Category Archives: LEGO

You’d probably expect a lot of the posts on a LEGO website like The Brothers Brick to be about LEGO, and you’d be right. If you’re browsing this page, you might want to consider narrowing what you’re looking for by checking out categories like “Space” and “Castle.” We’re sure there’s something here that’ll fascinate and amaze you.

Borderlands 2 returns to Pandora LEGO style

What began as several friends having a blast leveling up together in Borderlands 2 became a fun collaborative effort to showcase the cast of characters in Borderlands 2 with bricks. Evan Bordessa, Simon Liu, Daniel Church, Caleb Wagoner, Alec Doede, Eric Leis, and myself (Nick Jensen) present a brick built trip back to Pandora in search of loot and mayhem. Originally intended to be a tribute to the playable vault hunters, the collaborative layout became more expansive, covering several other major characters and a few enemies and vehicles found on the journey to the Vault.

First, let’s take a look at the playable vault hunters. From left to right: Axton the Commando (Evan), Salvador the Gunzerker (Eric), Zer0 (Daniel), Gaige the Mechromancer and Deathtrap (Nick), Maya the Siren (Caleb), and Krieg the Psycho (Evan).

The full layout features additional characters, vehicles, and scenery found throughout Pandora. Bandits, Hyperion engineers, and Hyperion loaders of all types and sizes stand among characters such as Face McShooty, Mad Moxxi, Mr. Torgue, Angel, Handsome Jack, Claptrap, and Tiny Tina. A pair of Runners, vending machines printed by EclipseGrafx, loot boxes, and a New-U Respawn Station complete the Pandora feel.

Watch a brief overview of the full layout as it was at Brickworld Chicago 2016 in the following video.

Individual photos of most of the characters and scenery can be found on each builders’ Flickr photostream and in this imgur album. (Warning: Mild Language)

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LEGO Mars rover in action [Video]

It seems Jeremy Williams paid attention to our unsubtle hints when we covered his fabulous Ares 7 Martian Rover model — he’s produced a video of the rover in action. Take a look — you can see the vehicle’s independent suspension and four-wheel steering make short work of the terrain.

To top it all, this video was shot on the Martian scenery layout at the UK’s National Space Centre in Leicester. The authorities there let Jeremy sneak in to do his shoot before regular opening hours — a very cool filming location for an excellent model.

Skyrim’s Dwemer ruins in LEGO

I remember the first time I ran across Dwemer ruins in Morrowind. It was a mysterious cavern full of strange pipes and hissing steam, and then I heard a noise, and something rolled at me and I died. Needless to say, I came back for more, until I’d vanquished the curious Dwarven artifacts left to guard the riches of the lost Dwemer race. I enjoyed the amazing steampunk relics again in Skyrim years later, and LEGO builder Bartłomiej H brings that experience to the brick with these fantastic Dwemer ruins. They truly evoke the feel of the disheveled passageways and abandoned rooms filled with metal machines and odd artifacts. He even includes an intrepid adventurer (like you!) to fight through the devious Dwarven devices.

Click to see more of Dwemerium

Fantastic weekend at Bricktastic Manchester

Bricktastic is an annual fan show held in Manchester in aid of Fairy Bricks — a charity which aims to brighten the lives of sick children by providing hospitals with LEGO sets.

This weekend saw thousands of LEGO enthusiasts descend on the show to see displays from some of the best UK builders, gawp at massive creations, try their hand at Mindstorms robotics, and enjoy some building of their own.

Here’s a short overview of some of the cool things Brothers Brick saw at the event, starting with the awesome Bright Bricks dragon which towered over the exhibition space…

Click through to see more pictures from the event

Brickmania M3A1 Scout Car custom LEGO kit [Review]

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve reviewed the custom LEGO kits designed by Dan Siskind of Brickmania. Back in 2013, I reviewed the Dodge WC54 Ambulance, and writing those reviews really got me started in building World War II models seriously. In the meantime, Dan and his team have continued to release new custom kits, on a near-weekly cadence. One of Dan’s recent Brickmania releases is the M3A1 Scout Car, produced by the White Motor Company between 1940 and 1944. The vehicle served throughout WW2, and its basic design served as the basis of the iconic M3 Half-track.

