2012: A Year in Review

Last January, I made a year-in-review post and today I'm going to do that again. So here was my 2012:

LEGO Set of the Year:

In 2011 the top set that I acquired was unequivocally Medieval Market Village, and in 2012 I acquired its immediate successor, 10223 Kingdoms Joust, which is an equally impressive set, and taken set-by-set was probably the most impressive or iconic set that I acquired in 2012--but I don't think it was the Set of the Year for my collection. That distinction belongs to 9472 Attack on Weathertop.

As I blogged about when I first got it, Attack on Weathertop was my first Lord of the Rings LEGO set, and I was deeply impressed with it--more impressed than I expected to be before I opened it. It's well-designed, has excellent minifigs, a great parts selection, and best of all (from a Tolkien fan standpoint) it's set in Middle-earth. Although if you told me to pick one set only, I would probably take Kingdoms Joust simply because it is so much larger, it would not be without a longing backwards glance at Attack on Weathertop, and within the context of 2012 being the year the Lord of the Rings LEGO was first released, it is a worthy Set of the Year.  

LEGO Theme of the Year:

Last year the Collectible Minifigs were my Theme of the Year and on the basis of simple volume, they would make a compelling case again this year. The Dino and Monster Fighters themes that came out in 2012 were both excellent original themes on LEGO's part, though I have but a single set, with a single minifig, between them. NinjaGo continued to be a major presence in the LEGO world as well, but was barely a blip on my radar. All that I bought this year in any sort of quantity were Collectible Minifigs and Lord of the Rings LEGO. Part of this was due to financial considerations. What with the expenses of getting married and then waiting unemployed to get my green card, I did not have the disposable income for most of the year to spend on LEGO. A Collectible fig here or there, and a few VIP points-fuelled Lord of the Rings sets were all I could afford. (The Kingdoms Joust, referenced above, was a very early purchase indeed--all the way back in last January.) And with that in mind, the clear champion theme this year was the Lord of the Rings.

When LEGO announced that it had acquired the license and was developing sets, I feared the worst, which is to say sets as forgettable as the entire Pirates of the Caribbean line. What I got--and yes, this may have something to do with my status as a Tolkien fan--was another Star Wars line, and I daresay I said enough good things above when talking about Attack on Weathertop to explain my decision for naming the Lord of the Rings my Theme of the Year.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

 Last year I declined to name a Collectible Minifig as my Fig of the Year, and I'm going to again this year, but it's worth noting that there was no real stand-out minifig addition to my LEGO-verse this year. It did not change drastically this past year due largely to the fact that "REAL LIFE" things kept a focus on the story side of LEGO to a largely background position. Among those that did get some sort of attention was the Black Falcon knight (redux), who comes with Kingdoms Joust.

MOC of the Year:

This is a new category, and one that I think I may not have included last year due (among other things) to the fact that I haven't made a lot of MOCs over the past few years--and certainly haven't posted many online. But I make a few this year, and even managed to post a couple. The one that says "2012!" more than any other was not a complex MOC; indeed it was quite simple... but I made 75 copies of each half.

Other Thoughts...

In general, 2012 was dominated by becoming an adult. I graduated with my Masters degree, I got married, and my wife and I went through the wranglings of getting my Green Card. All of this kept LEGO to the sidelines--but the sidelines are where LEGO has been in my life for years, and it's a comfortable place. LEGO had a chance to be centre-stage as favours. at my wedding and was there as part of solace during the long wait for my work permit. In general it was a Castle/Lord of the Rings sort of year. I've always been a Castle fan first, but this year there was little room for anything else, and the fantasy angle had the opportunity for a lot of attention with the new Middle-earth lines, attention that I foresee persisting into the next year as more Hobbit sets come out and find their way into my collection. That was my 2012 in LEGO... what was yours?

Problem Minifigs: More on Johnny Thunder

Over a year ago, I posted (linkie!) about Johnny Thunder as a minifig, calling him a "problem minifig." The particular definition that I was going for was that, although he's an attractive minifig by himself, he's a difficult fig to assimilate in multiple copies to one's collection. This is a problem with hero, villain, or other "character" minifigs because they've been designed to stand out, unlike "soldier figs," who are conducive to army-building by their very nature. As far as problem minifigs go, Johnny Thunder is by no means the most problematic. The post from last year showed how I've incorporated the five Johnny Thunders of my collection into new forms; this post will go further and deal with other "Johnnies" I've had to deal with. These other Johnnies come from two sources: Soccer sets (3420 and 3406) and the Knights' Kingdom (2) chess set, 678. Before I get to the fates of these eleven minifigs, however, I'll deal briefly with a duplicate Johnny head that entered my collection via Bricklink last summer. It may be wondered why I ordered a Johnny head at all, when these posts show that I have more Johnny heads than I need; the answer is an illustration in the economy of Bricklink: in order to replace a minifig that was part of a stolen bag last summer, I needed a Johnny torso, and it was more expedient for me to buy the whole fig than just the head. The discarded extra head, however, did not stay discarded long, and soon found a job on the police force:

It will be noted, at least, that this redundant Johnny is at least a Johnny 2.0, of which there are fewer in my collection--not least because the 11 Johnnies-that-did-come-as-a-Johnny are all the original versions. Eight came as Shadow Knight pawns in the chess set; the other three are members of soccer teams. Here is a group shot of the 11 duplicates, in their new roles:

