and to bolster the fleet that has been building up there, and existed mainly as a defence force of former privateer ships.  He was to take command of that little fleet of driftwood, and organise the defences of the harbour.

But why?  There was a naval base nearby, though from the information he had received it seemed that the commander there even considered just visiting it's older neighbour beneath his stature.  Yet, the island seemingly thrived on the export of coffee- and cacaobeans, and while those are exotic goods, he couldn`t imagine what was brewing that a ship of the line needed to be positioned there.

No, something definitly was brewing, and he hoped the major would fill him in further, as he was apparently not on a need to know basis from high command...

She's ready at last, my 6th Rate frigate, complete with the historical accurate gun number of 24 (6th rates carried 24 - 32 guns).  Took my quite a while to build her, but I`m might glad with the result.

For now, she will be moored in Quinnsville for the BoBS game, as the class 6 and above aren`t available yet for licensing, and save up the gold to do so when they are.

Hope you like her, for Queen and Corrington!

Classic Lego Build: 7009 The Final Joust

Another Castle set today, as we get one of the Fantasy range of sets, released in 2007.

Albeit small at 50 odd pieces, is does come with some great minifigures as this set tells the tale of the undead knight and the heroic knight jousting it out.

They also come with their mounts, a heavily barded one for our hero, and a black skeletal horse for the undead.

We start the jousting barrier on a 2x3 brown plate.

By the way of grey arched bricks, these are conneted to each other along the whole length of the barrier.

Using gold top elements and dark blue jumpers, decorations are added.

We also build a small weapons rack for this set, using brown corner plates as feet and decorations along the style of the jousting barrier.

And the full set completed:

It`s a simple set, but apart from the blue jumpers and the golden triangles, also features some excellent minifigures, making it worth the purchase.

Inspirational Lego # 46

Hey guys and galls, here we are again with a selection of great builds found on the internet.

Now, my life is going to get a big turn-around soonish, but that`s for another post, so let`s get drooling over these pretty mocs.

We begin with an awesome looking space hangar in the Friends theme, including a cute "pink" Colonial Viper.

Next we have this great rendition of the Pokemon Aerodactyl, a classic all the way from the original games.

Age of LEGO is a build based on all those RTS games out there, where you build villages, resources etc etc and it just looks mighty cool.

The Battle of the Blackwater is one of the most epic scenes in the Game of Thrones television series, and it's beautifully rendered in this microscale build.

Briki Tiki is a hommage to the Islanders subtheme from the Pirate line, I just love that huge brick build brick they worship.

This cliffside by Simon S from Guilds of Historica is amazing in how the slope has been achieved.

A lovely desert dwelling is the next build I wanted to share with all of you.

A saucer made of bricks instead of plates makes this a smooth build of the Excelsior.

This Harry Potter moc showcases the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, as seen in the second movie of the franchise.

Finally this week, there is this spooky flaming red skull, which is a great piece of lego sculpturing.

Well, that`s it again for this week, see you all next week with a fresh selection!