How did YOU play with Legos?

[Jexik]

People often make comparisons between Heroscape and Legos. For many, they both fit that urge to build and stack stuff. After other recent discussions about what got people into Heroscape, I began to think about how I played with legos, and whether that may have shaped or been analogous to the kind of Heroscape player that I would later become.

When I was about 18 months old, I didn't put stuff in my mouth, so my parents took a chance and started putting regular legos in front of me. Not the big DUPLOs. Regular legos that say not for kids under 3. I doubt I did anything spectacular with them, but I got started early!

Starting around my 6th birthday, and continuing for a couple years, every major gift holiday (pretty much just b-day and Christmas) was met with me getting a big Castle set. It made my 6 months. I'd almost invariably force... I mean ask my dad to sit down with me and we'd build it together, by the instructions that very morning. I hardly ever built something of my own design. I find it interesting that later on, I've almost always either played on official Hasbro Scenarios or something from the BoV.

However, I mentioned that I was really into the Castle sets. Throughout the year, I'd sometimes get other, smaller sets, and what almost always was the deciding factor for me was how many little lego men were inside. I wanted more guys! I'd set them up around my castles in dynamic poses. There were battles in the courtyard, out in front of the castles, drawbridges being raised, etc... Eventually, I created alliances between the different kinds of guys, based on the emblems on their shields. The Lion-shielded guys were good guys, and they were allies with the guys who had Falcons on their shields. Sometimes, they would be joined by the robin-hood looking band of outlaws, but only if the situation was dire. Their enemies were the guys with Dragons on their shields, of which I had two castles. Later on, some of the dragon-allied units even included actual dragons! And a Wizard! The evil dragon guys were also allied with the Wolf Pack.

My focus on the battles and figures continued to this day, at least that's the way I see it... as did my ability to go on and on at length about something I enjoy. Apparently I was a very quiet child until I learned how to talk.

So, what about the rest of you? How do you and/or your children play with legos? Was there a different building toy that you preferred?

I did do a search, and the closest I came up with was this thread, which had a fairly small first post.

[killercactus]

And here I was thinking this was going to be a bunch of discussions about Romans and why you moved them down in the Power Rankings.....

EDIT: to add something - I never had the lego "sets" - I just had a bunch of random legos that I built into multi-colored houses. I guess that parallels my sub-par map-making skills and my acceptance at just throwing a map together with whatever terrain lays before me in about 10 minutes.

[Tai-Pan]

Nice post. I was a huge fan of the old castle legoes, but they had been pretty much discontinued by the time I started in, and didn't come back until after I was pretty much done.

I played with legos at a very young age as well. As far as building went, I often would build what the instructions said, and later I would disassemble things to build my own stuff. I was never as creative or good at building as the people that did the instructions (or my dad), and I see that now with HeroScape. I can do some neat stuff by myself, but I never like it as much as stuff other people do. As far as set collections go, I got some of everything, which is very similar to how HeroScape operates. In legos, I had spacemen fighting islanders fighting cowboys fighting mechanics fighting gungans. Very HeroScape-esque. There were no rules as to who was on who's side, except that guys who didn't fight together where they were from didn't fight together there (eg Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul were never on the same side). Later on as Legos got more and more expensive for less and less, I changed over to MegaBloks Dragons collection. The Dragons there were awesome and put Legos Dragons to shame. The people were better too, but only restricted to one theme. The pieces they came with were much more decorative and suited for building large castles than most of legos stuff, which was largely composed of small pieces composing larger things. Some of the Dragons' stuff is so impressive, I've thought about getting it out and using it on Heroscape battlefields. I've got one piece that is a gate that looks like a dragon's head and would rock in some kind of campaign scenario or something.

I like the parallels between our lego lives and our HeroScaping.

[AMIS]

I never really played with lego as a child. I was more into outdoor sports. (I know I'm just showing my age again.)
Thankfully I have two boys, so I have been playing with it recently...I mean supervising them as they play with it. Actually they've become more interested in electronics now so (with prodding from my better half) I just got rid of a whole slew of the Dragon's stuff.
My oldest seems to have some interest in Heroscape as a game but the other just loves to stomp other figures with Grimnak's steed. At least he hasn't broken anything yet.
Chomp, Chomp, Chomp, Stomp, Stomp, Stomp.

