Tag Archives: BrickWarriors

Knife-throwing 101

RoR Thieves Guild Overall

Ryan Hauge, of BrickWarriors, just posted this fun little scene of an assassin training their apprentice. The timbered roof is cool and the crazy green flames in the fire make me smile, but the archways over the doors and fireplace really make this standout. I also have to mention that four-poster bed. The finials on the bedposts? BrickWarriors’ Magic Wands. Nice touch.

Ryan told me that this is a scene from his new book, now available on Amazon, also called “Riddle of Regicide (Pentavia Book 1)“.

Custom Roundup: Crazy Arms, Brickarms, Brickforge & BrickWarriors.

There have been so many new custom items coming out recently, it is almost overwhelming. I’ve been meaning to highlight several of these items and more of them keep coming out!

First on the list is Guy Himber’s Crazy Arms. Guy sent me some of these awhile back but I never got pictures uploaded because my camera was on the fritz and then I forgot. But luckily he has restocked them and they are a lot of fun! They replace the existing minifig arm, allow other “crazy” poses and are currently available in black, brown and white.

CRAZY ARMS info from V&A Steamworks

Brickarms released their Xperimental weapons in October and they look good. I don’t own any but I got to look at a few of them at BrickCon. They definitely live up the standards that Brickarms fans have come to expect. On a side note, Brickarms has reached an agreement with the makers of Offensive Combat. Brickarms will be releasing weapons from the game and some of the Brickarms product line will be appearing in the finished game. I did get some of the prototypes of these weapons and they are fantastic.

By Request, the eXperimental Series

Brickforge has been busy as well, releasing new Shock Trooper armor, Camo patterns and baseball bats in the last couple of months. I haven’t seen the Camo and baseball bats in person, but I got a set of Doomsday Shock Trooper armor in my swag bag at BrickCon and it was pretty cool!

Peek-a-boo!

Lastly, BrickWarriors has been heating up their molds with all sort of new products, including Androids, Demon Armor, Two-Headed Ogres, new plumes and RPGs, among other things. I haven’t picked up any of these yet, but I have been impressed by the number of items they have been putting out lately. I see that some of the items are already sold out, but hopefully they will be restocked soon. Also, BrickWarriors is donating a percentage of each order to Toys for Tots through December 1st.

November 2012 - Dragon Wings, Tail, Lance, and Plumes!

That is all for now, but I will be doing another Custom Roundup this weekend. There was just too much for one post!

New BrickWarriors items and colors

This is long overdue, but Ryan from BrickWarriors sent me some of their new pieces for review awhile back. Unfortunately I dropped the ball. But now, along with the cool new items, he has just released new colors that look rather snazzy. As I’ve said in previous reviews of the BrickWarriors products, the quality is very good and the line of items consists of some really unique items. Go check them out!

How-to: Confessions of a minifig customiser – Part I: Getting started

As we say in our AFOL jargon glossary, purism is “a form of religious fundamentalism.” LEGO fandom includes a broad range of preferences for what’s “legal” and what’s not. In the spirit of broadening our horizons, we’re very pleased to bring you the first in a series of posts about LEGO minifig customization by master customizer Jasbrick.

Light Tent TestContrary to popular belief customisation of minifigs is not a dark art and even established purists have tried their hand at slapping some paint around (albeit on the Friends Mini-dolls). Some will never stoop to the mutilation of their favourite brand of ABS plastic, however I do believe that if done properly it can at least be appreciated by all.

The Brothers Brick have given me the opportunity to introduce you to some of the tools and techniques of my trade to help those amongst you that have the desire to walk on the dark side for a while. In later posts I will go into specific techniques that I developed in my time as a customiser. Hopefully you can benefit from avoiding the pitfalls I fell into and get a few projects like these underway:

New Gears of War 3

These minifigs involve more advanced painting techniques and some third party accessories.

Monster Manual Player Power

This group utilises painting, combinations, third-party accessories and printed decals.

Establishing a strong concept design

One tool a customiser must have is a highly developed imagination (something pretty common in the Lego community); everything else is optional.

Off to Afghanistan!Those moments when putting a particular combination of parts together and a perfect fig pops out are wonderful, but about as rare as chicken dentures. The key to a good custom project is pre-planning and a well defined concept. This does not have to be something completely new, as for example computer game concept art offers a rich seam of material to be interpreted, or real life inspiration can be just as good. The minifig on the right was created for a Green Beret Major currently serving in Afghanistan who sent me a photograph of himself to copy.

But if you want to start from scratch then a sketchpad is your best friend. You don’t even need to be good at drawing to develop a decent concept due to the simplicity of the design of our little friend the minifig. As this series develops I hope to be able to share with you some of the concept designs that I have developed and how they become a reality. Alternatively you can sketch your concept over a template like this:

Collectable Minifig Design Interview

Once the concept is set (not in stone, but pretty solid) the next step for me is to determine how much of this can be achieved with standard parts or by utilising third party accessories. I will be delving deeper into how to get the best from suppliers such as BrickArms, BrickForge, Brick Warriors and Arealight later, but I highly recommend checking out these companies as they offer a great range of products that can serve as inspiration in themselves.

Parts Library

As an AFOL who has amassed quite a large collection of minifig parts and accessories I have a library that I can dip into that can make most custom projects a matter of tweaking to get the final effect rather than building everything from scratch.

