It's been a week and a half since I wrote a blog post. That's way longer than I'd like, and I apologize. BUT there is a reason. Or at least an excuse.
So, once you've built something impressive, you will want to share it with other Lego fans. Trust me, you will. And I've found that the best way to do that is by posting on Eurobricks.
Eurobricks.com is an AFOL forum. It is divided into several subforums based on themes and types of building. Eurobricks profiles are free and consist essentially of an email address, username, and password. And once you have a profile like this, you can start posting immediately. Once you have ten posts, you can start deeplinking images, and things really start to open up.
Not only is Eurobricks a great place to share you Lego creations, it's also home to a host of Lego contests. Three of the most active subforums are the Technic forum, dedicated to the Lego Technic building system and the motors and gadgets that interact with it; the Historical Themes forum, focusing on the several medieval themes Lego has released since 1978; and the Lego Star Wars forum, devoted to the highly popular licensed Star Wars theme. Technic hosts frequent stand-alone challenges, while Historical hosts a years-old contest called Guilds of Historica and Star Wars hosts a year-old contest called Shadows of Nar Eurbrikka. Both of these last consist of a series of smaller contests for those who have signed up and joined teams. Since I'm not a castle-builder, I don't compete in Guilds of Historica, but I'm a very active player in Shadows of Nar Eurbrikka, or SoNE as it's commonly abbreviated, so that's what I'll describe to you.
The name of the contests is a parody of a comic book series set in the time between Episode V and Episode VI, titled "Shadows of Empire." Eurobricks members choose whether to join the Empire or the Rebellion, starting as a basic infantry grunt or fighter jock, and climb through the ranks as they gain experience points. Experience points, or XP, are earned by building for episodes or by building freebuilds.
Episodes generally run for a month. That is, a thread with the rules of the episode is opened on a given day, and about a month later is the final deadline for entries. Until that deadline, all entries in the episode are considered works in progress and can be freely altered. Once the deadline hits, the secret SoNE judges and the contest administrators swing into action. Some contests have unusual scoring rules, but normally, this is what happens: Each build is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "Minifig on a Plate" (a Lego plate, not a dinner plate), 5 being "An Average Build," and 10 being "Flawless Concept and Execution." For most builds, this is it; the score they received is the total score for that build. But the top five builds on each team are sent to the second round of scoring, where they receive as many as 10 additional points for concept, 25 for execution, and 5 for presentation; those additional points are added to their first-round score and the total is divided by two to give their final score. The highest possible score under these rules is 25 points.
When all the builds have been scored, the final scores of all the Imperial builds and Rebel builds are totaled, and the team with the highest total score wins the episode. A week or two after that, the next episode is released, and it all starts over again. There are some changes in the air with regard to that scoring system, though, namely the removal of the second round of scoring. It tends to dump huge numbers of XP on the very best builders, causing them to rocket through the ranks far ahead of the less skillful builders and those who don't have quite so much excessive time on their hands.
Scoring episodes generally takes about a month, and in that time you have the opportunity to build freebuilds. Technically these can be built at any time, but they are usually done during the wait for episode scores because that's when people aren't obsessing over their episode builds. Freebuilds have no rules other that they can not excessively violate Star Wars or SoNE canon and continuity and they must focus on your Lego character at some point in his or her life. They are scored much like Episode builds, but have of course no second round and are scored on a scale of 1 to 5 rather than 1 to 10. Usually during the first week of an episode, scores are handed down for all the freebuilds posted since the last time this was done, so sometimes thirty or more freebuilds are scored at once. To keep people from manufacturing XP with lots and lots of simple (or elaborate, for that matter) freebuilds, players are limited to 4 scored freebuilds between one episode deadline and the next. They are allowed to build as many unscored freebuilds as they like, however.
So what's the goal of all this? Well, there's collecting XP, for one thing. Final scores of episodes and freebuilds are given to their builders in the form of XP. Higher levels of XP buys you some building and concept privileges in the form of rank. An Imperial moves from line service to the Imperial Survey Corps at 10 XP, to the Imperial Security Bureau at 25 XP, to his or her choice of the Shadowtroopers, Storm Commandos, or Dark Troopers (all various forms of commando troops) at 50 XP, to the Imperial Department of Military Research at 100 XP. The higher your rank, the more cinematically capable your character is allowed to be, and the more options you have as to how to fulfill the demands of an episode. For instance, a TIE pilot with 0 XP is basically limited to flying his fighter to combat the Rebels, or maybe flying a transport to drop Imperial ground forces into a combat zone, while a IDMR officer with 100 XP can do that, or he could do just about anything else that would help the Imperial forces, including directing the battle from the bridge of a Star Destroyer! The corresponding ranks for the Rebellion, in case you wondered, are line service, Alliance Support Services, Alliance Intelligence, SpecForce/SpecOps, Army/Starfighter Command.
Another benefit, or cost, of XP is that is can change what you are required to accomplish during an episode. In the most recent episode, Episode VI: Bounty Hunter Hunt, the more XP you have, the more separate builds you are allowed to make. There have been discussions of making completely different requirements for high-ranking builders during an episode. We'll see what comes of that.
The other main motivations, aside from XP are victory for your team and recognition from other builders. Very rarely are there prizes to the winning builders or teams.
What does all this have to do with my prolonged absence? Well, a new episode was released Saturday night, and in this episode speed is of the essence. So, I spent Sunday and Monday building and taking pictures to get my work out as soon as possible. Now that that's done, though, I have a lot of material on my computer, just about ready for a review of an official set, so I'll be back soon with more material for your perusal. Until then, happy building!
P.S. Here are the links to my two builds so far this episode. Normally only 1 build is allowed per builder per episode, but the rules are different for this particular episode. "Oh, the Uniform!" and "Shot the Messenger" are two of three that I'm allowed to build; the third will come much later.
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