Tag Archives: Board Game

Building Scrabble words with tile-built tiles

Squint and you might think the only thing LEGO about this elegant build from Galarie d’Antha is the word spelled across the tile rack. Antha created these giant-sized scrabble tiles for a typography challenge at the BrickPirate forum (a venerable haven for francophone builders). As a Scrabble player with no less than four sets in my collection, I appreciate the classic wooden tray design with the little lip for holding the tiles upright, and the tiles look so real I can practically feel my hand rummaging through a bag of them. Of course, my Scrabble brain looks at those sets of letters and screams that brand names are not legal plays, and HOLE or HOG would both be worth more points. And even if you could play LEGO legally, my AFOL brain bristles at the idea of someone trying to pluralize it with an S. You know what’s a great Scrabble word? BRICK. 13 points, or 36 points on your first play.

Giant Scrabble - One word to win

Everdell Chapel in the brick

Next to LEGO I am a huge board game nerd, and I love it when hobbies collide. Isaac and John Snyder drew inspiration from one of my favourite board games. Everdell is a worker placement game in which you build the homes of the many forest critters that inhabit the forest of Everdell. The artwork was done by Andrew Bosley and Dann May. The playing cards depict forest locations but also its inhabitants. The illustrations on the cards look truly as if they came straight out of a fairy tale. I can surely see why Isaac and John would draw inspiration from it. In this creation we see the Everdell chapel which is built on a rock in a foggy lake. A grey Belville tower roof has been incorporated in the landscaping and to me it is mind boggling that this large piece blends in with the scenery so well.

Everdell Chapel

The resemblance to the source material is really amazing. The Tudor style is done exceptionally well, and including yellowed and damaged white bricks to depict the decay of the building is really clever. On the playing card there are no animals included but it is nice to get some forest critters in there to make the scene appear more alive. They even get cute custom outfits made out of capes and rubber bands. I am curious to see if these two will keep drawing inspiration from this lovely board game. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t mind!

Bringing LEGO back into game night

Are you ready to play? Builder Pascal shows us how LEGO and board gaming can coexist as the ultimate game night. What was once an assortment of bricks is now a modular custom tile strategy game. A mix of grass, water, rocks and mountains can be created by filling in various parts of the map. The fact that I can recreate the terrain after every batch is fantastic, assuring no game is the same.

Modular Terrain

Pascal says the inspiration for this creation was found in the 1984 game BattleTech. I’m thrilled to see each 2×2 tile piece has a single stud in the middle to balance my robot warriors. This will definitely come in handy since everyone knows you’ll need to stay on the high ground if you’re going to win at this game.

Brick’s Gambit

Nowadays, custom chess sets built from LEGO are not at all unusual. It is after all the most popular board game and can be played over and over again without getting boring. It has also recently experienced a surge in popularity following the Netflix series Queen’s Gambit. Being easy to build from LEGO, it is something many builders do at least once in their life. Here, Daniel Barwegen adds his own flair to the arsenal of stylised LEGO chess sets.

Chess

I was immediately drawn to the uniquely spindly pieces with the wide bases. Some pieces like the king and queen continue the design to their crowns, which are sharp and angular, and even the horse-heads of the knights include teeth and gears. I love that the pieces appear easy to grip, like straws and pencils, rather than not having enough space between neighbouring pieces. The textures on the rooks are also well done without being overbearing.

And yes, we’ve noticed that some pieces are not in their correct squares. And so has the builder. That’s the beauty of LEGO and chess – you can easily move the pieces back to their correct place without ruining the game.

Check out more life-sized builds of things other than chess sets!

The board game Azul comes to life in LEGO

Toltomeja and I share not one, but two hobbies. We both love playing board games. Toltomeja’s favorite game is Azul, a game which I play quite often myself. Their rendition of the game in LEGO bricks is instantly recognizable. Even if you are not familiar with the game you can still appreciate this creation for what it is, an amazing build with lots of interesting building techniques and a very pleasing aesthetic. They even managed to improve the game board by adding insert slots for the little game cubes. To top it all off they even built the table on which the game board is resting, complete with wood grain and everything.

Azul

Bloodborne Hunters Dream

The game Bloodborne holds a very special place in the heart of Nathan Hake. It inspired him to make this LEGO Bloodborne Hunters Dream creation. The build took about a year to make and I can understand why. Hunters Dream is a location in Bloodborne. Also known as Dream Refuge, it is the place where the player goes after their first death and operates as a central hub, providing trade and upgrade services. The player can port from this location to any of the Lamps that they have activated.

