“Battle Bricks”
This is a game designed to practice controlled flying and
strategic building. Of course you don’t have to make a
battle out of it, but it’s sometimes fun to see who domi-
nates!
Pairs of players create their airframes, whatever design
they want to make that flies. People quickly learn how to
build to sustain hits and defend their motors.
When players airframes are ready, tie equal length strings
to the bottom of the flyers (out of the way of the motors,
of course) There are hook LEGO pieces that work really
well for attaching the leash.
On the other side of the leash, attach a weight that the
airframe can’t lift off the ground. You can even tie the
strings to table legs, or chair backs, jars etc. Whatever is
handy.
Now that the flight is constrained, players can practice
maneuvering their airframes to attack or retreat and bat-
tle each other in the air. The challenger who’s airframe
stays flying the longest wins.
“Cross the Line”
This is a relay game designed to test challengers piloting, building and problem solv-
ing skills. There are a range of variations of this game to accommodate fewer players
or a limited number of kits.
Setup: Two teams. Each challenger builds their airframes. There is a line or starting
area as a starting point for challengers. Depending on how challenging you want to
make it, there’s another line or a target on the floor a distance away from the starting
point. (*hint, really light simple designs may fly faster and be reconstructed quicker in
the event of a crash)
Once each challenger completes a successful landing— and you can determine what a
successful landing is. Is it crossing the line and landing in a pile of LEGO? Or is it land-
ing with the airframe fully in tact?
The object is for each team member to pilot their airframe effectively from the starting
point and land it past the opposite line or in the target before the other team.
Here are some other ideas for how to make this challenge your own!
• Only one controller per team so binding and arming are part of the challenge.
• Limits on the number of batteries each team can use. So once there’s a suc-
cessful landing the battery has to be shuttled back to the next challenge. Game ends
when batteries are dead.
• One “Fix it person” Say a challenger crashes before they hit the target, another
team member is the only one who can reconstruct or rejigger the airframe build in a
hurry to get their teammate back in the air to try again.
• Time it. The number of successful landings in a certain amount of time wins.
• Divide and conquer. Maybe you have a particularly good pilot, and another
talented fix-it person, and really fast builder, and a fast runner? Let the teams decide
who is in what role to maximize the number of successful landings etc.
You get the idea. Riff on what you want to optimize for. Cooperation, teamwork, spe-
cialization? Even with two people you can set this game up to accomplish “all time
records” and see if you can beat your last scores.
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