A Great Ball Contraption module has one job, move balls from input to output, and an infinite number of ways to fail at it in front of a convention crowd. Dressing that job up as a pirate ship adds a whole new set of hazards, and the question mark in the title suggests not all of them were avoided.

Hard sci-fi in LEGO means trusses, dishes and no swooshable fighters, and this one commits. The main radar dish is the part to study: nine red bicycle frames hooked together by their handlebars. Parts usage like that is why people keep the odd bits in a separate drawer.

M-Tron got magnets, red and black and that lovely trans-neon green, but never a pair of legs. Luna S has fixed the oversight with a dense, playable mech that keeps the classic-space rule of features everywhere. Bonus points for the little autonomous walker riding on its back.

Eli Willsea has a knack for vignettes that tell a whole story in a small footprint, and this one is about as direct as a build gets: a lone figure at the foot of a stair, darkness below, light above. The builder ties it to his own faith, but the image works on anyone who has had a hard stretch. Look at how the lighting does most of the storytelling.

A classic BrickNerd technique piece, back on the front page, solving a problem every LEGO city builder runs into. The fix comes from an unlikely place: an arch from the Lion Knights' Castle set. Part numbers are included, so it is something you can actually build.

Somebody built a whole alternate-history wargame universe on top of LEGO, gave it away, and grew a community that writes fiction and draws art for it. The designer's point that bricks are the perfect prototyping medium will ring true to anyone who has ever hacked something together. The included squadron instructions are a nice touch.

A builder took LEGO's Monet set and reworked it into a moody night-time palette, then wrote up which part swaps worked and which colours turned out to be liars next to their neighbours. It is a good look at colour theory done in plastic, with a comment from the set's designer about how many bridge colours they tried.

Two of this feed's favourite things in one small build: a speeder bike wearing a tyrannosaur as a body kit. It is compact enough to actually build this weekend, and the write-up explains the pipe-frame trick underneath. The final jaw detail left out of the instructions is the kind of nerdy footnote worth reading for.