It is easy to see here how Johnny-heads are not useless, despite being something of a "problem." Four of them--the four in the back--retain, more or less, the identities they possessed when they arrived in my collection: three soccer players and a Shadow Knight--though there have been some trades in the Soccer league. The major difference is that I did not keep the other seven Shadow Knights as they were. Three have joined other Castle armies: Dragon Master, Royal Knight, and Shadow Knight. Two more have joined other historical themes, Imperial Guard and Wild West cavalry. Joined with three of the extra Johnnies in last year's post who were added to historical (Castle and Pirate) themes, this shows an overwhelming preference for using Johnny's be-follicled face for minifigs who predate modern razors. They don't work uniformly well--I don't think the Dragon Master wears his mustache quite so well as the Imperial Guard, for example, but they do work. In much the same way, Johnny's face can be used in science fiction settings, such as the Aquanaut and Blacktron (1) figs shown here. I don't think Johnny works quite as well in a futuristic setting, but it isn't completely incongruous, possibly because Johnny's facial hair is well-kept and not overly lurid--though maybe more lurid would work better, if one went for more of a "large ham" and less of a "Starfleet" sort of look. Meanwhile, what does the Shadow Knight army look like these days?

Well, in keeping with the original Shadow Knight and with the Johnny-Shadow Knights of the Chess Set, there is a strong tendency towards facial hair among this newer, more diverse cast of soldiers. Nor is this quite the entire army--just the eight soldiers who more or less take their origins from the Chess Set pawns. Coming someday... what about Johnny's shirts? Johnny's hats? Other Shadow Knight heads? The list of Problem Minifig examples are endless, and I'm sure will be discussed again.

1843 Space/Castle Value Pack

It's been a busy few weeks and not a lot of posts here, and LEGO has been in the background of life. That said, I've picked up some new LEGO here that hasn't made its way onto this blog yet. One of those sets was Set 1843, a unique Castle/Space value pack set from 1996.



My motivation for acquiring this value pack is rooted in my love for both Spyrius and Royal Knights, the two featured themes. On the Royal Knight side, 1843 was the last set I needed for my collection, following a Bricklink hunt a couple years ago. On the Spyrius side... this is only the second Spyrius set in my collection, though I've been collecting minifigs and parts piecemeal for years.

I'm not sure which half of this set I like more, though I suspect the Spyrius would win. The Royal Knight catapult is one of the nicer catapults out there and matches the blue colour-scheme of 6044 King's Carriage, but when you get right down to it, there are a LOT of catapults in LEGO's catalogue.

Mind you, there are also a lot of spaceships in LEGO's catalogue, but although this Spyrius fighter isn't full of inventive parts usage, but it is a fairly unique design and a rather attractive one--and swooshable, which counts for a lot.

Favourite Minifigs: Black Falcon 2.0

With a hefty balance of VIP points accumulated, and a healthy number of giftcard LEGO Store dollars in Christmas presents, I headed out to the LEGO Store a couple weeks ago, and I came back with 10223 Kingdoms Joust, which was very exciting. This post will not go into that excellent, excellent set, but will only look at one of the minifigs--a minifig that caused immense excitement on Classic-Castle, because of his shield.



Yes, my friends, that is a Black Falcon.

The Black Falcons were, with the original Lion Knights, one of the two original factions of Legoland Castle (1984-1992). As such, they are more than qualified to be considered "Classic" Castle, the Yellow Castle notwithstanding. Unlike the Lions, which saw their heraldic reincarnated at least three times thereafter (four, if you're willing to count the Morcia lion), the Black Falcons never really returned (again, unless you count Morcia--but no one *I* know counts Jayko's Talonjay as a Black Falcon province). What is more, while most redone Lions featured new colour-schemes and completely revisited shield designs (for example, the red-blue-white Royal Knight lion head has little in common with the classic lion, beyond having a lion), the Black Falcon shield here is very obviously a take-away from the original black falcon shield.

The reverse-image falcon in black/white (silver, in heraldic terms) has been retooled slightly, but the family image is unmistakable, and for simple nostalgic reasons, its bearer is currently one of my favourite figs. He's been very slightly modified, with his original dark green plume replaced with a white one. In the set, the dark green plume helps make the knight match his dark green and black tent, which I assume is that colour to make it compatible with the current Lion Knights' rivals, the dark green-flavoured Dragon Knights. Indeed, my Dragon Knight from 7187 Escape from Dragon's Prison has already moved in and taken over the tent. This freed me up to give the Black Falcon a white plume. I considered giving him a dark blue plume, in honour of the blueness of the classic Black Falcons, but white seemed more appropriate.

It's also worth nothing that while the barding of the Black Falcon knight here lacks any specific Falcon heraldry, it is still the first "Black Falcon barding" the LEGO Company has made, and the lack of definite heraldry only makes it more generically useful.

2011: A Year in Review

Inspired by this post on Gimme LEGO, and by the prevalence of "Year in Review" things in general that crop up at this time of year, I've decided to take a look at some of the things that were the best in my LEGO life of the past year.

LEGO Set of the Year:

There can be little doubt, I think, that the most amazing set I acquired in 2011 was Medieval Market Village. Released in 2008, this set is the almost-uncontested pinnacle of LEGO's Castle design thus far. Some of the Kingdoms sets of the past year went a long way towards incorporating some of the magic of Medieval Market Village into the more everyday sets of the theme, but this enhances rather than detracts from the Market Village's prestige.



