Thinking of building someone else’s MoC?

Wondering what it’s like? Let me tell you:

  1. It’s such an energising project. I’m so grateful to all the people1 involved in my last.
  2. I had maybe 75% of the parts already, I still spent significant amounts on postage and bricks but fun / cent is way higher than official kits. 2
  3. It’s not Lego standard. Things are flmsy. I’ve made instructions, they are hard. The ones I’ve followed have been excellent but it’s still a genuine 18+ project.
Stay sane, sort first.

It helps if you enjoy parts management. What I probably should have done was take the provided parts list, pull out the parts I had, do a single set of Bricklink orders for the rest. Stick to the script.

What I did instead 😛

  1. See how far I could get with the parts I had, looking to make substitutions for piece or colour.
  2. Prevaricated on choosing the colours.
  3. Got carried away. Obviously changing all the seats to Star Wars tan is just something that has to be done but was the little display tile for the gunner really necessary when nobody is going to see any of it through the smoked glass canopy which doesn’t open?
Loving the colour of the pilot’s footwell here

But TBH I have very little intention of learning those lessons 😂

  1. Bricklink (sorry Brick Owl3) is like arranging a series of mini-Christmases for yourself. The waiting for a parcel from Thailand is half the pleasure. I found it surprsingly cheap. The expense is actually the shipping.
  2. Building and rebuilding meant I took multiple passes through the instructions. I appreciated it more, learnt some of the techniques, understood by doing.
  3. The “just 1 order” is a bit of a dream really. You will make mistakes.
  4. Picking colours is fun and can be a project within the project. You can build mini sketches to see how they will look together. Just bear in mind that the everyday pieces that you likely have will be the cheap ones. The cost will come from the rares so a good idea is to check those out first. And of course not every piece comes in every colour. (Which is why you should stick to the script of course)
  5. Personalising it makes it yours. More commitment, more love.
  6. Enjoy the ride. Be present in the build. Don’t rush to the conclusion because then you’re done and a big part of the fun is finished.

Even near the beginning I was itching to make my own ship, with very different design goals. That wonderful story is for another day but I probably wouldn’t have started without the easier step of building something big by someone else first. Inspiring! Part of that creativity popped out in the stand.

But OK, here are the lessons I will take:

  1. It really doesn’t matter if you order a few extra of something. I was stressing trying not to waste money but it’s cents. No need to look to substitute that missing 1×8 tile with a pair of 1x4s you do have.
  2. Add the missing parts to the wanted list straight away. You can add notes to them in Bricklink. Using a notes app as an in-between just led to confusion.
  3. These pro-builders are good. I did try some improvements but it was pretty much optimised already.
  4. Economising by going for almost the right colour and calling it patina is hard. It takes skill and, ironically, you’ll need to order parts specifically. It’s not a way of dodging buying parts.
  5. On a Macbook at least you can break up a big pdf into smaller ones. This made scrolling up and down (something you’ll probably do a lot) a pleasure again.
Cars from the highly recommended Bricks Garage

I hope there’s enough here to help you decide if taking on a project like this is for you. If you are on the fence, I’d say take the plunge. It’s been such a great journey for me.

I mean how nice is that dark azure above the health bar?
  1. Nick Trotta, Christian Wieß, Shaun Mooney and the many Bricklink stores I used. ↩︎
  2. I had some lovely interactions with shop owners when things didn’t go right. It’s good to remember they are often just fans too, engaging in some trading for a hobby as much as anything. ↩︎
  3. I dearly wanted to use Brick Owl because parts are easier to find there but they just don’t have the depth of community. ↩︎

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