MOCs: Building my own Sith Pawn for a "Jedi versus Sith chess" exhibit

This marks my first post that will be about Lego creations that I'm actually working on.  I am a proud member of the Philippine Lego User Group (PhLUG), Lego's officially recognized club in the Philippines.

Every month members meet-up for Brick-fast, a breakfast event that of course involves all things Lego.  At Brickfast there's a whole ton of Lego resellers and buyers.  You can get complete sets or that little part you've always been looking for.

Aside from the Lego bazaar, members also look forward to the exhibit of MOCs by other members.  all sorts of castles, buildings, spaceships and robots pop up during the monthly exhibits.

With this brickfast happening on May 3, the day before May the 4th it was decided that the major theme for the exhibit would be all things Star Wars.

I volunteered to join the team setting up a Jedi vs. Sith chess exhibit.

Below are pictures of the various builds I tried to flesh out my pawn piece. 

The initial build

Everyone agreed to put the minifigs on 8x8 platforms that will serve as the actual pieces of the chess board.

My first order of business was picking a minifigure to customize my sith with.

Unfortunately I was unable to take pictures of the initial selection process.  I have an actual Darth Maul and Luke in black that became the base for my Sith pawn.

The picture below is the initial build I cam up with.  The head of the minifig was taken from the Mr. Freeze minifigure from Lego set 76000:  Arctic Batman versus Mr. Freeze.

That faces totally screamed Sith, especially after the hood was put on.

Since I was already looking at Mr. Freeze's minifig I also thought of making use of Freeze's minifigure torso for some test builds of alternate Sith pawns.  Here's the result a rocket launcher pack with Darth Maul's face.

The colors didn't feel to Sith-life for my tastes.  The initial build shown below still felt like the better choice.  And I was growing enamored with the look of his armored flight pack.

Here they are side by side.

Tried changing the torso for some other pieces and I still couldn't feel a more sith-like vibe from it.  Maybe I'll just use this in another MOC someday.

How about swapping Darth Maul's head in.  Oh looks sinister!

Some other test builds:

A pawn in every sense of the word.  No weapons pack to augment his pawn like stature.  This one makes use of a Chima minifigure head, Wolverine's hair piece and a pirate captain's body.

So I kinda liked the effect of Wolverine's hair on a chima head.  Gave it a strange Samurai feel.

But Darth Maul still looks more sinister.

Here's the back of that armored flight pack.

Luke want's to see them.

Swapped in the Egyptian queen's hair piece on the Chima head.

And here's tomahawk guy as a sith.  Definitely gives off a Sith vibe but still not as good as Mr. Freeze or Darth Maul.

Using a female hair piece here.

And donning the evil robot's helmet.

Okay now this Winter Soldier type hair gives a great Sith/Boy band mash up feel!  Definitely looking fierce and sinister!


I've adjusted the minifigure's flight pack to reflect a simpler and more pawn looking pack.  Despite my like for the armored flight pack I assembled I kept thinking it was too much for a pawn piece.

Side by side now with the original armored flight pack.

Darth Maul looks like intergalactic Bieber here!

At this point I was beginning to sell myself on the much smaller flight pack.  Next time I'll volunteer for a knight or bishop piece so I can make a bigger MOC hehehe.

Here's the back of the smaller flight pack.

A final look at the armored flight pack.

The board
So exhibit day came and I decided finally to use the smaller flight pack.

Here's the board laid out with the other  chess pieces.

And here's my own Sith pawn at the end of the board.

This was my first time to actually volunteer to do a piece and at first I had my apprehensions about making a piece that was worthy of the other builders.  After this one I'll gladly volunteer to do bigger MOCs.

As usual the Brickfast was an awesome experience and the PhLUG members were all great.

Leg Godt!

WIP: Star Diamond Blocks Soldier Deformation: 5-in-1 Robot set PART ONE

Okay so this huge Star Diamond box is lying around in my room and I haven't found time to actully work on the kits within.

Remember this was part of that haul chronicled in this blog entry: Recent pick-ups?

One of the purpose of this blog of course is to make people aware that there are good alternatives to Lego out there.  You just have to look around some and eventually you'll stumble on one.

(You can revisit my previous posts regarding this: Alternative brands to Lego and Where to get alternatives to Lego in Manila?)

Aside from my other hobbies like playing the bass guitar or building Gundam model kits, Lego and brick toys have always been a passion.  Putting together ROBOT BRICK TOY MODELS are pure heaven (see my Sluban Flamingo Transformable Spacecraft )  Gundam was becoming expensive and Lego was one of my first loves.

It's pretty awesome that so many kits are coming out now that are baed on robot/mecha designs (Too bad Hasbro's own Kre-O line has left me disappointed.)

Anyway the monster box you see below was worth all of 2000 pesos!!!!!  I put my Green Lantern Hal Jordan Lego and 1/144 HG Farsia on top of the box for size references.  Man it's a huge box.

Inside the box are actually parts to form 5 individual robots that are also sold in separate boxes.  You can think of this as some kind of collector's/completist box.

Below are the 5 individual robots included in the box together with their model numbers in Star Diamond's Block Soldiers Deformation series.

Here's the BIG BAD himself!  All 5 Bots reassembled as one huge Mecha!  Making this combined form robot number 6 that I can build from the instructions that come with the box.

BIG BAD Robot Number 6!

Remember how I said these are actually individual sets that Star Diamond eventually crammed into that MONSTER box?  Well when it first came out you can buy two and combine them to form a bigger bot.  Well Star Diamond included the instructions for combining two bots as well as acknowledging it in the reverse side of the box.

The three other robots that you can build (aside from the 6 on the front side of the box).

The Star Diamond logo.

The Blocks Soldier Deformation logo.

Yep the whole box totals to about 808 pieces.  Very nice!  A Lego set with the same brick count would most likely cost me an arm and a leg!

How far I got.
Since it was already about 1 am I got as far as opening 2 of the boxes!

The neatest thing was in the box.  Do you see that green bottle opener like thing?  That is a Lego part separator.  It's only available in bigger Lego sets and not all big sets would have it.  It's supposed to facilitate removal of stubborn bricks that you can't pull apart by hand.

I was overjoyed that this Star Diamond set comes with it.

The knock off Lego part separator

Apparently all the smaller boxes had one! DAMN!

So at this point in time I was too sleepy to start building.

This is definitely to be continued...stay tune folks for the next installment!