Dan Harris is one of British historical building collective Bricks To The Past. On this, the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1’s Battle of Passchendaele, he offers a moving brick-built tribute to the fallen. In particular, it commemorates the loss of Welsh poet Ellis Humphrey Evans. You can read more about the poet and his work in Dan’s blog post. In the meantime, this quiet little scene provides a poignant image with which to commemorate the thousands of young men who gave their lives.
In addition to the best LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick also brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the last week of July 2017.
TBB NEWS: Get your first taste of what is to come from Star Wars: The Last Jedi as well as a review and some deals.
OTHER LEGO NEWS: This week had a few other interesting LEGO-related news articles, so here are the best of the rest.
Initially designed with the help of a focus group of adult LEGO builders, Ninjago has been one of LEGO’s most popular themes since its inception in 2011. Rumors of its impending cancellation circulated a few years ago, but the theme has stayed strong and become one of the longest-lived homebrew licenses for LEGO. Now having spawned a feature film due for release September 22, the line is as robust as ever with more than a dozen sets and a minifigure series from the film in the latest wave. This year’s lineup contains the several of the largest Ninjago sets ever, such as 70617 Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon, which we reviewed yesterday. Today’s focus is 70618 Destiny’s Bounty, which at 2,295 pieces edges out 2015’s Temple of Airjitzu (2,028 pieces) and loses only to the as-yet-unreleased Ninjago City (a whopping 4,867 pieces) to come in as the second largest Ninjago set ever. 70618 Destiny’s Bounty retails for $159.99 and is available now from the LEGO Shop Online.
Once upon a time, the dark fortress of Minas Morgul belonged to the to the world of men. Back then, the city was called Minas Ithil and it protected Gondor from the evil forces of Mordor. John Snyder has built a gorgeous rendition of the city as it was before the Witch-king of Angmar took over.
At first glance, I mistook John’s castle as something out of Disney rather than the Lord of the Rings. Regardless of the source material, from the top of the tower all the way down to the bedrock, this fortress is one of the loveliest LEGO castles I’ve ever seen. According to John, his Minas Morgul weighs 31.2 pounds and is his heaviest build to date. He also says he tried to maintain the architecture (and pointy crenellations) from the original design. The bridge, in particular, reminds me of the scene in the film where the Nazgul ride out in a frenzy to find Frodo.
For more photos, including alternate angles and even an “I Spy” style scavenger hunt, check out John’s flickr.
Dwalin Forkbeard shows his love for the fantasy worlds of Warhammer with a 52cm tall LEGO Dwarf Thane full of character. The subtle contours of the armor plating suggest the Thane’s battle-hardened stance. The shaping of the face mask and helmet are excellent, especially around the eye holes, allowing for a rather impressive beard to extend downward.
While architecture skyline builds are a popular way to capture some of the landmark structures of a city, city son has created this fantastic mountainous sculpture of Hong Kong’s landmarks. At the base we have the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre with its glass façade, surrounded by Golden Bauhinia Square. Dominating the scene is the Big Buddha with the Ngong Ping 360 cable car and Peak Tram exiting the mountainside, all of which are located on Lantau Island, Hong Kong’s largest outlying island.
What a great way to capture some of the highs of Hong Kong, although Big Buddha doesn’t look impressed with the cable car exiting his head!
With only two months left until The LEGO Ninjago Movie, we’re finally getting to review the movie tie-in sets. We got an exclusive sneak peek at Toy Fair in February, but LEGO had banned photography at the time, so we had to wait until June to even show the first pictures. Now, we’re able kick things off big with a review of 70617 Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon. This set is due for release August 1, 2017 and has 1,403 pieces. It will retail for $99.99 USD.
Star Trek: The Next Generation turns 30 years old this September! This gave TBB’s very own Iain Heath just the excuse he needed to created this STNG diorama. Inspired by Kadigan Photography‘s printed tile version, Iain came up with a way to brick-build the holographic environment simulator’s famous yellow grid (you can even see how he did it in his Flickr album).
Fans of the show will appreciate Iain’s take on the holodeck, entitled Safety Protocols Disabled, as it was a common trope the writers used to create extra excitement and tension. Captain Picard looks awfully concerned as Data is getting the Donald Gennaro treatment from Rexy, while Crusher’s face seems to suggest she saw it coming. Perhaps she was sick of Data getting all the best one-liners and disabled those protocols herself?
Today we bring you not just one, but two companion droids built by GolPlaysWithLego. I like to think that a man’s best friend is WLY on the left, although the look on his owner’s face suggests he is not altogether happy with the ride. The shaping of both droids is very cool with the new curved mudguards ideal to frame the ‘face’ areas. SPD is definitely giving out arachnoid vibes with those spindly legs and seems to be the ‘protector’, being both armed and unmanned.
I love WLY’s legs — ingenious use of helmets, plus a rather unusual part, namely the small armour plates from the Baze Malbus SW “constraction” figure. And did you spot the 1980’s phone speaker printed tile as the droid’s mouthpiece?
It doesn’t matter what age you are — everybody loves a LEGO fire truck. This impressive beast from S Asbury doesn’t disappoint with its beefy proportions and use of custom chromed elements.
The truck is built “seven-wide” — a relatively unusual standard in the LEGO world, but one that pays off here, giving the vehicle a real sense of heft and scale. Such a design decision makes for a more complex building experience though — LEGO tends to be better-suited for even-width building. You can see how the builder has had to use a combination of plates on the underside…
And what rescue vehicle would be complete without an extension selection of on-board gear. This model fully delivers, with a number of well-stocked compartments…
All-in-all, this is a cracking model — an air of the “official” LEGO City style letting it fit into any brick-built scene, but at a scale that creates some sense of realism. Big enough to tackle any rescue, small enough to still look kinda cute. Lovely.
It’s not every day you see a castle made of body parts. And you might not expect such a thing to look quite this pretty. Fresh from using bananas for a cottage roof, alego alego has now put together a cute little microscale castle which makes extensive use of torso pieces from Friends minidolls. The parts selection somehow works, resulting in a creation that’s both weird and wonderful. I particularly like the minifig lifejacket used to create the yellow gatehouse — inspired.
Prolific Australian builder Karf Oohlu (aka Fedde Barendrecht) makes use of the still relatively-new “macaroni pipe” piece to create a twisty bendy pipey masterpiece of greebling. I have no idea what this piece of equipment does, but I imagine it makes some immensely pleasing gurgling noises when it’s operating. Aside from the piping, the use of engine turbine inserts placed back-to-back makes for an effective gasket – I’ll be stealing that for my own models.
