Review: 70665 Ninjago The Samurai Mech

I stopped into my local Lego store on New Year's Day and found this on the shelf.  I bought it immediately and went home to write a review.

Box.  I paid $14.99, for a $0.10 Price per Piece.

Instructions & Stickers.

Minifigs.

Parts 1.  Plates, Slopes, Wedge Plates, Mudguards, Ball Joints, Stud Shooters, Bar Plates, Pin Hole Plates, a Tile, and a Helicopter Blade.

Parts 2.  Ball Joints, Wedge Plates, Brackets, Clip Plates, Plates, Slopes, Flags, Corner Bricks, Bar Holder w/Bar, Bar, Technic Pins w/Stop Bush, Exo-Force Arms, Hinge Bricks, Tile, LArge Round Jumper, and a Boat Bumper.

Parts 3.  Pneuma-Ts and Clip Tiles!

Builds.  Two 2Rh/2Rd/2B Frames and a Station.

The Questions:

Can you build something -- a frame, station, or starship -- right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Is it below, at, or above the golden ratio?  At.  (0)  (The Golden Ratio is $0.10 per part.)
If you can't build a frame right away, or choose not to, does it have parts you should be able to put into use right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Does it have more than a handful of immediately useful parts?  Yes.  (+5)
Score: +15 (A).  Only the price is holding this back from having an A+ rating.

Yearly Look Back, 2018 Edition

Let's take a look back at the past year.

I'm up 17 posts from last year, for a personal best of 185 posts. I'm holding my "slightly more than three posts per week" average for the fifth year in a row and actually increased it to 3.6 posts per week this year.  I've passed 1,000 posts.  I'm estimating cracking 2,000 posts sometime around July of 2024.

The Central MA gaming group continued to meet this year.   We only managed seven games together, but I managed to play in twelve games this year.  I'm working on setting up a meet'n'greet for all the Massachusetts players I can track down, and maybe even any Greater New England players that can make it.  I still want to implement my "Game Store Grand Tour" plan and cycle through several game stores to get us in front of more people.

I managed 105 reviews this year; 7 non-building block, 9 Mega Bloks, 11 clone bricks, 11 Kre-O, and 67 Lego. That comes out to an average of 8.75 per month. Which is an increase of 0.92 reviews per month.

I'm closing in on 800K views, which is roughly another 100K views since last year.  Thank you to everyone for that.   My Flickr stream is over 2.2 million views which I must thank everyone for as well.

I got to attend PAX East and PAX Unplugged again.  I got to meet more great MoF0s, see some old friends, hopefully make new ones, and play some fun games.  I finally got to share a table with Vincent and Joshua this year which was a real high point.

See you next year!

Terrain & Scenery 13

Everything in this post was purpose built for Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack.

Rocky Terrain by Mark vanWeerd.  Neat stuff.

Ruin by Markus Küper. 

A different kind of wall.

MFZ - Plants & Terrain by Moctagon Jones.
I like the look of the rock formations.

Face Statue (Terrain) by Grass4hopper.  Very

neat, has a fantasy vibe.

Porta-john by milt69466.  Too fun to pass up on.

Purity: Kre-O B5715 Blizzard Strike Bumblebee Kreon Review

I've been sitting on this review for a while.  I reviewed a similar version of this set earlier this year.  It's similar to the other one with palette swapped pieces.  I'm still using the Non-Building Block review system for these since they look like they could be a Frame-in-a-Box.

Box. I paid $5.00 for this at Dollar General.

Instructions.

Disassembled.  All that Trans-Yellow is pretty
 cool.  The 1x1 Bar Plates are very useful.

Assembled.  2Rd+d8 for the gatlings, 1Y
for the pistol, and 1B for the helmet.

Size Comparison.



The Questions:
Is it below, at, or above $10 per Frame?  Below.  (+5)
Is it a good size to use in a game?  Yes.  It looks roughly the same size as a Chub.  (+5)
How many parts does it have to represent systems?  Four.  (+5)
Does it have enough parts you can remove to represent White Dice damage?  Yes.  (+5)
Score: +20 (A+).  Another Frame-in-a-Box.

Purity: Block Tech US35-0071/FB Robo Machines Review

I was alerted to the existence of these sets by a kindly post on the MFZ Facebook group the other day.

Box.  I paid $5.00 for this at 5 Below, this gives us a $0.03 Price per Piece.