So why was the Market Village my set of the year, rather than a 2011 set? Were the 2011 sets that bad? No, not at all; on the contrary, LEGO put out some amazing sets in 2011. The thing is, however, that 2011 was not a year about expanding out into new things in my collection, but of consolidating what I had. In the first few months of the year, I rebuilt a number of sets that hadn't been constructed since the Great Take-apart of 2004. In my trips to the LEGO store, I've focused more on smaller sets, mystery bags, and the pick-a-brick, with an eye towards increasing my liquid parts supply than to broaden my set horizon. Medieval Market Village was the only outstanding set that I got that I can say with a high degree of certainty will not be taken apart. This trend towards consolidation was increased in mid-summer when I had a number of minifigs stolen, and my Bricklink orders which had already been focused on finding parts to rebuild long-dismantled sets became additionally focused on replacing lost figs.

LEGO Theme of the Year:

Hands down, the Collectible Minifigs were my Theme of the Year. This was the second year LEGO had been releasing collections, and 2011 was nowhere near as frenzied as 2010 had been, when shortages of Series 1 and 2 led to mad scrambles by LEGO fans and exorbitant repurchase fees on Bricklink. By contrast, Series 3 through 5 were easy to find and remained present in stores for a generous amount of time. That said, however, I only bought two collectible minifigs in 2010, both off Bricklink, discouraged by the difficulty of finding them. In 2011, however, I caught the bug.



The Elf was the one who started it. When I picked him up in January, I was still in "old me" mode, which told me that I was only going to pick up one or two per release. The problem, if I may call it that, is that I did so well identifying him by feel that I wanted to do it again, and believe it or not that was the trick: I got hooked on the success of grabbing the one I wanted... and I've yet to disappoint myself. And the numbers are telling: a year ago I had 2 Collectible Minifigs and today I have 32.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

This is the hardest category to pick yet... and turning to the Collectible Minifigs is, the last category notwithstanding, not going to provide the solution. As many Collectible Minifigs as I bought, none of them has definitively stood apart as the Minifig of the Year.



Instead, I'll recognise Lucien and Alex from Aquazone Breakfast News as the Minifigs of the Year, for the simple reason that 2011 was the year that my focus on Minifigs and their accoutrements took a significant step from the realm of game-play to the realm of storytelling. Grandfather's Tale, the year before, had already begun the process, but Aquazone Breakfast News took it a step further. More importantly, AqBN has been an ongoing commitment, and because of its weekly nature (daily, in December) was the most constant element in my LEGO life.

Other Thoughts...

2011 was a major shifting year for me. This blog was a large component of that shift, as the recognition of Lucien and Alex may already suggest. Also too, the new emphasis on consolidation, rather than expansion, has seen an increase in the time I spend on LEGO, rather than a decrease, as might be expected. Filling out the corners of my existing LEGO-verse and LEGO collection has been a more focused, and more attainable, goal than simply keeping up with each year's new round of themes.

2011 was also the year that I realised that my fiancée (girlfriend, at the start of last year) was not going to be a one-time LEGO purchaser, but that she had it in her to be a rather significant LEGO fan herself. I have yet to visit the Braintree LEGO Store without her, and she's spent probably as much money there as I have. So far, she's more of a collector, especially of the cooler licensed sets, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

And that was my LEGO 2011--what was yours?

Lord of the Rings and LEGO - Part Three

When I wrote my first two posts, several months ago, about The Lord of the Rings and LEGO, I did not expect to be writing a third, but breaking news in the last couple days has changed that.

Coming 2012, the LEGO Company is releasing a new line of minifig-scale sets, based on the upcoming Hobbit movies and their decade-old Lord of the Rings predecessors. This is probably the biggest news in LEGO licensing since Star Wars LEGO came out in 1999, because more than with any other work of literature or film, LEGO fans have spent spent the past decade either bemoaning the fact that LEGO hadn't acquired the LotR licence or arguing that such a licence was unnecessary, and possibly even undesirable.

Well, the debate about whether LEGO should get the licence has just taken a completely new turn, and a lot of people, LEGO fans and otherwise, are excited about what this means. For myself, however, I am at best cautiously interested. I am not excited, probably because I was always on the side of feeling a licence was unnecessary.

As a Tolkien fan, I don't think that LEGO sets based off the already-derivative movies are going to be the be-all and end-all of the LEGO experience. I have problems with some of Peter Jackson and Team's decisions in portraying The Lord of the Rings, and even where I don't, I feel that his interpretation is only one among many possible interpretations--and I'm not a big fan of making it into "the" interpretation.

Secondly, as a LEGO fan, I'm not a big fan of licensed themes. I don't like flesh-toned figs in place of yellow figs (though there are moments when the variety is nice), and I don't like the overpricing that comes from purchasing the licence--an overpricing that is often associated with mediocre or weak set designs. Not always--some Star Wars and most of the Indiana Jones sets were really well done... but I cannot say that same for Pirates of the Caribbean.

Does this mean I don't see potential here? Of course not. I am excited about the likelihood of new weapon moulds, new Castle-valuable parts, and lots of foliage. Even if the product is less-than-Tolkien, it should still add a lot of interesting new parts to my Castle collection. In all probability, I will acquire more of these sets than I have of many themes of late, simply because everyone knows me as the LEGO guy *and* as The Lord of the Rings guy. But I'm not getting overly excited ahead of time, and I'm definitely not getting my hopes up.

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!

Two New Kingdoms Sets

First off, my apologies for continuing to fall off the face of the Earth, even though it's no longer summer. School has been great, but it's also been busy, but that's not the real reason I've been tardy in the posting. The real reason is that I'm really not proud of the pictures I've been taking of my new acquisitions, so I've been putting off having anything to do with them. However, I have now bitten the bullet and will round out the sets acquired--rather a long time ago, now.

Both the sets I'm looking at today are from the current line of "Castle" LEGO, the Kingdoms theme, which is in its second year. The sets of this second wave were released over the summer, and I picked up two of them. The first is 6918 Blacksmith Attack, the smallest in the wave.



