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04 July 2019

LEGO® Overwatch: Weapon No. 20

Posted by Admin
The new gun introduced this year for LEGO® Overwatch sets is officially named "Weapon, No. 20" or "Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Blaster with Studs on Sides, Bottom, and Front" by BrickLink. It's a super interesting piece, so we asked Jonas Kramm to explore its geometry and capabilities.


For the Overwatch theme, The LEGO Group (TLG) introduced a new weapon mould (Design ID 44709). So far it comes in four colours:
The part will first appear in a non-licenced set in the upcoming theme Hidden Side; 70423 Paranormal Intercept Bus 3000 will contain at least one in Light Purple. Brickset has no inventory yet, but you can spot it on the pictures.

Four recessed studs and a 3.18! – for its size, the new gun comes with a lot of connection points.

The Studs


The studs at the front and the bottom are positioned where you would expect studs to be; same as where they are located on SNOT bricks like this 1x1 with studs on 4 sides (Design ID 4733) shown below.


What's special is the placement of the studs on the side. When the weapon lays on one side the orientation of the studs can be compared to the 2x2x⅔ modified plate with 2 studs on the side (99206). And not only on one side, but on both sides.



This means that the centre of the gun has an unusual thickness of 1.5 plates and allows for some new SNOT building techniques, especially when you build something that is 3 studs wide.

The Handle

The 3.18mm connection of the weapon is angled, so the first question was: "Can I make a circle?" 
And yes, it works. I didn’t calculate if it fits mathematically, but it feels right when you connect the five guns to each other.


I don’t know if it was intended by the element designer, but there are other similar parts where it doesn’t work, so I’m glad it does here. The older gun mould (15071) for example doesn’t form a proper circle.



In combination with the triangular tile (35787) it inspired me to build this windmill.

Aside from these technical uses, the Overwatch weapon has an interesting shape in itself. When playing around with the piece I immediately saw the handle as being small legs for a table, and the element also turned out to be great for a microscope.




With its recessed studs, the angled bar and the small texturing I also expect the piece to get used as greebling in many space creations. It inspired me to try my hand at creating a small robot: The De-dehydration Bot, that keeps you hydrated when in summer your building room gets heated up.


For the legs of this bot I combined the gun with the rather new 1x1 45° roof tile (35464).

Instead of buying multiple Overwatch sets, you can also get the piece on Bricks & Pieces now. At time of writing, three of the four colours are available so I added them to my B&P April Highlight list.

However if you do want the actual sets, consider supporting New Elementary by following our Amazon affiliate links!

Amazon USA: Overwatch Tracer vs. Widowmaker 75970 contains two in white and one in black


Help New Elementary keep publishing articles like this. Become a Patron!

Thanks to our 'Vibrant Coral' patrons: Big B Bricks, Dave Schefcik, David and Breda Fennell, Iain Adams, Huw Millington, Neil Crosby, Antonio Serra, Beyond the Brick, Nick Savage, Sue Ann Barber & Trevor Clark, and Kevin Gascoigne. You're all awesome!

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Products mentioned in this post were kindly supplied by the LEGO Group. All content represents the opinions of New Elementary authors and not the LEGO Group. All text and images are © New Elementary unless otherwise attributed.

14 comments:

  1. I love those guns. I Bricklinked a few of them as soon as I could, and made a robot skeleton from them:
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/137434519@N08/48121043491/in/dateposted-public/

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  2. No mention of the exclusive Drum Laqured Gold version of this gun that came with the promotional Tracer in the Overwatch promotional mystery box that was sent out to influencers. A lot of people forget that one ;)

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    1. Really? Or is this just a joke? It isn't listed on BrickLink...

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  3. No mention of the exclusive Drum Laqured Gold version of this gun that came with the promotional Tracer in the Overwatch promotional mystery box that was sent out to influencers. A lot of people forget that one ;)

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  4. The gold one: https://youtu.be/uwECTzO85zk

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    1. I didn't know about the golden one. Thanks for posting the link! Quite cool, but there isn't really a fair chance to get one.

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  5. When the 4-stud blaster (as I've been calling it) is in profile, the two opposed studs are one half-plate further apart than if you use a cliplight (thick ring) 4081b to reverse stud direction... or one whole plate further apart than if you use the old cliplight with a thin ring (4081a). I think! Can someone confirm this is correct?

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  6. I am trying to understand the part to make the model for Mecabricks and I noticed that the thickness is a little bit bigger than 1.5 plate. The theoretical thickness of a plate is 3.20mm which would mean 4.80mm for this weapon. However, the measured dimension is roughly 4.94mm.

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    1. I didn't have the equipment to measure it, but I had the feeling too. In the example where I stacked 1x1 plates on each side to align with the 1x3 plate I changed three plates for a 1x1 bricks with stud on one side. Theoretically that should fit, but it caused to much tension and stressed the bricks.
      (https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kpx-LFj4IEc/XQKovVzD-wI/AAAAAAAALNc/Ll9EwCOSQZE7SgJyTTDgHPqC5mSfpY4IgCEwYBhgL/s400/20190514_140135.jpg)

      I expect the reason to be the air-gaps, which fans tend to forget and that are also the reason not all combinations with brackets work, but I hadn't time to further elaborate that thesis.

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  7. That make sense.
    I think the designer just wanted to make it as thick as 1 stud. I use 4.80mm for the diameter on mecabricks but the real value is closer to 4.90 which is pretty much the dimension I measured on 44709.

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  8. I tried to measure the angle of the handle (by importing a well-lined up photo into a graphics editor) and made it 110 degrees. The interior angle of a pentagon is 108 degrees, so I think you are right that the circle construction you demonstrated is well-founded mathematically.

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  9. It is also the fossil head in set 76945

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