minebrix

[minebrix]

The four new LEGO Minecraft sets, coming August 1. Looks great, can't wait!

[minebrix]

Here’s a full video review from The Brick Show of the big new summer LEGO Minecraft set, the Nether Fortress!

#Nether Fortress #Ghast #Alex #Steve #Blaze #Zombie Pigman #Glowstone #Nether Quartz #Netherack #Nether Brick #Netherwort

[minebrix]

A full video analysis of the summer LEGO Minecraft sets by michaelmgf of MGF Customs!

#Summer 2015 #sets #video

[minebrix]

theBrickBlogger.com: Custom LEGO Minecraft baseplates

http://thebrickblogger.com/2015/02/custom-lego-minecraft-baseplates-more/

“Paul currently offers three different kind of patterns for LEGO Minecraft fans: one with tan and brown colors, the other is tan and green colors, and the third is red and yellow colors. The colors are pretty close to LEGO’s own color palette.”

Paulmartstore BrickLink store: http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=paulmartstore

#baseplates #custom #bricklink #amazon #ebay

[minebrix]

theBrickBlogger.com: LEGO Minecraft combined models & more!

http://thebrickblogger.com/2015/04/lego-minecraft-combined-models-more/

"An overall review of all of the sets, and what can you build with them when you have the entire collection."

#review #Video Review #thebrickblogger

[minebrix]

The Want List: MOBS

The new Summer 2015 LEGO Minecraft kits will bring us a bunch of new mobs to populate our Minecraft worlds. The Desert Outpost will add a dog/wolf to the mix. Zombie pigmen, blazes and ghasts are coming with The Nether Fortress. We'll be getting a snow golem with the Snow Hideout. Steve is even getting company as Alex joins the LEGO Minecraft line in two of those sets.

But there's still a lot of variety in Minecraft to be added in future expansions. Here's three sets of mob types I'm hoping to see eventually, listed in groups of six according to my preferred priority. Do you agree or disagree with my selections of what is most important? Let me know by commenting on this post.

Priority One -- Must-Haves

CHICKEN


The humble but indispensable chicken is the only food mob not included in the first releases -- kind of a surprise because we did get cows, pigs and sheep -- and even added mooshrooms in the Crafting Box kit. Yes, a brick-built chicken tends to be pretty small. I've built a few based on a white 1x2 brick body topped with a yellow 1X1 modified plate with a horizontal tooth for the bill and a white 1X1 standard plate for the top of the head. (I know it looks more like a duck -- but so does the Minecraft chicken...)

It lacks wings and the distinctive red wattle under the beak -- but those details are too small to model unless you make the chicken badly out of scale with the rest of the mobs. Without chickens, where will Steve get feathers to make arrows... eggs to make cakes... or KFC take-out when a chicken finds itself on the wrong end of a flaming arrow?

HORSES


The other essential animal would seem to be horses. LEGO already has horses that will work with the standard minifigures, so it would only take a bit of retooling to make it blockier to fit with the Minecraft model. LEGO could scatter a variety of horses into new sets, since Minecraft has 7 colors and 5 patterns to mix and match. Skeleton and Zombie horse variants are also available in the Minecraft world. It's only a matter of time before Steve and Alex can saddle up and ride the Minecraft range.

SKELETON IN GOLD ARMOR


OK, it might be cheating to list this as a separate mob. It appears there will be an iron-armored skeleton among the Summer 2015 releases, after all. The only thing needed to do it is a new armor color -- which would fit both the skeleton and Steve. But the "skelly-bling" is so well known among Minecraft players that it would be a welcome addition. Do this one in real metallized gold rather than pearl gold for best effect. Shiny!

WITCH


The truly dreaded witch is too good a mob not to have around when the Minecraft survivalists need a real challenge. Witches are just nasty, and a witch's hut would make a great construction to build a swamp-themed LEGO Minecraft set around. A new squared-off hat would be needed, but the head under it can be a recolored version of the next mob on the must-have list – one which would be my absolute number-one choice to add to LEGO MInecraft...

VILLAGERS


I was rather expecting these to come along with the second series of releases in Summer 2015, but not this time around. Still, I hope to see these by the end of this year. Villagers are too much a part of Minecraft culture to leave out, especially since there are so many building kits to be featured around them.


Heck, you could do an entire set of kit releases just putting together the iconic village feature locations with the appropriate villager minifigs. (MegaJonJon77 is already doing that with his growing series of YouTube video tutorials on village buildings, to which we link on Minebrix on a regular basis.) So we'd have a Farmer with a Village Farm kit, a Blacksmith with the everpresent Village Smithy, perhaps a Butcher with a standard Village House, a Librarian in his Library (Bookshelves!), a Priest with the big Church Tower set and even a hapless Zombie Villager hanging out at night by the Village Well for the low-end set in the group.