There have been many Castle blacksmiths over the years, from the original 6040 Blacksmith Shop in 1984, to the fan-designed set by Dan Siskind, 3739 Blacksmith Shop, the recent Medieval Market Village, and a couple others. As sets go, Blacksmith Attack isn't the stand-out best that has ever featured a blacksmith, but it has its perks.

In terms of design, Blacksmith Attack most strongly resembles the smithy portion of Medieval Market Village, and it is naturally going to lose out to that masterful set in most categories, except for affordable size. The blacksmith himself, however, is new, with a new torso and a black cowl not seen since the 1996 Dark Forest sets. The other fig is a more-or-less standard Dragon Knight, who I note with approval has a shield (unlike his predecessor in 2010's 7950 Knights' Showdown.

The real departure for Blacksmith Attack (other than simply being a cheap blacksmith set--most of the other examples are in rather pricey sets) is the inclusion of the Heroica weapons. Designed for one of LEGO's boardgames, this set of six-weapons-on-a-sprue are slightly smaller than most minifigure scale weapons, and I don't personally like any of them as much as I like the equivalent "classic" minifigure weapon. Nonetheless, they provide some variety, and I definitely think they have a place. Speaking for myself, I can see them being quite helpful for distinguishing Hobbit-scale weapons from Man-scaled.



The second Kingdoms set that I bought, which also came out this summer, is 7187 Escape from Dragon's Prison. Much like Blacksmith Attack, Escape from Dragon's Prison belongs to a pedigreed "type" of Castle set, namely the "mid-range size, Castle wall" type of set, which goes back to
1984's 6061 Siege Tower, and has had a number of reinterpretations over the years. As such sets go, Escape from Dragon's Prison is not a terrible wall, but it is a little weak on the ground floor, where one can shoot an arrow or toss a spear right through the bars of the prison--admittedly, this would probably kill one's captured vassals or allies.

The real reason to buy Escape from Dragon's Prison is the parts and the figs. It is a respectable army-builder, with four figs, none of whom are individualized hero, king, or wizard figs. I was a bit disappointed that LEGO included two Lion Knights and only two Dragon Knights. I would have preferred a single captured Lion and three Dragons, but that's because I have other sets. I suppose that from LEGO's perspective, one has to assume that the kidlings getting this set don't have any other minifigs they can draft, so if they only get one little Lion and he's captured, it's game over--hence the need for a second Lion fig to rescue him.

This minor disappointment is made up for by the impressiveness of the lead Dragon Knight, who I feel I can rightly say is *the* Dragon Knight:



The dark pearl euro visor, new-designed printing on the dark pearl euro armour, new Dragon Knight barding, and new Dragon Knight kite shield (and, I believe, new head--though I'm not sure about that one) make the Dragon Knight here *the* Castle fig of the year to beat.

CCRP: A LEGO Story-Telling Retrospective - Part 2

Earlier this week I delved back into my initial history as a member of the Classic-Castle Roleplay, and a look at my original main characters. Today I want to run through the main characters that cropped up over the following years (with an eye to whether and how they might appear in Grandfather's Tale).

For the first few months, my characters stuck to themselves, with some light interaction with the other players. The first "local" characters to introduce themselves were Dragon Masters. Elbadar was one of these:



Elbadar was definitely the Dark Horse candidate to become a major character among the ensemble that was my CCRP cast. He was a minor character, second string to another Dragon Master (played by another RPer) who had command of the Dragon Master regiment that the Sorcerer-King acquired. As such, he ought to have been a bad guy, but he turned out to be a wily, mostly honourable character who formed a real friendship with Bernard Quorandis--aka "the guy with Elwen in this picture:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif



Bernard Quorandis, Captain-General of the Imperial Cavaliers and Viscount of Quoran, was introduced into the plot with the idea that he would eventually be Elwen's love interest. However, he was soon swept away into the massive black hole of a plot called The BloodVaine Epic, which also swallowed up Sir Dractor, Elwen, Elbadar, and most of my characters, completely derailing my original Sorcerer-King/Old Man plot for over six months. This was for the best, though, because Bernard Quorandis and Elbadar would never have become friends otherwise, and it is unlikely that Elbadar would have surprised me otherwise, and become the near-hero he ended up as.

There was also a third new character who joined Elwen and the Sorcerer-King on their quest for the Wizardsbane: Sir Jayko Falconensis:



The CCRP started in 2004, the same year KK2 was released and thus right during the maelstrom of ridicule that line received on Classic-Castle as a result of juniorisation and rainbow-coloured knights. Jayko, as the "baby blue" or "barbie blue" knight--and as the canonical protagonist--came in for what might have been the most criticism. My decision to include him as a character at that time meant that he was a rather buffoonish character--at first. It took over a year, but Jayko was to eventually have a "redemption" plot. This was partly underway when the CCRP collapsed, and would have eventually seen Jayko and Elbadar's plots intertwine as my chief secondary plot (secondary to that of Sir Dractor).

All three of these characters have yet to appear in Grandfather's Tale, but it is safe to say that if I ever visit their factions in any detail in that story, they will soon appear. Jayko, in particular, because he already exists as an official LEGO minifig, will certainly appear if KK2 does--the only question is whether KK2 will appear. Elbadar is likely to appear as one of the marshals of the Dragon Master army, although I don't know when; and Sir Bernard has been the unofficial general of my Classic LEGO Castle armies for years.

In the next CCRP update, I'll look at the second generation of heroes.

