NEXOGON: Platform and Slugship

Duncan Lindbo (donutsftw on Flickr) has completed his initial creations using part 27255, the Combo Power Shield from LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™. Let's start with two of them today.

Normally, I get referred to as "the mecha guy", since giant robots tend to dominate my displays at public events... but I welcome the opportunity to flex my creative muscles, and the NEXOGON parts festival has given me the opportunity to do just that!

Minecraft 2017: the new parts

What would Jonas Kramm (Legopard on Flickr) do with six LEGO® Minecraft sets? We will find out in the coming weeks, but first, to bring you up to speed he's written a great rundown of the pieces in the new range: 21129 The Mushroom Island, 21130 The Nether Railway, 21131 The Ice Spikes, 21132 The Jungle Temple, 21133 The Witch Hut and 21134 The Waterfall Base. He's even added a helpful catch-up of other interesting parts the theme has introduced over the years.

The LEGO® Group has been producing sets in minifigure scale within the LEGO Minecraft theme since 2014, but these sets still seem to be pretty unpopular in the AFOL community. That is probably the reason why nobody noticed that a new wave of LEGO Minecraft sets popped up in the product line.

I was the lucky one on the New Elementary team to receive the six new sets to give you a look at the new parts… perhaps I am the only one who has ever played Minecraft?

NEXOGON: M:TRON Nexoship

The creations for our parts festival, NEXOGON, are now starting to roll in and today we have an effervescent creation from Neil Crosby (thevoicewithin on Flickr) from the UK. Click any picture to enlarge.

Built with the power of a Nexogon at its core, this little bubble of fun is used by the M:TRON crew to tool around a planet's surface having a good time. With a booming sound system in the back, and controls powered by the mind, you're more likely to see this bouncing all over the landscape than making a smooth flight.

Bucking the trend

Today, Elspeth De Montes gets imaginative with 21029 Buckingham Palace, creating some alternate builds for us, as well as analysing the parts that come in this set. Also, sheep.

As the capital of the UK, London has proved to be a popular location for LEGO® Architecture designers; 21023 Big Ben and the Skylines set 21034 London are both from the city. In addition, London landmarks appear in the Creator Expert theme with the huge 4163-piece set, 10253 Big Ben and the even larger 10214 Tower Bridge which has 4287 parts. With 780 parts, 21029 Buckingham Palace was released in September 2016 and is priced at £44.99 / US$49.99 / 49.99€.

NEXOGON: Landing Platform

Even before Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha on Flickr) received the shipment of LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ Combo Power shields I sent him for our new parts festival, he was busily playing with some that he bought himself!

[UPDATE: Want to know how the platform is built? Check out this recreation on Mecabricks by Oby1! If you use it in some way, please credit Tim Goddard and Oby1 for their great work.] 

So far on New Elementary we have explored a lot of the potential geometric options, so I am starting with something a bit different. I've effectively built a giant Nexogon and turned it into a landing pad. I added a bit of 'tanscaping' (landscaping built with Brick Yellow [TLG]/Tan [BL] bricks and slopes primarily on their side) and passed the photo to my good friend Rob Damiano who did some wonderful things to bring it to life.

NEXOGON Landing Platform by Tim Goddard with Rob Damiano. Click for larger view.

NEXOGON: Our parts festival begins

Our next parts festival, NEXOGON, is progressing nicely! The new LEGO® part 27255, a.k.a. "Plate, Modified 6 x 6 Hexagonal with Pin Hole" or "Rotor , w/ 4.85 hole, No. 1" or the "Combo NEXO Power shield" is found in several 2017 sets from the NEXO KNIGHTS™ range. Bulk amounts of this part are now on their way to 14 select builders around the world and indeed some of the builders have received them already. One of them, Gary Davis, was so excited he immediately sent me this picture... so I guess the festival is officially underway!

LEGO® boxes: are they important?

The LEGO® Group want to know what fans think about the way that premium, expensive sets are packaged. They've created a surprisingly detailed survey for everyone to use. As someone who saved LEGO boxes from an early age, I found it rather fun to complete! The survey closes on March 6, 2017.

Brickheadz: Super Heroes & Disney

The LEGO® BrickHeadz are available today on VIP Early Access! They are on general release from March 1 priced £9.99/ US$9.99/ 9.99€. Sven Franic returns to examine the remaining sets.

As I said last time, there are certain pointers which tell me this theme could be a great success. Apart from its collectible perspective, the theme is jam-packed with pieces in new colours and exclusive printed elements, and I would assume this kind of budgetary flexibility isn't given to every LEGO design team.

Previously I built (and destroyed) the characters from The LEGO Batman Movie for your delectation; today it is the turn of the MARVEL LEGO Super Heroes and the characters from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Brickheadz: LEGO® Batman Movie

This week we are doing early reviews of LEGO® BrickHeadz, a fun range of brick-built, heavily stylised pop-culture figures. They are released on March 1 priced £9.99/ US$9.99/ 9.99€ but VIP Early Access started on February 15. To get inside their headz and see what makes them up, we welcome back Sven Franic.

BrickHeadz are a novelty in the LEGO collectors’ world, and if other collectable series are anything to judge by, the first series is usually the one that ends up being most sought after, whether this was the intent or not. Series 1 of BrickHeadz so far consists of 10 buildable figures: four characters from The LEGO Batman Movie, four MARVEL Super Heroes and two Disney characters.

 Today, we will look at what comes inside the four LEGO Batman Movie figures: Batman, Batgirl, Robin and the Joker.

Towering achievement

Have you all already decided whether or not to buy 71040 Disney Castle? At £299.99 / US$349.99 / €349.99, the first obstacle is cost. Beyond that, if you are a Disney fan, I imagine it is a must-have. If you crave large, challenging LEGO® builds this is definitely something out of the ordinary. If you love to wow your friends with your latest LEGO display, this is a great choice — aside from being appealing and highly detailed with loads of rooms inside referencing different Disney films, it is a good shape for display in that the model’s footprint is relatively small compared to the overall height. We even have a human being to show you just how big it is...