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J.A.F. Team

A blog by xccj

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About this blog

Just a lesser evil, born unequal

Entries in this blog

Ambitious Bionicle Mosaic Idea

Ambitious Bionicle Mosaic Idea

So I've helped make a bunch of Bionicle mosaics over the last nine years.  The first couple we did as a large group, but over time people's interest (and parts collection) waned, while my interest in making cool Lego mosaics has grown.  I gave up on trying to do big group projects after I ended up doing over half of the 2016 "group" mosaic, and instead Chocolate Frogs and I have done a couple of smaller size ones that have traveled around the convention circuit. But... We're coming up
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Oh No Change on BZP??

Oh No Change on BZP??

So BZP got a revamp, and only went down for a few month.  Now it's back and I have to get used to all the changes!! I think the blogs got the worst of it, TBH.  Although this does seem more in line with other personal blogs I've seen elsewhere on the internet, so it's probably a modern template that's cool for everybody but those of us (like me) who are so used to the old BZP / Invasion format.  This new one looks like it could incorporate pictures better, so that's something I'll have to s
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Old and New Stories

It's been a while since I've put together a blog post, so here's me jabbering about my stories in general. I'm finally finishing up a couple that I've been posting.   Highfly Vinesman, Deepwood Wayfinder was for the BZPower Fanfic Exchange 2018 and written for Darth Jaller. It features Tamaru, Taipu, and Kapura and it's been fun writing back about the MNOLG-era. The other is a sequel to my Kulagi's Kanoka story, A Shadow's Contrivance which features the Kanoka wielding Matoran against the Dark H
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Blog Story: Chapter C

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter C   “Arpy is totally on to something,” you say. “Bionicle was dying out. The story wasn’t as good, the sets were boring, and the extra merchandise is plain annoying. I think Lego can certainly do better.”   “You’re insan
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Blog Story: Chapter K

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter K   “Combine you’re elemental powers!” you shout. “It always works for the Toa; it should work for us.”   The four of you lift up your weapons and place them together. “For Unity!” you all shout, and then you release your
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Blog Story: Chapter J

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter J   “Attack from different directions,” you tell your friends. “If we hit him all at once, he can’t possibly block us!”   The four of you split up, just as TTN fires a blast of energy towards you. You have the furthest to
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Blog Story: Chapter I

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter I   You jump forward, grabbing the slimy kraata attached to Blue’s face. You pull it off, and with a loud pop it detaches from Blue. With disgust, you throw it off the balcony.   Luckily, the kraata hadn’t sapped away muc
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Blog Story: Chapter H

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter H   You and your friends catch up to TTN as he enters the Collectables forum. You have to be careful following him, because the forum is not very busy. Collectables hasn’t been busy in years.   But TTN doesn’t linger by t
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Blog Story: Chapter G

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter G   “You’re mine!” Sumiki shouts, firing his crossbow. Eeko knocks aside the arrow, but Sumiki is already rushing towards him. Eeko swings his blade, but Sumiki ducks beneath it and tries to deliver a powerful blow to Eek
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Blog Story: Chapter F

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter F   Krahka advances on Eeko, flexing her muscles. Most people would be afraid if she attacked them, but not Eeko. He calmly spins his blade and waits for her to make the first move.   Krahka doesn’t take long. She pounces
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Blog Story: Chapter E

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter E   The four of you sneak behind the bushes, following Eeko to the Movie and Books Discussion forum. You’d been following him for a while, but so far he hasn’t done anything suspicious, outside of the big rally.   “He’s h
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Blog Story: Chapter D

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are named after real members, but their personalities and traits are fictional and are not meant to reflect on my opinions of the actual members. This is a work of fiction, and I hope you enjoy it.   Go Back to Previous Chapter   Chapter D   “Arpy is acting rather suspicious,” you say. “Maybe we should check out what he’s doing. He might’ve caught a virus or something.”   Sumiki, Krahka, and Blue nod in agreement. You all remember what happened the last t
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Review: 41161 Aladdin's and Jasmine's Palace Adventures

Aladdin is one of my favorite Disney movies (making Jasmine one of my favorite Princesses) but I’ve been disappointed that she hasn’t appeared in more than one Lego Princesses set. Well, this year she gets to be in a couple, likely hoping to capitalize on the live action Aladdin movie coming out. The biggest one of the Palace Adventure, so I picked that up. It’s $29.99 with 193 pieces.   The main draw is the characters. Jasmine has appeared in one set before as a minidoll (included in the pictur
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The LEGO Movie 2 Collectible Minifigures

It should be fairly obvious that I have an obsession with collecting figs, and when I heard that stores in my area were releasing them early, I kinda jumped on it. The first store I visited didn’t have any, but the second one had a small selection, and I was able to grab 9 of the ones I wanted.     First I want to address the bag issues. It was rumored that these figs were going to be double bagged like the UniKitty figs, which makes it difficult to tell them apart. But based on my selection, n
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Best Lego Sets of 2018

