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Hello everyone.

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:58 pm
by Hikaro Takayama
Hello everyone, another new face around the forum....

My real name is Ben, and I've been collecting LEGO Castle (and Pirate and Space) sets for the past 20 or so years (with only two dark ages)....

Castle is really what got me into LEGO, one of my first sets being the Forestman's Hideout that I bought with my allowance money at a local gas station/mini-mart back in 1988... My brother and I were BIG into Robin Hood and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow at the time, and we ended up with all of the Forestmen sets except the Camoflaged Outpost and Forestmen's River Crossing....

This led to the acquisition of other castle sets, which we combined with our pirate and space sets (Basically, the Lion Knights were our "Good" faction's special forces, the Imperial Soldiers from the Pirate line was the Army, the Pirates were the Navy and the Futuron and similar space line was the aero-space force, and after getting into Lord of the Rings hardcore, the Forestmen became the Elves, complete with a 10"x10" baseplate dedicated to a LEGO version of Caras Galadron)...

But I digress. My brother and I went into a dark ages (pretty much permanent in my brother's case) in 1995, at which point we gave away almost all our LEGO sets. I came out of my first dark ages (which in the chronology of my LEGO world's backstory is known as the "Final War") in 1996, and while I managed to get some of my Pirate sets back (one of my friends who I gave them to got bored with LEGO and said that I could have them back when he found out I was getting back into LEGO), just in time to pick up some of the Royal Knights, Imperial Armada, Black Forest and Fright Knights sets.... The Fright Knights kinda dampened my enthusiasm for Castle for a bit (although I bought a number of the sets for the black dragons, which will soon be serving as mounts for my LEGO Nazgûl), but the Ninja theme in 1998, coupled with the lack of Pirate sets (due to that theme's demise) and the general meh-ness of the new space themes brought me back into Castle hardcore....

You see, I've always been a big fan of Japanese history, ever since I read this historical choose-your-own adventure book about Miyamoto Musashi and found out about the Samurai (My biggest gripe about the current Ninjago series is the distinct lack of any kind of Samurai faction), so I managed to grab all but two of the 1998 ninja sets (the bridge one and the Bandit's fortress)... Unfortunately, my enlistment in the US Navy in 1999 ended up forcing me into another dark age from 2001-2009... You see, while I could get a few sets when I was stationed at Dam Neck Naval Training center, I had no space to keep them on board ship, so I just put them into storage and kind of forgot about them until after I got out of the Navy in 2005.... The lack of anything really appealing during that time, coupled with my struggles to re-adjust to civilian life caused me to continue more or less ignoring LEGO until 2009....

The turning point was winning a $100 Wal-Mart gift certificate at the company picnic in August, 2009, which I used to buy some video games (the entire pre-Bethesda Fallout series), and when I found myself with some money still on the card, I decided to check out the LEGO aisle, and found, much to my delight, that the Pirates were back! Not too long after that, I discovered something called "Brick Arms" when watching a WWII LEGO stop-motion video on Youtube, on top of which the new Kingdoms line came out and the rest, as they say, was history.

I'm still into the general Castle theme, but unlike most people here, I don't use my castles or castle minifigs to represent typical Medieval scenarios (or even medieval/high-fantasy), but rather a Hayao-Miyazaki inspired post-apocalyptic setting, where the fortresses might LOOK like medieval castles and some of the troops might LOOK like medieval knights, but the castles are made of titanium-reinforced ceramcrete and the knights are equipped with unobtainium environmental combat armor and armed with unobtainium vibro-swords, assault rifles, machineguns and lasers that look like either antique revolvers (Cosmo-Dragoons) or matchlock muskets (Cosmo Arquebusses)...

I'm not sure if such MOCs are welcome here, but I figure that it wouldnt' hurt to ask... In any case, I'm also looking for templates for making sticker decals to place on the standard 2x2 LEGO flags pieces for some of my custom factions...

Anyways, nice meeting you all, and I wish I'd found this place sooner. :D

Re: Hello everyone.

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 1:35 am
by Tower of Iron Will
Hello and welcome to the site. I share your pain about the Ninjago theme not having any samurai in it, and it was the Ninja theme that stopped me from going into another dark age when it came out. I have been a fan of Japanese history as well, and as a kid wanted LEGO to develop an oriental theme (this was way before Ninja came out).
-Tower

Re: Hello everyone.

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 4:37 am
by Hikaro Takayama
Tower of Iron Will wrote:Hello and welcome to the site. I share your pain about the Ninjago theme not having any samurai in it, and it was the Ninja theme that stopped me from going into another dark age when it came out. I have been a fan of Japanese history as well, and as a kid wanted LEGO to develop an oriental theme (this was way before Ninja came out).
-Tower
Hah, that's funny! I remember when I was a kid being ticked off that LEGO didn't have any samurai swords, which made the original Ninja sets ever sweeter.... As for the lack of Samurai in the Ninjago theme, at least the series 3 minifigs have the samurai dude.....

Re: Hello everyone.

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 5:42 pm
by Rogue Shadow
Welcome to CC! I agree with your Ninjago feelings. It was kind of a...letdown. I would like samurai, and I would also like generic ninjas, not element themed ninjas.
That aside, enjoy your stay!