CCRP: A LEGO Story-Telling Retrospective - Part 1

Having packed all my LEGO up for the summer (to sit, well-packaged in my future father-in-law's barn) while I return to Canada without 99% of it has made it difficult to come up with topics to write about--and the crazy humidity that comes with living on the ocean from the perspective of a deep-inland prairie boy has utterly drained me of any sort of ambition.

Fortunately, my lazy wanderings in the past few days took me back to a place in my LEGO history that bears writing about, namely the Classic-Castle Roleplay (2004-2006).

The Classic-Castle Roleplay--the first, and most successful, of what would actually be three roleplayed stories under that name--was started on Classic-Castle's Gaming Forum in 2004, only a month or two before I joined the forums as a user. By the time I got involved in the Roleplay, about a month after I joined the site, it had gone through its first major phase (the "Misfits" era), and was ramping up towards what would eventually be its most massive--although in most opinion NOT most enjoyable--epic. Now, I don't plan on giving a blow-by-blow of a five-year-defunct online story written ostensibly about LEGO people (its completed epics are available in the Archives, anyway); rather, I want to look at its role as a major part of my storytelling history.

The Roleplay (and it was the Roleplay for a good year and a half for me) came to me at a time when my LEGO-writing projects (a series of stories in homemade book form that spanned my late childhood and adolescent years) was coming to an end. Given that the Roleplay absorbed massive amounts of my creative output over the next couple years, it's very easy for me to say that it succeeded and replaced my earlier, private LEGO world, and was in many steps clearly a forerunner to the public, LEGO-based storytelling I now attempt in the form of Grandfather's Tale and Aquazone Breakfast News.



The three figures just pictured were my initial protagonists, and looking at where they came from, it's clear that my initial ambitions were simple: get my toes wet in the collaborative-writing pool, and not work too hard at anything TOO serious. From left to right, the characters are: Sir Aethelred Dractor, "the Old Man," and Elwen dan Raleigh. They were joined by my initial villain, the Sorcerer-King:



The Sorcerer-King is a name that will be familiar to readers of Grandfather's Tale, because it was the name I assigned to the evil wizard from the 2007 Castle line. The Roleplay character, however, although he gave his name to the later wizard when I being lazy, was originally an import from my "epic"--my only serious and non-LEGO attempt at creative world-building. The Old Man was an import from the same world, though I called him "the Old Man" specifically to avoid using his real name in my epic, because I didn't want the name stolen. Although it was not a LEGO-based epic, I did have a go at recreating its characters in LEGO form, as can be seen in this Brickshelf gallery. I should warn anyone curious enough to go there that it was http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmy very first Brickshelf subfolder, and contains my oldest surviving attempts at LEGO photography.

Because the Old Man and the Sorcerer-King were both on loan non-canonically from my non-LEGO epic, it was inevitable that they would eventually leave Dametreos (as the world of the CCRP was known, in honour of its creator), but it would be take me close to a year before I was finished with their plots--partly because I took my time, and partly because they got swept into other stories along the way. Neither was a particularly memorable character: the Old Man was a fairly standard old wizard and the Sorcerer-King was your garden variety evil-wizard king (albeit he was the Dragon rather than the Big Bad, to link to TV-Tropes. Their main saving graces, in my opinion, is that I didn't try to go over-the-top with either of them, but made their plot more of a private battle than an all-out, Lord of the Rings-esque war. Whether their "mysterious pasts" (kept mysterious so as to preserve the solitude of my non-LEGO epic) helped them or not, I don't know.

Sir Dractor and Elwen were also imports from the non-LEGO epic, according to the backstories I gave them for the CCRP, but neither had ever belonged to it before. Elwen was a freshly-minted character, with a vaguely-LotR-sounding first name, and a last name borrowed from a Royal Knight character. She was included in an early attempt at gender-balanced not only the LEGO-verse, but my stories. Unfortunately in that respect, she was approximately as run-of-the-mill as the Old Man or the Sorcerer-King. As a 17-year-old boy, and a nerd at that, I certainly had no idea how to write a woman--let alone a warrior woman with a bit of a tragic past. To my credit, I can reread most of what I wrote, and not cringe... but the flipside of that coin is that most of what I reread about Elwen is rather forgettable.

All of which left Sir Dractor as the most successful of my original four characters. Like the Old Man and the Sorcerer-King he pre-existed the CCRP, but unlike them he did not originally belong to the world of my non-LEGO epic. Instead, he was imported almost directly from the world of my earlier LEGO stories, based directly on the sets. Sir Dractor, you see, was originally a Royal Knight, who came with my 6090 Royal Knight's Castle. Sir Dractor was the knight in red, on the brown horse, and because he was a Royal Knight character with a Dragon Master head, he had a long history in my LEGO legendarium of standing out in the crowd. In some very early games or stories, he was the villainous rebel against the Royal Knight king's rule; in later years, he was something of a Worf-esque Klingon: a noble barbarian who had joined the good guys.

It's kind of funny looking back to think that Sir Dractor was the character who was most successfully written, because he was every bit as much of a cliché as the others: he was a talented warrior with almost unbelievable skills--and tough as nails. In one memorable crowning moment of awesome, he was hit by a catapult stone and got back up to fight.

Sir Dractor is also the character from the CCRP most likely to reappear in Grandfather's Tale at some point--not counting the reappearance of the Sorcerer-King's name. This is not so much because of his success as a CCRP character as it is because of his original roots: as he was originally a knight with my Royal Knight's Castle, it is probable that he will return there if/when Grandfather's Tale brings me in the direction of the Royal King's court. The Old Man is going to make an appearance in the background of Chapter 12 (which, with Chapter 11, has already been photographed and will be finished some time this summer), but is unlikely to have a speaking role.

