Some of you spotted this Ninjago District block in my last update about the project. It has been built for several months but I have not had time to edit a video for it until now. This is the Virtual Gaming Arcade, which is a very popular attraction in Blockville. Let’s take a look at the outside of each section before going inside for more details.
Minifig Themed Habitats #1
These Minifig Habitats are built for figs that have come from some of LEGO’s classic themes over time. The first is the Town Airport worker, then everyone’s favourite villain Dart Vader, next is the Chef from the LEGO House MiniChef restaurant and lastly, a theme which might not be familiar, Clikits!
Star Wars Funky Falcon Gets Some Company!
Several months ago I made a video of my funky rainbow-coloured version of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon microfighter, set 75030. Recently I decided to see if I had the parts to build some more. So I set about making my funky version of 75033 Star Destroyer and 75194 First Order TIE Fighter. Now you can see the trio of Funky versions next to each other.
Funky Falcon – My MOD of LEGO Set 75193
This Funky Falcon is my MOD of LEGO Star Wars Set 75193, the Millennium Falcon Microfighter.
I bought the Millennium Falcon Microfighter and built it quickly. “It’s rather grey”, I thought to myself. So I had a rummage around my parts collection and came up with a selection of pieces in much more funky colours. Watch the speed build and see me test the stud shooters!
Star Wars: Sith Infiltrator (7151) & Imperial AT-ST (7127)
A friend from the London AFOLs was selling some old Star Wars sets, and I decided to pick up a couple from her at the meetup on Monday. I chose the Sith Infiltrator (7151) and Imperial AT-ST (7127). They are older sets from 1999 and 2001 respectively. I haven’t built any sets from this era before, so I thought it would be interesting.
Luckily they both came with instructions, and I set about building the Sith Infiltrator first.
I actually found building this quite hard. Instructions have come a long way since 1999 – for starters, they didn’t give you the little list of parts you need for each stage, which I find is very helpful for checking you have done everything for that step. With modern instructions, I’m quite careful to gather the pile I need for each bit before starting to put them together. But here you had to play “spot the difference” with the previous picture to see what you were supposed to be placing where, and it was much easier to miss little bits which you then had to go back to.
In the end there was only one piece missing – a corner 2×2 slope. But I wasn’t too bothered as I don’t plan to keep the model built. I’m much more likely to use the parts for my own purposes. It was also interesting to see how build techniques have changed. It ended up with a lot of studs showing, which isn’t so common now. Plus each wing assembly was held on with one Technic pin into a rather chunky piece known as a Light Gray Slope, Inverted 65 6 x 6 x 2 Quad with Cutouts (30373), which proved to be rather wobbly when swooshing the ship about.
In the end I decided not to put the AT-ST together, but just sorted the parts into my inventory for future use.
Advent: Day 1
I bought myself a LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar (75184) this year – the first time I’ve had an advent calendar of any sort for ages. And I also got the neat promotional set 24-in-1 (40253) free with a reasonable purchase from the LEGO shop online a couple of weeks ago. Both sets come in colourful boxes with great images on the front, which give you a good idea of what you can expect to build.
Of course, the Advent Calendar will be unveiled one day at a time, but the 24-in-1 required me to empty the contents into a sorting tray and start rummaging! There appears to be a good selection of pieces in plenty of interesting colours and yes, another pesky orange Brick Separator! The instruction booklet is substantial with decent step-by-step guides to each model (and advice to use that brick separator at the end of each day, ready for the next one!). Parts are re-used so you won’t be able to make all 24 models at once, but that seemed fair enough.
So what were today’s builds? The Star Wars calendar instructions appear on the rear of each door as you open them. No. 1 hid a charming little Ghost ship, nice and colourful and a few decent details around the sides.
Meanwhile we had a different sort of ship with the 24-in-1 – a Tall Ship with treasure aboard! Quite a cute model and an inventive use of the wing pieces for sails.
I had also bought myself what I thought was a nice little Christmas Tree model with a couple of minifigs and presents around it. I was quite disappointed on opening it that it just appeared to contain enough pieces to make the minifigs, presents and a “star” for the top of the “tree” – which was just a print on a cardboard box inside!
I must admit to feeling pretty cheated by this packaging:
I had genuinely assumed the tree would be in there too, and rather disappointing that it wasn’t. Do you find the first picture misleading?