The ElDorado Fortress is one of the "BUT" sets. As in "this feature is good, but...", so it is a mixed experience.

The very idea to revive an iconic set of the Pirate era is laudable. To build it with a built base instead of a raised baseplate is good, BUT it costs a load of bricks and thus drives the price of the set up in a region where it should not be: beyond €200. A price of €199 would have been acceptable.

What contributed to the high brick count was that the whole set was designed in a modular fashion, which is basically a good idea, BUT the design fell short here and it is only partly modular, i.e. the pieces only fit in a limited number of combination - the modularity is far from universal.

And so, the boat is a BUT thing, too. It is nice that they included a little sailing boat, BUT it is totally unrealistic in it's design. The transom and rudder configuration is that of a motor boat, and the rigging is totally off with a square sail and a gaff sail on the same mast. This is as if they would sell car models with legs instead of wheels. OK, we can now discuss at length the amount of realism in a LEGO model, but this is so far off, it hurts.

The crane is a good idea and well-designed, BUT it lacks the reach to actually load and unload something from the boat.

The list goes on and on.

In the end, I decided to completely redo the model as a (large) MOC, non-modular this time. The island fortress will cover about 12 baseplates, and another 12 will be surrounding quays and docks. Luckily, I already have the polulation (20-30 blue-shirt soldiers and about 150-200 sailors - originally pirates, but they can be used as harmless laypersons, too) and about 50 guns. All collected for an abandoned project years ago.

Maybe I'll document my work on the boat, maybe I'll only provide it as a finished work. Don't know.

cool, I'll check that one out, thanks! Boost seems to display them most accurately, which makes the fact that Sync doesn't show half of the pics at all really weird, as that's the app I used to make the post 🤔

Thanks! Brick for brick I also enjoy ‘normal’ lego more, but the MOCs for technic are better imo and more reasonably priced from what I have seen.

So of you take rebuilding/MOCs into account, in my experience (and opinion) Lego technic gives a bit more bang for your buck, but the absolute enjoyment of building a set is bigger with regular Lego.

Disassembling a newer set is significantly easier than older sets, because the pins are still more flexible. I think they tend to harden as they age. So if you put on some nice music and think of it as a little bit of me-time, it’s not so bad.

Edit: fixed a couple of typos