LEGO Bricklink Designer Program Series 3 – Lost City: Ruining a good thing? [Review]

With the start of October, LEGO is speeding up the cadence of releases from the BrickLink Designer Program. There’s five new fan-designed sets up for pre-order this month, and we’ll be digging into our advance copy of BrickLink Designer Program Series 3 – Lost City by fan designer Thomas Lajon, exploring all the mysteries within it’s 3,506 pieces. Pre-orders for BDP Series 3 will begin on October 8th at 8:00 AM PT, at which point Lost City will be available for $289.99 USD. Read on to discover if this city has been ruined for the better.

LEGO sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

A lack of packaging

As with our two prior Bricklink Designer Program Reviews (Snack Shack and Logging Railway), we’re reviewing an advance copy of the set. The box doesn’t exist yet, nor do paper instructions. I’ll still include pics of the parts for each step as we wind our way through the build. Unlike in our last two BDP reviews, Lost City doesn’t include a sticker sheet.

The build

Much as we begin so many of these set reviews, we’re going to begin with a base for this ruin. This is accomplished through a sandwiching of light and dark gray parts. I appreciate the rounded edges of the base, as I think they work well with all of the curves we’ll be assembling later on.

Our next step is to add the central room on the lower level. This includes several vessels and a centrally-located tomb. The tile work in green will eventually hold a layer of transparent light-blue panels, submerging this entire space. For that reason, I think it’s a little odd that there’s water already in two of the containers, and that the sides of the room are completely open. But we can re-evaluate that in the final model.

Cracking open a few more bags of parts, we construct a little outcropping on the left of the build. This is mostly vegetation with a stone roof. But hidden amid the grass are a pair of dark-green snakes. We’ll be seeing a third snake added at a later step. While this build started out very grayscale, we’re going to find that it becomes more and more green as we continue through the instructions.

Next, we bound from the left side over to the right and continue to develop this base level. A tree trunk forms within the ruins, to be finished into a full tree at a later step. At this point, a common theme emerges: where a normal set would include overlapping plates and bricks add stability, the Lost City is build in a kind of hyper-modularity. This is best seen here as the front and back rectangles of arches could be joined in the center by a plate, but are left separate. We’ll come back to this theme a few more times, and again at the end.

The next section we construct is my favorite of the entire build. We add a roof to the central chamber and install the trans-light blue panels, flooding it with water. While this section isn’t the most stable, it does hold up during the rest of the construction, and looks beautiful in the final model. The greenery around and inside the pool of water is a beautiful thing!

With the flooded chamber complete, it’s time to add a pair of towers behind it. Once again, the assembly isn’t the most stable, owing in large part to half-plate gaps between the towers and the floor beneath it. It was stable enough for construction, but definitely not how I would’ve designed it. In the center of these towers is a great little throne, molded over with shades of green. The rear view of these towers doesn’t offer much at this point.

I apologize, but I forgot to get a picture of the parts for our next section, back on the left of the build. Plenty more vegetation is added, along with a fallen dome from one of the city’s towers. Thomas does a great job re-using the same brick-built patterns throughout the set, including these domes. And each time, whether by color or composition, the build is augmented in some way. A normal LEGO set would have the builder make 5x of some sub-model and install it throughout. But in the Lost City, everything is in a unique state of decay.

Our next series of parts adds a roof to that outcropping from before. A second skeleton, this one quite disassembled, lies underneath this stone canopy. Despite only being supported by a double-wide arch in the center of it’s depth, this outcropping takes the weight quite well!

With the little patio off the main room completed, we return to the towers at the back of the build. Another layer comes into focus, continuing many of the themes from layer 1. It should be noted that these towers lack an actual solid floor, and instead feature round openings all the way down. This will be relevant later on.

The walls and roof beams of the main chamber appear in our next section. A second tree is started, this time in the chamber’s roof. Connection points (dark green clips) are added to the top in preparation for a tiled roof in a later step. And the stone face found in the central portal above the open room portents the coming steps.

With the central chamber completed, it’s time to add some stairs leading up to it. As I brought up before, there’s less support and less overlap than expected with this stony flight. While there was no structural issues during assembly, I would’ve felt better with more internal structure and more linkages to the rocks on either side. A wonderful stream of water (coming from the flooded lower chamber) spills out the front along the right side. It’s a great use of the minifigure energy “missile” common in Marvel sets.

Out in front of these steps, we find a pair of brave adventurers ready to search this mossy ruin. They stand before a pair of stone statues, certainly worse for wear, with the same head as the one stationed above the main chamber. The crumbling duo frame the main room and throne expertly.