The iconic villager nose could be painted on a regular Steve head if LEGO is feeling like being frugal. To do it up right, though,the villagers should get a new head sculpt and a squared-off folded arms piece that snaps on where the usual minifig arms attach to the torso. Robes made out of cape material for the appropriate villagers would be the icing on the cake. With the different professions represented, this would be a highly-sought-after set of minifigs.

IRON GOLEM


If you have villagers and are building villages, you will need an Iron Golem to protect them. This would make a nice brick-built addition to any LEGO Minecraft village building kit – perhaps to accompany one of the mid-range kits in a set of village releases as described above.

Priority Two -- Filling in the Gaps

CAVE SPIDER


The LEGO Minecraft spider is a triumph of cool brick-built design – one of the best creations of the theme.  The smaller, faster and annoyingly poisonous cave spider would be a great addition to underworld settings, especially as part of a dungeon spawner. Can a smaller spider still be a brick-built piece? The distinctive blue-black color makes the cave spiders attractive even as they swarm all over you and bite you to death.

SPIDER JOCKEY


Speaking of spiders, wouldn't it be sweet to have skeletons riding spiders – “spider jockeys” – for your LEGO Minecraft layout. These things are about as deadly as you can get, combining the speed, vision and climbing ability of a spider with the ranged firepower of a skeleton.

Spider Jockeys are able to deal damage in two ways and take damage as if they were two separate mobs. Dispatch one, and you still have the other to contend with. An armored skeleton with an enchanted bow atop a spider is enough to scare any sensible Steve, no matter how tough his armor.


Getting a LEGO Minecraft skeleton to mount atop a LEGO Minecraft spider is a non-trivial matter. There's very little for a LEGO piece to clip or plug onto on a skeleton torso. Illustrated here is one method, requiring no custome pieces and only a small modification to the spider body to create a “footboard” onto which the skeleton's feet attach.

This exploded view shows in red the two parts that need to be added to make the “footboard” that holds the skeleton rider to the back of the spider. The gray block is where the normal head should be on this model, since LEGO Digitasl Designer doesn’t have Minecraft-style mob heads added (yet).

COLORED SHEEP


This one's easy. LEGO would only need to cast a four-footed mob head in the proper colors, perhaps first for the “natural” sheep colors (black, light gray, dark gray, brown and – yes, it is possible to have one spawn naturally – pink), then the “dyed” colors. Paint those heads with sheep faces, and you are ready to go. The rest of the sheep is all unpainted plates and bricks cast in the proper colors. This would be a great centerpiece
 for a Sheep Pen set.

Red, orange, yellow, lime, green, light blue, cyan, blue, purple and magenta are all possible Minecraft colors for dyed sheep – and most can easily be constructed using existing brick colors. It might be too much to hope for to get LEGO to make sheep heads in all these colors, but a “rainbow” sheep flock with several bright colors might be a cute poly-bagged item. (Want a legendary “Notch” color-changing sheep? Just layer several colors of “wool” plates together topped by any colored sheep head!)

SLIMES


These might be the easiest brick-built mobs to do. A printed transparent lime 1X1 brick topped with a 1X1 transparent green plate makes an acceptable mini-slime, a printed 2X2 transparent lime brick with a transparent green 2X2 tile on top and a similarly-colored plate on the bottom is all it would take for a middle-sized slime, while a large slime could be made with four printed transparent lime 2X4 bricks stacked in two overlapping layers with 4 transparent green 2x2 tiles on top and 4 transparent 2x2 green plates below. Easy-peasy.

OCELOT/CATS


We're getting a wolf/dog in the series 2 LEGO Minecraft releases this summer, so it only seems fair to give cat lovers (like me) a nod as well! Besides the printed-block ocelot, we would also need parts colored properly for the tabby, tuxedo and siamese cat variants from Minecraft. Meow!

SILVERFISH


I have mixed emotions about LEGO Minecraft versions of these mobs. I really hate silverfish. I'd rather face an angry Iron Golem than a brace of these scuttling little horrors. They give me the creeps. But if LEGO is to do a stronghold set with an End portal (and this would be a great set for series 3 or 4), I suppose we have to have them.

Doing a brick-built mob here and keeping the silverfish both small enough to be in scale and accurate enough to be recognizable might be challenging. It might just be better to cast a single piece silverfish with a single socket on the bottom to sit on a jumper plate.

Priority Three – Specialty Mobs

ELECTRIFIED CREEPER


Uncommon, certainly. A creeper has to be hit by lightning to create an electricified creeper – and you sure hope that doesn't happen anywhere near to Steve. But hey – why not?

A passible electrified creeper could be easily made by casting a standard creeper in transparent green to simulate the electrified glow. Give it a wide berth. If it's close enough to see, it's too close.