Favourite Sets: 1491 Dual Defender

Rounding out the Black Knight theme that has occupied my thoughts around here of late, is a "favourite" set, 1491 Dual Defender, which was also the fourth LEGO set in my collection, and since it was a Christmas present, it rounds out my first year of LEGO, which began the year before, at Christmas 1992.

Dual Defender is a catapult set, one of MANY the LEGO company has made over the years. I'm not at all sure how realistic it would be considered, but it's more aesthetically pleasing than my most of the catapults that were released in the decade of the 2000s, and because it was my very first catapult, I'm more fond of it than of pretty much any other.



A reader familiar with the set will note from this picture that the minifigs have been slightly modified. That is, instead of having blue legs with black hips, they now have white legs with black hips. This is a post-Great-Take-Apart decision. In light of their honoured status in my LEGO collection as the first two Black Knights--indeed, for close to a decade, they were my *only* Black Knights, and the soldier on the left who does not have a re-glued sword was the first Black Knight king in my collection. The white legs is an honour, because it ties them into the colour-scheme of the knight from 6086 that I've designated the king of the Black Knights.

The set also differs from its original form in that the extra pieces it came with are long, long since gone. It's a pity, too, since those extra pieces were another sword and a light grey clip, like the ones holding the spears to the back of the catapult. However, I suppose I shouldn't complain; presumably the extra pieces served their purpose: that's why I still have two clips and two swords with the set, because I had an extra one of each to lose.

Back around the turn of the millennium, this set would have looked significantly more cluttered, as other elements were added to my Black Knight collection, mostly from 5135 Castle Accessories, including the crown, the dragon plumes, the red flag on short flagpole, and the oval Black Knight shield. They also eventually picked up a black horse and red saddle from 5394, the horse and saddles accessory set. Add to that a homemade cape not unlike the one currently worn by the current Black Knight king, and this set was as suped-up as I could make it, and these two swordsmen were as prepared for battle as any ten-man army I had.

Favourite Minifigs: 6086 White Knight

Keeping with the theme of my last post about the Ones That Got Away, today's offering of a favourite minifig is a Black Knight--even though I've titled this post "white knight." He's one of the four knights who come with 6086 Dungeon Master's Castle, and I've called him the "white" knight, because he has a white pennant and dragon plumes. Possessed of a barding and a full set of "euro armour," he's a fine, full-armoured knight. The picture below shows him as he came in Dungeon Master's Castle:



As the elusive white-tinged Black Knight, I've long considered this fellow to be the king of the Black Knights, and in his role as such in my collection, he's been slightly modified to fit this new role, as seen below.

Ones That Got Away-Part Four

Back well over a month ago now, when I started writing posts about the "Ones That Got Away," I made it through three of the four "classic" themes of LEGO: Castle, Pirates, Town, and Space. Well, it's my list of classic themes, because in my formative years, "classic" LEGO was 1992-1994. Aquazone was an honorary fifth, but an assiduous reader of my Aquazone Breakfast News comic will note that it's never had quite the same love from me as the big four. Nonetheless, I am aware that even older fans may not see Pirates as a "classic" LEGO theme on par with the others, given its younger age.

In any case, although I talked about my "Ones That Got Away" with regards to the Pirates, Town, and Space themes, I have yet to address Castle, which is a case of saving the best for last, since Castle is my favourite branch of LEGO System.

Black Knights were the first LEGO theme I ever spent hours looking at in catalogues, and the first set I ever saved up for was 6086 Dungeon Master's Castle. Also known as "Black Knight's Castle," this set is still my all-time favourite LEGO set, if you rate things on a purely nostalgic scale. The main reason, in addition to being one of the most aesthetically pleasing castles LEGO has ever produced, is because, although I saved up for it, I never got it as a child. Nope. Instead, my parents picked up 6081 King's Mountain Fortress when they went shopping with my money while I was in school. At the time, I was just happy I had a LEGO Castle--and my third set, to boot--but I knew it wasn't the one I wanted, and as the years passed, I would wonder what it would have been like if I'd managed to get it instead.

Well, for one thing, my Lions would have been more badly outnumbered in those early years than my Black Knights were. A couple months after getting King's Mountain Fortress, I got my fourth LEGO set, 1491 Dual Defender. Those two guys would be the entirety of my Black Knight army until 2002 or so, when a partial knight in a bag of garage sale LEGO would be fleshed out with an accessory pack to bring their total up to three. As a result, the Black Knights became fearsome warriors, the best-trained soldiers in all the LEGO kingdoms. After all, how else were they to win any battles?

Unlike the other "Ones That Got Away" stories, this one has a fairly happy ending. I would eventually get Dungeon Master's Castle in 2006, thanks to Bricklink, making my Black Knights not only an iconic faction, but a true powerhouse in my LEGO universe. However, because I was out of high school and about to leave home by then, I still consider the theme as a whole, and that set in particular, to be one that got away from me... though I did catch it in the end.

Minifigs: The Elf

When the Elf minifig was discovered to be included in the 3rd series of collectible minifigs, Castle LEGO fans rejoiced. It probably comes as no surprise, given my previous posts about The Lord of the Rings that I, too, was excited about the Elf's appearance. However, ever when I acquired him (as documented in this post), my inner Tolkien fan would not allow him to enter my collection unchanged. This post examines where his disparate parts ended up.

