LEGO figures of WNFF members.

[Vega]

Just have sportsfan accidentally spidernat and/or himself to comically even the odds.

But Spider is the de facto big bad. I can't kill him, at least not until I've established a main bad guy.

[The Chief]

But Spider is the de facto big bad. I can't kill him, at least not until I've established a main bad guy.

Who said kill?  Didn't you ever watch transformers?  Any time "bad" guys have overwhelming advantages, they automatically become the three stooges in order to give the outmatched "good" guys a fair chance.

You could just have hammonds and sportsfan accidentally each other, then it's at least 3-to-1 against spidernat.

[houston-nat]

Who said kill? You could just have hammonds and sportsfan accidentally each other, then it's at least 3-to-1 against spidernat.

Sounds like you accidentally the verb.

[The Chief]

Sounds like you accidentally the verb.

Yeah it was deliberate both times.  It's Vega's show, so I figured I'd let him supply the verbs

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally

“I Accidentally…” is a catchphrase, internet slang, and trolling mechanism that exploits the imagination of English-speaking internet users. By constructing a complete sentence that begins with “I accidentally” and then removing the verb, one creates a very confusing sentence left to the imagination.

[Vega]

Who said kill?  Didn't you ever watch transformers?  Any time "bad" guys have overwhelming advantages, they automatically become the three stooges in order to give the outmatched "good" guys a fair chance.

You could just have hammonds and sportsfan accidentally each other, then it's at least 3-to-1 against spidernat.

I suppose. Also, I didn't watch Transformers when I was growing up. I was more of a Scooby Doo kind of kid, so I'm used to the good guys outnumbering the bad guys by a lot, but being totally inept/stoned and thus only winning by either dumb luck or with help from Batman.

[Vega]

WARNING! Extremely long and immensely geeky post explaining my plans for this thread is coming! Please hold.

[Vega]

So I actually do have a plan for all of this. As I mentioned previously, my idea is to have this story take place in the LEGO Castle universe. I'll explain, but first we need some back story on the Castle universe.

It starts way back in 1984, when what could be called the modern era of LEGO Castle began. We began with two factions, the Lion Knights and the Black Falcons.


^^Average Lion Knights.^^


^^Average Black Falcons.^^

These jolly fellows battled each other non-stop until 1988, when two new factions, the Black Knights and the Forestmen (Robin Hood.) joined the fray.


^^Average Black Knights.^^


^^Average Forestmen.^^ (That fortress is freaking awesome. One of the best sets I own.)

FOUR freaking factions! But wait, there's more! In 1992, they introduced a FIFTH freaking faction, the Wolfpack bandits!


^^Average Wolfpackers.^^ Blue wagons FTW.

Yes, these were the golden years of LEGO Castle. Five different factions, oodles of epic castles, challenging builds, and great minifigs. Things began to change somewhat in 1993 with the introduction of the Dragon Knights. From this point on, there was usually only one faction released per year, which sucked. The quality of the builds also began to deteriorate with the introduction of large molded parts in place of multiple smaller parts. This practice is called juniorization. It is intended to make the builds less difficult for younger children, and it really pisses off older fans. (Go look at Town sets from 1996 to 2000. The amount of juniorization in those sets is horrifying. Truly a dark time in LEGO history.)


This set, Dark Dragon's Den, is a good example of juniorization. See those big freaking grey rock wall parts? The bigger ones are called Big Ugly Rock Pieces, or BURPS, and the smaller ones are called Little Ugly Rock Pieces, or LURPs. They were the beginning of juniorization in LEGO. Also blue Santa Claus.

The Dragon Knight's do have something interesting and different, and that is a (Very loose.) storyline. As far as I know, up to this point, there weren't even any clearly defined good guys and bad guys. It was just factions fighting, and you made up the story.



As you can see, it was very open-ended. The only thing it really established was blue Santa's name and that these new guys were the crap. Anyways, this theme marked an unfortunate shift towards simplicity in LEGO that thankfully wouldn't hit it's stride until several years later. The next few years are some of the best of all time for LEGO overall. In 1995, LEGO introduced a new incarnation of the Lion Knights known as the Royal Knights.


