Brick Bucket Review: 70753 Lava Falls

5/5

Appearance - 5/5

Construction - 4/5
Pieces - 4/5

Playability - 5/5

Minifigs/accessories - 4/5

Value for money - 5/5

70753 Lava Falls is part of the "Tournament of Elements" wave of Ninjago sets, released in March 2015. It retails for $7.99 and contains 94 pieces, for a CPP of 8.5 cents/piece.



Verdict: Great pieces, great minifigures, a great play feature, and the whole product just looks good. Plus, there's the fantastic price-to-parts ratio - I seriously can't think of another set where you can get 94 pieces for 8 bucks, especially not a set this good. Save for the two very minor flaws I discuss in the review, I couldn't have asked for anything more. 

Civilian Warthog

I don't play Halo but I like many of the game's vehicle designs, and I certainly recognize the M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle, aka the Warthog, when I see it. This one by Nick Brick is different from the other LEGO versions I've seen with its flashy yellow color scheme. (Apparently this is the civilian model, not the military one.) 

The Technic work in the underbelly looks really nice, and those sides and central bar? One can only imagine how those are attached... oh wait, Nick also posted this breakdown image so we can have a closer look at his genius design: 

The world of Pasha

Of all the LEGO competitions and challenges out there, Symphony of Construction has to be one of my favorites. The mix of LEGO and music - my two favorite art forms and hobbies - gets the creativity flowing and always produces some amazing MOCs and musical pieces. This entry to Round 4 of the challenge was built by Brick Bucket first-timer Mattias Sondergaard: 

The architectural style of this miniature city is a great contrast to the jagged rockwork and the entropy of all those scattered 1x1 rounds and cheese slopes around the model. This is a nicely built and presented entry to one of the most innovative LEGO contests out there. 

Click here to listen to the original piece of Music, "Myriad," composed by Ian Spacek with a cello performance by Tim Schwalf (One More Brick).

Dragon-building!

I've featured Nuju Metru's skillfully created Dragon Lands custom theme here before, and now the builder has announced a dragon-building contest! You can read the rules and guidelines on Flickr here. 

The best part is, to make the dragon building a little smoother for the newbies, Nuju Metru has created three instruction sheets with some advice for basic skeletons, heads, limbs, wings, and decorations. Take a look: 
(click to enlarge images)

This looks like a fun contest, and those guide pages are really well done. I look forward to seeing the army of dragons that is sure to come! 

War has been declared

Commander Mark Informs his troops that War has been declared. They are to march to attack the city of Lampsacus at dawn tomorrow.

This scene from Mark of Falworth makes great use of several custom pieces and some nice building techniques to achieve a natural, realistic look. I love MOCs that draw on historical architecture (Greek and Roman in this case) - besides LEGO, history is another of my big interests. 

The contoured base here is complemented by the dark green landscaping, which is itself contrasted by the bright leaves on the trees and the red of the building's roof. Overall this is a really nice looking MOC. (The custom minifig parts look great as well... I'll have to look into getting a few!)

EDIT: I'd thought the neon green leaves were custom; turns out they're actually from some of the new Elves sets. Regarding the minifigs, the builder says:

Those helms are Brickforge as are the shields and most of the spears. The armor piece and the scroll on Mark are Brickwarriors. :)

Garage life, part deux

We return to the venerable Brick Bucket garage (formerly the Brickology garage) to take a look at Norton74's shiny new '23 Ford T-Bucket. The car is of course very well built but the MOC wouldn't be the same without the detailed and carefully designed backdrop and accessories. The overall look is very similar to that of a real garage - nice work. 

More photos on Flickr here. 

Koi Pond

After the hectic events of the past weekend (new blog name!), it was nice to see something calming in my Flickr photostream. Through a perfect blend of smooth and irregular textures, simple shapes and complex ones, Chris Maddison has once again turned plastic bricks into something more. I wish I was sitting beside one of these right now. 

Brickology is now The Brick Bucket!

In light of some recent events that I've discussed in my two previous posts, this blog needs a new name, and I've decided on The Brick Bucket. The new URL is www.thebrickbucket.blogspot.com. (I am looking into purchasing a custom, non-blogspot URL soon.) The new URL for the review site is www.brickbucketreviews.blogspot.com. Thank you for your understanding and sorry for any confusion. 

Name change coming soon!

Due to reasons I mentioned in my last post, this site needs a new name, and right now it looks like it's going to be The Brick Bucket. 

(testing logo, not final)

This means that very soon, this blog will be moved to the new domain, www.thebrickbucket.blogspot.com. I will post again when that happens. Sorry for any confusion. 

Brickology needs a new name

I was contacted earlier today by LEGO Certified Professional Beth Weis, who, previously unknown to me, has a LEGO business called Brickology. Since Beth owns the rights to the "Brickology" name, and since she clearly has more experience in the LEGO community than I do, she requested that I change the name of my blog. I'm happy to do so, but this will require that I create both a new name and a new web domain. 

This is where I need your help, dear readers. This is your site; I'm always open to suggestions from fellow LEGO fans. If anyone has some new LEGO blog name ideas, please don't hesitate to let me know via the Contact page. I've got some ideas in my brain too, but one of you might come up with something great... 