The problem with the Elf was his hairpiece. If I were to cast him as an Elf from Tolkien's canon, I would say from his possession of armour, long-bow, and colour-scheme that he is a probably a Sindarin Elf (Grey-elf), Nandorin Elf (Green-elf), or Sylvan Elf (Wood-elf). However, all those aforementioned Elves are members of the broader category of Telerin Elves... and as a general rule, Teleri have dark hair or silver hair. Golden hair is generally an indication of having Vanyarin blood... and the High Elves of the Vanyar never came back to Middle-earth and mingled with the Sindarin Elves et al (though some mixed Vanya-Noldorin Elves did bring back the golden-haired gene, and the King of the Elves of Mirkwood in The Hobbit is proof that gold hair is not exclusive to the Vanyar). In any case, movie-Legolas aside, my Elf wasn't likely to be permitted blond hair in my collection.

Besides, I subscribe to the "normal ears" party in the "what do Elven ears look like?" debate, and the Elf minifig has highly-prominent ears.

So what became of the Elf?



Well, if we consider a minifig's head to "be" the minifig (and the rest of the minifig to be his/her accoutrements), then my Elf became the warrior in the picture above. In so doing, he replaced a Han Solo lookalike as my golden-armoured Elf-prince. As you can see, he also acquired the steed from the Prince of Persia set I acquired the same time as the Elf.

Not that his armour went unused in my Elven army. Indeed, most of the Elf turned up as a part of my Elven fighting force.



This picture shows the three Elves who acquired pieces of "the Elf." You will recognise the already-portrayed Elf Prince, and notice that the armour and shield were inherited by the warrior with the Little Armory sword to his right, while his longbow (and Bricklink-bought quiver) arm the soldier to his left. One will note my prevalent preference for dragon-helms in equipping Elves.

Meanwhile, what happened to that blond-hairpiece-with-elf-ears, you ask? Did it end up in the minifig parts pile, never to be used with those extra top hats, blue caps, and Islander horns? Not so!



The hairpiece actually ended up on this custom version of the Brickster by chance. I wasn't intending him to be "finished" as such. I was actually planning on reconstructing him using his black tuque ("beanie" to non-Canadians), grey pants, and single blue glove. The spare Jayko pants and jestingly-grabbed elf-hair were mere placeholders, but I have become quite fond of the combination, and think that the elf-ears complement the impish facial expressions. How exactly a Puck of a Brickster ended up in my LEGO universe, I'm not sure yet... but he's definitely there.

Lord of the Rings and LEGO - Part Two

If you dig deeply enough in my Brickshelf folder, you will eventually come up with a old subfolder entitled "Tolkien," which has not been updated since it was first established back in 2004 or so. It contains pretty much all the remaining visual evidence of an attempt back in high school of my brother and myself to make a LEGO home-video adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.



It was an ambitious project, the last in a fairly long line of rather badly made LEGO movies, that prior to delving into Tolkien plots, had been original stories. It should be emphasised that these were not stop-motion movies, but video-camera filmed scenes with no/limited movement and lots of talking. Dreadful as the end products were, however, they were a lot of fun to make, and probably taught us a fair bit about the craft of cinematography. It was also, apart from my Silmarillion project, the only serious attempt I made at portraying Middle-earth in LEGO (the battles and games mentioned in the previous post notwithstanding).

In the end, we finished 3 of a projected 7 installments--one for The Hobbit and each of the six "Books" of The Lord of the Rings. The picture above comes from The Return of the Shadow (as Book 1 of the published Fellowship of the Ring got titled. The astute observer will notice that the hobbit-hole is not lined with LEGO bricks, but is non-LEGO, and the dark "floor" is my smooth desktop. Nonetheless, considering my abysmal track record in those days of photographing LEGO, it's still a decent image, and catches the "feel" of Gandalf and Frodo discussing the Ring in Bag-End.



This picture is from Part II, which got to keep the book's title of The Fellowship of the Ring, and shows the Gates of Moria. Personally, I've always felt that this was one of the better sets created for those movies (hence why a picture was taken), though the biggest reason for its success is not that I was a talented builder, but that I successfully stickered the Gates to look like the image in the Book, which defines the scene.

Unfortunately, all footage of this last film was lost (and possibly its predecessor?), which so discouraged my brother and I (having put a few weeks of hard labour into it) that we never attempted the remaining four parts. Mind you, we were both getting older and less interested in such things... but never mind that. It's a far better story to say that, the footage being lost, the morale of the crew was broken and the project never finished.

Maybe someday...

Lord of the Rings and LEGO

Those who know me at least a little in my personal life could tell you that there are two major oddball characteristics that I am known for. One you can guess easily enough if you're reading this blog: LEGO. Even though I think of myself as, at best, an intermediate level LEGO fan, compared with the people I know on the Internet, I'm still one of the names that would come up first in most people's minds when they think of LEGO (so, yes... I've seen the LEGO church forwarded email a few times, and it's always worth looking at).

The big fan niche that I belong to is the realm of Tolkien fandom: The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth, Hobbits, and all that jazz. I'm less modest about the extent of fanaticism here, and would say that I'm even an elite fan, although if anyone knows bigger Tolkien fans, it's probably me, thanks to the Internet.