This is Royal Knight's Castle, considered to be one of the greatest LEGO castles ever. It's something of a Holy Grail to me, but that is a story for another day.

It also came with the first ever ruler in LEGO Castle. He was simply known as the Royal King.


I prefer to call him the Ginger King.

These guys were pretty badass. They initially fought the Dragon Knights, but the next year, their new enemies were revealed; The Dark Forest faction, a gritty reboot of the Forestmen. Or they might not be enemies. The box art is confusing in that regard.


In this set's box art, the blue feather Forestman seems to be attacking the Royal Knight, but the other Royal Knight appears to be loading the catapult to shoot at his buddy! WTF?


Also for this set! The Forestmen seem to be trying to rob the Dragon Knight's carriage, but the other Dragon Knight is loading a catapult to shoot at his buddy! I sense a pattern here, and, once again, WTF?

The Royal Knights and Dark Forest were great. I lusted after them when I was a kid, but I never got any. The next year introduced an indisputably evil faction, the heavily juniorized Fright Knights, led by the dark wizard Basil the Batlord and his hideous sidekick Willa the Witch.


I think the people who set up the box art pictures were retarded. The Royal Knight in this set is shown to be guarding the entrance while a Fright Knight is riding the Royal Knight's horse. Idiots.


GAAH BURPS AND LURPS! Um, yeah. Another example of stupid. The Dark Forestman here seems to be guarding the door. NOT A MEMBER OF THE FRIGHT KNIGHTS.

As you can see, the sets were quite juniorized and so forth, but I like the aesthetic well enough and the minifigs were great. This marks the end of castle for a while. From 1998 to 1999, Castle was replaced by the legendary Ninja line. It is technically a sub-theme of Castle, but it isn't relevant right now, so we'll skip to 2000, which saw the release of the mixed bag that was Knight's Kingdom I.





Juniorization reared it's ugly head very much here. The sets were aesthetically weird and not challenging to build at all, but when one takes in to consideration the other awful crap going on in other themes at the time...


Monster truck cop car. Damn you LEGO.

... This stuff was pretty damn good, especially the minifigs. The Lion Knights were led by the pimpin' mothafreaka King Leo, who is still one of my favorite minifigs of all time.


^^Pimpin' mothafreaka.^^

These figs introduced printed hips and legs, which were unheard of at this time. Also, we got the female knight Princess Storm, the daughter of King Leo.



We also got the evil Bull Knight bandits, Cedric, Gilbert, and Weasel. They were pretty damn cool also.



And, finally, we got something we hadn't seen since the eighties, a maiden! This particular lady is Queen Leonora, Leo's wife. Apparently, Leo is so badass that his wife had his name added to the start of her own name.


And may I say that she looks really good for a middle-aged woman with a twenty-something year old daughter.

After KKI, LEGO took another break from castle that lasted all the way until 2004. It sucked, but the drought ended with Knight's Kingdom II, a theme that received a very wide range of reactions from people, but is generally thought of as sort of the epitome of everything wrong with early to mid 2000s LEGO. It may not sound promising, but it is what inspired everything that I have done here. I'm splitting this in to two posts for convenience. Next post will tell you everything you need to know about KK2 and I'll finally explain what the freaking hell any of this has to do with anything.

[spidernat]

I need more than three SsSers. There needs to be roughly as many SsSers as LoDers or it won't be a fair fight, especially with the powers that I've established that Spider and Sportsfan have.

You're just not looking. There are way more SS'ers than Lod'ers. The difference is that most of LoD are alpha dogs while the SS'ers are gammas at best.   

[spidernat]

Next post will tell you everything you need to know about KK2 and I'll finally explain what the freaking hell any of this has to do with anything.
[/color]

OK my last post was in response to what went on in the last page and then I read/see this. 

But this is totally bad ass.

