A LEGO Stormbreaker fit for an Asgardian king

Riley Scott fancies himself the “Tony Stark of LEGO”. However, his latest creation positions him to take the title of Dwarf King currently held by the lonely Eitri.

Lego Stormbreaker

I think we’re past the point of spoiler warnings with Avengers: Infinity War already in its home video phase, so I’m just going to jump right into how perfectly this model recreates Stormbreaker after its unique birth. In the movie, the freshly-cast hammer and axe sections fall out of the mold, and with both Thor and Eitri unable to help complete the weapon angsty teen Groot finally jumps into action by grabbing the separate pieces and intertwining them with wooden tendrils. Compare the LEGO model to its completed appearance in Infinity War below: the contrast of the metal look against the more organic stacked round LEGO bricks and plates is stellar.

One more shot of the strongest weapon in Asgardian history, one we saw deal some major damage to Thanos in the climax of the film. Sadly, Thor should have gone for his head.

Lego Stormbreaker

A floating LEGO village fit for a king

When you’re building a floating castle, space is limited. The City of Alaylon designed by the legendary architect Sir Alberto Mauriccio (according to the LEGO builder, Brother Steven) is a wonderful example of making the most of limited land. The island in the sky that this fortification and village are perched on is actually made up of two pieces of land connected by a sky bridge.

The City of Alaylon

There is nothing boring or plain about this castle in the sky. The many wall and tower fortification are built using some common elements of various sizes, like radar dishes and 1×1 round plates, and the inclusion of sloped elements at regular intervals along the walls ties the different structures together. The outer walls are gently curved to reinforce the crescent shape of the landscape.

The many upper towers, all in white, are also built to different dimensions using a wide variety of arches and other architectural elements that compliment each other quite nicely.

The City of Alaylon

The smaller shops and building inside the castle walls are the perfect addition to the scene, providing a glimpse into the day to day life of its residents and visitors. I really love the mason perched on a small platform to do some delicate repair work.

Travelling across Europe? Pamper yourself with a first class seat in DB Class VT 11.5

Make sure you’re at the right platform as this fantastic recreation of the DB Class VT 11.5 arrives at the central railway station. Built by Holger Matthes, this LEGO version of one of the most legendary German trains combines everything that a LEGO train builder could think of. Six cars, each 7 studs wide, stretch over 80 inches/2,5 meter long. Designed with a huge variety of curved slopes, this VT 11.5 looks almost like a PIKO set!

LEGO VT 11.5 Trans Europ Express (TEE)

The only thing that could possibly make a brilliant model like this VT 11.5 shine even brighter is, of course, a custom set of interior lights. Describing pictures like the one below makes almost no sense, so, it’s much better to enjoy it without any comments!

LEGO VT 11.5 Trans Europ Express (TEE)

Creature from the Brick Lagoon

Logey Bear’s latest LEGO build was inspired by the Creature from the Black Lagoon and includes a number of scary-good part choices. Front and center is an alien clinger from the Alien Conquest theme bringing fun curvy details to the face. It pairs exceptionally well with the minifigure arms that surround the eyes. A pair of bigfig arms are cleverly used as upper legs and several pairs of flippers are used for the webbed feet and gills.

Gill Man

You build...raptors?

From Jurassic Park to Jurassic World, velociraptors have remained a fan favorite in the series. While the raptors in Jurassic Park were hungry killing machines, Jurassic World gave us lovable trained carnivores. The scenes of Owen Grady bonding with Blue since birth are memorable, and I bet Owen would be proud of this wonderfully detailed LEGO version of Blue built by PaulvilleMOCs. There is a pleasing balance of form and function here. A splash of color keeps the model visually interesting, while ball & socket and hinged joints allow Blue to “strike a pose.” I really like Blue’s mouth, which consists of a 1×3 hinge tile, with the finger wedged between a modified 1×1 plate with clip. Finishing off the mouth is a dark pink minifig hand, which makes for a really cool-looking tongue.

LEGO Jurassic World Blue Velociraptor Left

And if you still haven’t had your prehistoric fill, the builder has also done a fun rendition of Mr. DNA.

Mr. DNA

LEGO Creator 10263 Winter Village Fire Station [Review]

If there is any indicator that the winter holidays are fast approaching, it’s the release of LEGO’s annual addition to the growing Winter Village collection. Each year at around this time, we see another charming set hit the shelves, and they’re arguably just as prized to collectors as Modular Buildings like 10260 Downtown Diner. This year’s holiday season brings us 10163 Winter Village Fire Station. The set has 1166 pieces, including 6 minifigures, a baby,  and a dog. It’s currently only available for LEGO VIP Program members, but will be available to anyone starting October 1st, retailing for $99.99 USD.

Click to read more about the newest addition to the Winter Village holiday collection!

