Minecraft 2017: Techniques using LEGO® part 27928

Taking another small break from our parts festival, today sees the return not only of the interesting new Minecraft piece (which BrickLink have named 'Wedge, Plate 2 x 2 Pentagonal with Center Stud and 1 x 1/2 Raised Tab on Top') but also of Jonas Kramm and his apparent predilection for street furniture!

In my previous article I showed you a long list of highlights from the new LEGO® Minecraft sets. Today I will present you the first ideas I came up with using the new mould, the modified 2x2 wedge plate in Reddish Brown (Element ID 6163991|Design ID 27928). Luckily we get a great number of this part — 24! — in the set 21130 The Nether Railway [available from Amazon US and Amazon UK], so I could play around with some ideas that use it repetitive ways. The generated structures immediately inspired me to build two fence designs.

NEXOGON: Hive

Today, Li Li from MOC Recipes returns with another creation and beautiful geometric ideas using the new hexagonal LEGO® piece 27255 (Plate, Modified 6 x 6 Hexagonal with Pin Hole).

The Nexogon really reminds me of some sort of sci-fi beehive, so I created a large sci-fi colony.

NEXOGON: White Rhino

Today, for our parts festival celebrating the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™Combo Power shield part 27255, we welcome back Christian Benito (a.k.a. Little Brick Root) with a wholly different creation to the building he gave us last time.

With my first model for the festival built and sent off, I had that intimidating tablescrap on my plate. I still wasn’t ready to use it, so I went back to the well and recreated an arcing shell from my Nexogons. It quickly became a shield in my mind’s eye. A really big shield. The kind of shield that a mecha would carry. So I built a mecha.

NEXOGON: Mecha with drone detail

Today we introduce Li Li; another of our featured builders in our parts festival using the new hexagonal LEGO® piece, 27255. Many of you will know Li from his website full of excellent building techniques, MOC Recipes, and if you don't - well, bookmark it now! Li has already sent a bunch of cool stuff and we kick off today with one of his models.

One of the first things that I wanted to build with the Nexogon was a mecha. This inverted triangular piece seemed like the perfect way to build a buff torso. So here’s my attempt.

NEXOGON: Coronae Softworks

Another of the 14 featured builders in our parts festival using LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ piece 'Rotor w/ 4.85 hole' makes his premiere today: Christian Benito (a.k.a. Little Brick Root). He lives in Portland, Oregon, as do two other builders I chose... by sheer coincidence!

When my Nexogons arrived, I was in the midst of a pre-convention building frenzy and I barely had time to do a bit of fiddling. With the con behind me, I had a particularly interesting tablescrap that I just didn’t know how to use. It uses Nexogons to make a really interesting shape, but nothing has come of it yet. Then in one of Tim’s articles I saw six Nexogons arranged in a star. A building came together in my head and Coronae Softworks was born.

NEXOGON: Classic Space scene

We left you on a bit of a cliffhanger when we showed you Kevin Levell's initial creations for our parts festival using the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™Combo Power shield. Wait no more: let's blast off into Classic Space!

When I was building spheres for my NEXO Globeships, I heard the news that The LEGO Movie Sequel would be set in space. Surely this would mean 'Benny's space': Classic Space, the 'space' of my childhood? Suddenly my sphere needed to be a dome, a habitat or space lab for spacemen! (It’s probably pertinent to mention that I had just seen The Martian too.)

I’ll admit, I got a bit carried away after I had the ‘Hab/Dome’ built.

NEXOGON: The Enforcer

We welcome another new builder to the parts festival today: Luc Byard (on Facebook and Flickr) who is an active builder in the UK and in the Eurobricks ‘role building game’ Andromeda’s Gates. Today, he approaches LEGO® part 27255 in a wholly different way.

No civilian disturbances in sector 12

NEXOGON: Swamp Shrine

For his fourth instalment in our parts festival using the new hexagonal LEGO® piece 27255, Duncan Lindbo (donutsftw) abandons space in favour of... a swamp!

For my next build, I decided to do something a bit different from my standard fare, and went with a fantasy build rather than something sci-fi. The result is this abandoned shrine/temple, hidden away deep in a swamp. Just what is that glowing macguffin inside? The Fountain of Youth? A magic energy crystal? I don't know, but it looked cool.