[Vega]

Back in '04, my heart was troubled by the lack of castle (And space.) sets over the past few years. Thankfully, LEGO heard my mental pleas and produced a new castle theme (Space didn't come like I wanted until 2009.) called Knights' Kingdom II, or KK2. Before we go any further though, I must mention one thing about this theme that is universally hated and really hurt the quality of the theme itself.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*shudder* Oh freak. I hate those abominations. That is what the good knights of this theme look like. The fanbase dubbed them jellybean knights. These... things, with their horribly gaudy colors and ridiculously large helmets were what we got after four years of nothing. I am still mentally scarred by it all.

Anyhow, on to the sets.





Quite frankly, they're utter bovine fecal matter. Of the seven sets released, I only bought the above set 8780, and I only got it because it was on massive discount, and the only reason I got it was because of the epic bearded fellow that comes with it. Juniorization was rampant, with BURPs and LURPs everywhere, as well as massive specialized castle wall pieces. I took it apart almost immediately. This theme was not limited to minifig scale sets though. Due to the success of their Bionicle theme, LEGO decided to expand their buildable action figure concept to Castle also.



I did buy all of these. This initial attempt was... flawed. They're so damned skinny. They don't look like knights at all; they barely even look human. Things got better the next year though.



Much better. They actually have armor and the colors are way less gaudy. I've still got the '05/'06 large figures constructed; they're in a bag in my attic. Solid action figures all the way around. Thankfully, the action figures weren't all that got better in '05...






^^HOLY crap^^ The final picture posted there is Vladek's Dark Fortress, the most visually impressive LEGO Castle of all time. It has some juniorized parts, but they are used alongside more complicated building techniques to create a very engaging and sturdy build. (One of the main side effects of large pieces is lack of structural integrity.) Truly a masterpiece, and the the sets are pretty impressive themselves. This was as good as it got for KK2. '06 was the final year for KK2, and while it wasn't nearly as good as '05, it ended the theme on a solid note.





We'll start with the action figures. They're the same design as '05 except with different armor. Still solid. Now on to the minifig scale sets.







Those were the only three mass-release sets for KK2 in '06. The boat has a pretty cool design, but the main focus is the bridge and tower, which connect together to from a very impressive structure that I had displayed for a very long time. They're made of plenty of LURPS, but they're used quite tastefully and look way better than a lot of smaller pieces would. Not necessarily an impressive build, but the height of the tower gives it real presence. The minifigs were quite poor this year however. Other than some brilliant new armor, (One of which I've used on Linty.) they're disappointing. They're not necessarily horrible, but they're unimaginative and lazy. Nothing new to be found at all.

The other set released in '06 was Battle at the Pass, a TRU exclusive wall that is the ONLY set in the entire KK2 theme to come with generic good guy soldiers. All of the other good guys are individual characters, not generic soldiers. That gives the good guys the four main characters and the king against the villain and his horde of mindless supermen. Not very good odds, but they win anyway. More on that later.



Overall, KK2 had it's flaws, especially in the first year, but it got much better as it progressed and ended up being a pretty solid entry in the LEGO Castle collective. I'll get back to KK2 momentarily, but I need to mention what came next first.

KK2 was followed up in '07 by a theme simply known as Castle, although it has retroactively been dubbed the Fantasy Era. This is when LEGO really started to hit their stride. The Fantasy Era initially saw the Crown Knights, aka the Crownies, do battle with a horde of the undead, led by an evil necromancer.






^^Goofy yet fun set. Mr. Necromancer certainly isn't very subtle.



^^IT'S THE WAGON TO HELL!^^ This will most certainly appear in my story.

Later on in '07 and throughout '08 and '09, the Crownies teamed up with dwarves to fight against a massive army of trolls.








^^I'm going to order that set soon.^^ I'll review it when I get it. One of the few civilian castle sets made, and it's magnificent.

I loved the Fantasy Era. I didn't get nearly as many of the sets as I wanted to, but I got enough to know that it was a massive step forward for LEGO. It was followed up in '10 by Kingdoms, which ditched the fantasy elements and went back to Lion Knights fighting Dragon Knights. This theme is ongoing, although it will end with one more set next year, after which we will have to wait until whenever LEGO releases a new Castle theme.


^^Very good set.^^




^^Another civilian!^^ Also a good set. Nice figures.


