Volitak_Boxor

What was Teridax's intention when initiating the Great Cataclysm? If I recall correctly, his original plan involved impersonating Dume, trapping all the Matoran from the city into spheres, using the Vahi to speed up their memory loss, and then "rescuing" them so that he could be hailed as a hero. I don't see how the Great Cataclysm plays into all of this. I mean, he could easily call in some Rahkshi or something to attack the city while the Matoran were in the pods. Forcing the Great Spirit into a coma seems like an awfully difficult way to cause a catastrophe to "save" the Matoran from. Was it just a failsafe? I mean, I think I remember seeing somewhere that Teridax came up with his usurp-Mata-Nui plan after his first plan in Metru Nui failed, so I don't think he was already preparing for that when he first infected Mata Nui with the virus. Can anyone help shed any light onto this?

Great coverage, and up relatively quickly, too! Thanks! Basher looks neat, as does the two-pack of Grinder and Ekimu. Scorpio looks a bit weird, but I can't quite tell how its tail function works, so it'll at least be an intriguing build. Were you, by chance, able to see the backs of the packaging? Any comics, combiners or other such info?

Thanks for the Aqua Blaster Blade fix and the Tahtorak upload, TomRoid. And great find with the Korean Piraka instructions! The instructions for the other model were pretty detailed, so I'm surprised that the Zamor-hand shows up without any specific instructions. Perhaps the back page would shed some light, if an image of it is ever found as well.

Awesome! I've never seen that Battle for the Region of Fire insert. Really nostalgic! Reminds me of similar inserts they had in 2005-08 -NotS Yeah, those were always my favorite parts of the Lego Magazine. The colors are messed up on the Protectors on another page, though. Specifically the Protectors of Stone and Jungle. Nice find! I'm pretty sure that the Region of Fire insert is new, because it wasn't in past coverage of the booklet. It's pretty neat. On a related note, the neat Tahu - PoF combiner is apparently called "Special Tahu." I guess it's nice to have an official name, but it could've been way more interesting than Special Tahu...

Wow! New sets look interesting, to say the least. Can't wait for better photos tomorrow! Also - Trans-Neon Green Miru lives!

All right, here's some Matoran Nui instructions that I put together: http://tinyurl.com/obttjj3 . Can someone verify their accuracy? (I'm not sure if I attached the blue torso in the right spot.) Also, what do you think of the format? Would more info be helpful enough to justify the effort? On another note: Wow, did you manage to avoid breaking any lime green pieces? 99.9% sure he broke one. One of the biggest reasons that I dislike the Pit War Tortoise.

It's kind of sad that the most personality we've seen for most of the Protectors so far has come from 30 second clips advertising combiners, of all things. That's not the fault of these newest stop-motion animations, though. I think they're pretty neat and have some Lego-style humor that we likely won't see in the story, and I chuckled, so I'd say they were successes. P.S. Anyone wish that those clear mask-holding pieces were real?

I am happy to report that Phase 1 of creation of the Comprehensive Bionicle Alternate Model Database is complete! All combiners are listed with an image, and all official Lego-released instructions have been compiled into nice PDFs (or JPEGs, in a few cases) and linked. If anyone takes the time to look through it and has any feedback, I would love to hear it. Now, what's next? First, a few minor items: - The Sea Spider's instructions appear to be incomplete and/or incorrect. The eyes seen in the photo are never built, and the customary final step of 2005 sets of adding the Rhotuka is omitted. I think that we ought to make our own instructions that match the official photo from the Rahi Beasts book. (A small aside... the 2005 instruction books were pretty terrible, in some spots. Boggarak turns red for one step, eye colors are all over the place... Not good.) - The second Korean Piraka combiner has official instructions, which leads me to believe that the first does, too. Unfortunately, I can't find them online. If there are any good internet sleuths around who could look into this, it would be greatly appreciated. - If instructions for any new 2015 combiners are released, we'll need to be sure to update the database. Now, the big ticket items. - Many models simply don't have official instructions. To compensate, we can use the photos to build the sets ourselves and then photo step-by-step instructions for anyone to use. I have an example of what I intend that I plan to upload soon, so then we can discuss if there's any formatting we want to do between our fan-made instructions. - Part inventories for each model were discussed at this project's inception, and it sounds like a good idea, but I don't have any idea about how to go about creating them efficiently. Is anyone aware of any useful Lego inventory-creation tools? TomRoid, it sounds like you've got some good stuff ready. I don't mid if you go ahead and append your WIP documents to the end. It would probably make sense to divide the database into 3 parts: Combiners (what's already there), Contest Models, and Buildable Media Models (MNOG Matoran, etc.). Thanks for getting that together. At this point, I've pretty much reached the limits of what I can do all on my own (at least for a while), since I don't actually have my sets with me currently. If we want to continue to improve this project, we'll need to chip in as a community. I look forward to making this database even better!