Bloodborne hunters dream LEGO moc close ups. This build took about a year to make and was my first display at cbs. The build was inspired by the amazing video game Bloodborne which holds a very special place in my heart.

More than a year later Nathan decides to remember his epic creation by making a micro-scale hunters dream and it is absolutely stunning. Not only is the building very recognizable. The whole ambiance of the big creation is well translated to the micro-scale build.

Micro hunters dream

Will anyone trade me two bricks for one sheep?

I’m trying to build the longest road here, folks. I need those bricks. Anyone who has ever played the board game The Settlers of Catan will instantly relate to this build by Cab ~, with the hexagonal board tiles and the wooden game pieces. This one is built in three dimensions, however, and with LEGO bricks. Impressively, the whole scene is LEGO, including the cards in the background, the table, and the dice. I happen to love mosaics, and the work that went into those cards is well worth it. I also love Catan, so this build has me wanting to have a game night. The only problem is the social distancing. Maybe if we all sit six feet apart it will work…

Game Night

It’s also an entry to the Iron Forge, the open-to-all-comers entry competition to the famous Iron Builder, so you can see lots of minifigure legs in the build. They give the hexagons their distinctive shape. I also love the clips for the sheep’s grass and the grille tiles for wheat. Now if only I had built my settlement on the bricks.

Every piece is useful in chess and in LEGO

If you love strategy games, it is likely that you enjoy chess, one of the oldest strategy games out there. When I was in high school, a group of friends and I got together to play chess every Friday, but I must admit that I showed up mostly for the Twizzlers and chips and salsa. Judging by his excellent LEGO rendition of a chessboard, Chris Maddison seems like the kind of guy who would have shown up to show people up with skillful moves and clever endgame strategies.

Chess Set

This is a very handsome and elegant board and set of pieces, with virtually no studs showing except for the eyes and throats of the knights. The anti-studs at the top of the rooks look great, but my favorite piece is the king, with a simple yet effective cross atop his crown. The SNOT (studs not on top) board looks perfect for playing; I could easily see myself being checkmated in three moves on it. Perhaps it is time for me to dust off my old chess set and start playing again; or better yet, I could build myself one like Chris.

40198 LEGO Ludo Game (also known as Parcheesi or Sorry!) [Review]

Unlike building with LEGO, playing board games implies very specific elements of luck, strategy, and competition. It’s very hard to draw parallels between building with plastic pieces and spending hours over a board moving tokens back and forth. So when the two universes meet each other, the result can be absolutely unpredictable — just like 40198 LEGO Ludo Game, the new LEGO version of the famous Ludo board game. The set consists of 389 pieces, includes a small army of 16 minifigures and retails at $39.99/€39.99. And could I have imagined how much fun was hidden inside the box..?

Click to read the full review

It takes only 6,500 pieces to build a perfect LEGO empire chess set

There are dozens of ways one can decorate their home with LEGO, either mounting Star Wars battleships on the walls, placing LEGO sculptures all over the place or even hanging huge LEGO mosaics in a guest room. Still, there is nothing quite like a brilliant grandmaster chess set built completely with LEGO pieces to be exhibited in your home library. Bonus points are for a themed chess set – just like this 6,500-piece-large masterpiece by Aniomylone.

Chess set

Click here to take a closer look at the pieces!

LEGO Go board provides more possible outcomes than atoms in the universe

Despite spending the first fifteen years of my life in Japan and living in the same city as one of the largest Go clubs in North America, I’ve really only admired the ancient game of Go from afar. I’ll need to correct that someday, perhaps by building one of my own Go boards from LEGO, as Kadigan did. The 17×17 board takes advantage of the tiny gaps between LEGO tiles, with 1×1 round tiles as the black and white playing pieces. He’s even created realistic wooden bowls from ball turret bases.

Go (圍棋)

If you liked this, you might also appreciate the 9×9 LEGO Go board built by Joe Miller a couple years ago.

LEGO vignettes from CLUE the board game

Bust out your detective notebooks because it’s time to find out who killed Mr. Boddy! The list of suspects is long and the combination of rooms and murder weapons seemingly endless. Leah G built seven fantastic little LEGO vignettes based on the classic board game of who done it known as Clue. Each vignette depicts a possible murder scenario and tons of great details.

Clue Board Game: The Body

Who do you think could be responsible for such a heinous crime? Could Tim Curry be invovled somehow? I need to snoop around a bit more for clues before I’ll feel confident opening that secret envelope. Leah has narrowed the list of possibilities down to a few of the usual suspects.

See all the possible villains after the jump