With the front and left of the build looking quite complete, we next turn our attention to the neglected right side. Our next agglomeration of bricks completes the floor and outer railing of the arched rooms from earlier. Once again, there’s no overlap between the forward and rear sections. However, the level of ruination here is exquisite, featuring all kinds of crumbling columns and skewed angles.

We complete the left side with another round of parts. The first tree is finished, featuring green leaves of the dark, sand, and original varieties. Another dome pops up along the roofline, as does a roof shingled in all variations of green. This brilliant “pattern” of color shingled to angled plates is one of the more iconic aspects to this set’s design, held in stark contrast to the stony structure beneath it. I do think that the rear half of this roof should’ve been tiled similarly, though.

Yet again, we return to the towers in the background to add another layer. The left one is even topped with another of those brick-built domes. The interior holds one of the best designed bits of the entire set: a drop of water is suspended, about to fall three stories into the flooded chamber at the bottom. Narratively, it’s so fulfilling to find an explanation for the ruin’s flooding baked into the construction.

The next round of bricks is probably the most grueling aspect of this creation: tiling off the central roof. While it’s a bit of an ordeal, the final look does make all those 1×1 plate placements worth it in the end. Gaps in the once-turquoise shingles add to the ruinous nature of the set, along with the occasional leafy plant popping out. And of course, there remains a gaping hole in the covering for that tree to poke through.

Speaking of that tree, our next set of parts will bring that together. Made in the same spirit as the one on the right of the main towers, the connection points here aren’t nearly as stable. In the end, this portion of the build became a bit precarious. And I even removed the tree at points when finishing out the build. It probably would’ve been better to seat the Technic axles each in a full 2×2 round brick instead of the stack of 2×2 round plates used here.

Our last section completes the build, adding another layer and extra-tall dome to the right tower. As with the other side, this dome also has some water dripping down, though not nearly as dramatically. The extra lift to this final dome feels like an appropriate variation on the architectural theme presented thus far.

The minifigures

Before we look at the whole thing together, let’s look at the details of our pair of included minifigures. These adventurers are fully kitted out with a brick-built backpack, walkie-talkie, binoculars, pickaxe, and torch. Each torso has printing on the front and back, while both pairs of legs have no printing at all. Only the woman’s face has two-sided printing, varying between a cocky smile and a worried expression. Unlike standard LEGO sets, the minifigures in BDP sets are rarely a draw for buying the kit, and that remains true here. Nothing exclusive or hard-to-find.

The finished build

I was shocked by the final size of the Lost City. It’s far larger than I expected from the pictures on the BrickLink website, and quite dense as well. A lot of that density comes from an overwhelming number of smaller parts. There’s no quantity of large plates here except for those used in the base construction, with so many more intricate pieces utilized to properly convey the ruin of the city.

Even with such high density, the footprint still rivals other LEGO sets around the same price, feeling significantly larger than the recent LEGO The Legend of Zelda 77092 Great Deku Tree 2-in-1 for $299.99 USD. While there are no play features in the final construction, there’s certainly a lot to look at, and plenty of hidden scenes worthy of dropping in the included adventurers.

Conclusions and recommendations

The sets of the BDP series remain a difficult bunch to review, because at the end of the day, we’re reviewing a creation made by a LEGO fan. At TBB, we spend nearly all of our time showcasing and celebrating the work of those in the LEGO community, and it feels weird to be critical of that same type of work just because it’s been made into a LEGO set (unlike the LEGO Ideas program, where a designer has usually redone or heavily modified a proposed set from the public). But as I do want this to serve as a meaningful review for those of you looking to pre-order the set, I’ll soldier on. During construction, I frequently found myself wondering if a section had actually been built in real-life before being proposed, or opining how I would’ve done something differently if this was a creation of mine. I remain perplexed how the water remains in the central basement chamber when there are large openings on the left and right. And I question some of the color blocking choices when it comes to the green invading the gray and turquoise build. At times, the moss can feel splotchy instead of following clear growth patterns related to proximity to water or nestled within cracks where plants would normally take root.

But setting aside all those nitpicks, this is still quite the stupendous display piece! Common architectural themes bind the structure together, organic shaping and the brilliance of greenery against a gray backdrop bring the structure to life. And, while I take issue with the moss and grime distribution close-up, the desolation of the stonework feels natural, and missing pieces are usually found nearby, lying on the floor chipped or shattered. It’s clear to see what an astounding empire once made this structure, and the beauty in reclamation by Mother Nature. From the images we have, this remains one of my favorites from Series 3 (and from the entire BDP line so far). So if you’re looking to snag one of the sets from Series 3 of the Bricklink Designer Program, this one is certainly worth the price.

Available for pre-order beginning on October 8th at 8:00 AM PT, with shipment to customers in approximately 5 months, BrickLink Designer Program Series 3 – Lost City is made of 3,506 pieces and retails for $289.99 USD.

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