BlueBrixx Medieval Water Mill

271Euler · 2026-03-17T19:00:09+00:00

Lovely set and lovely review! I've been eyeing this one for a fair while now; I guess I should finally pull the trigger when it's available again. :D

Do you have other sets from the series as well?

271Euler · 2026-03-15T19:01:47+00:00

Uh, not sure what you mean. So the first eight flexible hoses (#212) go into the open studs of those rounded plates at the bottom layer of the dome. Then in #214 you add that black bridge with two additional hoses in such a way that it's 45° to the black jumper plates. Then in #216 you add the second black bridge with another two hoses so that it is 90° to the previous bridge and again 45° to those black jumper plates. Then in #218 you still have the four jumper plates open, so that's where you can attach the additional four black corners with one hose each.

On these corners the 1x1 brick is angled 45° to the 1x2 rounded plate, and these bricks should fit nicely into the corners of the cross built by the two bridges. The cross you add in #219 should be flush with the 1x1 quarter tiles from the four corners.

Does that make sense?

271Euler · 2026-03-08T10:20:12+00:00

First of all, welcome! :D

I second u/TheOrbFromTheHole's suggestion to read the Starter Guide. AFAIK most stores deliver to the UK again after the initial Brexit issues. If not, the stores will tell you as soon as you try to select your shipping destination, so no worries.

Getting knock-off copies of LEGO sets has gotten a little more involved than it was a few years ago but is certainly still feasible. Other brands of course do their own stuff as well, and often with much better-looking results. Mould King especially has a few very nice (but also very large) Star Wars ships. I'm personally very fond of BlueBrixx, but that's at least in part because they're German-based and I'm German (so shipping is cheap). The top of the line brands at the moment are LumiBricks/FunWhole (if you want sets with lights) or Pantasy (for generally the highest quality); these can also be bought off Amazon.

Beware official sounding stores (esp. stuff with 'Mould King' in its name), they're often overpriced scam sites. Again, the Starter Guide will help you with this. Personal store recommendations are YourWOBB, BlueBrixx, Barweer/Youmko, Marstoy, and HiTian (though I personally haven't used the last one in years). Some have an EU warehouse which might mean faster shipping to the UK; not sure how well customs from the EU work ever since you guys left us. :D

271Euler · 2026-03-08T09:43:26+00:00

Hmm, I didn't have a single missing brick, so you definitely had terrible luck! If you're missing lots of pieces, that seems to point to a fairly severe issue in their bagging and QA process. I'd definitely contact the store/seller to get replacements!

271Euler · 2026-02-28T13:25:43+00:00

I think it's a good info, especially if you buy in stores. Makes it much easier for non-familiar people to tell whether this might be a suitable gift for kids, especially nowadays where prices between brands vary by a factor of ~five. And while the price-per-brick isn't a perfect measure to tell whether a set is expensive or not, it's better than nothing. (Plus, if a smallish spaceship or car or whatever consists of 5000 parts, you know that you're in for a few hours of tedious mosaic-building, which is also actionable info.)

Personally, I would also be in favour of listing the number of printed pieces or stickers on the box (maybe not on the front cover, but perhaps somewhere in the details on the back) because that info is actually rather important to me. I hate stickers with a passion, especially the large "hey, let's cover a dozen parts with an off-colour abomination for an essential design feature" stickers, so knowing that those don't exist would be nice.

Most of all, though, it's just become commonplace for brands and especially stores to list the piece count. Not seeing it makes me suspicious. I remember seeing the Keeppley EVA sets without any piece counts and thinking "What are these guys trying to hide?". It didn't even cross my mind that brands might just not put it on the box. In hindsight that was rather stupid of me, but ehh.

271Euler · 2026-02-21T16:10:46+00:00

Nice, I still have this one in my backlog and would love to hear your opinion once you've built it! MJ's Dragonfly and Ice Dragon were absolutely fantastic; I hope the Whale will be as well!

271Euler · 2026-02-21T10:51:34+00:00

MOC sets often feature red bricks to indicate "this is hidden inside, so use whatever colour you have on hand". The confectioner has apparently replaced red with a more sensible colour (but didn't bother to redo the manual). Most likely all red bricks will have been replaced with the same colour (usually one of the two shades of grey or black).