^^Even more civilians!^^ And it comes with goat form Hammonds! What's not to like?


Now to finish up KK2 and explain my idea. KK2 was unique among LEGO themes, and especially among Castle in that it had an actual story to it. Sure, we've had named characters before, like Basil the Batlord and the KK1 characters, but nothing like this. It was pretty simplistic and cliche, but it was designed for kids as young as seven, so it is understandable. It isn't really written down anywhere, so I'll try to explain it by memory.

Once upon a time, there as a fantastical kingdom called MacGuffincia... er... Morcia. It was made up of four provinces; Talonjay, the Falcon province; Bantaras, the Monkey province; Orkosan, the Bear province, and Aldendan, the Wolf province. It was ruled by the good king Mathias, and all was happy puppy dogs and soap bubbles, until one day, one of Mathias' supposed allies, Lord Vladek from the neighboring kingdom of Ankoria, stole the magic MacGuffin Book of Morcia book thing that allowed him to turn his soldiers in to mindless lugs and do cool crap like overthrow Mathias.





So four gallant cookie cutter knights; Jayko, the brash young Falcon knight; (Blue knight.) Danju, the wise and experienced Wolf Knight; (freaking purple knight.) Santis, the strong and stoic Bear knight; (Red knight.) and Rascus, the wisecracking and daring Monkey knight (Green knight.) go out to get the Superior MacGuffin, the Heart of the Shield of Ages, which is the centerpiece of a magic shield that King Orlan, the founder of the whole Morcia thing used to unify the provinces. This will defeat the other MacGuffin for some reason.



After some heroic questing, our fruity heroes get to the crapadel of Orlan, the awful freaking set that I bought on discount. They get past the giant snake and collapsing bridge and make it inside the crapadel.



The epic bearded fellow, who is called the Guardian and who is never really explained, gives them the Heart of MacGuffin thing to defeat Vladek for great justice oorah.



They get in to the castle, Jayko uses the MacGuffin to zap Vladek with his own Force lightning, and everything is awesome... until more MacGuffin happens in '05!





The king has used the MacBookfin to deduce that Vladek is back in his home country and has used some magic something that I either can't remember or was never adequately explained to make a magic giant MaskGuffin called the Vladmask for MAXIMUM POWER and crap to take over Morcia. The MacBookfin gives the king and the gay knights their spiffy new armor to fight for greater justice. Danju and Rascus get kidnapped and rescued, and the king leads an attack on Vladek's fortress.



Rascus and Santis sneaked in to fortress to lower the drawbridge, because those siege engines wouldn't have worked at all.


^^"For Frodo."^^



Then Jayko and the king don't bother with the drawbridge that Rascus and Santis risked their lives to lower and just use the freaking seige engine. Jayko slices through the opposition to get to Vladek and the MaskGuffin, which has made Vladek invincible-ish. The king frisbees Jayko the Heart of MacGuffin to shield himself from the mask radiation of something. Then, Jayko sidesteps Vladek and stabs the MaskGuffin, which apparently isn't invincible like it made Vladek. After the fight, Mathias decides that he's too old for this crap and gives the kingdom to Jayko, the young, inexperienced, and brash knight instead of the wise philosopher Danju because because. (More on THAT stupid thing later.) And they don't capture Vladek somehow.



And like any good bad guy, Vladek lives to fight another day. He hires a few mercenaries to help him go get a MacGuffin.



Jayko, who has grown a beard because all LEGO kings have beards, hears of this somehow and brings his new young knights Kentis (Green.) and Adric (Red.) along to go fight Vladek. Like any good villain, Vladek explains that in the ancient Mistlands Tower is imprisoned a guy that's like Sauron and Voldemort or some crap, (A MacGuffin person! Interesting.) and that he plans to release him for massive experience points.



Random questy stuff happens


^^The Internets could do so much with that image...^^

Jayko takes the shield MacGuffin and all of it's shattered parts, which he has now, to the tower where bearded blacksmith guy (It's Orlan, the first king of Morcia.) reforges it into it's original magical form, which gives it more MAXIMUM POWER to defeat Vladek.


