dragon

40562 Creator 3 in 1: Mystic Witch: Gift With Purchase 14-31st October

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It’s a funny time of the year: the Christmas/Holiday season sets have been announced, but the Gifts with Purchase are a bit unpredictable until we enter November: We went with early October purchases to secure the Gift with Purchase Ideas Set ‘Ray the Castaway’ and then out of nowhere… This Happens.

The 40562 Mystic Witch set is a Creator 3-in-1 set that will be available as a gift with purchase in the second half of October 2022 (there might even be a day or two of overlap with double GWP Points if you are really clever). In Australia, the purchase threshold is $165 AUD (or $USD100/€100/£100 ROTW): Perfect if you are looking at 10308 – The Holiday Main Street in time for the holidays- or another copy of 10497 Galaxy Explorer because it is an awesome set!

I was fortunate to be sent a copy to look at: will it be enough to trigger purchases during the latter half of October, before the Christmas GWPs start to appear, and indeed before Black Friday in November? Let’s take a look!

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Rebuild the World: Nurturing Creative play.

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If you have been following the LEGO Social Media feed over the last few days you may have felt a little baffled. Following a 10 second teaser, featuring a man carrying an oversized bow and arrow… cross to an anthropomorphised lion and deer sharing a coffee… a life size LEGO Fire truck and a crowd of people dressed as minifigures – with oversized minifigure accessories: camera, flower, flippers look to the sky to see a rubber raft fly by. We are now excited to be able to bring you the short film in its entirety. (after the break)

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Building up to terror!

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Our Christmas buildup continues today with a dragon. Or lizard man. Both are cool.

Great use of SNOT bricks, red cheese and green plates, to say nothing of the cone and mixel eyes, means that this character is just about perfect.

He compares pretty favourably with the lizard mascot figure from the collectable minifigures: 

This build does many things right in many different ways. I give it 5 out of 5 arbitrary praise units.
Play well

Dragonshead revisited, revisited.

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Regular readers of this blog will be getting a little tired of its self referential nature.  Sorry about that. New readers may find this to be a useful place to start (or not…)

The Story so Far:

I Like the Elves Dragons set, especially the  Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave Set, but I am not a fan of the dedicated Dragon’s head mould, except for the obvious reason: great colors, printing, fits lot of detail into a small space. I looked at the Red Creatures Creator set, which was never really found in Australian Shops, as it gave me some ideas on how to approach a Dragon Head.  In order to get a good supply of FYOBLO curves, bows and small arches, I picked up a copy of the McClaren P1 Speed Champions set.  I found my self working through 5 drafts of dragons head, before being properly satisfied.  Except that left me with some Light Stone Grey on view in the dragon’s snout.  So I go a copy of Super Soarers (31042) because it had some FYOBLO brackets in it.

Now read on.

So I got myself some Flame Yellowish Orange/Bright Light Orange (FYO/BLO) brackets.  They are inverted compared to the ones that I got in the McLaren set. So I needed to rebuild the dragon’s snout a little in order to accommodate the changed directions of brackets: this moved the cheeks back, and revealed a coloured plate holding on the 2x2x2/3 bow that makes up the forehead: so I replaced it with some small plates.

I also substituted two 1×1 tiles on the cheeks with 2x1x2/3 baby bows, just in from of the eyes, enhancing the curved structure of the head.

Head clueHere is the main hidden structure of the snout of the dragon, just in case you feel possessed by a desire to try recreating the effect. Other color palettes may allow different solutions, and I think that would be fantastic. Please share them here or on the Rambling Brick Facebook page.

The Final Result:

I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

 

Play Well

Dragonheads Revisited: 31032 – Red Creatures

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Have I been dragon my feet?

I appear to have been discussing LEGO Dragons on this blog a little more than I do in real life.  I have no good explanation for this.  Of interest, dragons appear in LEGO sets a little more often than they appear in real life.  Coincidence? I think not.  Dragons are creatures inspired over the years by human imagination, and LEGO bricks are intended to inspire the human imagination.  Earlier this year, I looked at the Fire Dragon’s Lava cave: Part of the Elves Dragon’s Series this set contained some great scenery, but the brick built head was not entirely to my taste at the time.   Kai’s Elemental Dragon (70602) was an impressive dragon, and the head featured interesting use of arches.  However, the final effect was fairly large compared with the Elves Dragon’s heads.

IMG_5105Red Creatures (31032) was released at the start of 2015 (this means anytime between early December 2014 and February 2015, depending on where in the world you happen to be standing.) At the time of its release, it was overshadowed somewhat by the release of 31031 – the Rainforest Animals.  This colourful Creator Set featured a brick built parrot, with a controversial play feature. I didn’t see red creatures around the department stores in Australia, but it may have been on limited release around some of the independent toy sellers.  There always appear to be a couple of small Creator sets on shop.lego.com that don’t get general release on this side of the globe.  The current Park Animals (31044) and Future Flyers (31034)would both appear to be in this category [NOTE: this is a tip for anyone seeing them in an airport, or overseas, wondering what sets to buy for their LEGO fans back home in Australia.]

But I Digress…

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Enter the Dragon: A set I never intended to build (70602)

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I never intended to build this set. By the way, I am talking about Jay’s Elemental Dragon.  I bought it primarily to boost my supply of pearl gold pieces, which in turn was going to add some bling to the Raid Zeppelin (70603). The Zeppelin is predominantly reddish brown, black, dark tan with orange highlights. I wasn’t a fan of the use of the orange in that set, and wanted to use a more metallic option to make the airship look a little more ‘steam punk’.  I understand why orange was used over a more metallic colour: pearl gold is a colour used as trim in the Ninja sets, for their vehicles and dragons, as well as their swords.  The sky pirates skate along with a colour scheme that includes black, brown, dark tan/dark orange and so using orange rather than gold made sense.  It doesn’t mean I have to like it as an example of steampunk airshipness.

And the dragon in this set is covered with bling: the chains, blades, claws, fancy wing trim all in pearl gold. And they should just slot in nicely to the airship. So… Mission almost complete? Possibly if I hadn’t been distracted by the actual build here.

This set has 2 minifigs (Ninja Jay, and Skypirate Cyren)- and a robot monkey ‘Monkey IMG_8222Wretch’- and a total of 350 pieces.  Continue reading →