Tag Archives: Pirates

Avast, me mateys! If ye be lookin’ for LEGO on the high seas, you’ve found the place where X marks the spot. Here be a treasure trove of sailing ships, garrisons full of imperial scalawags, and other such nautical nonsense. Walk that plank and dive into the wonderful world of LEGO Pirates.

Putting the ‘rat’ into pirate – with clever parts use to boot

We often see collaborative projects in the LEGO community where different builders will all build within a similar theme. But it’s not often that said collab is themed around a specific builder! Steven Howad (Ghalad) and co have undertaken a “special secret collab” (his words) to celebrate LEGO designer and AFOL community stalwart Markus Rollbühler. Steven was handed five mice to get him started, but he has taken them and really ran with it – there is so much NPU here! The mice are in the beard, but we also have: octopuses and tyres for the hair; Dots wristbands for the sash and headband; lifejackets for the jacket buttons; long-haired dogs in the cheeks; and plenty more besides. But my favourite – and the most meta – are the boat hulls used for the hat and epaulettes!

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One Piece pirate ship? How about 4,000 Piece?

As excited as we are for the newly revealed One Piece sets, we still hold out hope that LEGO will return to the Age of Sails with sets that aren’t infused with clowns and talking reindeer. For minifig-scale ships, there are few LEGO shipwrights as skilled as Saran (MocYourBricks) who for years has been upgrading designs from LEGO’s past with an AFOL’s eye for detail and custom sails and rigging. This photo comes from bee.brick, who recreated the Black Pearl and Queen Anne’s Revenge from Saran’s instructions. with extra flourishes, like brick-built canon blasts.

Built from 4,000 pieces, the Queen Anne’s Revenge is a thing of beauty, and even if the roughly $1000 cost of sourcing the parts and instructions is out of your price range, you can vicariously experience the joy of building it in this one-hour “speed build.”

Pirate the galaxy in style with the Typhoon and Tarantula starships

Official Star Wars media runs the gamut from abysmal to sublime, but the best Star Wars stories will always be the ones that exist in our heads. Perhaps no other fictional universe has spawned as many fan works where foundational canon serves as a launchpad for creativity. In the LEGO community, RPGs like Star Wars: Factions are collaborative playgrounds for stories told with visual accompaniment in the form of original builds. Sentinel_Brix is one of the more prolific members of that community, leaning heavily into the “opera” side of space opera with a complex serial story with a sprawling cast. One of the builder’s latest arcs features pirates and includes original designs for a galleon and starfighter.

Per the builder’s lore, the DY-76 “Typhoon” is a starfighter from the Clone Wars era built by Koensayr Manufacturing. If the vessel’s cockpit looks familiar, it’s because it comes from the same company the made the Y-Wing. I especially like the biplane wing design and the color details in sand red and light blue.

Read on to learn more about Sentinel_Brix’s Star Wars pirate faction

Yo, ho, ho, ho, me hearties!

If ye be dreamin’ of a white Christmas, legend has it that there’s an uncharted isle where snow falls but once a year. Ye don’t believe me? Well, Jo Marte captured the whole jolly affair in LEGO! Featuring crows nests, skull-shaped caves, and shipwrecks, the scene bears all the trappings of classic Pirate, only things are looking a lot merrier for this motley crew of scallywags.

Swap yer grog for eggnog and cozy up by the fire as we await the arrival of White Beard’s booty. Here comes the jolly devil himself on his dolphin-pulled skiff. “On Flipper! On Skipper!” the festive freebooter calls.

Ye best be staying silent about what you’ve seen. Dead men tell no tales. “Now swim away, swim away, swim away all!” Until next year.

Brickmaster and commander

For someone who grew up with the old Pirates LEGO theme, it’s always gratifying to see the theme’s evolution at the hands of able builders. Case in point: “Redcoat Navy Brigantine” by Evancelt Lego. The Imperial Navy sets sail in a slick, stylish vessel that pays homage to the original theme while really hoisting the yardarm a few notches in terms of detail and accuracy. This incarnation of the pirates’ nemesis has a distinctly Napoleonic feel. The deck hums with activity while bayonet-wielding marines stand at the ready. I love those brick-built furled sails, which are almost indistinguishable from cloth, and the trans blue and white tiles standing in for a serene sea. Is the Navy on the trail of pirates, or do they have another mission in mind?

This little fortress is big on details

Miniaturizing a large set (either for budget reasons or just because a microscale version looks so darn cute) is a common enough practice among LEGO builders, but most of the time the miniature versions don’t stay at minifig scale. “Eldoradito Fortress” by. Ciamosław Ciamek keeps most of the major features of the larger 10320 Eldorado Fortress (itself a remake of the classic set of the same name), so it stays true to its storied pedigree despite its smaller size. We’ve got the winch, jail, tower, cannons, dock, stone ramp, rowboat, and palm tree. There’s even a solitary guard, though he looks as though he’s probably overdue to be relieved. The only feature that doesn’t make it into the smaller version is the ship (which would be tough to shrink down much further anyway).