Instructions.

Parts 1.Wheels, Ball Joints, Brackets, Tiles, Mudguard Plate, Minifig Helmet, Minifig Assault Rifle, and Cars Windshield Brick.

Parts 2.  Plates, Axle Plates, Clip Plates, Jumpers, Tile, a Grille Tile, Bracket, Slopes, Plates w/Door Rail, and Minifig Head.

Parts 3.  Plates, Axle Plates, Plates w/Door Rail, Jumpers, Brackets, Tiles, Grille Tiles, Brackets, Bricks, Headlight Bricks, a Panel, and a Turntable Base.

Parts 4.  Plates, Wheels, Ball Joints, Slopes, Lampholders, Antenna, Tooth Plates, Clip Plates, Mudguard Plates, Technic 1L Connectors, Round Plates, Minifig Gun, and Brick w/2 Studs.

Parts 5.  I'm not sure if you can tell but the anti-stud in the bottom section of this plate is mis-molded and barely there.  This lets you know the quality control on these parts.  Also, the clutch on some of the Ball Joint pieces is very variable.

Build 1.  2Rd/1B/2Y quad.

Build 2.  Brawler.

The Questions:

Can you build something -- a frame, station, or starship -- right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Is it below, at, or above the golden ratio?  Below.  (+5)  (The Golden Ratio is $0.10 per part.)
If you can't build a frame right away, or choose not to, does it have parts you should be able to put into use right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Does it have more than a handful of immediately useful parts?  Yes.  (+5)
Score: +20 (A+).  I'm conflicted about this score.  The quality control isn't great yet you get two Frames and plenty of spare parts out of this set for $5.00

Terrain Workshop

I had a little time to kill one day after work and before an appointment so I wandered into a Michael's to take a look around.  I knew they carried clone brick sets at one point and I figured I'd have a look see at what they had in stock.  Turns out they now carry Lego but that's a different story.

I wandered into the scrapbooking aisle and saw multiple types of paper with colorful designs and prints on them.  This immediately gave me an idea for a table cover that wasn't made of felt and also had multiple colors, prints, and/or textures that made it look like the covering was multiple terrain types at once.

That was the initial idea.  Later, I had the thought that these paper products could be combined with a felt covering in a sort of "mixed media" effort at creating a cool table-setting.  I didn't abandon the original idea but with PAX Unplugged coming up quickly I got working on incorporating the second idea into the terrain I had already planned on bringing to the con.

This is what I started with.  I've always thought that water was a hard thing
to represent well so a picture of ripples in actual water looked good to me.

I then cut the pages -- three of them -- into sections of straight
lines and curves.  These can be assembled into a straight line or a
series of bends.  This can represent a river, canal, or whatever.

I also had plenty of paper left over to cut into "greebles" or smaller sections

of water.  (And looking at that picture I now have another idea for terrain.)

I took two of those leftover bits and cut them into smaller

sections. It's amazing what you can do with negative space.

Next is sand.  The original idea was using this as a section of beach.

To implement the second idea I purchased more -- this is just

one page -- and cut them into sections to act as a road or path.

Once again, plenty of leftover sections and fun with negative space.

All of these were added to the forest section of the "Sand & Trees"

set-up.  Which then became the "Cherry Blossom Forest" table-setting.

The main problem is going to be storing these so they don't get bent or crinkled.

And I feel like I'm going to be doing enough of these terrain posts that I'm not going to bother numbering them.

Review: 30551 Cinderella's Kitchen Polybag

I've been sitting on this a while, time to clear it off the "To-Do" stack.

Bag.  I paid $3.99, for a $0.11 Price per Piece.

Instructions.

Minidoll.

Parts.  Plates, Round Plates, Swirled Top Plates, Round
Tiles, Large Round Jumpers, Jumper, Slopes, Brick
 Bricks, Arch Brick, Window Frame, Windows,
Printed Tile, Bracket, Support, and Minifig Parts.

Build.  Station and a 1 Hit piece of Cover.

The Questions:

Can you build something -- a frame, station, or starship -- right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Is it below, at, or above the golden ratio?  Above.  (-10)  (The Golden Ratio is $0.10 per part.)
If you can't build a frame right away, or choose not to, does it have parts you should be able to put into use right away?  Yes.  (+5)
Does it have more than a handful of immediately useful parts?  No.  (-5)
Score: -5 (B-).  Sounds about right to me.