LEGO Masters France – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap
Continuing our LEGO Masters adventure in France we have another whopper of an episode with two massive challenges that involve lots of destruction. Two classics LEGO Masters challenges featured in this episode: The Smash Challenge and The Bridge Challenge.
Renamed “Mega Big Bang” for this series, the smash challenge is much the same, several models are set up to explode. Get dropped from a height, slammed into a wall on a sled or hit with a baseball bat.
The winner is who can tell a fantastique story around a space theme with their build that also looks when great coming apart with no pieces remaining. They have 7 hours to build.
Challenge One: The Smash Challenge
Video of the destructions below.
Maximilien & Thibault – Dynamite – Crash world
Their idea is to build a rocket that is exploding on take off. Their plan is to have different stages of the rocket with sections full of different colours. Georg makes the comment that the story might be too simple. Responding to the criticism they added a space creature on the side.
However, the rocket remains standing and largely intact not having the intended effect of the alien falling off and the explosion being underwhelming.
Christelle & Johan – Dynamite – OLG 2050 BLG 390 LD, on the frozen planet
With the world’s resources dried up, humans have looked for resources elsewhere in space. An industrial accident sets the stage for this explosion. The Brickmasters drop in and make a note that the scene is lacking a crucial detail it looks like a warehouse, not one in space.
Taking on the advice they adjusted their build to look more spacey and to give it an ice planet effect.
The explosion has some nice moments such as the space ship flipping end over end and parts of the building landing back on other sections getting praise from the judges.
However, not everything goes up and the silos remain largely intact.
Marguerite & Renaud – Baseball Bat – The space trout
A giant flying space trout where you can see his skeleton while seeing the insides of the things he has eaten. An incredibly creepy build.
The impact impresses the team who are overwhelmed with the destruction of something they had grown attached to.
Yann & Jean-Philippe – Free Fall – Blurp The Monster Toy Eater
A giant green monster who comes into people’s houses to eat their toys. It’s a really awesome creation filled with great details that bring it to life such as the spanner and his hand shoving another toy in.
The judges commend their technical level in keeping the shape rounded and breaking up the cube form with lots of slopes. But giving them some advice over the arms not having covered joints.
Eric gives it a good thwack and it explodes in a burst of purple with its blue brain sailing through gaining praise from the judges who loved the contrast of colours.
Loïc & Guillaume – The Wall – Martial the Martian
An alien riding a giant round flying saucer. He’s been going around to planets picking up animals and food before meeting his end hitting an invisible space wall. Using an increasingly common trick of rail tracks to create a quick curve. An adorable three-eyed alien sits inside a nice curved saucer with a little cage full of his collections.
An impressive result from a giant build that manages to crash into many pieces with great contrast of Martial’s green bits and the ship’s grey with all of the colours inside.
Amongst the debris, they found that the cows have survived.
Alban & Xavier – Free Fall – The Revolting Monster
An ugly monster that’s hiding inside an asteroid which is also a mining base. The intention that the monster survives as the asteroid breaks apart around him. They realize that their build is quite solid, amusingly testing parts during construction.
The drop is a success, the alien manages to survive the fall intact with some of the asteroids also being intact. Giving praise from the judge in achieving their goal.
Sébastien & David – The Wall – The Space Raptor
A large ship called the Space Raptor must escape a wormhole. Hoping to utilise the unique nature of their crash device they aim to have the ship smash through the hole as it’s being chased by space worms. The judges make a point on the story needing to make sense outside of just being in a cool setting.
Just before launching, Georg also points out the space worms look a bit too gentle. The judges were impressed that something that looked pretty solid managed to explode in a shower of parts. But did also pick up on parts that had remained intact.
The two best were judged to be Loïc & Guillaume and Yann & Jean-Philippe with the former taking the win to earn a small advantage in the next challenge. The bottom two teams were Maximilien & Thibault along with Christelle & Johan.
Challenge Two: The Bridge Challenge
This has been a staple challenge since the UK series with the basic premise of building a 2m bridge. That can support increasing amounts of weight until it collapses. In the event of a tie, the bridge with the best story and look gets judged and a team eliminated at the end.
They have ten hours This is a technical challenge as LEGO isn’t brilliantly suited for lateral forces as the bricks will easily separate.
Many teams also rush to build technical constructions which have the advantage of using fewer parts and being lighter. While other teams have had success using snot designs that put bracing to help hold the sides in.