[nyys]

Tons of Legos in mya house growing up, mostly sci-fi sets. I used to give myself challenges and try to build something out of every pieced I had, which was back when you actually got a lot of pieces in the sets as opposed the the giant chunks you get in many of big sets today.

My son is now 7 and I've tried very hard to get him into the Lego thing, but I think introducing Scape (and now other games) at age 4 has destroyed any hope I might have of building lego town in his room.

[lefton4ya]

I always liked building my own things out of random lego blocks. I remember I made a really sweet racecar that came apart into a dunebuggy and a hovercraft and I memorized the build so I could take it apart and put it back together. I started getting the Technics and Space Police legos (before they had StarWars branded) but I found that after I build the pre-made suggested build instructions, I got bored with them. The space legos were hard to build other things with besides what was on the box and I wasn't inventive enough to build something from scratch with the technics, but I would mod the ones they ad build instructions for to make them look cooler.

I started liking various other building toys more such as Construx, K'Nex, Capsela, Zaks & even Block & Marbles - the main reason was that it seemed more customizable and I started to hate the way lego sets were going being branded and coming with only enough bricks to build what the instruction sheet came with - even at 8 years old I became a product snob.

As I am writing this I can relate this to Heroscape a lot:

• Sometimes I like coming up with one or two cool maps and other times I like using maps that came in the instruction book and BOV maps, but then tweak them
• I like using official figures but tweaking some of the stats to be "better".
• I no not like when they have locked synergies such as elves and drow, where there is no room to have variety. I love the Marro-Warlord-Roman-Soldier-Knight-Champion... chains of synergies where you can have more variety in army builds.
• I do not like the D&D branded scape at 28 just like I did not like the Pirate, Space, Castle legos getting away from "classic legos" when I was 8.

[wriggz]

I also didn't look at this Thread thinking it was about Romans and how people play them.

I can say Creating Space Pirates from a pirate set and space man set was very cool. Mixing Genras in Lego was fun, easy, and necessary when you had limited resources.

I would build for hours creating Deep sea adventures, Pirates coves, or Alien attacks. I loved building my own robots to terrorize the Lego Citizians.

Nowadays, Heroscape is my only hobby (who has the time for others?) I like making customs, I make my own maps (except when hosting a tournment, and even then I mod them) and I love the game play. It seems really far removed from those carefree lego days of the past, But like Lego, my heroscape is story driven and I think that is the key to the simalarity.

[Xn F M]

I Played with my Legos almost exactly the same way you did Jexik, my favorites were the castle sets too (though when I started getting Legos the only ones available were the one with the lion shield guys, but they kept advertising the older ones in all the insert books *grumble grumble grumble*).

[Sokol]

The Lego castle set I owned was old. You had to build the horses from Legos and they didn't look that great. I loved having battles too, but once the castle got destroyed, I rarely rebuilt it. There were also too many little specialized pieces. None of the stuff I built without instructions looked that great.

I love the Heroscape castle set because you can build a large castle quickly, and it takes little creativity to build something really cool.

I always wanted more Legos than I had. I definitely want more Heroscape than I have. I just can't get enough terrain (and I'm at 15 ROTVs and counting).

[MI_Tiger]

What are these Lego "sets" of which you speak? The Legos I played with as a kid were just colored blocks - no castles, no sci-fi, no guys. I used to build all sorts of things with them - race cars, space ships, pirate galleons, etc. Of course they all looked like boxes made out of colored blocks, but I had a great time.

I feel so old . . .


Seriouslly, I'm amazed at the Legos my kids have now (mostly Star Wars). On the one hand, I love the detail in the new sets, but I do sometimes wonder if they stimulate the imagination as much as the old blocks.

[MegaSilver]

Originally Posted by killercactus

And here I was thinking this was going to be a bunch of discussions about Romans and why you moved them down in the Power Rankings.....

I was thinking of the same thing in bold!

MegaSilver

[Chardar]

Did? I still do play with legos. I mainly play with technic now. The NXT is definately my favorite set. I made a fully funtioning juke box with the NXT, an ipod touch, and a set of speakers. Hardly traditional legos but that's how I play with them.