WITHER SKELETON


I can't believe these don't appear in the series 2 Summer 2015 Nether Fortress – they missed a bet. But a second Nether Fortress expansion should have them. To do them right would include making a somewhat taller skeleton in a dark grey hue. (Just going to a slightly longer set of bony arms and legs would be enough to make them the requisite 2 1/2 blocks tall so they tower over normal skeletons.) The standard LEGO Minecraft skeleton head would work fine in the darker color.
 Of course, once you have wither skeletons, you can easily have...

THE WITHER


A brick-built figure topped by three wither skeleton skulls, the Wither could be an add-on in a set containing wither skeletons, or even be a wonderful poly-bagged item by itself with some appropriate decorative items. This would make a nice mini-diorama with Steve and Alex (in really good armor with top-notch weaponry, if they are smart)!

BATS


Why should this fairly common cave fixture mob be a lower priority item? Well, partly because it would probably be best done as a cluster of small bats on one base – but mostly because bats don't do anything! They would be cute window dressing for a LEGO Minecraft layout and that's reason enough to make them, but  they're not going to draw attention to a set the way dangerous (and larger) mobs will. I want them, but I'm willing to wait until a Deep Cave set released as part of series 3 or 4.

MAGMA CUBES


The magma cube is more or less an extension of the slime concept, and should be built in three sizes. I'd do them with stacked translucent plates printed on the edge for the eyes (like some of the micro-sized mobs were created). This would allow you to build the bigger ones in mid-jump by adding smaller translucent red tiles between the layers. Again, this  would be a fine addition to a second Nether Fortress set along with the wither skeletons.

DONKEY/MULE


Donkeys and mules can wait until later but I definitely want to see them! Donkeys and mules would be built the same, differing only in color. They need to have a way to mount a chest on them, too. (The LEGO chest in use now absolutely needs to be replaced by a block-built Minecraft chest that is the size and shape of the crafting bench and furnace – but that's another article.)

So... what mobs are you hoping for in Series 3 and beyond of minifig scale LEGO Minecraft? If you have customs for some new mobs, send pictures or plans along and we'll share them with the community!

#Minecraft #mobs #Want List

[minebrix]

Here’s MegaJonJon77 again with the next video in his how-to series, making a LEGO Minecraft Village Library! Be sure to thank him for this great video series by leaving him a “thumbs-up” on YouTube and checking out the rest of his LEGO videos!

#MegaJonJon77 #video #village #library

[minebrix]

MegaJonJon77 presents Part 3 of his video tutorial series on building a LEGO Minecraft village -- The Farm. As a bonus, he also shows how to build one of the light poles that illuminate the villages. This is a nice series, so be sure to give him a "Like" and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

#village #video #tutorial #MegaJonJon77 #farm

[minebrix]

Digger318 found one more "bootLEGO" Minecraft line, this one from Sheng Yuan. summing it up in one word, these Minifigs and accessories are GOOFY! See for yourself...

#Digger318 #bootleg #minifigs #video review #Sheng Yuan

[minebrix]

Here's part 2 of MegaJonJon77's village build video tutorial -- the blacksmith! Give him a "like" on this and suggest what you'd like to see him do next! Church? Library?

#tutorial #village #blacksmith #MegaJonJon77

[minebrix]

The least expensive of the summer crop of LEGO MInecraft kits at $19.99, The Dungeon pits Steve against a zombie spawner in a desert-area setting. Cactus and a lava lake complete the scene. (Video preview from the New York Toy Fair provided by The Brick Show.)

#zombies #spawner #cactus #desert #ny toy fair 2015

[minebrix]

Preview teaser of the Desert Outpost kit, coming in August for $59.99 (courtesy of The Brick Show). The kit centers around another swing-open building like the First Night kit provides with a small tower you can defend by dropping TNT onto the armored skeleton below. Both Alex and Steve are included along with a cactus. I'm still kind of surprised to see a boat and a wolf showing up in a desert set, but I'm happy to be getting them!

#Alex #desert outpost #cactus #wolf #skeleton #boat #ny toy fair 2015

[minebrix]

The Brick Show brings us a great teaser look at The Nether Fortress LEGO Minecraft Kit, coming in August at $79.99. Some very cool features coming here, including a brick-built Ghast that shoots fireballs and light-up Glowstone! The kit comes with both Steve and Alex, plus a zombie pigman and a blaze. The ubiquitous brick-face 1 x 2 bricks now come in gorgeous dark red for nether brick, too.

#kits #nether fortress #Alex #glowstone #ny toy fair 2015

[minebrix]

Also coming in August, at SRP $34.99 is this nifty Snow Hideout. Here's a fold-open snow building where Steve can hide from the creeper lurking outside around the icy pond and snow-covered trees. A brick-built snow golem is the best feature of this set. (Again, big thanks to The Brick Show for this close-up video teaser!)

