Dungeons & Dragon Minifigures

Lego has come out with a Dungeons & Dragons theme. Of course I bought the big set as soon as I could manage to get a good deal. Here's my build log from where I built set 21348: Red Dragon's Tale. But they also have come out with a line of D&D minifigures - set 71047. I bought two full sets, so that I could build and display one set as they created them, and then do a little mix-and-match with the other set. At our house, we use Lego minifigures when we play D&D already, so these will be great for our character figures.

So I'd like to share my sets with you, both as-marketed and as-mixed. Here's a few pictures. On the left will be the figure as the instructions/pictures say to build them. And on the right, the remixes I've made for each. I'm not going to do a full review of each here, but I did find a really detailed review here for you.

We start off with the Dwarf Barbarian, who comes with both female and male double-sided heads, and a really nice axe. For my remix, I got rid of the hair on the male head (with beard), so just don't turn him around. The Elf Bard comes with a beautiful lute and a bright scarf. I used the barbarian's hair for the female bard to differentiate her in the remix.

Next is a Tiefling Sorcerer, who comes with a magic effect and a pseudodragon familiar, and a Dragonborn Paladin. This makes two dragonborn minifigures (the other is the innkeeper in Red Dragon's Tale), so we now have two color choices. I really love the mace/scepter build in gold, blue, and pearlescent, with the tassel. For my remix on the Tiefling, I found the tail can be flipped to either side. And for the paladin, I removed his plate mail to show off the printed body, gave him a sword instead of the mace, and flipped the tiny horn bits on the back of his head down instead of up, making this one seem a little smaller and subservient to his standard cousin.

The Gith Warlock comes with a staff featuring an eye and a pair of daggers. My remix character is rocking the double-daggers, instead. These are a new mold, and I really like them. The Mind Flayer has a pet Intellect Devourer, which can sit on a figure's head, which has happened in the remix. And he's taken the warlock's eye-staff to use to see, since his own eyes are now covered.

The Halfling Druid has a antlered hood and a sweet little bird. Then an Aarakocra Ranger with his puppy. And everyone's favorite vampire, Strahd von Zarovich, with a pet rat. For the remix, I gave the bird to the bird-man so the druid could have both the rat and the puppy.

The remaining named characters include the Lady of Pain, followed by Szass Tam, the necromancer/lich, and then Tasha the Witch Queen. I used a spare Tiefling head and Strahd's hair for the remix on the first, and gave her two colored bits of fire magic. The remix necromancer uses the Lady of Pain's cape instead, and gets one of those cool daggers from the warlock. My remix witch holds a magic flame in her hand instead of the cauldron, and I've swapped out the spell in her book for the extra prints on the Lady of Pain's Cubic Gate (I'm going to use that print in my D&D game I'll run with the Red Dragon's Tale set).

Building and Aging

 As the body ages, it gets harder to build Legos.

I've developed some arthritis in my right thumb. Which means after just a short time building, my thumb joints hurt and sometimes my whole hand spasms. So I'm having to learn to build left-handed primarily, or take a lot more and longer breaks.

I've had dental issues in the last couple of years, so I've had to mostly break myself of the habit of using my teeth as tools. That means for releasing bricks, too. I've gotten used to using the brick-tools for it instead, or sometimes tweezers or a dull knife. Some of the tiniest pieces, though, really won't release any other way.

And my eyesight has definitely worsened, too. I have a magnifier with a light that sometimes is necessary to see the finest of detail. But Lego is pretty friendly on their instructions, so that's not usually a problem.

None of which means I've quit building Lego. But it does mean I need to give myself a lot more time to do a build. So each build lasts longer for me!

Reconstruction

This blog was started so that I could show off all my Lego builds. I was starting to get pretty good at creating my own builds, and I wanted to showcase them. Some of them would go on to be dismantled, and this is my record of them. 

But blogger.com doesn't work quite the way I'd like as far as displaying the posts. Being intended more for periodic written blogging, the 'table of contents' effect is date-dependent and unwieldy to use. So I've converted all my posts over the years to pages. The side effect of this is that all the ones converted show a date of December 2020. Well, many of the posts had dates of June 2017, so I'm guessing that was a conversion effort back then. Dates aren't really relevant to this sort of thing, anyway.

But my build pages are currently listed over on the left in three categories.

Custom Projects are things I've designed and built on my own. In the Lego-fan world, these are often called MOCs (My Own Creation). Some of these are things I wanted for functionality (phone stand, pieces to use for D&D). Others were for display, build for something I'm a fan of (Firefly, Dresden Files). And some were just for the heck of it, because I had an idea.

Build Logs are where I've taken a larger Lego build and built it out following the directions given. In most cases, I've then followed up by modifying the build to be something of my own. But as I built it, I took pictures and noted my thoughts about the build.

Collections are where I've taken several pictures of some of my stuff that are all around a theme.