The word “fantasy” often brings to mind pristine castles, shining armour, and impossibly lush flowerbeds. Today’s guest, however, is a builder who prefers to find beauty in the shadows. Alexander, aka dark_dreamlands, is the mind behind “Plague Town”, an 18th-century city of crumbling cathedrals, grisly guillotines, and an all-consuming deadly plague. Alexander’s regular updates to the architecture and inhabitants of Plague Town has helped inspire a rising trend of dark fantasy creations in corners of LEGO fandom. We are thrilled to take the grand tour with him and find out how to craft melancholy in a hobby so commonly associated with glee. TBB: Happy Halloween! Can you introduce yourself to our readers? Alexander: Hello and thank you from the bottom of my heart for paying attention to my work! My name is Alexander, but in the Lego community I’m better known as Dark Dreamlands. I live in Russia, I love history,...

Today, the LEGO Ideas team revealed which of the 57 Ideas sets that qualified for design review back in May will go on to become official sets, including the beloved Megazord from the Power Rangers. We’re thrilled to see La Catrina approved, just in time for Dia de los Muertos too! The list skews IP-heavy, with 4 of the 6 approved sets and all 3 parking lot sets being based on IP (although 20th-century literature is a novel source for LEGO). Keep in mind that these fan designs are not the versions that you’ll eventually see on shelves, as first they have to go through an internal design process. Which sets are you most excited to see come to life? GO GO POWER RANGERS! LEGO MEGAZORD by TrumanBricks LA CATRINA by yop1172 SMURF VILLAGE by The Half Blood Baron E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL by Lafabrick ラーメン。 RAMEN by Micdud And in an interesting move, this marks the first time LEGO is making...

LEGO’s big bricks for small hands, DUPLO, doesn’t often feature in AFOL builds unless it’s as filler under the terrain of a giant diorama, a challenging seed part for Iron Builders, or you’re Djokson and there are no rules. For Japanese builder Haru Takatsugu, DUPLO has become the medium of choice for 5 years of MOCs, with the builder recreating everything from lifelike sushi to a recreation of the Spirited Away bathhouse. Halloween builds are especially challenging, given how few DUPLO sets feature black bricks, but Haru has managed to amass enough to make spooky black creations an annual tradition. Most impressive is the builder’s haunted house from two years back which features a full interior for a poltergeist party. Some of these DUPLO figures and accessories are exceedingly rare, like the skeleton that appeared in a single set back in 2006 and is almost impossible to find on the secondary market....

Every October, LEGO builders around the world turn their attention to the brutal and boisterous denizens of fantasy lore: the orcs. For Orctober, I wanted to explore what makes these creatures tick: not just their monstrous brawn, but the different archetypes that define their place in the horde. We have a lot of noble heroes in LEGO, but now it’s the villains’ time to shine! My goal was to create four distinct characters: each representing one of the RPG classics: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Guile – showcasing the diversity and ferocity that defines the Greenskin horde. I wanted to make each of da Orks distinct with each of the LEGO system colours: Sand Green, Olive Green, Dark Tan, and Bright Green, and still using roughly the same scale and style. Gorgash, the hulking warboss, is all brute force, heavy armour, layered plates, and a giant hammer to match his ego. Zul’gar,...

Over the past three years, Polish AFOL Mihał Ch has been documenting his nation’s history in a series of LEGO vignettes. The minifig-scale scenes celebrate the heroes of art and culture, as well as recognizing atrocities, uprisings, and statecraft, with builds paired with a history lesson. Just in time for Halloween, as part of the third series of vignettes, Mihał remembers some of the darker chapters in Polish history. For example, dissidents being exiled to Siberia during the Russian occupation. Here, Mihał pays tribute to the January Uprising of 1963-1964, when the escalation of “russification” and repression sparked a guerrilla war for independence that, despite early successes, was ultimately quashed. Here we see Mihał’s depiction of the Galician slaughter when, in order to avert a Polish uprising for independence, the Austrian military incited the local serfdom against the Polish aristocracy in bloody revolt with promises of a better life, only to sweep...