Bricks Cascade 2020: 99 Bricks Contest

A month ago I was attending the Bricks Cascade LEGO convention in Portland. A highlight of that event for me was on Friday when I participated in the “99 Bricks” challenge, in which you have to build a bunch of different models out of the same 99 elements, each one to a different theme or subject matter, and you only have 3 minutes to do it in! I think my favorite was the first one I made, a robot:

1: Robot

Here are the rest of the models I made, all from the same set of 99 parts. Of course, not all parts went into each model, but we had to draw from just those parts. The parts were not provided, so I had to come up with them on my own. I used some parts from the free model we all received with our membership, and bought a couple of small sets from one of the vendors to get more variety of colors and parts to work with. I ended up not using a lot of the parts I brought though.

2: Flower 3: Appliance 4: Dog 5: Vehicle 6: Bird 7: Buildings 8: Sailboat 9: Fish

I got the most votes for 2 of the events: my robot and sailboat, if memory serves, but another contestant won 3 of the challenges and was the overall winner.

If you’re ever attending a convention with a similar contest, I recommend giving it a try. It is a great creative challenge. You just have 3 minutes for each of the models to come up with something to fit a random theme, just from a small collection of pieces. A big part of the challenge is coming up with the right 99 parts to build stuff with — for example, it helps to have some wheels and some eyeball parts, and a range of different shapes and sizes.

All in all it was a pretty great event–Bricks Cascade is one of my favorite conventions. This is the third and final post I’ll be making about it. I also posted a few things on Instagram (@billwardsbrickpile) during the event, so check those posts out as well and follow me there if you use Instagram.

Given the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be a while before any of us gets to go to another event like this, of course. In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home!