Manda’s (Amachan) LEGO

The last set from my recent purchase and I think I saved the best for last, the heat might be affecting my decision…. ? This is Amy’s Animal Rescue Island. I enjoyed the entire build thoroughly and will definitely be including some of bits of this in my diorama idea. The hidden door for instance would be a great way to hide one of Dr. Eggman’s hideouts for example. The minifigures are great as always, the Tails minifigure is the same as in the workshop and Tornado set, but that’s no problem. I really love this set.

Here is how my Sonic Brikwars warband is coming together, it is just some ideas.

Another Sonic the Hedgehog set done. This is Tails’ Workshop and Tornado Plane. I do really like the plane build apart from one little thing. They should have included a piece to fit in the place where Sonic stand when he isn’t standing there. The workshop is okay, looks pretty good, but the build was kind of meh. The Buzzbomber Badnik is pretty good, really happy with all the Badniks so far. The Tails minifigure is adorable and they included a variant of sonic with a different facial expression in this, which is nice.

Another 1 of the new LEGO sets built, this is the only one that is not from the Sonic the Hedgehog series from my recent purchase. It is Sora’s Transforming Mech Bike Racer from the LEGO Ninjago range. It is more of a trike than a bike though, but….. Nya… ? Overall it was a great build apart from one thing, stickers…. While I generally don’t mind stickers that much, with my disabilities it is very hard to apply them perfectly. I think I did decently enough. The transformation feature is a bit of a hassle, but it works well enough.

Here is also a little Ninjago display I have put together with all I have from the Ninjago range so far.

I finally finished sorting all the old LEGO. ? I wasn’t able to complete any of the sets that I have identified that I had though. ? Most of them are just missing a handful of pieces, so now I am just going to have to go through all sets and see which ones I actually want to complete and which ones are just going to be turned into building bits for other projects.

Here is the second set I build, that’s the 2 smallest sets done, 3 more sets to go. This is Sonic’s Speed Sphere Challenge. To simulate Sonic rolling up in a sphere, they have made a round thing you can put the minifigure in and than launch it using the included launcher. I honestly don’t care much about this feature, but it is something that is in a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog sets. The rest of the set were some interesting little builds, while the arch and the ramp build will mostly be taken apart later to serve as building pieces for my diorama idea. The music booth and the lawn chair and table might make its way into it without much edit.

After putting this set together though I can just image Sonic racing about, Rouge relaxing with a cold Chaos Cola and Knuckles just blasting the Green Hill Zone music on max volume.

I got a bunch of new LEGO sets in today, mostly from the Sonic the Hedgehog range, but also 1 from Ninjago. I will be showing them of as I build them.
The first one is Shadow’s Escape. A great build with some great figures. There are however 2 problems I find with it. The prints on the side of the bike are upside down on the other side as they aren’t properly mirrored but just 2 of the exact same pieces. While not really a problem for me, for children I think that the handlebars used on the bike are going to break fairly soon. It is very finicky to get Shadow on the bike holding the handlebars. Apart from that the action feature with Shadow breaking out of his containment pod works really well.

I have mentioned before that rather than playing Brikwars I am interested in developing my own tabletop game for LEGO. Over time I will be posting ideas that I have for such a game and kind of hoping to get some input on them. So here is the first one, ranges.

LEGO is in the end a children’s toy, so I want this game to also be playable by children and not make it too complex as a base. Some more advanced rules might come in later that are optional. First I wanted to consider ranges and measurement. While I honestly think the inch is a great way to measure distances for tabletop games I think it is useless for anything else. This made me think, wait, LEGO has their own system, why not use that. This is what I came up with for now:

Interact Range (Red) is 4 studs long and represents the basic range in which a minifigure can interact with objects and also is their melee range.

Short Range (Green) is 8 studs long and represents the basic movement distance for most minifigures and also range for short range weapons and stuff a minifigure can throw.

Medium Range (Yellow) is 16 studs long and represents the range for most ranged weapons.

Long Range (Grey) is 32 studs long and is used for the longest range weapons.

When I came up with it it sounded pretty good, now that I have actually laid it out I am not so sure. The ranges seem rather short. I am thinking of changing short to 16, medium to 32 and then long at 64. I am going to let this run through my mind a little bit longer, but I think it is a start. Let me know what you think.

I got some more sorting storage for all the old (& new) LEGO to go in. I can use the smaller boxes I got before for the smaller stuff and use these for the larger bits.

I got myself a knucklehead and a flirty bat girl…. I love the look of these minifigures ?, Rouge more than Knuckles though, but they are both really good LEGO representations of their game characters in my opinion. The mech was a great build, the flyer and the chaos emerald a little bit simpler, but still good. Looking forward to getting more Sonic the Hedgehog sets.

So here is an update to the project as I now have a better idea of what I want to do going forward. This project will involve everything I want to do with LEGO and not just Brikwars.

I have 2 3′ by 4′ boards standing in storage that I was planning on using for wargaming and I am planning on buying cheap LEGO compatible build plates to glue to them so I can use them with LEGO.

1. Brikwars
Brikwars is no longer going to be the sole focus of this project as I mentioned before, but it is not going to go. 1 of the boards mentioned above will be used to make a Ninjago city style gaming table specifically for this. The layout will have some buildings on the side that are partially accessible with a Chinese/Japanese style garden park in the centre. This will provide some cover for minifigures, but also an area for mechs to manoeuvre. Since LEGO doesn’t have a base like in traditional wargaming figures I can play around with that a bit more.

