Favourite Minifigs: Sir Edmond of Orimault

He's a Lion knight. No... not those new Lion Knights. This fellow belongs to the oldest Lion Knights in the LEGO Castle genre: the 1984-1992 Legoland Castle "Lion Knights."



Of course, as you can see, this guy isn't straight out of a contemporary set, but a customized fig. He's made an appearance on the Internet before, as the rather minor character of Sir Edmond of Orimault, one of Princess Anne's suitors in the early chapters. His sword, helm, and breastplate comes from the now-defunct Little Armory, one of the earliest commercial LEGO customizers.



However, as you can see, the customization on Sir Edmond is not limited to what the Little Armory products I gave him. The pennant on his lance, his shield, and his torso all bear customized arms--based on the gold-rimmed classic Lion shield seen on this torso, and it is by limiting myself to these two colours (with the addition of greys and blacks) that we get this distinctly non-traditional Legoland Castle Lion Knight--a faction that defined itself by wearing red in opposition to its opponents, the Black Falcons.

Although I created the actual stickers seen on Sir Edmond, the templates were based on those created by Anthony Sava on Classic-Castle, and would likely not have appeared without them.


Also, in other news, look forward to daily updates from Aquazone Breakfast News over the next twenty-four days. Starting tomorrow, they present the 2011 City Advent Calendar!

Some Statistics

Unfortunately, Boston has been cloudy since I've been home, so today's post may be a bit more boring than it might have been in the weather had felt cheerier. Of course, I'm talking about statistics today, so it's possible that no amount of pictures would make that better. On the other hand, I don't think I would have decided to talk about some statistics if I had pictures...

Anyway, you've been duly warned.

I've been using Excel to keep a record of my LEGO collection for some years now. I had a paper record ca. 2000 that listed when I acquired all of my older sets, which remained current until about 2003-4ish (just before the Great Take Apart), and the current Excel document was started in 2007, so it's a mostly accurate record of when I acquired my sets, a completely accurate record of what sets I have, and has also developed into a bit of a statistical chart, as I keep track of the "ratings" my sets get.

Each set is evaluated on five criteria (developed on Classic-Castle in the course of reviewing Castle sets on the official review threads): Parts, Playability, Figs and their Accessories, Design, and "Nostalgia." Obviously, these are all open to subjectivity, and since the point of the whole exercise is more or less to figure which sets are my favourites, that's not really problematic. It's been interesting to compare where sets line up with Lugnet's rating system, and it would seem that (for the most part) once you average out my five criteria, you end up with fairly standard assessments. "Nostalgia" is the trickiest of the five, because while the other four aim for objectivity (while admitting it's a biased process), Nostalgia is there specifically to provide a category to account for sets that I really like (or dislike)... and can't give any good reason for.

On the basis of these statistics, I've also calculated the averages for each subtheme. The numbers are less fair here, since I've only evaluated sets that I own, so a theme with two small (and often mediocre) sets in my collection will probably not rate as well as a theme with 15 sets ranging from small to large, which in turn will not rate as well as a set with only one or two of the largest sets (which often get the best ratings from me). However, as a measure of "favourite," I think this list is fairly accurate, and it's as good a way as any of listing them.

Some other day I might go into a discussion of my favourite or least favourite sets, but for today we'll just look at the favourite and least favourite themes in my collection. Starting at the top, my favourite themes according to this criteria are:

1. Adventurers-the Egyptian Subtheme from 1998, with a 9.85 rating
2. Black Knights, ca. 1992, with a 9.3 rating
3. Designer (the large house sets from the 2000s-2010s), with a 9.25 rating
4. Imperial Guards, 1992-5, with a 9.0 rating
5. Legoland Castle, ca. late 1980s, with a 8.94 rating

The interesting thing about this list, is that the only theme from the 3rd Millennium is the Designer line, probably reflecting the fact that the earlier sets have a higher nostalgic quotient. Indeed, both the Black Knight and the Imperial Guards have been looked at as "Ones That Got Away," and Legoland Castle and the Egyptian Adventurer line would have counted as the same if I had not, in fact, caught them.

