Review: 30688 Tropical Toucan Polybag Review

The first polybag review of the year.  According to New Elementary it's a Gift with Purchase for January 2025.  It's also currently available at Walmart.

Bag.  MSRP is $4.99 for a $0.08 Price per Piece.  

Instructions.

Parts.  Half Round Plate w/Cutout, Wedge Plate w/Cutout, Rounded Plate

w/Pinhole, Round Plates w/3 Leaves, Wedge Studless Slopes, Slopes, Bricks,

Bricks w/Studs on Side, Double Inverted Slope w/Cutout, Printed Round Tiles,

Round Plates, Plates, Corner Plates, Rounded Plate, Round Plates w/Petals,

Clip Plates, Slopes w/Cutout, Curved Slopes, Curved Slopes w/Cutout, Bricks 

w/Stud on Side, Angled Bars w/Stud, Studless Slope, Offset Plate, and 4x3 Leaf.

Build.  IO Frigate.
 

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+).  There's a nice selection of parts but I feel like it needs more basic Plates to be really good.

Terrain Workshop: Trees 28

Most of the parts for this build come from the Aurora's Forest Playground Polybag.  I was sorting parts the other day and -- as I normally do -- I starting putting things together in what I thought was a visually pleasing manner.  This lead to a basic tree design.

Starting at the bottom we have four 1x3x2 Inverted Arches, then two

2x2 Round Bricks, two Log Bricks, and four 1x2 Round Plates w/Layered Leaves.  This gives us 2 Hits and is 16 feet tall and 20 feet wide in 6P scale.

If you want something a little larger, and a little more complicated, we

can add in two 1x2 Bricks w/Pinhole, two Inverted 1x1-1x1 Brackets,

and two more 1x2 Round Plates w/Layered Leaves.  The tree

is now 3 Hits and is 19 feet tall and 25 feet wide in 6P scale.

We could also make a third version that is a cross between the original

and the taller one.  We do this by subtracting -- from the original build

-- a 1x2 Round Plate w/Layered Leaves and a Log Brick, then adding

in a 1x2 Brick w/Pinhole and a Inverted 1x1-1x1 Bracket.  This

version is 2 Hits and is 16 feet tall and 22.5 feet wide in 6P scale.

Size comparisons.

These are more Disney-esque than my previous builds but considering where the parts came from that shouldn't be a surprise.  You might even call these Keebler-esque.  I hope this gives people ideas or techniques to use in their terrain builds.  Flickr page.

Terrain Workshop: Windmill

Way back in the day there were a lot of windmill designs being shared in the Mobile Frame Zero community.  It's a pretty easy piece of kit to design and stands out on the table.  This design can function as a Station or as a piece of Cover.

Let's start at the bottom with two 2x2x2 Slopes, over that is a 1x2x5 Brick and a 1x2 Triple Slope, on top of the Brick is a 1x2 Brick w/Pin, and attached to that is a 3 Blade 9 Diameter Propellor.  This assembly is 1 Hit and stands 24 feet tall at the top of the column.  The propellor adds 10 feet to that at the top of the rotation.  The diameter of the propellor is roughly 22 feet.  This is all in 6P scale.

As this all fits on a 4x4 base, it can be used as a Station.  Using them as stations would provide a bit of a story element to a game as you could say your squad is defending a Wind Farm.  In real life they'd be OSHA nightmares but this is a game and we don't quite have to worry about Health & Safety labeling things as unsafe.

I hope this gives people ideas or techniques to use in their terrain builds.  Flickr page.

Terrain Workshop: (Clone) Trees 27

After reviewing and sorting the BrickCraft Christmas sets, I stumbled across the Axle Connector w/Clips piece from the Bricktanicals Bluebonnet set.  This led me to thinking about my original Clone Tree design and how I could update it with the new piece.

This starts with two Clip Leaves from the Miniso Toys Sunflower set.  The next piece

is the Axle Connector w/Clips piece from the Bricktanicals Bluebonnet set.  The next

piece is an Inkwell from the Make-It Blocks Birds 3 set.  The final pieces are two

1x1x2 Round Bricks from the Brix Record Player set. This gives us a 1 Hit tree that

is 30 feet tall and roughly 8 feet from edge to edge in 6P scale. Granted, it costs $16.22

to build this but you also get four Frames and a ton of extra parts out of the deal.

To build two of these you'd need another Miniso Toys Sunflower

set and Bricktanicals Bluebonnet set.  This brings the total price

to $26.19 but that means each tree is only $13.10 each.