NEXOGON: Patterns with pentagons

Our next builder in the NEXOGON parts festival, our celebration of LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ Combo Power shields, is Tom Klatt (thirteenthmonkey on Flickr) who hails from the state of Minnesota, USA. Tom's initial investigations paired the Nexogon with another brand-new LEGO piece we investigated recently...

This first build came together as I had the parts to LEGO Minecraft 21130 Nether Railway and one of the Nexo Knights battle suits lying near each other on my table. When I put the new Minecraft piece, Reddish Brown 'Plate 2x2, w/ design' (Element ID 6163991|Design ID 27928), where the NEXO power shield would normally go, I saw the potential for a face.

NEXOGON: More tips using part 27255

Let's take another breather from the amazing builds using LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ Combo NEXO Power shields and explore the geometry of this new piece further, this time with regular contributor Gary Davis (Bricks for Brains). 

The Nexogon joins a small family of LEGO® elements with attachment points at a rotation separation of 60° (and 30° in some cases).

NEXOGON: Hangar & launch tube

Duncan Lindbo returns today with this third set of creations in our parts festival using the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ piece Rotor w/ 4.85 hole, a.k.a. the Nexogon.

This build was inspired by a shape Tim built in his original post on the Nexogon's geometry. My original thought was that that would serve as a good base for a micro-scale train yard turntable, but trains aren't really my jam, so instead I built a spaceship hangar with a launch tube, inspired by the likes of Battlestar Galactica and EVE: Valkyrie.

NEXOGON: Globeships

One of my intentions when selecting builders for the NEXOGON parts festival using LEGO® part 27255 was to risk including people I'd never heard of. Kevin Levell used to build but that was eight or so years ago. However his renewed enthusiasm and ideas were so infectious, I just had to put him on the list! I'm already glad I did: here's his first bunch of creations for your enjoyment.

The Nexo Big Thing

An alien flies his old globeship...

 ...to his local ship dealer for a trade-in...

Old Bricks: Brick Yellow & Brick Red

Francesco Spreafico returns with another guest post today containing more interesting historical facts about LEGO® colours. Francesco first published this article in Italian on his excellent blog Old Bricks.

About a year and a half ago, Kevin Hinkle of the LEGO® community engagement team told us a bit of trivia he had heard from his colleagues in the Materials and Research & Development department: the reason why the LEGO colour that is commonly called “Tan” is officially called “Brick Yellow”.

NEXOGON: Space Marine Drop-Pod

A new build for our parts festival from Duncan Lindbo (donutsftw on Flickr) today, using LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™Combo Power Shields (Design ID 27255) to fill an awkward gap.

Is it a meteor? A comet? No, it's a space marine drop-pod!

NEXOGON: Mini-Reactor One

Jeremy Williams (Bricking It on Flickr) has written for New Elementary many times and also took part in a previous parts festival. He's more excited about the Combo Power Shield than any other recent LEGO® part, and so he returns for our NEXOGON parts festival.

You may remember seeing my Reactor One model on Flickr last year, or 'in the brick' at Skaerbaek Fan Weekend or The Great Western Brick Show at STEAM. Well, I decided to use two Nexogons to create a miniature version of Reactor One!

NEXOGON: More Building Techniques

In January I made many observations about the geometry of new LEGO® piece 27255, the "Nexogon". There's plenty more to discover though and some of our featured builders are describing their experiments, including Neil Crosby (thevoicewithin on Flickr) who recently created a round one-man spaceship from a Nexogon for us. 

When I first saw the Nexogon I knew it was going to be a piece I wanted to play with. I've always liked geometric shapes and taking things off the LEGO grid, so having another piece with studs in multiple directions on a plane was exciting. When I first got my hands on one I started playing, just trying to work out how the things fitted together and what connections weren't immediately obvious from looking at them.

So, this post isn't going to be a "look at the pretty final model" post. Those posts are great, but to be honest as a reader I sometimes find them a bit intimidating. The thought "I could never get there" has crossed my mind plenty of times in the past when I see the wonderfully intricate pieces that some people come up with. Instead, this post is me documenting some of the process that I went through in my exploration of the Nexogon. Nothing's a final piece, but hopefully some of the connections in here will be useful to some of you.

First up; one of the very first things I did with the Nexogon. It's useful to know that the space between the 2x2 connection points and the central stud hole is half a stud wide, which means you can place a 1x2 plate with rail on each one, tightly forming a triangle. This is, however, only possible on the underside of the Nexogon without raising by one plate first, due to the lip designed to surround a pentagonal Nexo shield.

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.