Creating a charmingly crooked castle

It’s one of the contradictions at the heart of LEGO building, that we love to see the rectilinear brick subverted. Bravo to jaapxaap, who has centred his latest model on some seriously wonky geometry. There’s no doubt that Falcon Castle is suffering from years of subsidence, its central tower quaintly leaning at the most acute of angles.

Falcon Castle

Of course it takes real talent to do this, which you pick up again in the embellishments that have been added: the ingot bricks used to simulate wear, or the golden tower painstakingly formed form telescope pieces. In the end though, you just have to marvel at the way the imperfections of the ramshackle fortress have been so perfectly built.

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for September 16, 2018 [News]

In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the second week of September 2018.

TBB NEWS: This week was relatively quiet for news, seeing only two large sets becoming available for purchase, and the announcement of Bricklink’s new design program.

75222 Betrayal at Cloud City and 10263 Winter Village Fire Station available – Whether you’re already prepping for Christmas or just want to see Han Solo dunked in a vat of Carbonite, LEGO’s two newest sets are ready for you this week.
Bricklink announces AFOL Designer Program – LEGO partners with Bricklink for the latest way for LEGO fans to have a chance at their designs becoming official sets.

TBB Reviews & Features: This week’s reviews were all about Star Wars, and we reviewed two sets from their respective trilogy’s middle movies, The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi.

Review of LEGO Star Wars 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – We do a deep-dive in this hands-on review, examining every aspect of the first-ever LEGO Star Wars Master Builder Series set.
Review of LEGO Star Wars 75230 Porg – We’re taking a look at LEGO’s first-ever life-size creature from Star Wars, the cute Porg.

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Melt the hearts of thy enemy — or then again, there’s always the laser blaster

Star Wars never looked so good as with this LEGO Friends-themed makeover. This B-Wing is a fully custom build by Tyler Sky and reimagined for a more colourful Rebel vs Imperial universe. If the peaceful and friendly lasses can’t melt the heart of their enemies, my advice is to just lock, load and fire the ion cannons away! What makes this even slicker is the lack of visible LEGO studs (save for a couple around the sides of the cockpit). And if you really like this, read our earlier article on Tyler’s similar take on the Y-Wing

BFF B-Wing

Aiwan Ting Pavilion is eye-pleasing, both inside and out

When it comes to building historic Chinese architecture from LEGO bricks, it can prove challenging to capture the sweeping curves of rooftops and ornate details. While we’ve seen builders employ a variety of techniques for this, with his model of the Aiwan Ting Pavilion, Chinese builder Smoker Nie has managed to pull off both the shape and the details in an especially eye-pleasing manner. Aiwan Pavilion is located on Mount Yuelu in the Chinese province of Hunan.

LEGO MOC Aiwan Ting Pavilion Of China

Smoker’s building is an excellent likeness, both inside and out. According to the builder, 12350 LEGO bricks were used in its construction.

Click to see more of this LEGO Aiwan Pavilion

How to build a Grumman E-1 Tracer early warning aircraft from LEGO: Part 2 [Feature]

This article is Part 2 of an ongoing series. Read about the LEGO Grumman E-1 Tracer Part 1 here.

About two weeks ago, I started building a new aircraft model: a Grumman E-1 Tracer. Because some of you might like to know how one might build such a LEGO scale model, I am documenting my process in a short series. In the first part I described why I decided to build such an oddball aircraft in the first place and how I plan a build like this. I also explained that I usually start by building the difficult bits. A few of those are the subject of this article.

E-1 Tracer WIP (9th of September)

The Tracer’s wings are not quite perpendicular to the fuselage. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if the engine pods and the main undercarriage weren’t attached to them. I have built angled wings before, including some rather large ones. In practice, however, it is almost impossible to mount the wings using hinges and also have them carry much of the model’s weight. Furthermore, if I were to build the wings at some weird angle, I would then have to figure out how to align the engines attached to still be parallel with the fuselage. My solution is to attach both engines directly to each other and also to the fuselage using a bridge structure. I built this bridge perpendicular to the fuselage using plates. I then put the actual wings on top of it. By combining 2×3 and 2×4 wedge plates I filled in the gaps where the tops of the engines join the wing. Getting everything to fit nicely involved a lot of trial-and-error, but it works.

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LEGO Cloud Strife and his Chocobo ride into the sunset.

When Final Fantasy 7 came out for the PlayStation console in 1997, I spent many, many hours playing it, and one of the most pleasurable aspects, aside from kicking the pixels out of a multi-stage boss in epic 45-minute battles, was riding all over the world on my trusty Chocobo, searching for the elusive Giant Cactuar. This creation by Vincent Kiew captures the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife, astride his Chocobo in large scale.

FF7 Chocobo & Cloud Strife

Vincent managed to make the Chocobo look very light on his feet, which is exactly how they looked and felt in the game. Also, Cloud is very accurate to his on-screen inspiration, down to the large clunky hands, his giant sword slung across his back, and that signature spiky anime hair.