Many of the stranger combiners came from foreign promotions, such as the various Kabaya sets, a Korean triple-pack of Piraka, or the Japanese Lego Magazine. All of the models in the database linked in my sig have been endorsed by Lego in some form or another, although there's a bit of a grey area on just how "official" some of them are. On the other hand, some clearly official combiners might just look ugly to you. Any models in particular that you were wondering about?

If you want to get really picky and/or save a few dollars, I think that you could even eliminate one check box each for Onua and Pohatu (corresponding to the black Fikou). It looks like two of the three Bohrok Va Kabaya combiners leave an unused Onua claw, Akamai doesn't use the black Pakari, and I'm pretty sure that you could find the necessary black sockets, axles, head, and ball pieces in the piles of unused parts from other combiners (granted, I haven't checked, but it seems pretty likely). That would mean you wouldn't need a whole extra Onua and Pohatu just for the little Fikou, but on the other hand, it could turn organizing this list into a convoluted mess. I don't think that there are any other redundancies on this list,because most combiners use most of their sets' unique parts, but I'm not 100% sure. Aside from that tidbit, I think the combiner checklist looks great! Mind if I use it / link to it in the combiner database?

I guess that most of BZP's older reference materials became redundant after BS01 rose. Back in 2001/2002, there weren't really many other good reference sites for Bionicle, but it seems like BZP has passed its reference mantle on. Now, assuming that the Kanohi logos for News, Reviews, BZPower, Market, and Opinion remain intact after the front page redesign, I wonder if there are any plans to repurpose Onua? Perhaps the Pakari could indicate highlighted user creations, just as the forum header has changed from saying "reference" to "creations"?

Would the Kal/Va be able to reprogram the swarms (like the Matoran did) to be able to aimlessly go about cleaning things? It would be inefficient, but it might be a viable failsafe. Also, what were the consequences of trying to stand up the GSR without cleaning the island, anyway? Worst comes to worst, if the Bahrag died, the Order could probably get somebody to clean the island themselves. A couple of Toa of Plasma could probably do the job relatively quickly, I think.

I was just wondering myself if clock shenanigans could lead to any new discoveries... It's a shame that they didn't. Thanks for taking the time to find out for us, though! Also, did you check the date after you'd unlocked the 189th part? I know it's a long shot, but perhaps after you get the last part, exclamation points still show up for five more days to unlock the combiners.

Personally, I don't think that the masks were scattered as an aftereffect of the Ekimu/Makuta conflict or by the MoUP, because of the resting place of Kopaka's gold mask in his character video. I could buy that the masks were somehow scattered with their pedestals magically appearing, but Kopaka's gold mask is in some sort of 'Akaku'-shaped cave. I can't believe that that would just appear spontaneously. I'm thinking that some group hid the masks. If not the Protectors, then maybe some other force loyal to Ekimu, which would parallel the Skull Spiders that many people predict are loyal to and possibly even influenced by Makuta? Of course, the Akaku design could just be there to look cool, and I'm looking too deeply into things... but hey, what else is there to do until new story comes out? Or it could be that the Protectors found the mask after the scattering, and built the shrine. That's an interesting possibility that I hadn't considered... But then, if the Protectors hadn't hidden the masks but then later found them, why would they leave them where they had found them? Maybe they thought the gold masks would be safer from the Skull Spiders hidden in the wilderness instead of in the villages, or maybe part of the prophecy indicated that it would be important for the Toa to search for and find their masks, instead of just receiving them from the Protectors... It's an interesting scenario to think about.

