LEGO Military / Discuss

LEGO Military Award Service says:

Atten-shun!

Platoon! At ease.

Actually in the past year, the Flickr LEGO Military group has grown from the size of a platoon to that of a small battalion. While most of our members spend most their time watching from the sidelines and maybe building the occasional MOC, there's no disputing that this group has served to develop a hard core of military builders - a LEGO building community where numerous builders look forward to the next terrific MOCs and are always learning from one another. Last year's Military Building Competition was instrumental in really kickstarting the group, and we're happy to announce the follow-up competition for 2009.

We're bringing the same four main categories back that we had last year; MOC, Model, Vig, and Diorama. But to make things a little more interesting, and perhaps easier and fairer to judge, each category has been slimmed down to two subcategories, which entries will have to adhere to. These have been designed to give a specific angle to the competing entries, and to encourage building in certain niche areas that have perhaps not been explored so much by most of us. We tried something like this to some extent last year with the "dug down" diorama theme, and following feedback from the community, we're going with a similarly focused approach in all categories. And to keep things fresh, we're adding two additional brand new categories, each with their respective subcategories: Micro and Squad. While the subcategories mean that your building possibilities are a little more limited than they were last year, we hope that they stimulate you to build the kinds of MOCs that otherwise might not occur to you.

Without further ado, here are the categories and subcategories:



Model

WWII era airplanes

Modern armor


We're used to seeing lots of great modern warplanes and helicopters and WWII era tanks, so we're shaking things up a little. The subcategories are fairly self explanatory, and we're confident they'll give all the skilled modelers out there new challenges. WWII era means any actual airplane in service on either the Allied or Axis side, between 1939 and 1945. Modern armor can be considered to be any real-life armored land vehicle in service with any country since 1990. Scale can be "approximately minifig" or anything larger than that. When submitting a model (especially of a less-known vehicle) it can be useful to include a link to a picture of the real thing.


MOC

Littoral/Riverine type boat

Top Secret - Unmanned Combat System


For the purposes of this competition, a MOC is a minifig-scale vehicle of your own design. We're used to seeing plenty of modern conventional choppers, tanks and IFVs and the like, so we're branching out in two somewhat underrepresented areas: Small combat vessels and unmanned vehicles (these can be land, air, or sea based). As a guide, try to keep these MOCs no larger than 60 studs or so in any given direction. The boat category encompasses anything from Steampunk/late Imperial timeframe up through the present day and the future. The unmanned vehicle by its nature is a modern or futuristic style vehicle of some sort.


Vignette

"Army Life"

"Rescue"


A vignette is a small scene sitting on a base (ideally not much larger than 8 by 8 studs, at the very most 14 by 14 studs), focusing on a single event or maybe even a more abstract theme. For these vigs, we're asking you to come up with something that could fit either of the two titles above. "Army Life" lends itself to a vig depicting common scenes from basic training, soldiers relaxing between missions, etc. "Rescue" is fairly self-explanatory and works well for any number of action-oriented scenes. Both of these subcategories can be interpreted in any time era you like, from late Imperial up to a futuristic setting.


Diorama

"Occupation and Resistance"

"Walkers vs. Wartracks"


Dioramas really allow you to build on a large scale, working in buildings, landscaping, and maybe even a couple of vehicles. "Occupation and Resistance" works well for any insurgency/resistance/invasion/peacekeeping theme. If you want to identify the sides as the goodies and baddies, you may do so as you see fit, but there's no need to - after all everyone in war generally thinks they are on the right side. "Walkers vs. Wartracks" is designed for anyone who wants to address the epic question: "Who would win in a battle between tanks and mecha?" Any diorama in this subcategory should be centered on at least one tracked and one legged war machine, locked in mortal combat. All dioramas can be as large as you like, but should be at least 48 by 48 in footprint.


Micro

"Battlefield"

Model


The Micro scale category sort of expands on both the dio and model themes. The Battlefield subcategory should be built on at least a 48 by 48 baseplate and is your chance to depict a battle full of tanks, warplanes, artillery guns, etc all built to microscale. Do take advantage of the opportunity to include landscaping, roads, rivers, maybe trees, and/or buildings. The Model subcategory can be a model of any real life weapon of war. There is no strict rule for what scale it should be, aside from significantly smaller than minifig scale. As a rule of the thumb, if a person would be taller than about one brick in relation to your Micro model you are probably building too large.


Squads

Pure LEGO

Mods/customs allowed


This is the category for all you army builders out there. Put together a squad of six minifig soldiers and make them look cool. We're keeping one subcategory for pure LEGO and another where we'll be pretty liberal with various custom mods and so forth.


Rules:

Please read this carefully, as the rules have changed a little from last year. If you have a question, make sure you read the rules first, before you ask it in the Q&A thread.

The deadline is May 30th.

Like last year, we're only interested in new MOCs. If you've already built something that fits any of these categories, that's great. Now go build something even better for the competition!

This competition is open to everyone, both longtime Flickr LEGO Military veterans and newcomers. Please note, you must be a member of Flickr and this group to enter.

You may only enter one MOC per subcategory. If you build something for the competition and you enter it in the competition entries thread, you may not change it or replace it with another entry. So don't rush into building something - there is plenty of time to plan your way to world domination through LEGO! In fact we won't even let you submit any entries officially, until the beginning of April, when the Competition Entries thread will open. So take your time. If you want to post WIPs and ask for feedback, that is of course fine, and if you want to build several MOCs for any given category before deciding which one you think is the best, that's OK too. But once you enter a MOC officially you can't change your mind.

This is simply to discourage people from building lots and lots of similar entries, and also to encourage people to build in more than one category. There is no limit to how many categories you enter - theoretically you could submit 12 different entries, one in each subcategory.

There will be cool prizes, both BrickArms and LEGO, although the specifics of this will remain under wraps for now. We do hope that winning free stuff isn't the prime motivator for people to take part in the competition, but like last year, there will be prizes for the winners.

Winners will be judged by Magnus Lauglo, Fradel Gonzales, and Jas Nagra. The judges are
excluded from entering the competition. The judges reserve the right to change the rules at any time, in any predictable or unpredictble way if need be, in order to preserve the idea and spirit of the competition.

Now go forth, grab your bricks, and divide and conquer!

We are thankful to the good folks at BrickArms for once again sponsoring us, so if you are in need of any realistic minifig accessories, do check out their current line of excellent products! Thanks also go out to Steve Witt, at LEGO, who has helped out very generously with additional TLG products to be used as prizes.
Originally posted at 7:18AM, 10 March 2009 PDT (permalink)
magnus_lauglo edited this topic 37 months ago.