The following image is a recent group of minifigs that I put together that are without any noticeable customisation. I managed to achieve a lot with just the combination of parts and a few third party accessories thrown in to tie the concept together:

Odysseus Crew need ship

I recommend that you take a close look at the Minifig and Minifig parts areas in the catalog on Bricklink and see which figs / parts speak to you of further opportunities. Developing an inventory of useful parts is essential to allowing you to get projects moving swiftly before your enthusiasm for the concept dies.

New Custom Parts Roundup [News]

We recently have received news about a number of new custom items so it seemed appropriate to cover them together.

First off, I was sent a package of some new items from Brick-Warriors. The new items are high quality and fit well, as did the last batch that we reviewed. The new items represent a fun cross-section of genres. Naturally I’m a big fan of the Medieval/Fantasy pieces, but the modern weapons are very nicely done too. Check out the set in my photostream for more pictures.

Warrior Da Bomb

Three Warriors Modern Soldier Front

Secondly, Brickarms has released four new variants of the M-16. While I haven’t had a chance to see them in person yet, I have to say that the M110 is my favorite. But they all look good and Brickarms quality has always been high. I was also remiss in reporting the awesome Castle prototypes that Will announced at BrickCon back in October. You can check those out in my photostream as well. They are incredible and I only hope that they become production pieces at some point.

M16 Variants & M110

Lastly, there have been some new items over at Brickforge that slipped in under our radar. Their Shock Trooper armor is now available in Dark Tan and Azure Blue (with Alien Defense Unit logos). The Shock Trooper helmets, Tactical Vests and Tactical Helmets are available in those colors as well. Pretty cool stuff!

Between home and the war’s desolation

After I posted my little fleet of microscale spaceships in September, I kept tinkering with the design of the ships, and when I got bored, built new ones. By BrickCon, I had added a new cruiser and hospital ship.

U.E.F. Expeditionary Strike Group - V2

The cruiser is based on the same keel as the carrier, but the most notable improvements overall are the little bits of light gray, red, and yellow, plus the decals. Exo-Force sets provide a remarkable diversity of military/industrial designs on clear sticker sheets that add cool details to a finished model.

Since I had all that gray greebly LEGO lying around, I tried building a Silverback from Gears of War 3, but it got considerably bigger than I intended — though I like the ultimate design — so I’m calling this little battlemech “Sasquatch”:

C.O.G. "Sasquatch" battlemech (1)

For the minifigs, I’m trying out the new Gears-inspired armor and weapons from BrickWarriors. Their lineup doesn’t currently include a non-retro Lancer rifle or Gnasher shotgun, so I’m using the old Amazing Armory versions.

(I’m also experimenting with a new indoor photo setup and post-processing, which explains the difference in the same light bluish gray between the two photos.)

BrickWarriors Custom Items [Review]

BrickWarriors is a new company, specializing in custom weapons and accessories designed for use with LEGO minifigures. They recently sent me a complimentary review package of their initial offering.

The quality of the pieces is on par with the other well-known custom companies. While the plastic doesn’t feel exactly like LEGO, it is very close and the pieces are sturdy. None of them feel flimsy or brittle. At the time of this writing, there are only four colors: Black, Red, Brown, and Dark Pearl Gray. The color matching for the black and red pieces were identical to the official LEGO pieces to which I compared them. The brown pieces were very close to official pieces and the dark pearl gray was just barely lighter in color than the pieces I checked it against.

The fit and compatibility was good. None of the items appeared to stress the hands of the minifigs. The weapons have multiple grips points in the places you would expect the real guns to have them. The hats, helmets and armor all fit well. They were not loose or too tight.

There was one item with some fit issues. Before sending me the items, the designer informed me that the horn attachment points on the Minotaur head had issues. Brickwarriors uses the official LEGO horns for the Minotaur and apparently LEGO made the horns slightly larger than the standard bar connection. The Minotaur holes are sized for the standard bar, therefore the horns stress the hole a bit. I checked this out and the official horns fit very tightly (I had some trouble getting them out) but other bar pieces fit just fine. BrickWarriors informed me that they are currently working on their own horns, which will be sized correctly. Also the neck hole on the Minotaur is tighter than on official Lego heads, but it does come off easily.

The company has made an effort to maintain the look of official LEGO pieces. Mostly this works for them pretty well. One place that I don’t think it works very well is in regards to the solid trigger guards on the guns. The company told me that they chose this design because they thought that it maintained the look they were trying to achieve.

The price of the items is reasonable, with US$1.00 being the price for most of the weapons and smaller accessories. The larger guns are priced at US$1.25. The armor, other bodywear, and helmets are US$1.50. The most expensive item is the Minotaur head at US$2.50.

The weapons and accessories cover quite a range of genres, from Sci-fi and Fantasy to Historical and Modern items. As a dyed-in-the-wool Castle fan, I’m partial to the Fantasy Items, but Space, modern warfare and apoc fans will enjoy the modern and futuristic armor and weapons.

Overall, I thought this was very good first run of items and hope to see more from this company in the future. They have a number of unique items that help them stand out and will fit nicely into any collection of custom minifig accessories. If you wish to see more, you can view all the pictures of the items in my BrickWarriors Review Pictures Set.