Like some of the custom kits I reviewed back in 2013, the M3A1 Scout Car is a WW2 vehicle I also built back in 2014, so I’ll be comparing Dan’s version with my own.

Click through to read the full review

Minifig Batman is at home in this darkly lit LEGO Batcave

We’ve seen some pretty epic LEGO Batcaves here on The Brothers Brick over the years, including a Batcave built from 20,000 LEGO bricks and a super-detailed LEGO Batcave, and even Wayne Manor with a 1960’s Batcave. Chak hei Mok joins the Batcave builders club with this atmospheric lair featuring spots for multiple tumblers, a command post,

Click through to see more photos of this LEGO Batcave

My office is panelled in the finest LEGO mahogany

Nice woodwork here from KaiNRG/Geneva. This courthouse is appropriately grand and intimidating with some excellent parts usage to create the wood panelling and the strip of carpet. Those NEXO Knight shields also look good — nice to see these parts showing up in a low-tech Castle creation.

Don’t swat this LEGO fly, it may fight back

You could be forgiven for thinking that this latest build by James Bailey was an insect to swat or perhaps a technologically advanced drone spying on your every move. In fact, it is a LEGO damselfly, admittedly looking a little more cybernetic than the real thing. The attention to detail and the clever use of parts drew my attention to this insect initially while some nice photography shows the build off well.

I have to admit that I am a massive fan of the movie director Guillermo Del Toro, and this robotic, steampunk-looking insect is reminiscent of the clockwork insect that are a trademark in many of his films.

England 1216 – the siege of Dover Castle

aido k has created a wonderful piece of microscale cartography depicting England’s south-eastern coast in 1216. The different castles are all excellent and this feels like the sort of map a medieval lord might have planned his attacks with. I admire these kind of creations based on historical reality, but I can’t help but imagine a microscale model like this depicting Westoros…

Elaborating on his theme, the builder has gone on to create another model of Dover Castle itself — still in microscale, but closer-in. Particularly nice work on the defensive walls and towers, although I suspect the carefully balanced tiles might not stand up to sustained attack!

LEGO Nexo Knigths 70337: Ultimate Lance [Review]

We’re starting off our reviews of the latest wave of Nexo Knights sets with the four new “Ultimate” figure sets: 70336 Ultimate Axl, 70337 Ultimate Lance, 70338 Ultimate General Magmar, and 70339 Ultimate Flama. Each of these four sets includes a figure and a load of accessories, and will retail for $10 USD when they are officially available August 1. Today we’re looking at 70337: Ultimate Lance.

Click to read the full review

This LEGO version of the famous Pixar desk lamp is utterly adorable

While Finding Dory tops box offices all over the world, yu chris pays a tiny yet sweet tribute to the animation studio behind our favourite movies. It’s simply impossible not to recognize the famous desk lamp, whose name, by the way, is Luxo Jr. Here it is a second before it will smash the poor letter ‘I’…

The lamp features some simple but smart solutions. Apparently, the inner structure of the lamp is made with a handful of basic Technic beams, but I love them tiled on the outside. Thus, the lamp looks solid, and its proportions are also great. As usual, more photos are in the builder’s photo stream.

LEGO Shop reduces free shipping threshold to $35, gives away Classic Castle knight in July [News]

The LEGO Shop online has just reduced its free shipping threshold from $75 to $35, and in July they’re giving away a Classic Castle knight to all LEGO VIPS with purchases over $50.

Hitting both the $35 and $50 minimum is easy this month with the release of some great new sets. 75828 Ecto-1 & 2 retails for $60 and includes 6 minifigs with 556 parts. Read our review, and it will also be this month’s TBB LEGO giveaway.

10253 Big Ben retails for $250 and includes 4163 pieces (you can read our recommendation in our review from a few weeks ago).