A new name will be a big change for this site, requiring a new web domain as well as changes to all the social-network accounts in this blog's name. Please stay tuned; I will have more information about these developments in the days to come. 

Audi supercar

Not too long ago, Audi wasn't really known for supercars. That all changed when the company took the Lamborghini Gallardo platform and turned it into the Audi R8 V10. Being "a fan of the R8 and orange LEGO pieces," well-known Technic builder Sariel decided to combine the two. The result is this masterpiece of a LEGO supercar: 

Many more images can be found on MOCpages or on Sariel's website. I love that the builder challenged himself by building the vehicle in orange, which is a very rare color in LEGO and consequently quite difficult to build with, especially something of this scale. Some of Sariel's build notes I found fascinating: 

To make things harder, the orange pieces are fairly rare and I spent entire year with Bricklink’s Color Guide in front of my face just to make sure I’m using pieces that exist and can be bought (one doesn’t automatically mean the other). And then Lego is unable to maintain one consistent hue of orange.

Probably the most challenging part of the model was its front end. There was little space elsewhere, so I installed the model’s battery exactly in its nose, right between the front grille and front axle. This meant putting several meters of wires there, including 5 pairs of Lego LEDs in the headlights. If you want a simple recipe to start hating yourself, try to make an axle that is suspended, steered and driven at the same time, then put a ton of wires around it, and then try to make it all fit under a very low hood. I believe I spent no less than month to cram everything in there without making the hood taller. In the end, the entire front end was like a combination of about eight separate modules that would stay together only if connected in a very specific order.

Sunset

This really caught my eye in my Flickr feed this morning. Once again, Kosmas Santosa's clean building style and impeccable photography have served him well. This beautifully constructed and photographed scene makes great use of contrasting colors to show a landscape bathed in the sun's last golden glow. 

The tree and clouds help add texture, and I love the three-piece boat: so simple, but it adds so much. Also, the 1x1 clips used as grass might be the most inspired use I've seen for that part. 

Icy hot

70804 Ice Cream Machine is one of my favorite sets in my collection, but it's not half as neat as this remodeled version by Abram Harris. This vehicle style works very well with the pink-and-white color scheme- very 50s. 

B-19 Hellhawk

Rancorbait has more than earned his first mention on this humble blog with his latest build, a sci-fi gunship that wouldn't look out of place in a Marvel movie. 

I love the smooth shaping and contours and the "purposefully-exposed studs" look, and those intake grilles have been getting a lot of love in the Flickr comments. I think Rancorbait also deserves credit for this ridiculously large photo, which unfortunately this post can't do full justice to - click through to see this MOC in all its glory. 

Jewel of the galaxy

Color can matter just as much as design in a build, and this addition to the Starfighter Telephone Game by Guy Smiley :-) is a perfect example. The construction is unorthodox and by no means poorly made, but what really sets this apart is the combination of colors. Black and gray as a base, topped off with lime green and bright blue. It reminds me of a shimmering jewel or maybe some kind of rainforest creature. Some of those Serpentine stickers from Ninjago really got put to good use too. Nice build. 

Foxbat

Alexander Safarik (Malydilnar) adds a touch of realism to this awesome space-fighter, "Foxbat," with a Russian-inspired sticker job and rundown landing strip. 

An ovine individual

I missed this build when it was posted a couple weeks ago but I'm happy to announce that this blog now contains a friendly sheep, courtesy of PaleoBricks. The jumble of BIONICLE parts flows very nicely, and the technique using minifig arms to connect the ears is something I never would've thought of. 

Mastodon and Arm Suit

I was going to post .Tromas's Arm Suit MOC a few days ago, but I'm glad I waited until now, because the builder also made this sweet truck to go along with the mech:

The description from Flickr reads: 
Mastodons formed the backbone of mine protected vehicles in both the Canadian and Japanese armed forces for the last two decades. With the formation of Canada-Japan and the merging of the armed forces there was a surplus of Mastodons. With the primary goal of the forces now being national self defence and peacekeeping many surplus Mastodons have been retrofitted to carriers for the newly developed Arm Suits. The high mobility chassis is ideal for operations throughout Neo-Canada and although it is somewhat overkill in urban environs, it is perfectly at home patrolling the tundras of the far north.

More images here

Castle of champions

Iron Builder is back! It seems no one can beat the Mayos, but now their days in the arena are past and it may be time for a new champion to take their place. Defending IB 6kyubi6 seems to have built a place of residence for whoever emerges victorious in this round, which you can follow on Flickr here. 

The seed part for this round is the pitchfork element, and 6kyubi6's challenger is vitroleum. 

(By the way, I love those miniature cannons!)

Silly Sunday

I'm back after a few days' absence and it's time for some fun. This will be gladly provided by .Tromas and his gang, "Yesterday's Tomorrow": 

The gang will be riding in their Volkswagen Cube-Vanagon, from which they run their illegal black market operation:

It's not often that I post figbarfs but these are particularly well done and I quite like the truck as well. 

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