One of the more intriguing new sets released under the LEGO® Minecraft™ theme in January 2024 was 21257 The Devourer Showdown, based on this year's Minecraft™ Legends video game.
The 420 piece set features new moulds, new prints and some new recolours that currently remain exclusive to this set. It's definitely worth taking a closer look, even if Minecraft, the disgusting Devourer or mucus projectiles are not your thing.
LEGO® Minecraft are taking a different direction in 2019 with the new subtheme BigFigs, which features yet another new scale of Minecraft build. 21148 Steve with Parrot, 21149 Alex with Chicken and 21150 Skeleton with Magma Cube will be released 1st January and we asked Jonas Kramm to investigate the new pieces that come in these sets.
The trend that LEGO® Minecraft sets are privileged to include new elements continues. Usually these are specific Minecraft moulds such as the tools and heads (which I’ve recently explored) but sometimes also includes pieces that aren’t so specialised, that will be used in other sets and themes afterwards as well. Let’s take a look at the new Minecraft sets called BigFig Series 1, and see what is new.
Jonas Kramm has been examining the LEGO® Minecraft animals and thinking up inspiring ideas as to how they might be used for something other than blocky animals!
Welcome to the last lesson of Minecraft Anatomy class. Today we will analyse the horse and the wolf to see what can be done with grey Minecraft moulds.
I've always been intrigued by the animal head elements that were specially introduced for LEGO® Minecraft sets. They're highly specialised and don't entirely conform to the System, but their blockiness and intriguing shapes made me wonder what else could be done with them. Who could I challenge to take on such a challenging challenge? The brilliant Jonas Kramm accepted my evil task! Over the course of three posts he will examine six Minecraft animal moulds.
Under the radar of most AFOLs, LEGO® has added several new Minecraft animal moulds to their assortment, which seem to be quite strange on first sight. But in a series of articles here on New Elementary I will dive into the blocky world, analyse the geometry of several Minecraft moulds and show you examples for the capability of these elements.
Elspeth De Montes has her hands on a large 2017 LEGO® set but she isn't going to build it! She simply must alert you to its parts and the fantastic quantities they come in.
It is time for another one of my parts reviews, so I hope you have your sea-legs ready as we set sail and look at 21136 The Ocean Monument. This set was an August 2017 release for the LEGO® Minecraft theme containing 1,122 elements including two minifigures, and retails at £119.99 / $119.99 / 119.99€ (currently cheaper at Amazon UK and some cheaper still at BrickLink).
Bein' Green
Sand Green is a rather sought-after colour, in part due to the famous retired Modular 10185 Green Grocer and also as it made frequent appearances in the Harry Potter theme. I thought it might be good to analyse Ocean Monument as a ‘green parts pack’ as Sand Green accounts for approximately 25% of the elements, with Earth Green [TLG]/Dark Green [BL] another 25%. That’s a LOT of green for a set with over 1000 parts.
Jonas Kramm has sort of been running a mini-parts festival here on New Elementary recently using a piece from the new LEGO® Minecraft sets, and today he brings it to our other parts festival...
For this build I combined the 'birdhouse' plate (Design ID 27928) with another part that is being reviewed on New Elementary currently, the Nexogon (Design ID 27255). The result is a three-legged Steampunk spider creature.
Recently we've been lucky enough to have Jonas Kramm (who has literally just won another Iron Builder title!) investigating the pieces that come in the latest wave of LEGO® Minecraft sets for us and one in particular has intrigued him. Today he shows some more of the clever builds he's created using the new piece called “Wedge, Plate 2 x 2 Pentagonal with Center Stud and 1 x 1/2 Raised Tab on Top” by BrickLink and “Plate 2X2, W/ Design” by TLG (Element ID 6163991|Design ID 27928).
Welcome back to more ideas using the new LEGO Minecraft mould. Having shown you two fence designs, amongst others, here are a few more uses of that element, starting with the first idea I built and the one that I like the most of all. In the comments on New Elementary someone already called this new modified wedge plate a “birdhouse plate” and that actually fits pretty well, as the part is just perfect for building birdhouses.
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.
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?
Every now and then, world-class LEGO builders experiment with some of the newest LEGO elements to examine their possibilities here on New Elementary. I call these “Parts Challenges” (although I’m less and less happy with this phrase, given that the task is a non-competitive affair. What should we call them instead? Maybe a "Parts Festival"!) Thanks once again to the super support of the LEGO Group we have a new round of posts coming up over the next month or so looking at some new elements from 2016 sets.
Just a note to say I've no time to put a post together this week... as AFOLCON/Brick 2014 is here in London, and today consisted of some 200 or so adult fans enjoying seminars and setting up displays in the MAAASSIVE exhibition hall. However I'll try to post bits and bobs on social media, so keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Here are some tidbits from today.
The best thing about today was someone quietly pointing out that the minifig heads from Minecraft are 'in System' after all, so I was wrong in my recent post on the subject. By placing a 1x2 jumper and a 2x2 jumper next to each other, two Minecraft heads align. Now that is nice.
Following Tim G's review of 21113 The Cave, I've got one more minifig-scale Minecraft set to tell you about today. However I can imagine that many of you will be rolling your eyes, yawning at the simplicity of these sets and won't be forking out your dosh on a bunch of 2x bricks. But don't dismiss these sets too hurriedly; the level of interesting parts in 21114 The Farm really surprised me.
Mojang's popular video game Minecraft has become a winning partnership for LEGO®. This Saturday a new wave of sets will be released (but are already on shelves in some European Brand Stores) and for the first time these new sets are in minifig scale rather than microscale. Today Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha) reviews the smallest set in the range: 21113 The Cave which will retail for GB£19.99 and has 249 pieces.
I cannot claim to know that much about the intricacies of Minecraft. I’ve never played it but obviously I have heard of it and have a fair idea of what it’s about. One thing that dominates (for me) most of what I’ve heard about the game is it’s comparison to LEGO. Is it the LEGO of the future, of the digital age? Well, probably not for me. It is undoubtably creative and uses that inspirational part of the brain that we LEGO builders use to create new and exciting things. But sitting in front of a screen for hours on end is not my idea of fun (at least not these days, many hours have been lost to Lara, Wipeout and others). This crossover set is my way into the Minecraft universe.
My favourite thing about the microscale Minecraft sets was that they contained lots of basic stuff; 1X1 tiles, plates and bricks. Yummy. Are the minifig scale sets going to be able to live up this? In many ways yes; let us investigate.
was that they contained lots of basic stuff; 1X1 tiles, plates and bricks. Yummy. Are the minifig scale sets going to be able to live up this? In many ways yes; let us investigate.