According to Polish builder Mateusz Waldowski, the Newag 15D/16D is a broad-guauge diesel locomotive that’s a heavily modernized Polish version of the Soviet-era TEM2. With excellent color blocking and a couple of custom stickers, Mateusz has built a stunning LEGO version in PKP Cargo livery. I especially like Mateusz’s use of corner panels for the steps, and the angled cab windows.
See more photos of Mateusz’s locomotive in his album on Flickr.
One of the best Saturday Night Live sketches of the season so far was in last week’s episode guest-starring Adam Driver, who reprised his role as the very emo Kylo Ren as he went undercover to mingle among his employees on Starkiller Base. Chris McVeigh has recreated the hilarious opening scene when “Matt” asks First Order staff in the cafeteria whether they like their jobs.
Click through to watch the video if you haven’t seen it
Many of the LEGO sets that never actually showed up on January 1st are finally starting to show up online and in stores, including Collectible Minifigures Series 15, NEXO Knights, and others. At the same time, Amazon and the LEGO Shop have discounted many earlier sets.
First off, nearly all LEGO Dimensions Fun Packs remain 50% off at $7.49 from Amazon.com, including the brand new ones released this week.
The LEGO Chima set 70146 Flying Phoenix Fire Temple is $36 or 30% off at $83.98 from both the LEGO Shop and Amazon.com.
Click through for more January LEGO sales & deals
While we certainly feature plenty of LEGO mecha here on The Brothers Brick, I’ll admit that many of them fall into the old Gundam pattern of humanoid robots that look like a giant person wearing armor. Not so with this latest from Japanese mecha master Ryuhei Kawai (Kwi-Chang), who recently posted a new mecha called LHB-025 鬼頭刀 (apparently the name used in Taiwan for the mahi-mahi or dolphinfish). This mecha looks more like something that would be in a Neill Blomkamp film, with a vaguely arthropodal aspect — wings, flaps, and cylinders sticking out of the frame every which way. The predominant white color scheme with spots of red make the whole thing look plausibly functional in an industrial setting.
With a couple hundred thousand regular readers here on TBB each month, we do our best to get great LEGO content to you wherever you are, whether it’s links to posts on Facebook and Twitter, photos on Flickr, or the occasional video on YouTube. To help you get your LEGO fix in even more places, we’ve just enabled posts on Google+, and we’re curating a couple of boards on Pinterest.
Are there other places you’d like to see posts from TBB? Let us know in the comments.
GoPlaysWithLego has been building mini-scale vehicles featured in the Battle of Hoth. While the AT-AT is impressive, what’s more impressive is the detail the builder was able to achieve with the tiny snowspeeder. Be sure to check out all the builder’s photos for more views of the AT-AT.
But I’ll be honest, I’m actually just blogging this to feature GoPlaysWithLego’s other photo, titled simply “Fetchez la vache!” I’ll let the photo speak for itself.
Sometimes it’s just fun to play with minifigs. Despite all the LEGO Star Wars sets I’ve built to review over the last month since the movie’s release, there are still some key characters from The Force Awakens missing from my collection. One of the most intriguing new factions is the Knights of Ren, of whom we only really get to know Kylo Ren, their commander. There was, however, a brief flashback that showed a squad of Knights lit up by lightning on a rain-drenched battlefield, so I thought I’d take a crack at building minifig versions of the Knights of Ren.
While the minifigs themselves are just your usual “figbarf,” I’m pretty pleased with the presentation. I’m not skilled with Photoshop or GIMP, so I primarily just use the Photos app on my Mac. First, I took my photo of the minifigs on a black cardboard background. With a screenshot from the movie trailer as a reference, I began post-processing by darkening the photo significantly, and reduced the warmness to get the bluer tones for the background as seen in the movie (which fortunately still kept the minifigs black). Next, I found a free online tool that lets you add effects like rain and a vignette to photos, so I processed a copy of my photo with that tool (first the rain, then the darker, blurred vignette border).
All in all, it was fun to build the minifigs, taking me back to my early days online, but I particularly enjoyed finding easy ways to post-process the photo to mimic the movie still.
KLUG, the LEGO Users Group (LUG) based in Osaka, Japan, is putting on the largest LEGO event in Japan this June called Japan Brickfest.
The event will be held June 4-5, 2016 at the Canadian Academy international school on Rokko Island in Kobe. (I went to second grade in Kobe, and it’s a lovely city.) Registration for builders is now open, but closes at the end of February.
KLUG itself includes a number of names that should be familiar to both LEGO builders on sites like Flickr and MOCPages as well as readers of TBB. KLUG seems to be a bilingual LUG with both Japanese and English-speaking members, so if you’re a gaijin AFOL in the Kansai area who misses your LUG back home, KLUG and Japan Brickfest sound like a great way to get involved with LEGO in Japan.
Attendee pricing is based on requested table space. For more details, see the builder page (in both Japanese and English) on the event website.
I’ve never watched either Star Wars Rebels or The Clone Wars animated TV shows, but I’ve appreciated some of the minifigs and bought a few of the sets on discount for parts. I regret not picking up 75053 The Ghost when it went on pretty deep discount late last year, given the ship’s great design, reminiscent of bombers and naval patrol aircraft from World War II like the B-17 or PBY Catalina. I’m mildly consoled by the release of 75127 The Ghost, part of the latest wave of LEGO Star Wars Microfighters. 75127 The Ghost includes 104 parts and 1 minifig, and retails for $9.99.
Click through for the full review
LEGO continues its Star Wars “Microfighter” series with Wave 3, released in January. With new sets from The Force Awakens, 75125 Resistance X-wing Fighter is the first Microfighter we’re reviewing here on The Brothers Brick. This set includes 83 pieces and the usual solo minifig, and retails for $9.99.
Click through for the full review
While we’ve largely focused on the “good guy” sets like 75102 Poe’s X-wing Fighter from The Force Awakens since their release in September, our coverage would be incomplete if we didn’t also review “bad guy” sets like 75101 First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter. The set includes 517 pieces and 4 minifigs, with a retail price of $69.99, though it has been consistently 20% off at $55.99 on Amazon since nearly its release last September.
Now that we’re nearly a month after the movie’s release, I will reference SPOILERS in this review. Again, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
I’ll share one non-movie spoiler, though: This is an unexpectedly awesome set — you need it.
Click through for the full review
Contrary to the resource-strapped organization in The Force Awakens, the First Order in the LEGO Star Wars universe certainly doesn’t lack stormtroopers, helped along by new releases like the 75132 First Order Battle Pack, which accompanies the 75131 Resistance Trooper Battle Pack we also reviewed recently. This battle pack has 88 pieces, the usual 4 minifigs, and retails for the normal $12.99.
Click through for the full review