At the bottom of the list (of 86 distinctly considered themes--not including Bionicle, Technic, or Duplo) are the following:

82. Alpha Team-Mission Deep Sea, from 2002, with a 7.35 rating
83. Soccer, from the early 2000s, with a 7.25 rating
84. Aquasharks, from 1995-8, with a 7.25 rating (technically a tie with Soccer)
85. Xtreme Island Stunts, from the early 2000s, with a 7.15 rating
86. Junior Pirates, also from the early 2000s, with a 6.4 rating

I do not think it is coincidental that the bottom bunch of sets tends to hail from the early part of the 2000s, nor that Junior Pirates is so abysmally below the rest--Jack Stone would probably be there too, if I'd ever got a set from that line. The Aquasharks are perhaps unfairly in the bottom five, mostly due to the fact that I have only got two sets, and one of them is the abysmal Super Sub, also know as The Aquashark Dart, which has a 6.6 rating.

All of this only goes to show, perhaps, that I am either too much of a nerd or have way too much time on my hands... or both. But I doubt I'm the only one out there who has done anything like this.

Grandfather's Tale Character: Marcel of Flamond

Since one of the major purposes of this blog was as a vehicle to discuss my LEGO stories--a selfish purpose intended to help motivate me to stay on track with it a bit more--today's post introduces a new theme of posts that will appear from time to time: a discussion of the characters in the titular story, Grandfather's Tale.



Marcel of Flamond was introduced in Chapter 1 of Grandfather's Tale as the Lion soldier who comes with the 1463 Treasure Cart, who is doing what he does: carting treasure to Castle Montjoie, King's Mountain Fortress. He arrives there in Chapter 3 at the same time as the adventurers who bring news of the bad guys' impending attack, and so he is swept up in the story as the soldier who lucks into escaping the castle with Princess Anne and the adventurers, Giles and Humbert,

Thus far--that is, Chapter X, the extent of the published story--Marcel has sort of just been riding along, while the real leadership has been provided by Giles and later Rebecca. Princess Anne is equally inexperienced and untried, but because of her royal station she's been taking some stands of leadership already. Even in battle, Marcel has yet to do much, since he gets told to stay close to the Princess while Giles and Humbert deal with the Fright Knights, or to stand back while the Forestmen shoot down the enemy.

So what is the point of having Marcel in this ensemble-cast story?

Well, first of all, Grandfather's Tale is being written as I go along. I have ideas of where it'll end up, ideas that are changing as I go along, but it's hardly fully formed. Thus, originally, Marcel got included because I needed someone's point-of-view to follow, some fairly normal character in a world of heroes, royalty, and magicians who could provide a starting point for me. The decision to include Giles and Humbert, which came about a chapter later, meant that when they got thrown together directly in the flight from Castle Montjoie, it made dramatic sense to have Marcel and Giles clash--and since Giles was clearly an experienced hero, Marcel quickly became the young, inexperienced hero.

This was a bit of a turn-around, because Marcel was never intended to be inexperienced, precisely. He was intended to be a competent, disciplined soldier--young enough to have a story-arc and even fall in love (although I didn't decide if that would be with the Princess), but the inexperienced part fits. After all, why would a soldier whose chief duty is to cart taxes to the king's castle have a broad experience of an adventurer or royal? Thus, by the time we get to his inactivity in the Dark Forest, Marcel is deliberately being cast as "not contributing much," to provide a deliberate contrast for later chapters (as yet to come...) where he will grow into one of the main heroes. And, yes, the door for romance is still open.

So why did I pick Marcel specifically to be my hero? Obviously, I wanted to start with the classic Lion knights, which were my first Castle faction (King's Mountain Fortress was my first Castle set), but why did I start with the little fellow from Treasure Cart? Why not one of these guys:



The answer is that Marcel came with a sword. This made him the "favourite" of my Lion soldiers growing up, since my brother and I had a strict hierarchy of soldiers: swordsmen, axemen, spearsmen, archers, crossbownmen. Within this schema, Marcel (who only received a name when I started Grandfather's Tales) was the most highly favoured soldier. It was also a chance to introduce Treasure Cart, the set, for a brief moment of completion. As of Chapter X, we've also seen King's Mountain Fortress, Wolfpack Renegades, and Dungeon Master's Castle. Although the point of the story is not to focus on the sets; rather to use the sets to tell the story, I enjoy having the opportunity to include the sets, as integral nostalgic elements of my mental LEGO landscape.

Finally, although I King's Mountain Fortress and Treasure Cart, my brother only had Treasure Cart. Thus, for six years (six highly important years of childhood), until we each got the Guarded Inn, this soldier had a huge place in his collection as THE Lion soldier, and was eventually augmented with parts from an accessory pack or two to become a proper knight--a story arc or trajectory that may not be so different for the character in Grandfather's Tales, so it seemed appropriate.