^^Didn't Jayko find this guy living in the ancient structure to be a little odd?^^

Vladek breaks orb that Sauron was in, but Jayko's MacGuffin one-ups Vladek's and Vladek and Sauron get stuck in the orb. Then the new guys get honored and the story ends.



Oh, and Captain Density puts two and two together to figure out who the blacksmith at the tower was. Really. It took him looking at the statue of the guy to figure it out? That's like one of us meeting George Washington and not recognizing him.



This took a really long time, so I'll finish sometime in the morning.

[PANatsFan]

More like village idiot.

[The Chief]

help from Batman.

I think you found your solution

[Nathan]

I think you found your solution

That was your best avatar, IMO.

[Minty Fresh]

It also came with the first ever ruler in LEGO Castle. He was simply known as the Royal King.


I prefer to call him the Ginger King.

How am I not the Ginger King?   

[Kevrock]

This is Royal Knight's Castle, considered to be one of the greatest LEGO castles ever. It's something of a Holy Grail to me, but that is a story for another day.

Do tell. I still have the baseplate to this, found it at my parents house.

The first half of your story spanned when I played Legos through when my brother played with them. I now feel old, and you are quite the historian.

[Obed_Marsh]

BiL not you Nannypants.

[Lintyfresh85]

Can I nag about how much I hate the bionic line of Legos? They need to keep making them like they did when I was a kid.

I had this pirate ship...



I had this castle...



and this western outpost...



And that's all I really needed!

[PANatsFan]

BiL not you Nannypants.

Ok cool - you call me a lot of things but I ain't not no idiot

[spidernat]

Ok cool - you call me a lot of things but I ain't not no idiot

You're the village idiot's dog.

[DPMOmaha]

Can I nag about how much I hate the bionic line of Legos? They need to keep making them like they did when I was a kid.

I had this pirate ship...



I had this castle...



and this western outpost...



And that's all I really needed!

Now you're making me wish I had gotten more into legos...

[Vega]

I think you found your solution

I think I may have indeed...

Do tell. I still have the baseplate to this, found it at my parents house.

As far as baseplate castles go, the Royal King's Castle is considered to be one of the best. It is so highly regarded that LEGO made an homage to it in '06.

Can I nag about how much I hate the bionic line of Legos? They need to keep making them like they did when I was a kid.

I had this pirate ship...



I had this castle...



and this western outpost...



And that's all I really needed!

You had epic and awesome sets. Oh, and Bionicle ended in '10, but it has been replaced by a very similar theme called Hero Factory.

[Vega]

So you may be wondering what any of all of the massive wall of orange text and LEGO pictures I posted has to do with my WNFF minifigs. Once again, a little explanation is needed. I have created a theory that states that all of the Castle themes are connected together in to one massive continuous story and that all of the Morcian provinces are descended from the original factions. I think that what Orlan, the original Morcian king, did was to unify all of the factions in to one kingdom, with the exception of the Ankorians/Fright Knights, who became allies of the Lion Knights after their defeat at the hands of the great Ginger King, but remained their own separate entity.

Talonjay = Black Falcons
Orkosan = Black Knights and Bull Knights
Bantaras = Forestmen/Dark Forest
Aldendan = Wolfpack
Ankoria = Fright Knights

Yes, alright. So what? Well, this begs the question of how we get from four factions being united but still retaining their own unique identities to everything being under the Crownie banner alone. I have a theory about that also.

Throughout the story, Jayko is shown to be very cocky and headstrong, as well as somewhat arrogant and focused on getting praise and glory for himself, but basically good at heart. In essence, a promising knight with much to learn and several potentially useful but, at the time, harmful character traits to be honed and/or eliminated. He was very much not ready to be the king, and I think that after defeating Vladek for the final time, the power goes to his head, causing him to start oppressing the people of the other three provinces in favor of his native province of Talonjay. This brings many long-buried prejudices and issues to the surface, leading to great social unrest and eventual civil war. I think that after much bloodshed, Jayko gets murdered by a revolutionary group led by his former friend Rascus, who installs a new king to the throne and manages to keep the kingdom intact under the new Crownie banner.

