Lego board games

The Lego company has published many board games throughout its history. These are based on current product themes. The games were made by RoseArt until it was bought by MegaBloks, the main competitor to Lego Group.

In July 2009, Lego launched Lego Games, a range of new board games.

Lego Creator

Lego Creator is perhaps the best known Lego Board game. In the game, players compete to finish building their model from a set of instructions first. Pieces are collected by rolling the dice, and following the instructions on the square, for example, "Take Two White Bricks". A Deluxe version is also available.

Lego Racers

In Lego Racers, players Build their own race track out of cardboard pieces, then take turns spinning the wheel to move their car. There are also various power-ups on the track that players can pick up and attach to their car.

Time Cruisers

In the Time Cruisers board game, players compete to bring back one artifact from each of the four time periods shown on the board. The artifacts must all be able to attach to the player's minifigure. For example, only one headgear item may be picked up.

LEGO Bionicle: The Quest Game

Bionicle: The Quest has been released multiple times to suit the then-current Bionicle products. The description from the last edition, from 2006, states: "The evil Piraka have invaded the island of Voya Nui and are now on the hunt for the powerful Mask of Life. Take up the Toa Inika mission to find the Mask before the Piraka. Traverse the island carefully, and be ready to go to battle along the way. Includes 6 exclusive collectible Toa Inika game pieces, a double-sided game board, a Protodermis ball launcher with Zamor sphere, a Piraka target, 50 Quest cards and a die."

Heroica

Lego Heroica was a Role-playing game based subtheme released in June 2011. The first official subtheme of the LEGO Games series, it consists of five modules depicting one of five areas, Fortaan, Waldurk, Nathuz, Draida and Ilrion. All the sets except Ilrion were released in June 2011, Ilrion was released the following year. Each game can be played on its own, connected to other Heroica boards for expanded games, or even taken apart to create entirely different scenarios. Each player has a "Hero pack", which keeps track of the player's health, items, and enemies defeated. The types of items, weapons, and enemies in each board differ. Each board includes a boss enemy and a relic that gives the hero who takes it special powers. There are four areas on the map of Heroica that have not been released into Lego board games. These four areas have the names of Barresh, Seldaan, Drandora and Elsruck.

Orient Expedition

This board game is released with the theme Orient Expedition in 2004. Unlike other games, its pieces come in almost every Orient Expedition set. 6 minor sets, 2 for each area, will come with game cards while 3 sets, the major sets will come with the board and dice. The game uses cards, minifigures and the sets itself to play. Lego Treasure Quest is a game were players have to find keys in a room.

Ninjago Spinners

Introduced in 2011 to coincide with the Ninjago line. In the Ninjago Spinners game, each player is given a minifigure and a spinner, 3 weapons (which should include at least one golden weapon), and at least 4 battle cards. The main premise of the game is to spin your spinner at your opponent and attempt to knock away his weapon. If the weapon is knocked away, it must be given to the opponent, and the match continues in this way until one player has all the weapons. Battle cards can also be used to alter the game, such as by adding things on to the spinner for defense or extra attack, forcing the opponent to place their minifigure on the spinner in weaker ways, or inhibiting the opponent's ability to use their own cards. Cards can only be used if the character card, which corresponds to the minifigure used in a match, has an equal or greater amount of bars in the given color of the battle card. Golden cards can only be played if the player character is using a Golden Weapon.

In 2012, the spinner design was redone, to allow for better customization. New additions to the 2012 game included further customization abilities, "crowns" which could customize a given spinner as well as providing a bit more stability and flexibility for the character in the spinner, and new card types including cards which coincided with the use of crowns on the spinner, or temporarily cut off the combat aspect by having players maneuver their spinners through an obstacle course consisting of battle cards for a weapon.

2011 saw the release of 14 standard spinner sets, 2 two-spinner arenas, one "skeleton bowling" practice set, and three standard playsets which also included spinners. 2012's line, which consisted entirely of the updated spinner design, included 13 standard spinner sets, 2 battle arenas, one practice set, and 5 "booster packs" which did not include spinners themselves, but rather weapons, minfigures, cards and parts for customization. The line was cancelled in 2013, to make way for the Legends of Chima Speedorz sets.

Speedorz

Introduced in 2013 to coincide with the Legends of Chima theme. The Speedorz sets are based on the eponymous "Speedorz", small vehicles based on flywheels. The Speedorz are operated by using a ripcord to activate the flywheel, and then setting the Speedor on the ground to allow it to race. Each set includes at least one Speedor with additional elements for customization, weapons, collectible cards, crystals (the game's score counter) as well as brick-built targets, ramps, and obstacles that consist of the game's challenges. In a round of Speedorz, both players will launch their Speedorz, either in conjunction or separately, depending on the challenge. In the "Boulder Bowling" challenge, for example, each player will go separately, to see how many boulders he or she can knock down in one turn, while in the spinner challenge of "Chi Battles" both players will go simultaneously, attempting to hit an active spinner first. After this is done, the player must draw one of the collectible cards and choose one of the four character traits on the card (instinct, speed, courage, or strength), or use one of his crystals to add a given number to the trait score. The opponent must then draw a card and see if it has a higher value for that trait than the opponent's. Whoever has the highest amount of the given trait takes two crystals as score, and the game repeats until one player has six crystals.

Most sets also allow for a non-competitive player challenge, as most of the challenges can be played with a single player.

In 2013, the line included 10 single-player packs and 3 two-player packs. In 2014, 4 speedorz sets have been introduced so far, and more are planned for release in future.

Lego Games

External links

• Lego games at BoardGameGeek