Elfire Interceptor

Granted, this is on the front page of pretty much every other LEGO blog at the moment, but... it's so. Darn. Cool. 

The latest addition to the amazing aerial arsenal of Nick Trotta (tardisblue) is the Elfire Interceptor. Nick's models are seriously some of the most incredible things you will ever see built out of LEGO - they fit together so well despite using insanely complicated building techniques. If you're interested in that sort of thing, hop on over to YouTube and check out the instructional video (with commentary) Nick made for this model. If not, just stare at the image below and maybe drool a little bit. 

Small scenes from outer space

I found two small space-themed builds on Flickr today that I really liked. The first one, by IamKritch, reminded me a lot of my own building style in my recent abstract MOCs, using SNOT to create a smooth brick-built base. It depicts a pair of Classic Spacemen encountering, of all things, a dirty sock:

The second build is this deceptively simple scene from O0ger entitled "Maintenance":

There's some fairly complex greebling going on in the opened wall section, and it offsets really nicely with those big smooth panels. I also like the choice of colors for a very muted photograph. 

The plague

It's a normal day on the farm. You're out plowing the fields, when suddenly your ears detect a distant buzzing noise. A shadow falls over the crops. You look up, and a black cloud slowly comes into view, blocking out the sun and creating a hellish cacophony of noise. The plague is here - a plague of locusts. 

No, not the insects! It's a swarm of Locust Battleframe mecha built by the insidious engineer Rancorbait! Or at least... it could be.

Rancorbait's models never fail to disappoint in the greeble department, but this is maybe the best example yet. Just look at all those tiny parts and how well they've been fitted together. This MOC is a strong contender for my favorite mecha of the year so far. 

Nexo Knights set images and analysis!

I've been holding my breath for the theme that has been chosen to replace Legends of Chima: the half-castle, half-sci-fi Nexo Knights, coming January 2016. Now, thanks to Eurobricks hackers' discovery of a stash of new images on LEGO.com's servers, we can finally stop guessing and see some of these exciting new sets for the first time. 

Oddly, I don't think Nexo Knights - a "big bang" IP in the same vein as Ninjago - has been getting the same hype as Chima was before that came out in 2013. Maybe it's that Nexo Knights has had less time to sit in everyone's brain: before a logo was discovered, the theme was mere speculation, and it was only a few days ago that LEGO released some teasers and showed off two of the sets at New York Comic Con. 

Regardless, I'm pretty excited about Nexo Knights. In my opinion it's looking better than Chima, but still not on par with my perennial favorite Ninjago. It seems like it'll have plenty of time to prove itself though. More than the storyline, I'm just excited about the new pieces and sets themselves, so without further ado, let's jump into the newfound stash of images!

UPDATE 10/23/15: While going through Brickset today I decided that I could match some of the known names listed there to some of the sets in this post, just based on intuition. I have edited the post accordingly. 

UPDATE 1/7/15: These sets have been out for some time now and I thought I'd point out that I accurately predicted the price for all but two. Merlok's Library was predicted at $30 and is really $25; the King's Mech was predicted at $35 and is really $30. So overall, these sets ended up being even cheaper than I'd thought! (Now I just need to decide which ones to get...)

Burnt sienna

_Tiler uses the relatively new shade of dark orange to great effect in this Star Wars landspeeder model. It pairs quite well with the brown and old dark gray. But color isn't the only interesting thing - the curves and angles of this build flow seamlessly together despite their complexity. This is a very nicely made replica.

Wow, I've kind of been missing out on posting for a good bit of time now, and things been just as busy for Aaron, Frog, and Thomas as far as I can tell. We'll try to get some more posts up soon; a few really great MOCs have been uploaded to Flickr recently that deserve to be featured here, I just haven't had the time. I'd also like to take a look at the recently-revealed Doctor Who set, but we'll see what happens. Stick around :)