Book Review: Badass Bricks
Badass Bricks. Thirty-Five weapons of Mass Construction
Author: Jake Mackay
Pages: 250, paperback.
Publisher: Skyhorse publishing
ISBN: 978-1-62636-304-5
Badass Bricks is a book related to weapons and military constructions made with LEGO® bricks. It is a big book with more than 250 pages, full of step by step instructions to build a great number of constructions with LEGO® bricks. It is very important to remark the great variety of the elements shown. The book is very detailed and includes a summary of the parts needed to complete every construction.
There is a common thematic, but it is not restricted to one scale or one type of weapons. The book shows many types of constructions, from ancient weapons to modern war machines. Some of the constructions are built to 1:1 scale, another ones to minifg scale and also to micro scale. The different constructions can be as easy to build as a 4 pieces weapon, to a complex RC tank, so there is no need to be very skilled, or to have thousand spare parts to build some of the models. The book includes a little description of every model to introduce it to the reader.
The author has grouped all the constructions in four different chapters. The first one is dedicated to hand to hand combat weapons, with 10 different replicas of 1:1 scale constructions, like swords, battle axe, combat knives, and others. There is a great variety in the type of weapons and the age they were used. The next chapter is related to the replicas of the ranged weapons. It includes 8 different constructions, from the simplest ninja star, with only four parts, to the crossbow-pistol, which includes a mechanism to throw small pieces. In this chapter there are constructions of different scales, some for minifgs and other for 1:1 scale. The third chapter is called “Heavy Assault”. This one includes the vehicles and war machines. Another 8 constructions of very different type, from the medieval Trebuchet to the LandKreuzer P1000, a tank project of the Second World War, that it is intended to be built with power functions. There are another 7 constructions in the last chapter of the book, related to “Special weapons”, from a flamethrower in minifig scale to a micro scale modern submarine. These seven constructions could be explained in the other three chapters, but they are grouped in this last chapter.
So, the book depicts an impressive number of construction made with LEGO® bricks, related with weapons or war machines. All the models are described with a step by step instructions, in order to allow the reader to build these elements without any problem. The graphics are good, and perhaps there is only one small failure in big constructions, where the references of the locations of the new parts are a little difficult to see, and you must have a constant count of studs. Taking this apart, the models are easy to complete. I would like to have more information of some of the techniques and descriptions of the LEGO models, as there are many of them, but very few words for such a big book.
In short, it is a very interesting book for the fans of military and weapons constructions. There are 35 models, with instructions to build all of them, and the variety and quantity will allow the reader to build many different constructions.
Acknowledgements: Skyhorse Publishing for the book.
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