I also think that Jayko was supremely harsh on the defeated Ankorians, sacking their land, mass murdering their citizens, and selling their women in to slavery, which forced the Ankorians to turn to the Necromancer, who saw an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the chaos in the newly formed Crownie Kingdom by using the Ankorians' hatred and spite towards the former Morcia to take over the Crownies. The Necromancer turned the few remaining Ankorians in to a fearsome undead horde and led them against them against the weak Crownies. After being pushed to near defeat, the Crownies finally achieve victory when Sir Rascus*, now a general in the Crownie army, kills the Necromancer in combat. The death of the Necromancer causes his magic to stop working, leading to the 'death' of the entire undead horde, along with everything that remained of the once proud land of Ankoria, with the exception of the few who were assimilated in to Morcia and the women sold in to slavery.

This storyline I've written, specifically the time in between the official end of KK2 and Jayko's death, offers an excellent backdrop for an adventuring story. Social unrest and strife combined with a massive lack of trust in the nation's army cause the peoples of Morcia to hire adventurers to deal with their problems instead of asking the army for help, leading the creation of adventurers guilds like the SsS, GoINF and LoD.

Any thoughts? Is this a good idea, or am I being stupid?

*Rascus makes as appearance in the Fantasy Era as a Crownie general. He defends the king's castle from a dragon, defeats a skeleton knight in a jousting match, rescues a dwarf from a troll warship by attacking on a dragon, and leads the attack on the trolls' fortress to save the king.


^^Utter badass.^^ And no, LEGO did not merely reuse Rascus' head for other minifigs. That's Rascus because I say it is.

And before I conclude, I'd like to ask why the freak Mathias gave up the throne to Jayko to begin with? I'm guessing that the reason is because he had no heir because he was gay. A queen of Morcia is never shown*, so it is a logical assumption. Makes one wonder what sort of services young Jayko was performing to deserve receiving the crown ahead of the other three knights...

*In the early-mid 2000s, there were pretty much no female minifigs outside of licensed themes. LEGO had determined that their target audience of 8-12 year old boys still thought that girls were the cooties and didn't want them in their LEGOs. (As someone who hit puberty at 11, I beg to differ.) The adult LEGO fan community naged and complained about it so loudly that LEGO changed their policy, so we now have the fairer sex in LEGO again.

[Vega]

In case anyone is worried that the background story will cause this to go serious business mode and become anti-lulz, don't worry about that. If I do make scenes for the storyline, they will be mostly separate from the WNFF stuff. The story merely gives a setting for our antics to take place in instead of Unknown White Place. But, if I ever do crossover my story idea with the WNFF stuff, I'll make sure it is epic win.

[CALSGR8]

Why do women have to be "fairer sex"?  As what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, women can be warriors too!   

[Vega]

Spider has been working to undo Hammonds' goatness for a few days now with little success.



He's tried numerous reversal spells and uncountable potions, but no result at all. Spider is getting very annoyed.



He has one potion that he has yet to try. It's a mixture of liquified fleebnork, ground cysquatch horn, and the skin secretion of the rare Bantaran moss frog. It's the most powerful reversal potion in existence, but it almost always has some unpleasant side effects. Spider decides to try it anyway because any side effects it has couldn't be as bad as being a goat.



He feeds the potion to Hammonds...



... And it kills him, much to Spider's surprise and frustration. Death is not a normal side effect.



Suddenly, Hammonds reverts to human form and comes back to life!



After some poking and prodding, Spider determines that the combination of the initial troll transformation spell, the Chief's goat spell, the fifth and seventh spells tried, and the final potion have caused a bizarre effect that has rendered Hammonds immortal. Whenever he is killed in human form, he comes back to life in goat form, and when he dies as a goat, he comes back to life in human form. This completely and utterly prevents his permanent death, no matter the circumstances. This has made Hammonds one of the most powerful beings to ever walk the LEGO Castle world. A truly disturbing thought.



I've traded in Sportsfan's hat for a helmet. It looks quite good.