I also spend more thought on Brikwars itself and until I actually play it I can’t really make a judgement. But because of the way it is structured I am thinking of creating my own tabletop “skirmish” game for LEGO minifigures and potentially 28/32mm figures as well.

2. Diorama
I am a fan of Animal Crossing and also of Sonic the Hedgehog from which both LEGO makes sets of nowadays. I planning on getting the majority of it and making a diorama on the 2nd board based on both of them. Both feature anthropomorphic animals so I think it will work well together. Some other stuff like from the LEGO Dreamzzz or City ranges might also make an appearance on this.

3. Classic LEGO
Now I also have a ton of the older classic LEGO that I am sorting out. I am currently about half way through or at least close to it. My plan is to build all of the sets I can identify and complete. After that I might take some apart for parts for the first 2 goals and some I might just want to display because of nostalgia and whatnot.

I have to make blow to GW because the LEGO minifigure from 1990 (left) is the same size and scale as the minifigure from 2024 (right) and the newer ones do have more detail without the need for scale creep.

That is all of the old LEGO washed and I have begun sorting it out. In total it was about 3 wash machine runs of LEGO. Sorting it all out is going to be a slow process and thus going to take a while, I am not in a hurry. So don’t expect to see many updates on that. The box it is in is like a 60L box and that is half full and that is without the larger pieces like platforms, build plates and tracks and stuff, so you have an idea of how much it is.

I do have to be careful, because it does contain sharks…..

That is all of the old LEGO washed and I have begun sorting it out. In total it was about 3 wash machine runs of LEGO. Sorting it all out is going to be a slow process and thus going to take a while, I am not in a hurry. So don’t expect to see many updates on that. The box it is in is like a 60L box and that is half full and that is without the larger pieces like platforms, build plates and tracks and stuff, so you have an idea of how much it is.

I do have to be careful, because it does contain sharks…..

That is the first batch of old LEGO washed today, many more to go.

I am just going to enter this project in the spring cleaning challenge, it is spring and I am doing some cleaning of hobby stuff…… I don’t expect it to get anywhere, but you’ll never know.

I made a couple of changes to Sora’s Mech. Changed the sword a little bit to have the edge of the blades down rather than up. I also removed the pink translucent shuriken as it looked more like she was holding a flower than it being actually useful as a weapon or shield.

Got my first proper set build since about 20 years ago, took me about an hour and a half, but it was a great build, absolutely loved it.

I got a Ninjago mech and some storage for some bits. This storage won’t be enough for the whole old collection which I will be going through slowly, but will be good enough for a start.

I found the best LEGO tool ever in the bags!

And I couldn’t resist making a brick monster…..

I’ve been to my moms today and while I thought she had given all the LEGO away, I was wrong. ? This is the majority if not all of the LEGO I had as a child. ? It does all need a bit of a clean though, but I will be going through it bit by bit.

This project will go over my progress through putting together different bits of LEGO and moving it on to play the tabletop game BrikWars with it.

Why LEGO?
I have been struggling with massive disabilities causing me to not be able to paint or build miniatures. The major disabilities limiting my hobby are tremors in my right hand making it very unstable and lots of pain in my left which I was learning to paint with. So, that left me with no hobby to do. I am getting physiotherapy to try and help me cope with the disabilities, but I am not sure it is going to solve anything. That means I had to look at something else. I can still play video games, so I thought I would just focus on that and while it is great, it doesn’t beat doing something creative with my hands. So then I though of LEGO. I used to have a ton of LEGO as a child, sadly I don’t have a lot of that any more. I went out and bought 2 €3,- bags of LEGO and put those together to see how it goes.

And it honestly went really well, even though at the time my hands weren’t great, as long as I am patient and not try to rush it it goes well. THen I went looking at how other people would have converted using LEGO to tabletop games and I found this tabletop game called BrikWars, specifically made for LEGO.

My Collection.
I went through what my LEGO collection is now. I have the 2 kits I bought recently obviously and I also have a lot of the classic Bionicle stuff which is sadly missing a handful of bits here and there. I have 2 more kits in the bottom left of the picture that are missing some bits. Luckily most of the missing bits are quite generic so getting replacements for it shouldn’t be an issue. There is a chance that my mom still has a some of the old stuff, but I doubt it, so this will be my starting point.

What am I going to focus on?
There are many different ranges of LEGO and many other brands of similar brick building kits. There are plenty of historical things out there from other brands and I may pick them up at some point, but for now I am going to focus on the Ninjago range from LEGO.

What is Ninjago?
To quickly summarize Ninjago just think of what if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers had a baby that grew up to be a weeaboo? It just rips off so many popular IPs and turns it into their own IP with a LEGO flair. Anyone who has played any of the LEGO video games or seen any of the films will know the silliness that they can come up with, so honestly it is perfect for me. But be your own judge, this video summarizes it perfectly.

What do I have planned?
Nothing concrete to be honest, I am just going to see where it goes. My ideas are to build a gaming table for BrikWars and maybe even create my own ruleset if I don’t like BrikWars as much as a game.

Anyway I hope you’ll join me in the next part of my journey of hobbying and wargaming with my disabilities.