The usual size comparison.  I hope this gives people ideas

or techniques to use in their terrain builds.  Flickr page.

Terrain Workshop: Volcanic Cone

Okay, let's start the new year with some new terrain.  Something other than trees this time, for a change.  I had this idea recently -- along with a bunch of others -- for something a little volcanic.  It starts at the bottom with two Half Cones, two 2x2 Round Plates, then a Round Large Jumper, and Large Flame Piece.

It's 1 Hit, 30 feet tall overall -- 12 feet for the Cone and 18 feet for the Flame -- and 10 feet in diameter at the base in 6P scale.  It also counts as Cover without the Flame Piece if you want to add a Tile or something to round out the numbers.  I think it's a good way to use up those Large Flame Pieces if you didn't have one already.  For me, it's also the start to a new set of terrain.  I also think it looks pretty spectacular and a bunch of these would make a good "Ooohh, look at that" display on a battlefield.

I currently have nine of these assembled.  I hope this gives people ideas or techniques to use in their terrain builds.  Flickr page.

Polly Want A Baggy 13

Back in October of last year we got a preview of what this year had to offer.  Looks like Lego is transitioning to paper bags for future polybag offerings.  As per usual, this information comes from Brickset.

30688 Tropical Toucan There are some nice flashes of color in this one.  According to New Elementary it's a Gift with Purchase for January 2025.

30689 Birthday Party Animals Kinda brick-y.

30691 Mini Monster Truck This could be a decent starship.

30694 Space Science Mech Frame-in-a-Bag

30695 Cinderella's Mini Garden Castle Looks like a terrain set to me.

30697 Nova's Doghouse Build Either terrain or a Station.

30698 Cooper's Flying Controller Mini Build This looks fun.  Probably another Frame-in-a-Bag.

30699 Mini Ninja Combo Mech Another Frame-in-a-Bag, hopefully it's more available than last year's Ninjago polybag.

30701 Field Flowers The first Botanicals polybag.

30703 Julian's Beach Painting Terrain, from the looks of it.

30704 Balkiry Attack I think this could be a Ship-in-a-Bag for IO or maybe a flying Frame for RA.

30705 The Lush Cave Fight Not sure what to think of this one.

30710 Skid-Steer Loader Another Technic polybag.  Lets hope this one is as good as the Mars Rover from last year.

As always, good hunting.

Yearly Look Back, 2024 Edition

It's time once again for another look back at the year that was.

The Central MA gaming group continued to meet this year.   We again played nine games together, which is one up from 2023.  We debuted a new table setting, brought an old one back from retirement, and accomplished a full size playtest of a new rule set.  We also managed to play most of a game of Intercept Orbit.  Which is the first time in six years since we've tried that rule set.

I'm up 4 posts from last year but, still maintaining my "at least three posts per week" average for the twelfth year running.  I made my 2,000 post in the middle of June this year.  I'm estimating 3K posts to be roughly six years away.  March of 2024 was my 12th anniversary of starting this blog.

I managed 122 reviews this year; 1 Zuru Max, 1 Mega Bloks, 3 Lazer Blocks, 4 Miniso, 4 Gundam Converge, 5 non-building block, 6 Brickcraft, 20 Clone, 17 Make-It Bricks, 5 non-building, 30 Lego, and 31 Block Tech.  That comes out to an average of 10.2 per month.  Which is the most reviews I've ever done in a year.  It's also the first time I've reviewed more sets of a company other than Lego.  I feel like Block Tech came storming out of the gates this year.  I acknowledge that a fair amount of the sets I reviewed from them were back log ones but there were a ton of other sets they debuted.  I also haven't touched any of the upscaled (upgraded?) Make-It Block sets that debuted late this year.

I did 3 War College and 12 Terrain Workshop posts this year.  Which is a decrease in both. I wanted to pivot to more Terrain Workshop and War College posts this year but more interesting sets were released this year than last and maybe next year will be the year that we start talking about tactics and terrain in earnest.

I'm now at 1.47M views, which is roughly another 200K views since last year. I still have no idea when I'll break 2 million. Thank you to everyone for the continued readership. My Flickr stream is over 6 million views which I must thank everyone for as well.

I managed to attend PAX East this year, if only for a couple of hours.  I want to try and organize a bigger con presence for 2025, make more of an effort to "show the flag".

Keep on gaming and I'll see you next year. :-)