6232 Skeleton Crew

Well, it's been forever and a day since I posted anything other than a comic here--and even longer since I reviewed a set! I can't say I foresee putting a lot of them up in the near future, but here's one anyway: the first set from my collection that I've rebuilt as a more-or-less standing addition to my permanent collection in a long time. It's a small set, mostly meriting a place among the "rebuilt" part my collection because it's a Pirate set--and I have a powerful nostalgia for Pirate sets.

I am speaking, as you can see from the picture below, of  6232 Skeleton Crew.

Skeleton Crew, despite being the smallest size of regular LEGO set (as opposed to impulse sets or polybags) that was available its day, has two minifigs: the sailor/pirate standing in front (who was known as "Billy" in my collection) and the skeleton bearing an Imperial Armada (conquistador) helm, lying prone behind him. This was the smallest Pirate set that released as part of the 1996 wave of sets that included the two Imperial Armada sets and a somewhat larger wave of Pirate sets proper. After seven years (1989-1995) of reusing the same Pirate designs against the largely similar Imperial soldiers and Imperial Guards, as well as against the strikingly dissimilar Islanders, LEGO produced a number of new faces and torsos for the Pirate faction in 1996, including both such elements on Billy.

I have long thought that this was one of the handsomest Pirates in my official LEGO collection, and the torso sported remains one of my favourite "historical" torsos, despite the fact that it's now seventeen years old. The head was part of a change in the mid-to-late 1990s from simple designs modelled around the classic Smiley to a much wider and versatile collection.

Nowadays, Skeleton Crew is worth picking up for Billy alone--throw in the conquistador helm, barrel, gold coin, and old grey bricks, and there's nary a piece here that isn't useful in large quantities. In my own collection, though Billy and his dead compadre have returned at last to their standard form, I've decided that Billy is no longer necessarily a Pirate. Obviously, he's no Imperial Guard or Armada soldier but, since he doesn't sport a patch eye, hook, peg leg, or the skull and crossbones, perhaps I can legitimately call him a non-Pirate. I'm running with that for now anyway.

6244 Armada Sentry

If the Armada line had included a second run, or even a larger first run, then my collection of Armada sets, which consists only of 6244 Armada Sentry would be slender enough to have merited the theme a spot on the list of "Ones That Got Away." As things stand, however, LEGO only ever released two sets in the Imperial Armada line, with three distinct figs, and a total of four figs overall. Less than half a dozen other Armada figs would appear in contemporary (1996 and 1997) Pirate sets.

Despite this very limited run, the Imperial Armada was a beautiful line, as LEGO's only foray into the era of the Renaissance--albeit in the Americas, under the auspices of the conquistadors. The minifig heads and torsos are excellent additions to Castle or Pirate collections (and useful elsewhere), and were never used in any other theme.



I got Armada Sentry for Christmas in 1996 from my grandparents, and I would remain the entirety of my Imperial Armada collection until the Bricklink era, when I eventually put together a second fig. In the meantime, I acquired enough of the helms to arm the Jayko Armada figs seen in this post. All told, though, my Armada faction is all of five-men strong, and remains based at the little fortified dock of Armada Sentry.

It's a lovely set, if a little one. For it's size, it contains a wonderful variety of pieces, nearly all of which (if not, in fact, all) are generally useful, including the green doors, which are exclusive to the set, and the 8x16 blue baseplate. Perhaps the least useful pieces one would find in acquiring multiples of the set are the 1x5x5 wall/window pieces, which tend not to be popular with advanced builders, but even those are far from "useless," merely "fewer uses."

KK2 in Hindsight

Yesterday I posted about LEGO of the last decade, and in one of my longer digressions, I wrote about Knight's Kingdom (2), or KK2 as it's more often known, and how it is among the most vilified Castle themes out there.

Certainly, when it came out, I was not a fan. I'm still not, really, although it's fair to note that I never managed to get my hands on any of the third year (2006), and I certainly acknowledge that the theme improved, and that it suffered unfairly from being the first new Castle theme in new grey--a double handicap if you consider the importance that grey brick has to a Castle builder.

One of the biggest complaints about KK2 is that it featured the most ridiculously coloured knights: solid red, solid green--and the archetypal evils of solid purple and solid baby blue.

However, I was looking at some figs standing on my bookcase today, and I was reminded of what an awesome colour light blue LEGO is--and reminded also that in the right context, any LEGO piece is useful. Perhaps KK2 wasn't the right context for Jayko and his troopers, but I feel like I've put some of his chess set to good purpose by making them conquistadors. They'd look just fine next to my Imperial Armada figs, don't you think?