Indeed, my Internet life has been an odd intertwining of LEGO and The Lord of the Rings. Not that putting them together was an original thought when I signed up on Classic-castle with a username in Quenya (Tolkien's High Elvish). My brother and I had played many "Middle-earth" games, wherein the entirety of our Castle collections was overhauled to represent the different factions of Middle-earth, letting us play out some terribly derivative battles with obscenely high casualty rates. Lions turned into the guard of Minas Tirith, Black Falcons turned into the Knights of Dol Amroth, and Forestmen into Arnorian rangers, while Royal Knights and Knights' Kingdomers (i) turned into the Rohirrim, and Black Knights (with their ironic dragon emblems) became the Men of Dale. Then, to augment the pitiful armies of Dragon Masters, Fright Knights, and Bull Knights who represented the elite armies of Harad, we transformed every Ninja, Pirate, Star Wars, and Adventurer fig we had, not to mention countless sundry other figs, into rabble-armies of Easterlings and Men of Khand, ready to overwhelm the armies of the West through sheer numbers. There wasn't an "antenna" unused in our LEGO collections.

It was a lot of fun, but insofar as the "great take-apart of sets of 2004" coincided with joining Classic-Castle, those days had come to an end by the time I selected the name "Formendacil" as my cognomen for the forums. "Formendacil" is an original coinage, insofar as I think I'm the only Formendacil that comes up when Google the term (it's been a while since I did), but its construction is relatively simple. In the annals of Middle-earth's history, there were Kings of Gondor named "Rómendacil" (East-victor) and Hyarmendacil (South-victor). It was a simple matter to extrapolate "Formendacil" (North-victor), which was original, had a nice ring to it, and seemed appropriate for a Canadian. I'm not sure why I chose a Tolkienesque name as my user ID, but it stuck, and I've used it as my chief online alias ever since.

Indeed, when I stumbled upon a Tolkien forum in early 2005 and decided to join, it was largely my experience as a member and eventual moderator on Classic-Castle that gave me the nerve to join. The Barrow-downs has since become even more of an online home than Classic-castle, due to two factors. Firstly, the Classic-Castle Roleplay, which had been my niche on Classic-Castle eventually wound down/dried up and I stopped spending as much time there. Secondly, I got to know a lot of the Barrow-downers as close friends, originally through Private Messaging on the forum, then through MSN and AIM chatting and later Facebook friendships, and finally through meeting a bunch of them in person. In fact, I would never have met my rather amazing girlfriend had it not been for the Barrow-downs, because she was the best friend and roommate of one of the close friends I picked up there. (Actually, my girlfriend has an account in her own name now, but that's because of said intermediate friend's influence, and it's unlikely I'd have met her if I hadn't been meeting the friend.)

I haven't actually mixed LEGO and Tolkien much since then. In my first couple years on Classic-Castle, I had the hope of illustrating a few parts of the Silmarillion in LEGO form, but I never quite finished my project of making base portraits to portray all the major characters and factions. WARNING: Those pictures are rather old now, and most of them are quite atrocious.


(Fëanor and his sons, possibly as they took their cursed Oath)

Still, when I was looking for a quick choice in my Brickshelf folder to use as an avatar on this blog, I settled on a picture from that gallery--a reminder of the connection between my hobbies. It depicts Angrod or Aegnor (I can't remember which...) with a trio of soldiers of the House of Finarfin, which may not be the most apt Tolkien avatar for me to use, but it was the best picture I had in my Tolkien folder, and I wanted one from there.

Besides... it's nice and arcane, and if I'm any sort of Tolkien fan, it's the sort who likes the arcane geographical and genealogical facts.

10193 Medieval Market Village

As mentioned before, I had a birthday about a week ago, and for the first time in the last few years, I got LEGO as a gift. In fact, I got more LEGO than I've ever received at my birthday.

Thanks to one very awesome girlfriend, I now own 10193 Medieval Market Village.



Although I actually own the set now, I would classify it as One That Got Away otherwise, because this was THE set of the last decade for Castle fans to own, hands down, and until about a week ago, I did not really think I was ever going to quite get around to it. Though it feels substantially cheaper here in the States than it used to in Canada (though I'm told the price came down there recently), somehow it's hard to justify buying such a large set, even though I know I'll end up spending that much in two or three smaller purchases.

In any case, I'm very happy. It's mildly unfortunate that the MMV has such an amazing parts selection, because the design is so stellar that I'm unlikely to part it out any time soon. Even the two soldier figs, which are hardly rare, are unlikely to be sent away to join the rest of my Fantasy Era (Castle 2007) army anytime soon.

Rebuilding the Past

In my other online fan-life, as a Tolkien nerd, the roleplaying part of the forum is undergoing some revamping. It's interesting that is happening now, because at the same time I'm letting myself get swallowed up in the excitement there, I'm on a bit of a building spree with old LEGO sets. I find this interesting, because the roleplay restructuring means digging back into the history of the forum, and at the same time that we're rebuilding our history there, I'm in the middle of rebuilding some of my LEGO history.

Amusingly, the LEGO history I'm rebuilding is, in turn, a rebuild of LEGO from the 1980s. I'm talking about a couple of the Legends sets LEGO released in the early 2000s, namely 10000 Guarded Inn and 10039 Black Falcon's Fortress.

When these sets came out in 2001 and 2002, they were pretty much dreams come true: Castle themes from before my collecting days made possible again. The knight with the Guarded Inn was my first Black Falcon. The Lion soldiers from the same set were my first Lions since 1994. What's more, the sets were justifiably well designed--they were re-released for a reason.

Rebuilding them this week, I almost don't understand why I ever took them apart. Given my MOCing skills are admittedly weak, their classic lines are well beyond anything I've been able to come up with. Looking back, I almost have to wonder if the "Great Take-Apart" of my sets wasn't my version of a LEGO Dark Age. (Normally, a LEGO fan's "Dark Age" refers to a period when the bricks are set aside and forgot--often during the teen and young adult years).

It's safe to say that these sets will get a viewing here at some point as "Favourite Sets."

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?