Return of the Jedi… On ice!

It seems like ages ago that the LEGO Community Engagement Team sent out a load of Winter Skating Scene sets to the registered Lego User Groups with a simple challenge: show us what you can do. As Brick Fanatics is part of the ambassador network, we’re on the list so we got some too.

The rest (pretty much) of the UK LUGs held a big ‘alternate’ building competition so I wanted to do something different. My first idea had been more photography based, using the sets to build a larger version of the base model into which I would place and artistically photograph different figures. Imagine a ‘Rebels’ and ‘Empire’ team playing hockey; that kind of thing. I’ll be honest though, I didn’t rate it much as ideas go… I like minifigure photography but it’s photography, not MOCing and I wanted to MOC.

It was while I was building the Final Duel set (which I’ll be reviewing in due course) that I started to think: what about blending the winter skating scene with another setup? The Emperor’s throne room seemed like a good fit as both sets shared some black and trans-blue elements that would tie in the colour schemes.

I could have squirreled away at this on my own but LEGO wanted activities, not just MOCs. Brick Fanatics being what it is, we’re small in number but have a large geographic footprint so that wasn’t going to work: in steps my faithful assistant, and here’s where the idea took an interesting turn. Normally, when I’m building, my daughter spends most of her time: a) building something else unrelated, b) coincidentally ‘needing’ all the bricks I’m about to use and/or c) insisting that every micro-MOC she puts together stays that way. This time, however, she was completely on-board and right from the start, we really were building together as a team.

After a couple of test builds, I realized that I was going to have to just rip out the centre of the retail set. Putting together a new, appropriately coloured base, I worked on structure and support while Imogen started attaching snowballs and decorating the lamp-posts. The overall project was about two well-spent hours of a Saturday afternoon and I had a great time doing it.

Right at the end, after the tiles had all been laid, Imogen brought me some little mini-builds and asked where she could put them. This might normally be one of those moments when you do the ‘it’s lovely but there’s no room left’ script but I thought the weird little ‘silver hockey-puck tiles on rockers’ things she’d built looked pretty cool so damn-it, I was getting them in somewhere, and somewhere you could see them too so they went down at the front, kind of like stage lights.

With our build finished I stood back and actually, I think it looks pretty good; better than I expected certainly. So here it is: a winter skating-ified Emperor’s throne room… Return of the Jedi… On ice!

Expect more from the Brick Fanatics team real soon!