2018 has been an interesting year for me for Lego. I generally bought fewer sets compared to the last four years, but my budget was dominated by a couple of large purchases this summer, thus forcing me to hold out on buying a lot of sets in the second half of the year. I’ve also bought a couple of sets that I have yet to open, which is a strategy I haven’t applied before. (Usually I build any set I get soon after purchase. But this year, I bought a few sets exclusively for the pieces, and I want
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Review 70644 Golden Dragon Master

Here is Lego's latest Ninjago spinner / action / unique character only available here set: 70644 Golden Dragon Master! Some people might be enticed to buy these because of the figs. (Guilty.) Some people might do it for the pieces. Some might do it for the action. And some people might mistake the price of these things and think they're getting a legit set. (I mean, really, $15? I get there are more pieces, but did this new design really need to be this big... or needed at all?)   Piece wise, th
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Review: Harry Potter Collectible Minifigures

Technically the Harry Potter Collectible Minifigures aren't supposed to hit shelves until August, when the whole Wizarding World line releases worldwide. But my local Fred Meyers scoffs at such release dates, and there were at least five boxes to choose from, three unopened! So I spent way too much time feeling out my favorites... which accounts for most of the series!     For the record, I did not get Dobby, pajama Harry, or Credence because I don't want them. I did miscount and so I didn't bu
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2018 Bio-Cup Entry: Elemental Duel

Full Album     Honestly, I was not aware of the Bio-Cup competition, but then again I'm not exactly in the Bionicle MOCing community on Flickr. Honestly don't know if this model stands a chance. I'm really pleased with my Onua and Tahu models, and the stone hand turned out nicely. But the fire phoenix was kinda thrown together... and it features prominently in the entry pict, so... Anyway, I hope the image conveys more of a scene with some motion than you'd normally get. But I've seen some of th
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Review 10261: Roller Coaster - Night 04

Aaaaaand done!     Bag 10 builds up the rest of the left side, including the large pole tower with the angled supports. As precarious as it is, the geometry on the angles is impressive. Honestly, I don’t know how I could MOC my own Roller Coaster; I was not keeping up with the various brick heights to get the math just right. I did have one column that wouldn’t fit on right… and lo and behold, it was because I forgot a single 2x2 round plate in the stack. You start off Bag 11 by building the ro
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Review 10261: Roller Coaster - Night 03

Yeah, I skipped a night, sue me. And then sue me for this... SMOKE BOMB!     Today I got through bags 6 - 9. 6 build the base, 7 added more columns (ugh), 8 added the ticket and fruit stands, and 9 built the gearbox beneath the loading zone. Overall, I've probably put in 5-6 hours of build time into this, but splitting this up across multiple days does make it seem like a less monumental task. (I have two bags left to go, so I'd estimate another hour and half of building time left.) It's going
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Review 10261: Roller Coaster - Night 02

And the building continues...     So tonight I finished bags 3 - 5. Well, mostly; I left out the sign bit to do later, and I jumped to the end to build one of the cars (literally the last bits you build for this set.) But in general, the right half of the Roller Coaster is finished.   The build was tedious, to say the least. If I wasn't building more columns (which had enough slight variations that I had to pay attention to each one) then I was building one of the supports. The whole thing is m
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Review 10261: Roller Coaster - Night 01

So I caved in and bought this. It's now the most expensive set I've ever purchases, beating Ninjago City by about $80, and it's definitely looking to be the set that takes up most of the shelf space; it will be taking over the display space where I previously had Ninjago City and the Ferris Wheel. But it just looks so cool that I couldn't NOT get it, right? Now, this does kind of kill my Lego budget for the rest of the summer, and there are some cool sets still coming out, so I am going to have
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Review: Gahlok Pen

There was some talk in the forums a while ago about the Bohrok pens, an abstract collectible item from the era of excessive Lego merchandising. In looking up some pictures, I discovered a relatively cheap copy of a Gahlok pen on BrickLink, and because I have no impulse control, I now own it. And since I previous wrote a review on the Lewa and Onua Mata pens, I decided to do the same with this one. So without further ado...     It seems like the standard pen case for the Lego pens at the turn of
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Build the Chronicler's Company

I was chatting with Swert the other day and somehow we started talking about Matoran designs, so despite everything else I really need to do, I designed and built these.     They're not really much smaller than the original McToran / Tohunga, which was my intention, but the system builds allow for some more varied colors (like teal). Couldn't figure out a decent way to do their throwing arms, so instead they get socket hands. Yayz. (Fun fact, I wedged round studs behind their masks for eye colo
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Set Review: S.O.G. Headquarters

Ninjago occasionally releases a set that’s basically an arena for the latest spinners. Usually it’s a couple of walls built to contain the spinners with a few functions and themed sculptures thrown in. Some of the designs are better than others, but mostly their appeal is in playability or unique minifigures. Well, in the case of 70640 S.O.G. Headquarters, I totally got it for the figs, although 530 pieces for $40 did convince me to get the full set and not just Bricklink Lloyd’s exclusive fig.
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