And if you were curious, here are some of the previous weights from around the globe:
Australia – 88kg.
Sweden – 192kg (the weight was capped at 88kg and the host and judge stood on the bridge).
Dutch – 160kg (The Dutch didn’t have aesthetics in play).
America – 453kg Some may have gone higher, in some places it was the stands the bridge was placed on that broke under the weight. Not the bridge itself, or as LEGO Master Cade (Australia) mentioned “We would have won if ours didn’t fall over”.
Interestingly the bases of the bridge don’t have ANY studs on which to connect bricks to which adds another challenge.
The builds
Maximilien & Thibault
With Thibault having strong technical skills and directing , Maximilien is a bit lost with all of the technicalities. They design a bridge with lots of technic parts braced and supported by two angled support beams. Which struggle to stay connected at the junctions. Theirs managed to reach 140kg.
Christelle & Johan – The Railway Bridge
Inspired by the San Francisco bridge they create an intricate top level that’s crossed braced with loads of complexity. However, this takes up their time as the judges point out. Why they haven’t started on creating the main support columns a few hours in. Scrambling they get their bridge together and it reaches 90kg as the support beam snaps in half.
Yann & Jean-Philippe – Water Bridge
An interesting design which appears to be using a two-tier snot span that has supports between all resting on two support pillars. The design was of a bridge of water with a little boat sailing through. Not much was shown during the construction. But in the final half-hour they struggled to get the bridge onto the pillars. As bricks started to shift leaving them worried to how it would hold up.
The weights are added and despite a rocky and unstable bridge. That has cracks appearing between the bricks they creep over the 114kg line to avoid being in second place. Yet the bridge exceeds expectations and reaches 311kg before the unstable span tips the weights over.
Loïc & Guillaume – The Eiffel bridge
Their design involves lots of lightweight cross-bracing and latticework. Two hours in they realise their design is too complex and is eating into their time and have to revert to a plan B using train track parts. To fill in gaps that the lattice won’t reach. They are a bit worried how this shift in construction technique will hold. But their bridge reaches 93kg (113kg with their bonus 20).
As the joints on the main beams give way. The judges point out they focused very heavily on technic parts and didn’t really have much in the way of aesthetics.
Alban & Xavier – The Rainbow Bridge
Xavier has some experience as he is a construction contractor and Alban is a graphic designer so this should pair up nicely for this challenge. Their design aims to incorporate an arc that is a rainbow that ties into a cloud. This is built out of supports made from solid slope pieces to create the rainbow with technic parts making up the top of the bridge.
A nice tense moment as the two rainbow arches are put together and braced. With Xavier holding up several kilos of LEGO as Alban rushed to get all the pieces together. The design is praised by the judges as they load up the weights putting 55kg on with ease and swiftly moving up to 100kg, then 225kg, then 300kg.
They bring in the spare weights to push it up to 400kg then finishing at 453kg. Equalling the U.S. record. An emotional moment for Xavier as he used to build LEGO bridges with his late father.
However, they continue to push their bridge’s limit reaching 500kg stopping for health and safety reasons, setting a new world record!
Sébastien & David – Barracuda Bridge
David is a master of technical building so this team had an advantage. Their bridge is a large black and blue construction with two solid pillars holding up the main span and a cross brace. This bridge looks light but manages to reach 375kg.
Marguerite & Renaud – The Glitchy Bridge
Their story involves around a bridge that is virtual and is glitching with multiple coloured bricks representing glitches. With technical building not being their forte, they focus on aesthetics.
They focus on using bricks braced by a technic frame that is in an arch that’s duplicated a couple of times for strength. A small moment of panic when they fear their span won’t fit between the gap but it just squeezes in.
The weights pile on to the team’s amazement, creeping past 200kg then reaching 464kg to their amazement. Even more is added on and they manage to tie with Xavier and Alban with 500kg!
The rundown
Alban and Xavier – 500kg Marguerite and Renaud. – 500kg David and Sebastien – 375kg. Yann and Jean-Phillipe – 311kg. Maximilien and Thibault – 140kg. Guillaume and Loic – 113kg. Johan and Christelle – 90kg.
The top two are obvious, with the winning pair being judged on aesthetics. Xavier and Alvan winning the Challenge. The team to leave us are Johan and Christelle.
Well done with your time on LEGO Masters. Next week! The Mega-Cities Challenge and Cut in Half and a double elimination!
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