Tag Archives: Magic the Gathering

Untold secrets of parts and pieces lay held between these aging pages...

The word greeble is well-known to any tenured builder. A technique used to add texture and detail to a model, greebling employs parts in interesting and fun ways. Depending on its purpose, adding greeble to a model can help randomize a texture, similar to The LEGO Movie logo, or to add specific detail like the engine pylons and power supplies in the iconic Y-wing. This month, some builders revived a theme from 6 years ago, “Greeble de Mayo.” A challenge for builders to greeble an 8x8x8 area during the month of May has resulted in quite a few great builds. Dan Ko finished the month with this alluring and mystic tome, magical pen, and ink well.

The Book of Greebles

The fountain pen and ink well are both concise models. The pink jewel and harpoon hand give detail to the pen while the inkwell, a round tile inside of a golden dish, is a subtle but crucial partner. A great additional set to the main model!

The Book of Greebles itself is quite detailed. A dragon-headed sword hilt adorns the spine while pearl gold clips and hinges are used to detail the brown binding. Roller skates provide focal points on the top and bottom at the tips of brown, curvy cattle horns. These details frame a magenta dome, accented by matching corner studs on the cover of the book. Textured bricks provide the illusion of pages but the bit of fabric sticking out is the clincher. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what set that particular cloth comes with or which minifigure it completes. All I know is it makes me think of vellum or some old type of paper, torn and worn, scribbled on by some ancient builder wanting to share their greebly secrets. Ultimately, that level of immersion is what really matters and I have to applaud Dan Ko on his work.

I imagine this model will be enjoyed by fans of Hearthstone, Magic the Gathering, or Dungeons & Dragons. It would make a great prop or token for in-game play, especially with role-playing, so Dungeon Masters with a love for building, keep this in mind! Your players will love them too!

Precise, clean cuts. No one saw anything. Again.

The world of Magic: the Gathering is, despite its cheap fantasy storyline, a treasure trove of characters and other motives. Some (far too few, if you ask me!) LEGO builders like Eero Okkonen take inspiration from it and create amazing works of art. This recreation of The Wanderer is a great example of a builder capturing the original artwork perfectly. The Wanderer is a clichéd mysterious character in the lore that would be quite interesting if it was in any other story.

The Wanderer

The build is mostly what one would expect from this master character builder. The real highlight is the incredible accuracy to the source material. The exotic colours like pink, gold and sand green are not the easiest to work with in LEGO, but Eero stretched his collection to the limit and successfully recreated the character, with all her challenges. The most interesting part usage to me was the Technic figure scuba flipper used as the ends of the hair. To read more about the building process, check out Eero’s own blog post on Cyclopic bricks.

For the life of every plane, I will keep watch.

A good LEGO creation will be good despite the motive and theme it depicts. Some times though, a build comes up that is both built well and plays on your personal interests. The builder that does that to me most often is Eero Okkonen. If you have been following The Brothers Brick for a while you are probably familiar with Eero’s beautiful character builds of various themes, many of which come from the Magic the Gathering trading card game, just like this particular one.

Nissa Revane

The build represents an elf planeswalker (basically a glorified mage) important in Magic’s storyline. The character’s likeness is incredibly well captured in LEGO, especially the iconic green markings on her face. The clothing and posing is great as well, with a flowing green cape and a green flame in her hand. You can read more about the build on Eero’s blog, Cyclopic Bricks. The builder is so good at capturing iconic characters that one could call him an Iconic Master…

The slimiest rat on the ship

Slimefoot the Stowaway is a Magic: the Gathering character that is most definetely not a rat, but his presence on an airship must have been much like a cross between a fungal rot and a rat problem with all the little saprolings he spread aboard the Weatherlight. Not sure what a saproling is? Me neither, and to be honest, nobody really knows anything apart from the fact that they are either of plantal or fungal origin and that there is a lot of them. Eero Okkonen has faithfully created Slimefoot and his pals.

Slimefoot, the Stoaway

With a mastery in human shape, Eero has done a great job of capturing what is basically a deformed humanoid with a mushroom top for a head and overgrowth all over his body. The colours are expressive, and the tentacles, while not present on the original art on the card, add a lot to the character and make for a great transition in the neck area. A great addition is all the little saprolings at the mushroom man’s side, whose various shapes really capture the mystical and magical appeal of the original art.

Seraph the Cyborg Angel comes to life

Builder Eero Okkonen is a master of bringing characters to life in brick form. This construct is of Do-It-Yourself-Seraph, a character from the Magic: The Gathering game. I must admit the concept of having a Cyborg Angel as a gameplay character is quite an appealing combination. I love the technique of the windswept hair and downcast gaze giving the character a solemn and thoughtful appearance. Builders who choose to work with only LEGO elements have their challenges, especially for creating unusual characters like this, but it’s always helpful to be able to reach into Technic and Bionicle as Eero has done. If those wings look familiar to you, that’s because the came off a set from The Lord of the Rings theme, Pirate Ship Ambush (79008).

Do-It-Yourself-Seraph

Your mind was a curious mix of madness and genius... I just took away the genius

He’s been known by many names: The Mind Sculptor, Architect of Thought, Memory Adept, Telepath Unbound, the Living Guildpact, Unraveler of Secrets, and Vryn’s Prodigy. But now he needs a snappy LEGO-themed name because Magic: The Gathering fan Sergio just built Jace Beleren out of LEGO. Built in the classic LEGO miniland scale, this LEGO creation is based on original artwork by Chase Stone.

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Sergio has also built the other members of the Gatewatch: the lovely necromancer Liliana Vess; the fire wielder Chandra Nalaar; the elven nature-mage Nissa Revane; and their commander the warrior-mage Gideon Jura. In addition to the great figures, the composition and lighting on these photos is simply phenomenal.

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She now hears only Emrakul’s murmurs

Magic the Gathering is full of amazing source material for LEGO builders. Last month we featured a jaw-dropping LEGO Sword of Feast and Famine and today we’re looking at Pascal‘s wonderful brick-built Gisela, the Broken Blade. Pascal’s version of Gisela somehow manages to capture both the essence of the original artwork while still remaining true to the builder’s own personal style.

Gisela, the Broken Blade

For those unfamiliar with the MTG storyline, Gisela is a powerful angel that was corrupted by the Eldrazi titan, Emrakul (an invincible spaghetti-monster). The pink bits on this build are the first signs of what I call “spaghettification.” Long story short, things do not go well for Gisela or her sister Bruna.