#snow golem #creeper #snow biome #snow hideout #ny toy fair 2015

[minebrix]

Video review by Digger318: Decool My World MInecraft "BootLEGO" minifigures

#digger318 #video review #minifigures #animals #bootleg #Decool

[minebrix]

Minecraft "BootLEGO" Minifigs

Some LEGO minifigures are manufactured in China, and Chinese toy manufacturers have been manufacturing “knockoff” LEGO items for some time. Unauthorized copies of minifigs from most LEGO themes are being sold in the Far East, along with original creations not offered by LEGO. Many of these “BootLEGO” products are making their way to Europe and the Americas via eBay and internet-based import vendors. It was perhaps inevitable that LEGO Minecraft would attract knockoff manufacturers.

In this case, three of the minifig knockoff makers are now offering LEGO Minecraft items. As is usual with knockoff products, the quality and attention to detail varies widely from truly awful to near-LEGO standards. Even so, some of you may want to supplement your LEGO Minecraft collections with extra figures, weapons, tools, animal and monster MOBs, etc. if so, here’s what is available.

SL Toys

This series of boxed figure sets comes with somewhat randomly decorated display bases. Quality and detail varies from OK to confusingly odd. There are six releases.

Steve w diamond pick

Diamond Armor Steve w wood sword

Zombie w wood hoe

These three are not too bad, resembling the originals (though not closely enough to be indistinguishable from them).

Pumpkin Head Steve w iron shovel

For some reason, two of these three companies produced Steve figures with pumpkin heads. OK if you need an extra pumpkin, I suppose.

Enderman w wood axe

This is just a normal minifig in black and purple with an enderman head. Fairly disappointing.

Skeleton w bow

Though several of the knockoff companies have already done LEGO-style skeleton bodies/arms/legs, this figure instead uses a Minecraft-style square skeleton head on a standard white minifig body printed with a skeleton pattern. Why?

Available from AliExpress, and often seen on eBay. Digger318 has done a full video review on this set on YouTube, and I recommend a thorough viewing of it.

 LeLe

The eight releases in this series are mostly pretty authentic-looking, and the packages are loaded with extras which you may find more useful than the minifigs themselves.

“Creeper” w bow, redstone ore & fence

This figure has a creeper-like head on a white standard minifig body. The effect is something along the lines of a creeper who saw Saturday Night Fever one too many times. Not sure how useful one lone fence section is, either.

Pumpkin Head Steve w wood pick, gold ore & web

Another inexplicable pumpkin head minifig. The “gold” ore is kind of greenish. (Emeralds?) 

Spider w stand

Heck of a nice spider, very close to LEGO In appearance. No extras except a display stand, but a figure this size is still a good buy alone.

Ender Dragon head w stand

This is a collector’s piece only (unless Steve wants to mount it above his fireplace in his castle after returning from the End). Not the whole dragon — just the head with a display stand, and no extras. Still pretty, though.

Zombie w iron pick, cow & torch

Skeleton w iron shovel, pig, torch & crafting table

Skeleton w bow, mooshroom & web

Steve w wood shovel, sheep & minecart track section

Even if you don’t need more zombies, skeletons, and Steves, these are worth picking up for the animals alone. The extras are nice and useful, and are dished out generously.

AliExpress has these, and we are starting to see them on eBay.

Digger318 also has a full video review of the Lele releases, which I highly recommend.

DeCool My World

Of all the knockoff manufacturers, Decool is one of the most prolific and consistent. These six sets seem to reflect that consistency. The animals are the stars of the show again. (After all, it’s hard to build a sizable herd when you get only one or two animals in a $50-$100 set.) The figures are all pretty close imitations of the originals. This is the only knockoff creeper with a real creeper body, for example. A mix of extras in these packages including lots of torches.

Zombie w wood axe, sheep & coal ore

Skeleton w bow & cow

Steve w wood shovel, pig & TNT

Diamond Armor Steve w diamond sword & 4 torches

Creeper w mooshroom

Iron Armor Steve w iron sword & 4 torches

These are brand-new kits, just released. AliExpress seems to have these on a sporadic basis right now, but they are likely to be more readily available soon. They are likely to show up on eBay as well. Digger 318 hasn’t posted a video review yet, but I expect he will soon. If so, I’ll link it here as well.

I’m not going to debate the desirability of buying, or even manufacturing, knockoff figures from licensed properties like this. (Feel free, however, to take up the subject in the comments — politely.) but they are out there and available online.

#Minifigs #Animals #Weapons #Tools #Bootleg

[minebrix]

First of a series on building a LEGO Minecraft village from MegaJonJon77. I hope to see more of these, especially since LEGO did not announce a village set with the next series of kit releases. Anyone out there done a custom minifig villager yet?

#video #tutorial #village