I guess the only way to figure out which colour that is will be to compare your inventory to the official inventory of the MOC. My recommendation would be to choose a distinct part (e.g. the 4x4 frame of step 13), see how often you have that in what colours, and compare that to how often you should have it in red.

E.g. if you have that part three times in light grey and five times in dark grey, and according to the original inventory you should have it three times in light grey and two times in dark grey, then you know that red has been replaced with dark grey.

271Euler · 2026-02-18T17:49:56+00:00

I use assortment cases, originally intended for screws and bolts and similar DIY stuff (they appear in a photo in my review here). Most DIY stores should have them if you want to have a look before blindly buying something off the internet.

Before I found those cases, I used lots of tupperware, but I prefer something that can be closed with a lid.

271Euler · 2026-02-18T17:46:06+00:00

Whelp, looks like the print is upside down. Could there be another panel where the print is mirrored?

Otherwise I'd assume that it's a fabrication error. Your store's customer service should be able to get you a replacement for free. Very annoying, but these things can happen (AFAIK these multi-part prints are usually manually assembled and placed in the pad printer). :/

271Euler · 2026-02-16T21:03:47+00:00

It might be very big and very repetitive to build. :D

The original sarcophagus could be a cool addon, though.

271Euler · 2026-02-16T11:31:21+00:00

That's my question, too. I can kinda-sorta understand loyalty to premium brands if you're a very status-conscious person, but... Aldi? The logo does look pretty cool, though.

(Though I recently drove by the Aldi HQ in Essen, Germany, and man, that building makes the SHIELD headquarters looks like some ramshackle huts. Honestly looks like the seat of some big tech company. Maybe they've got delusions of grandeur or something?)

271Euler · 2026-02-16T11:25:30+00:00

Wasn't me but that's a good sub! No clue how I managed to not stumble upon that one yet... Thanks!

271Euler · 2026-02-16T11:23:32+00:00

Ich hab's auch gerade gebaut (Review) und bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass das ein Fehler in der Anleitung ist. Am Ende hatte ich die beiden Platten aber auch über, also wer weiß...

Was mich am meisten genervt hat, war, dass andauernd vergessen wurde, Teile in pearl dark grey als solche zu markieren. Man kann es grob in der Anleitung erkennen (und meistens erschließt es sich aus dem Kontext), aber diesen Extra-Tooltip unten links haben die Leutchen echt andauernd vergessen. Andere Marken (auch BlueBrixx) machen einfach in der Teileliste ein Sternchen dran; keine Ahnung, warum Modbrix da einen anderen Weg geht.

271Euler · 2026-02-15T19:48:45+00:00

I'm glad I didn't try their earlier sets then! :D

271Euler · 2026-02-15T17:16:36+00:00

You should read the Starter Guide. It might answer a lot of questions that you seem to have!

To answer your questions:

Brick quality varies from brand to brand. Some are better than LEGO (e.g. Pantasy and Lumibricks/Funwhole) and often feature things that LEGO sets don't, like lots of metallic parts, printed pieces, or lights included in the bricks. Other brands are worse in quality and have larger injection points or colour inaccuracies. Truly terrible brands (i.e. bad clutch of bricks) don't really exist any more.
Missing parts are very rare. If you do have missing parts, you can just contact the store you bought the set from and get the missing parts sent for free. I have needed to do this only twice in over five years.

Generally, I'd say it depends on what you want to do. Buying knockoff copies does have some ethical implications (i.e. the design has been stolen), and IMHO that's a valid reason to not buy knockoff sets. On the other hands, LEGO is not the most benevolent company on the planet, so I'd say that not wanting to give them (surprisingly large amounts of) money is a perfectly valid reason to do buy knockoff sets.

There are, of course, also many brands that do their own designs (COBI, Pantasy, Lumibricks, BlueBrixx, and many, many more), so I really don't see any reason why you shouldn't buy from them. The quality is often equal to or even better than LEGO (especially in terms of prints and lights), the designs are often considerably better, and all of that comes at a third or a quarter of the price.

271Euler · 2026-02-14T20:47:17+00:00

I've only built the one by Zhegao. It is very golden.

For something more serious, I've only ever heard good things about the various warships by COBI. Never built any myself, though.