Should any of ye be wishin’ ta beg for mercy, Captain Hutt will hear yer pleas

Any fan of pirate history knows the legend of the Jade Eye’s Return, and how young Duke Wavewalker and his ragtag crew fell into the hands of the nefarious Captain Hutt while fleeing the Imperial armada. Joe (jnj_bricks) pays tribute in LEGO to the memorable scene on the shoals of Cancun where Duke and crew were taken by skiff to the all-meaty shark pit. Joe’s clever mash-up was made for a challenge to blend Star Wars with history, so taking the plank-walking Sarclaac scene back to the golden age of pirates is a perfect fit. The skiff’s brick-built hull is a lovely design and Joe’s technique for partially submerged sharks is brilliant, nesting the upper jaw over a grey dome and using triangular tiles for the dorsal fins. What sells the scene is the excellent remix of minifigs. Of course, pirate Chewie would use Hagrid’s beard.

Swashbuckling and derring-do aplenty in this LEGO adventure

It’s been a rough day for the merchant Steve. He’s just onshore to make a buck or two; unfortunately, he arrived at this idyllic Caribbean harbor town just in time for it to fall victim to enemy attack. Now he must join forces with the pirates of Captain Redbeard if he wants to get out before things get really rough. That’s the tale told in LEGO by Nicholas Goodman in this thrilling scene called “Escape from the Imperial Trading Post.” The thing is, I probably didn’t need to give you all that backstory. The build itself tells the story wonderfully, with a scene that feels ripped from a blockbuster movie: the pairs of combatants locked in desperate combat, the whitecapped waves crashing against the rocks, the palm trees swaying in the breeze. The cliffs have a natural, rugged look to them, and the fort’s whitewashed walls have just the right amount of weathering. Let’s hope Steve makes it to his ship okay; those cliffs look a little dicey.

A year-long LEGO Castle project documented on YouTube

One of the perks of having friends in the LEGO hobby is being able to see their projects develop over time, transforming from rough sketches and multi-colored foundations to beautiful works of art on their way to a convention. And over the past year, we’ve had the chance to look in on Caleb Schilling‘s process as he developed his Island Castle build over on YouTube. The work was on display at Brickworld Chicago this year, and the completed work is quite a sight to behold! Featuring an array of earth tones, a gorgeous galleon, and an army of conquistador-style minifigures, this scene displays an overwhelming number of interesting techniques bringing it to life. My favorite among them has got to be the design of the large palm trees, relying on 1×1 slopes to create bands of texture running up the bent trunks.

If you’d like to go back to the start with Caleb, he’s got all 8 videos lined up in an Island Castle playlist over on YouTube for every LEGO Pirates and Castle fan out there.

Just an itsy-bitsy taste of nostalgia

If you need a little more nostalgia in your life, you can get some teeny-tiny doses from these LEGO builds by Rick Brickham! Rick has taken on the challenge of miniaturizing a number of classic LEGO sets from years past. Not only are these great representations of the larger sets, they are examples of great building techniques in their own right. Let’s take a look at each build individually!

Click here for some close-ups!

It takes many pieces to make One Piece’s Whitebeard

The pirate adventure series One Piece is overflowing with larger-than-life characters, but Edward Newgate, aka Captain Whitebeard, aka “The Strongest Man Alive,” takes excess to new heights. To recreate this honorable ally to the Straw Hats in LEGO, builder lavishlump had to go big. Believe it or not, this model of the 666cm tall pirate emperor is to scale with the custom minifig of the captain’s number one, Marco the Phoenix. Lavishlump employs tiles to great effect to capture the captain’s chiseled physique, and the slight gap between plates in his head perfectly aproximates Whitebeard’s perpetually squinting eyes. The classic Islander horn piece makes for a dynamite mustache. But my favorite detail has got to be the use of a pearl gold handbag to connect the blade and shaft of Whitebeard’s massive naginata weapon.

With hundreds of colorful characters, dozens of whimsical pirate ships, and fantastic ports of call, One Piece and LEGO go together like skulls and crossbones. I hope to see many more LEGO tributes to Luffy and crew’s adventures on the Grand Line.

Black Falcons are on the move

LEGO ships come in various shapes and sizes and are captained by different factions. Builder Andreas Lenander transports us to a scene where the Black Falcons are embarking on an adventure. The builder shows off with the construction and placement of the sails, as I’m sure those things weigh quite a bit. Undoubtedly this portion of the build presented a challenging task as well as a unique approach to a frequently visited part of a ship build. Brick-built sails are not unique, but the approach here diverges from the often-seen use of borrowed capes and other fabrics and provides depth and volume to the overall build. Although the sails are great, a closer look at each shipmate intrigues me as I try to determine where the hairpiece was borrowed. I see a couple of familiar options- Ariel? Leia? Finally, the water caught my attention. Although the approach is simple, it almost seems obvious now. I don’t know if this builder utilized a groundbreaking approach to depicting water via LEGO bricks, but I sure enjoyed seeing it for the first time here.