There's three main categories of BZP activity noted on the front page (News, Reference and Discussion), but lately, Reference seems to have the short end of the stick. Most of the front page reference links are broken, and there hasn't been an Onua-marked reference post in years. For a while, that made sense, because Bionicle was mostly over, but with its return in 2015, will BZP resume its reference activities? I know in the past, there was a set database and some checklists for old collectibles, but I'm not really familiar with what sort of story-related things the old Reference Team did. Are there any plans for reference activities with the new line, or have those duties been left to BS01, leaving "Reference" on the main page as a relic of an older time? I wouldn't mind seeing an updated set database (at least somewhere online, be it here or BS01), but I'm wondering, just out of curiosity, if there's anything else that BZPower had in the past that would be a useful reference for the new line.

I wanted something Bionicle-related, and I like engineering, so I picked a couple of Nuparu-related things that sounded ok and stuck them together with an underscore.

Personally, I don't think that the masks were scattered as an aftereffect of the Ekimu/Makuta conflict or by the MoUP, because of the resting place of Kopaka's gold mask in his character video. I could buy that the masks were somehow scattered with their pedestals magically appearing, but Kopaka's gold mask is in some sort of 'Akaku'-shaped cave. I can't believe that that would just appear spontaneously. I'm thinking that some group hid the masks. If not the Protectors, then maybe some other force loyal to Ekimu, which would parallel the Skull Spiders that many people predict are loyal to and possibly even influenced by Makuta? Of course, the Akaku design could just be there to look cool, and I'm looking too deeply into things... but hey, what else is there to do until new story comes out?

Real combiners, that actually give something new to build! Yay! This is what I was hoping for/expecting, after seeing the types of combiners from Chima and Hero Factory the past couple of years. Hopefully we get instructions for all six Toa/Protector pairs soon. I wonder if these models will have any sort of storyline significance? (That'd give us something to call them, at least, besides "newer 2015 combiners." Have we ever had multiple combiners able to be build from the same two/three sets (Foreign/Kabaya models notwithstanding)?) Oh, and thanks for the PDF link, Aanchir!

Tahu. I didn't really like grey/white/silver Takanuva, and Nektann/Piraka didn't really stand out. Gresh wasn't bad. Skrall had some neat pieces, and the Rahkshi had a neat build, but I didn't like their overall builds in the end. Tahu looked pretty cool with the golden armor on, and I liked the new, huge, blended flame sword piece.

I chose the Skopio, just for its sheer size. It's the biggest set I own, and it looks pretty imposing when standing up in scorpion mode. Honorable mentions to Malum, Berix, and the Baranus.

I voted Pohatu Nuva. I liked his propellors. The airships look neat, too, especially the Axalara, but I only ever owned the Rockoh. And somehow, I managed to overlook Takanuva, who was another 2008 standout.

Nocturn. Like a Barraki, but bigger/more complex. I liked the GITD/trans-blue/lime, and the lime was all balls and no sockets, so it didn't even break! The expression with the Carapar head and a Piraka foot for a jaw instead of Barraki mandibles was pretty neat, too.

I never owned any of the titans from 2006, so I'm voting for Hewkii. Brown may have been gone, but I like the gunmetal and Keetorange.

Keetongu had a pretty neat torso build to integrate the function, and I love the spinning shields, too. Also, the introduction of Keetorange! Now that I think about it, that color could've easily wound up being called Oohnorange, due to Oohnorak's legs... Glad that didn't happen.

Lhikan and Kikanalo just looked really good, with Lhikan's old gold, Metru red, and lavaboards and the gunmetal accents in Kikanalo. Honorable mention to Krekka for the unique build.