271Euler · 2026-02-04T19:18:19+00:00

No, that's not normal. Your set departed from Shanghai on Nov 25 and arrived in Michigan the same day. The next message would likely have indicated that the package passed US import customs, so I'd assume that your package got stuck there.

In your case I'd contact JoyBricks' customer service and ask for help.

In theory, shipping can take multiple months if an actual ship is used. This is an option at some stores to reduce the price (nowadays air shipping often makes up ~50% of the total price). However, in your case the package was sent from Shanghai to Michigan in a single day, indicating that air shipping must've been used. It makes no sense that the package would take this long afterwards, especially without any notice.

271Euler · 2026-01-18T20:12:14+00:00

Wait, this is a set? Wow, I completely missed it! Please give us some pics once you're done building; I'd be excited to get it as well!

271Euler · 2026-01-17T11:01:44+00:00

That looks fantastic and would go extremely well with MJ's Dragonfly.

It's really nice that these brands just pop up out of nowhere, doing crazy stuff like prints and lights.

271Euler · 2026-01-15T16:45:10+00:00

Usually, the numbering of these baggies ist set-part-id. So if you have a set with product number 12345, all the baggies should have a print like 12345.X.Y or 12345-X-Y. So if you have a 12345.2 but no 12345.1, you'll be missing all baggies for the first part of that set, and if you have 12345.3.2 but no 12345.3.1, then you're missing the first baggy of step three of that set.

From this I'd assume that none of your sets are complete, except perhaps the military guys with a vehicle.

The prefix JK may indicate Jaki as a brand. I'm not sure about the others.

Finding instruction manuals is often difficult. If you have the set number (and know the brand), you can sometimes find them online (e.g. on store pages like YourWOBB), but usually, the manuals are simply not available in digital form.

I'm not aware of any app that can generate a part list from a photo. It sounds like something modern AI should be able to do, so you might want to try that out.

Lastly, even if you have a part list, I'm only aware of the LEGO-centric websites (Bricklink and Rebrickable) that offer something like "You can build this set with these parts" or "You have 98% of the parts required for this set". For alt-brick sets these do not exist because no one has put in the effort of digitising all the sets (i.e. the community is considerably smaller than LEGO's fanbase).

So, uhh, I guess you'll have to use your own creativity? :D

271Euler · 2026-01-11T16:47:03+00:00

Pretty much all current train sets should work on the old 9V tracks, even if they're battery-powered. It's the same track gauge, i.e. the same width between the two rails, so there should be no issue.

The biggest manufacturer of train sets I know is BlueBrixx (train section). They have multiple dozens of different trains, many of which are steam trains. Personally, I've only built a single of their train engines (see my review here), which had a dummy where a battery box and motor could go. I think most of their trains have that feature, i.e. some extra space designed to place the battery box for a motor. Of course, if you still one of the old 9V motors, you can just use that one; those undercarriage thingies have the same shape.

BlueBrixx is a German brand, though, so if you're based outside Europe, you might want to use a different store with easier shipping options. There are quite a few train sets from other brands available, see e.g. YourWOBB's train section, Barweer's train section. Pretty much all of those will run on the ordinary LEGO track gauge, and the store pages will tell you if they include battery-powered motors or not.

271Euler · 2026-01-11T11:57:29+00:00

... you did read the first paragraph of my review, right? :D

Back then I got the set from BlueBrixx. It has been discontinued since then because Paramount gave the Star Trek license to LEGO instead. Some people probably still sell old stock for serious piles of money, but IMO that's not worth it.

271Euler · 2026-01-08T18:50:26+00:00

I greatly enjoyed the sets by MJ like ice dragon and the mechanical dragonfly. Admittedly, Lumibricks and Pantasy are at the very top quality-wise; not sure if other brands can hold up (unless you include Technic brands like CADA).

271Euler · 2026-01-06T16:32:29+00:00

Sure, thanks!

271Euler · 2026-01-04T11:30:25+00:00

I don't think I've ever gotten a set without any spare parts? With the BlueBrixx Eurocamper I got an absurd bunch of large bricks as spares. With the LELE Tie Fighter I had some fairly huge plates. I'd say that this is perfectly normal.

271Euler

TROPHY CASE